POPULARITY
45 episodes with seo hacker
2 episodes with seo hacker
Growth doesn't come from hustle. It comes from clarity.Sean Si hit the wall most founders do — trying to do everything, lead everyone, and fix all the things. Then he blew it up and started fresh.In this episode, he walks us through how he scaled SEO Hacker by simplifying, delegating, and focusing on what actually matters. ✅ What burnout taught him about leadership ✅ Why most marketing teams misfire — and how to fix it ✅ How to rebuild culture without being the bottleneckIf you've ever said "I don't know what's working anymore," this one's for you.
Why is SEO so important now that it's going to be 2024? AI is coming along. What's it about with SEO? Why do I need it as a business owner? Why would you need it as a business owner? SEO now is so important because people, whether they're young or old, whether they are Gen Zs or Baby Boomers, they search in Google. Often we find ourselves searching in Google first before asking friends and families for their opinions, referrals, phone numbers and whatnots. So if that's the case where people go to Google first, doesn't it tell you how important it is that you appear in the top ten search results? Much more so if you appear in the top five, top three or top one. It's extremely difficult to get the top one spot. But if you're consistent in doing your SEO, such as most of our clients in SEO Hacker, who have been doing SEO for eight years or more with us, then it's going to be that much easier for you to get that top one spot, and it's going to be that much harder for your competition to get the top one spot. SEO Hacker as a company, we grew through this way. We rank for our keywords - SEO Philippines being our cornerstone keyword. Clients just come in because companies who look for SEO services would usually type SEO Philippines, and whoever is number one, they would consider to be the best in the industry. Since SEO Hacker has been there, we've dominated the number one spot for a lot of our keywords, we've gotten so many leads. Right now, we're working with 80 clients, and we're looking at expanding to more hopefully in the years to come. SEO has been our main strategy, and a lot of our clients realize this. And they also did SEO and it has produced similar results for them. It has grown their business because lead generation is extremely difficult, especially qualified lead generation where people who come to our website fill up the web form, name, email, and phone number. We receive them. And we know they're already interested. Why? Because they use our keyword. They're already looking for a qualified SEO provider. So for our sales team, what that means is every call they get, every email that they receive, those are qualified leads already. The chances of you closing the deal with that lead is extremely high. In fact, it's the highest out of all the marketing channels, including offline marketing channels. That is how important SEO is right now. Thirteen years ago, a lot of the big players here in the Philippines, a lot of the big companies didn't know what it was. They didn't care. Fast forward to thirteen years today, the budget for SEO has grown significantly, and every marketing department knows what it is, knows its importance, and it will still continue to grow because the younger generation, they woke up with smartphones, with fast data and with Google. It is their natural way of learning about the world. And if you know how to do SEO well, you will be able to make sure that they always find you and that you are able to influence them in their decision making process. I hope this video has provided value for you. And if you're interested to know more about SEO, we do teach SEO in the SEO Hacker blog. It's free! You can subscribe to receive our weekly newsletter. Or if you're interested in having us do an audit for your website or a friend's website, you can go to seo-hacker.net, fill up the form there and we will get your email address, your mobile number, and we'll be able to schedule for an audit for you so that we can tell you how well your website is doing, how well it's ranking, what else you can do, and maybe if you're interested to engage with us, we can also give you a custom SEO package. --- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack Youtube: leadme.ph/youtube TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@leadershipstack Leadership Stack Merch: https://leadershipstack.com/shop/
Embark on an insightful journey with Sean Si, Mr. CEO at 22, and David Tan, the COO of SEO Hacker, in this episode filled with practical advice and visionary insights. Tune in as they provide guidance for those with ideas, offering tailored advice to overcome barriers and turn these ideas into actions. Learn key entrepreneurial lessons from their 20s for faster success and explore the landscape of AI in the Philippines and its significant impact on various fields 5-10 years from now. Lastly, discover successful Filipino entrepreneurs known for their innovations and learn from their experiences. Don't miss this dynamic episode covering a range of topics, only here on the Leadership Stack Podcast! --- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack Youtube: leadme.ph/youtube TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@leadershipstack Leadership Stack Merch: https://leadershipstack.com/shop/
How do you know what's the right side hustle for you? I'll tell you a story first. When I was starting out SEO Hacker, I was writing for a blog. I had a problem. No one is reading my stuff. The solution is to search. How do other people do it? So I followed some other bloggers. They all said to do SEO. So I studied it and applied it. It was the solution. And there was value there because I found value there. There's no way that other companies will not find online relevant passive traffic because they are already searching. There is no way that they will not find it valuable. How did I know that SEO was the right side hustle for me? And the answer is honestly, I didn't know. It's a series of divine appointments and interventions. So at the end of the day, for me, life is not just about knowing things and doing things. Life is also about faith and having faith in the right person, which is Jesus Christ. That for me, is it. So there's no direct answer to your question because God gave you a set of skills, a set of desires, passions, as we call it. And the intersection of these in my opinion, that's the best side hustle you can do. But it's hard to know what those are. So, for example, for me, early on I knew I loved to write stories and stories and stories. I just write and I know I love to do that. And SEO has a lot to do about writing. But it's not just about writing. It's also about programming, knowing psychodynamics behind people, what keywords they might use to search for your product or service, knowing how to partner up with other webmasters, get links from their websites, and earn links from other websites. So it's a combination of different skill sets. That's what makes SEO so hard as a practice. There's that dilemma. There's still a skill set gap in a lot of places for sure, especially with the high level skill set like SEO. And that is something that I knew I wanted to do because of the intersection of my passion, which is writing and what I knew how to do, which is programming and IT. At the end of the day, I feel like I've also been given some balance there by God. Couple that with my desire for writing and skill set for writing and communication, that for me I think is how you really grow, what has been given to you by God. So at the end of the day, you pray about it, you try to figure it out - the intersection of your God given talents and your God given desires. And then once you find that out, you work super hard to be able to develop that. And then once you're successful as a freelancer there and you start to get more clients, then you will start to hire people. Then you develop your leadership and management skills, because there is no way on your entrepreneurship journey that you're not going to improve your leadership and management. You are always going to have to improve it. But leading a team and teaching them and managing them is a whole different ball game. You need to learn that. And so a lot of the time it's really going to be hard life experiences that will teach you about leadership. I've gone through some of them, and this is my effort and my team's effort in helping you to learn some things, learn some values from whatever it is that I've gone through as an entrepreneur. All right, guys, hopefully that adds value to you. And if it did, please do help us out by hitting the like button, the bell notification icon and the subscribe button. Again, this is your host, Sean Si, and I will see you in the next episode. --- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack Youtube: leadme.ph/youtube TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@leadershipstack Leadership Stack Merch: https://leadershipstack.com/shop/
Welcome to the Evolvepreneur (After Hours) Show I am your Special Host Christine Campbell Rapin Join me today where we dig deep with our guests and get you the best concepts and strategies to fast-track your business. My very special guest today is Sean Si ... Sean Si is a respected international speaker, entrepreneur, author, and investor. He is the CEO and founder of SEO Hacker and hosts the Leadership Stack podcast. Through his leadership, SEO Hacker has grown into a million-dollar company, overcoming challenges and crises. Sean holds certifications in executive leadership, persuasion, and motivation. He has spoken at major conferences, including TEDx, and shared the stage with renowned speakers and former Presidents of the Philippines. Sean started SEO Hacker as a side hustle and has since expanded it to employ 54 people, with plans for expansion into Singapore. He believes that a strong spirit, a capable team, and a clear vision are crucial for entrepreneurial success. Sean emphasizes the importance of faith and surrendering challenges to a higher power to maintain perspective.
Sean Si is Founder and CEO at SEO Hacker. SEO Hacker is the #1 SEO (or Search Engine Optimization) agency in the Philippines. Founded in 2009, SEO Hacker has taken hundreds of Filipino companies at the top of search results. IN THIS EPISODE | 00:34 Ano ang SEO Hacker? | 03:05 Let's start with the basics: Ano ang SEO (Search Engine Optimization)? | 05:39 How do you “hack” a company's SEO? What are some basic tips you can share? | 07:25 How relevant is SEO for any company? How does SEO boost marketing or sales for a business? | 10:20 Let's have an example! How can you probably take Start Up Podcast PH at the top of search results? :) | 12:10 SEO Hacker was founded in 2009. How different is the SEO landscape back then to now given all the recent tech advancements? | 16:09 Who or what type of companies have you worked with and how did you help them up in search results? | 18:00 If a company is interested to partner with SEO Hacker, what's the picture for them? How can they connect with you? | 19:50 You wrote a book “CEO at 22”. Can you share some lessons in the book that our listeners can learn from? | 25:09 What do you think makes a good leader? What do you think makes a good CEO? | 33:28 You also have a podcast: “Leadership Stack Podcast”. Tell us more about this. | 35:27 Share more about your vision and future plans! | 38:31 How can listeners know more about you and SEO Hacker? SEO HACKER | Website: seo-hacker.com | Facebook: facebook.com/SEOHacker OFFICIAL E-LEARNING PARTNER | Ask Lex PH Academy: asklexph.com | Get 5% discount by using the code: ALPHAXSUP CHECK OUT OUR PARTNERS | TechShake: techshake.asia | OneCFO: onecfoph.co (mention Start Up Podcast PH as referral!) | TakeFive Outdoors: takefiveoutdoors.com | Pinoy IP Works: pinoyipworks.com | Packetworx: packetworx.com | NutriCoach: nutricoach.com | LookingFour Buy & Sell Online: lookingfour.com | Benjoys Food Products: benjoysfoodproducts.com | DBUZZ: d.buzz | Pareto Consulting | AltSwitch | Twala | Eplayment | Hive Energy PH START UP PODCAST PH | YouTube: youtube.com/StartUpPodcastPH | Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/6BObuPvMfoZzdlJeb1XXVa | Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/start-up-podcast/id1576462394 | Facebook: facebook.com/startuppodcastph | Instagram: instagram.com/startuppodcastph | LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/startuppodcastph SUPPORT THE PODCAST | Patreon: patreon.com/StartUpPodcastPH | Unionbank: 109426505649 | GCash: 09623871744 This episode is edited by the team at: tasharivera.com
Revolve your life around your business, and you are destined to suffer. To avoid burnout, build a life outside of your business that feeds your spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical well-being. Sean Si has mastered the arts of counterbalancing and leadership development; tune in today to hear it all! About Sean Si:Sean Si is a serial entrepreneur, angel investor, author, blogger, keynote speaker, web developer, SEO specialist & thought leader. He is the CEO and Founder of SEO Hacker, an expert SEO company in the Philippines with a team of over 50 people (mostly millennials and centennials) in-house.Episode highlights: When hiring, make sure you have clear job descriptions, KPIs, and examples of “what winning looks like.” Having a process like this in place will ensure that you build a solid team from the get-go. (11:07) To be more deliberate on your entrepreneurial journey and stay on track with your goals, build consistency into your life. You don't have to stick to a perfect routine; just do what you can! (22:29) Work hard, play hard! We all need counterbalances to our work because burnout is unpleasant and unhealthy. So, be mindful of how you spend your time and ensure that you are doing things that fuel you spiritually, emotionally, mentally, and physically. (27:22) Invest in leadership development within your organization. A business led by people who are focused on fulfilling their role of serving others will be unstoppable. (46:07) Sean's best advice for entrepreneurs:“Work is a rubber ball; usually, when you drop it, it just bounces back up. But family, health, your spiritual life, these are glass balls. When you drop one of them, they're broken. It's hard to put them back together.” (29:34) Resources Mentioned:Developing the Leader Within You by John MaxwellConnect with Sean: LinkedIn Twitter Website Follow Beyond 8 Figures: LinkedIn Twitter Website
We all know that our success lies within our own two hands. Walang ibang magpapayaman kung di ang ating sarili lang. This is why Self-leadership can help you get ahead in your career, life and finances! However, what does it really mean to be our own leader and how do we even develop that mindset when everything is against us? You're lucky because today we are joined by Sean Si who learned how to lead himself to success to become a CEO at a young age of 22! He is the CEO and founder of SEO Hacker and the host of the Leadership Stack podcast. He has led his team through chaos and crisis to the million-dollar company that it is today. He is a Wharton-certified Executive Leader and Persuader, a John Maxwell certified speaker and coach, and a certified master of the Reiss Motivation Profile. He has spoken at the biggest conferences including TEDx, national events, expos, and has shared the stage with other well-known international speakers and former Presidents of the Philippines. What will you learn: "The One-Man principle" leaders are born leadership can be learned humility is not fake insecurity build habits compound effect and atomic habits power of prayer, be accountable Why is it important for us to learn how to lead ourselves? What does it mean to lead ourselves? Where does self-leadership come from? Is self-leadership a trait or a skill that can be learned? Why is it hard to lead ourselves? How do I prevent overconfidence? Where do we begin if we want to lead ourselves to change for the better? Connect with Sean: - LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/seansi/ - IG: https://www.instagram.com/sean.si/ - FB: https://www.facebook.com/seansi.speaks - Website: https://sean.si/ - SEO Hacker: https://seo-hacker.com/ --- SOCIAL MEDIA: FB: (https://www.facebook.com/PurposeDrivenFinance) IG: (https://www.instagram.com/purposedrivenfinance) LinkedIn: (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayadriantolentino) YouTube: (https://www.youtube.com/c/HeyKuyaJay) TikTok: (https://www.tiktok.com/@heykuyajay) OTHER INQUIRIES/FEEDBACK/COMMENTS/SUGGESTIONS: EMAIL: (hey@jayadriantolentino.com) WHATSAPP: (https://wa.me/971521435522) VIBER: (https://msng.link/o/?971521435522=vi)
Sean: How do you identify who's going to be a good leader or who's your potential leader? How do you process these things? Because we make wrong decisions about putting some people in the leadership role, and all they want is the title, the perks, right? And not about serving others. How do you know who's in it because they want to serve other people? Michael: Yeah, that's a great question. Mean Shawn, our company, we're not involved in that process. We get to an organization after a leader's already in place. Now, do I have my opinions? Can I tell pretty early on if I think somebody has what it takes to be a dynamic leader? So a transformative leader? Yeah, absolutely. But our team is not involved in that process. I will say that one of the things we work with teams on in rebel culture is around hiring and what's your hiring process looks like? All of this stuff goes back to culture. You're hiring process has to resemble. It has to mirror what it looks like to actually work there. So if your organization values data, your hiring process has to be rife with exercises where the potential leader is using data. If you value feedback, you've got to provide the person with feedback and you're taking notes on meticulous notes on how well this person responds to that feedback. I worked with an organization a few years back that valued feedback and coaching above all else. We did some interviews. I helped them design some of their materials and we did some interviews. And it was actually a really interesting process because folks would present potential employees, present performance tasks for us, and then we'd give them feedback. The feedback and their response to it held more weight than the performance task. Everybody was smart. Everybody did a good job in their performance task. What was more valuable was whether folks were nodding heads when we were giving them feedback. Were they taking notes? Were they asking follow-up questions with a reflection on their own work? The folks who did move much higher and much further in the process than the folks who didn't and acted as if that process, part of the process was a formality. So to answer your question, organizations have to hire people. Are there going to be some folks who just want the title, that slipped through? Absolutely. I've seen it. I know you have as well. The hiring process has to mirror the culture and you'll weed folks out right away, or at least many folks. And just recently, somebody, a team we were working with got a quote-unquote rock star to interview for them. They realized right away that this person was more interested in money than doing a great job. And money's great. I'm not knocking money, but this person was very focused on the dollars and cents, and this organization wanted somebody who is more focused on their product and their end results, and they didn't hire the person. And the person was shocked because of their reputation and in that industry, it didn't align with the organization's values and beliefs to hire him. And so he didn't get the job. Sean: That is how important that is. I agree with you, 110%. Your hiring process is super-duper important. It is critical to guard your house, and your culture. You know, in the preshow I mentioned that we are having a difficult time hiring people. We got so many applicants, so many, but it's hard to hire the ones who fit our culture. And the reason behind that is we are very intentional about our culture and SEO Hacker as well, and we are willing to be penalized. Because the workload is getting tough, we are willing to be penalized for that, for keeping our culture intact. - - - Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack
Sean: The first one is from Vicente and from Facebook. I have a question. I just started a design agency and I have an upcoming project. It's a design and development project which will be a few months of engagement. Is it best to hire my dev team or partner with a dev agency? And Jeff, what do you think? I want to know what you think about this? Jeff: Well, Sean, I would always advise most of the companies that I consult with that they should always stick with their core competency and eventually outsource those that probably are on the side or do not fall under their core competence or something that is core to their business. Because different departments, especially this is a design, I would always argue with - not just with Zagana, but with the previous companies that I work with, creatives especially. It needs a different type of culture. And I think this is where a lot of companies fail because they try to integrate, you know, the right-brainers and the left-brainers in one culture, there is a saying that goes - "one size does not fit all," so to speak. So I would say it depends if this is their core business, then you should hire and develop that team to be the best out there. But if it's not and it's just going to be a one-off, it's best to eventually probably outsource to another company, or group, or agency that is highly specialized in that one, especially if it's just a project. Because it really takes a long time to eventually develop a team and the learning curve, you just cannot rush it. And it might eventually cost them to lose that client or at least provide, you know, not a half-baked project to them just because you're trying to subpar. Sean: Yeah, I agree 100%. I mean, just like with what Jeff mentioned earlier, that if you have a culture that's very creative hiring dev people might not, you know, it will disrupt the culture - 100%. And if you're not comfortable with your culture being disrupted in a more, you know, developers are usually more rigid, more straightforward. More structured. Sean: So that's going to create a little bit of tension in the culture. Usually, that's good. But if you're if you don't want to manage that tension yet, then maybe outsourcing would be a good option for you. It's not to say that it doesn't work because I have SEO-Hacker, both the web design and the web dev team under one roof, we were all in one office and they worked really well together. - - - Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack
Sean Si does speaking engagements throughout the Philippines. He is the CEO and founder of SEO Hacker and the host of the LeadershipStack podcast. He has led his team through a decade of the chaos of starting up and the upward slog of scaling up. Today SEO Hacker is a multi-million peso company that has weathered times of crisis time and again. He has shared the stage and worked with some of the biggest names in the public speaking industry. Namely: Francis Kong, Chinkee Tan, Randell Tiongson, Anthony Pangilinan, Carlo Ople, former president, Joseph (Erap) Estrada, former president, Fidel V. Ramos, and Manuel V. Pangilinan to name a few. Show notes at: https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/sean-si You can find the community discussion for this episode at: https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/sean-si
Sean: What kind of leadership style have you adopted that you found to be most useful for your company, for your team? Ven: That's a great question because I did not adopt it. It was always been who I was. So that's the thing. I found the best parts of myself and offered that. I think you - Sean and I are familiar with strengths, and strengths development. So I lead with futuristic. So I also lead with ideation, strategy, competition, and relator. So that unique combination of strengths is who I am. I had to use the best of me for the company. So if I had a different set of strengths, I would be a different kind of leadership style. So I had to look at and own who I was and be able to use that. Ven: So for me, I'm futuristic, so I love thinking about the future, I love planning, I love telling others about what I see and giving them a lot of excitement about what we're going to do. Let's look at the technologies, all the cool things, all the gadgets. Let's get into the cloud and the automation and all of that, everything. And because that's who I am, and if I try to be like, let's say I wanted to be just like my dad or just like my mom. I would do a very poor job of that because I don't have those strengths. I had to be the best version of myself. Ven: That's probably that kind of thing - I didn't really adopt it. It's who I am. And that's what SCPA, our company, got. So if they got a different president, they would get that person's best as well. I'm not going to force that guy to be like me. In the same way, I will never force my kids or my nephews and nieces to be somebody who they're not, but offer the best of yourself and understand yourself. So that's one of the hardest things right, then really in a company, actually, we have everybody take that strengths finder test so that everybody knows what they're good at and how they could offer that to everybody. And even though they're not yet in a leadership position. Ven: And, you know, there are times, you know, the imposter syndrome strikes. I wish I was like my dad. He was like this. He was like, I wish I was like my mom. She was like this. She was like that. But in the end, I have to be satisfied with the strengths I have and they're pretty awesome as well. And what's funny is that when you talk to the others and they're going to say,' Oh, I envy you have that, I envy you.' And then we just stay in the company and let's work together, right? So that's the best thing because you have things I really need, you know.' So my sister and I, she has an activator. I just love working with her because anything that I want to happen, she just likes, just gets it done. Perfect for futuristic. So yeah. So you have to adapt it. I would say that in our company we adopt the strengths that you have. We offer that up as your best. Sean: Yeah. For those of you tuning in and who're not familiar with Strengths Finder, just look it up online. Gallup Strengths Finder 2.0. Very powerful stuff. And as SEO-Hacker, we also use that. So all of our regular team members, unlock their top five strengths and we use that to see who they are, profile them and see if they're at the right seat on the bus in our company and how we can utilize their strengths as well. So very good stuff. And we all have strengths. These are things that we love doing, we look forward to doing and we are really good at and we focus on using our strengths in our lives, not just at work but in our family, how we lead our kids or how we deal with our parents or siblings. I think that overall we will have a better quality of life and better temperament as well. - - - Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack
The premier SEO expert of the Philippines, Sean Si of SEO Hacker, joins us in this episode to share his amazing journey he's had running the top SEO company in the Philippines for over a decade. Sean will share his early hustles working for his father and how he stumbled upon SEO accidentally at a young age to create SEO Hacker. He will also share how SEO Hacker scaled over the years while being bootstrapped and how they overcame numerous challenges along the way. Sean will also share how leadership became his passion and he is now helping more leaders with his podcast.This episode is brought to you by PDAX. Join PDAX here: podlink.co/hustlesharepdaxFor show notes, go to hustleshare.comHustleshare is powered by Podmachine See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Sean: From Pam. What are the most important attributes of successful leaders today? Alright. Very good question. What is it for you Le-an? Le-an: Someone's always curious? That's the biggest - that's one of my core values, is if you want to be successful in anything, whether you want to be a successful leader, you want to be a successful entrepreneur or you just want to be successful at your job. You have to stay curious. You have to be the kind of person who what you see isn't you know, it's not what you get. You know that there's always something that you could chase, you can improve, or you can upgrade, or even replace altogether. Le-an: And there's always more and more combinations that you never see. So if you're always curious, if you're always trying to see if there's a better way to do what you're currently doing, it's so much easier for you to succeed, especially as a leader, because then you are also open to the different personalities that you'll have, the different projects, the different, you know, at least for me versus assistant kind of personality. Whenever I see that there is some sort of schism, basically not a full conflict between a client and an assistant, I go in and like, why is this happening? What is something that you're saying that they're understanding differently just because of the cultural differences? So it's giving that space that there's always something to learn. There's always something to explore and dive into and to never really take things as just as what it is. Sean: So Curiosity being an internal student or - in SEO Hacker, how we call it, is having a beginner's mindset that is very important as a leader and that takes humility as well. So I would say humility is one of the biggest, most important attributes of being a leader. And we tackled that in the question earlier of what if it gets to your head? So you have to have the humility to know that I'm not the alpha male here, I'm not the biggest name boss here around. I'm here to serve my people and to make sure I clear obstacles for them so they can do their best work. That's why you hired them. That's why you want the dream team. That's why you built this company. And if you don't have the humility, guess what happens? You yourself will burn your company to the ground. And that's the most horrifying thing that you're going to be telling your grandchildren. Right. Sean: So it's humility, for Le-an, curiosity. I would add another one. And this also is very important for me, integrity. You as a leader should be a one-man person. You have to practice the one-man principle. Integrity is a word that comes from the root word integer, which means one or hole. When you're not a whole person, you're different at home, you're different at work. And at work, you're different from person A and person B, that's a red flag. You're not going to be a leader for long, and you're also going to be burning your company to the ground. Because no one likes a person who is not authentic. Sean: So integrity is very important, both with your people and your clients. Clients will not hire someone or a company who they know doesn't have integrity. And integrity, the problem with it is it's either you have it or you don't. Because it's either one or zero. If your decimal places, it's also not being an integer. That's also not being an integer. So that's also not integrity. - - - Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack
Sean: How can I encourage my team members to speak up? Sean: They're comfortable talking to me, but it becomes a challenge when we ask them to speak their mind in an app or platform. I guess you have to first, create a culture of safety, an environment of safety where people can speak up. That doesn't mean they're not going to be responsible about what they say, they have to be responsible about what they say. They can't just say things like, they can't just tell you that I feel like resigning and I feel like this, this, and this also feels the same way. Like they can't just say that, they have to qualify it really well. So those are things that they have to take responsibility for. Sean: All I'm saying is when you create a culture of safety, a psychologically safe zone where people can tell you stuff, they still have to be responsible about what they say. They can't cuss you, they can't say bad things to you. They have to respect you. They cannot behave in a way that is going to be a form of misconduct. Sean: So that said, make sure that as a leader, you listen to your people. And when I say, listen, you don't just listen with your ears, you listen with your hands also, you act on what it is that they're saying if it makes sense. If it makes business sense if it makes team sense if it makes cultural sense to your team. So I'm not telling you to be a subservient CEO or a subservient leader - that you are going to follow everything that they say, if that's the case you should have just worked as an employee rather than a CEO. You have to make sure that you are making the critical decisions that are best for the entire team, not just for one or two people who are telling you their opinions in that circle of the safety zone. Sean: So it is a tough dance that you have to do as a leader, but people will speak up if they know that you listen, you have a sound mind, you have wisdom, the wisdom of God and you actually act on the things that make a lot of sense for everyone. I think in SEO-Hacker, that's the kind of culture we have. People just speak up. They tell us what they think. In fact, they rate the management, they rate me and the other leaders. Can you believe that? Every month we get that twice, and when we get scores around 7 and 8 we already get weary? That's how we are as leaders and we really act on what we can. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack
Sean: When will you get funding, like taking SEO Hacker to the next level? Sean: Oh, I've been getting a lot of those questions recently. Strangely enough, this is the fourth time that I've gotten it in a four to five-day span. Seems like a lot of people are interested in investing in SEO Hacker. I think that if I could keep it 100 percent owned by me, like what it is now, I would go for that. It's hard for an entrepreneur to always have someone telling him or her what to do, and I'm the type of entrepreneur where I like being at the helm. I like being on the hill. Sean: So it is hard for me to tell you when I will get funding because honestly, right now, SEO Hacker does not need funding. We need to invest as well. That's all we need because when you're in the services industry, you usually cannot just buy more stock and sell it for a higher price, like when you're in the merchandising industry. the merchandising or trading industry, like the retail industry, they buy stuff, they sell it in the malls or online, whatever. And what they use with the money when they sell stuff, what they do with that money is they buy more of those stuffs that they think they can sell. So the money just circulates. Sean: The difference between that and a service company like SEO Hacker is we don't have stocks to buy. So the money does not circulate in that way with SEO Hacker. As the CEO and founder, we have this stockpile of cash, and we do need to invest it somewhere because just leaving it in the bank is not the wisest thing to do. It is not the best thing for me as the CEO and founder to do. Sean: So if I do need to get funding, it would be for a huge reason. It should be for a huge reason. And I don't believe that we would need funding for the next few years unless we want to buy out a competitor, who is also selling. A really good competitor who's selling. I might get investors just to buy competitors. That's it. Otherwise. I don't think we're going to really need or get funding. Hope that helps. Sean: Taking SEO Hacker to the next level, the answer there is we're always taking it to the next level. So during this pandemic, where we have a slew of inquiries, and a slew of customers coming in, clients coming in. We are able to already see the trajectory on where we should go and we are leveling it up. We're actually professionalizing the entire company and we are hiring executive-level people already right now. So that is hopefully going to double, or allow us to double or triple our revenues when we professionalize in the next three years. Sean: My target is the CEO and founder, and the main salesperson of the company is to grow 100 percent each year. So far doing great. Can I take it to 200 percent? I don't know. That's the next question, but 100 percent every year is great for me, and that has been my target ever since I started the company. So we have grown more than that when we were at the very beginning. When you're at the beginning, it's possible to grow 300-1000 percent. But when you scale to a 50 man team, it's already hard-hitting 100 percent sometimes, especially when you're in the SEO industry, not in the tech industry. So I hope that helps. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack
Sean: From Viane, how should I or how do I go all-in with what I've started? Sean: When you go all in, that means you're sure you're doubling down on what you have. That means, for example, with me, that's when I resigned from HP and finally just went full time doing SEO Hacker because I was so sure that SEO was going to be big because I was an avid user of Google before. Now I keep searching. I'm a very curious guy. How I learned stuff is by searching for it in Google and learning it on my own. That's how I learn SEO on my own. That's how I experimented on the ranking factors. That's how I put up my first blog. That's how I learned to do certain kinds of coding. That's how I learned to edit some plugins and so on. Sean: And curiosity. Google serves curiosity. Google serves desire. How can it go wrong? How can it not grow? So I doubled down on SEO because I saw how powerful Google is. In fact, today there are people asking Google, Where can I find God? How do I get a love life? Stuff that you usually ask your parents or a close friend, you know? So, you know, given that thought, which is not that, you know, when you think about it, it's pretty sad that people are asking Google that. Sean: But that shows you how powerful Google is, and that showed me how powerful SEO can be. And so during 2010, 2009-2010, no one knew what CEO was, but I was doubling down on it. I quit my job, which was my only job, and I was very fortunate to have that job because I feel 28 units college. I didn't know why they hired me, but they did. They took a risk with me and I quit, you know, how bad that feels. But I doubled down on SEO and I knew this is the way to go. Sean: And looking back, it's now 2021. That was over 10 years ago. I'd say it's one of the best things I've ever decided on and I've ever doubled down on. And building the brand SEO Hacker up to this point. This, I believe, is the time for me to finally see how the seeds I planted are growing, because now I can see how many people are just saying, "SEO? If you need SEO, SEO-Hacker." I don't even know some of these people, but they keep referring SEO Hacker to people who are looking for SEO, which is great and I love them, and I'm going to be forever grateful to these people, referring SEO Hacker to all of these clients that also, I don't know, but that's the power of word of mouth. That's the power of doubling down on what you believe in. That's the power of branding. Sean: Invest in good branding. Make sure you do business ethically and with integrity. You take care of your clients and go the extra mile for them. They'll love you. They will share who you are with the rest of the world who need your stuff as well. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack
Sean: What are the best ways to grow organically, especially when your startup is still in the early stages? Sean: The best way to actually generate a lot of words is word of mouth about your business, about your product, about your service because that's free. And that is very, very effective in the sense that when you get referred by someone to another person who might want to get your product or service. That is a very powerful referral right there. And I know because my clients who are loyal to SEO Hacker and what we do and who have reaped the benefits of our work have been referring us left and right, and I'm so pleased and happy whenever I am personally tagged in Facebook groups, whenever there are people looking for SEO makes me so happy. Sean: It's word of mouth, right? Can't beat it. And one of the other things that I used to grow my business organically, SEO Hacker, is to do content marketing, and I was writing, so it was free for me. That was organic-free growth for me. When I was blogging about SEO, everything I was learning, I made sure that people could subscribe and tune in whenever I had news about the SEO industry or new strategies out there about the SEO industry. And we still blog about new strategies and updated strategies. Sean: We were able to publish earlier about SEO copywriting, by the way, for those of you who subscribe to the SEO Hacker newsletter, sorry for the double send. The first send was completely broken and we were testing things out I really am really sorry about that, but we were able to fix it. And now, if you want to go ahead and read the SEO copywriting article - How to do copywriting right? Then just go ahead and tune in to SEO-hacker.com, you will be able to find it. So, yeah, definitely content marketing. Write the content yourself. If you're a thought leader like myself during the early days of SEO Hacker, that is one big way for us to do it, and word of mouth marketing is generated when you have a word of mouth marketing strategy. Sean: And for SEO-Hacker, we follow the Purple Cow principle, which is to make your product or service so good and so great. Go the extra mile that people can't help but talk about you. That is the strategy I use for SEO Hacker, and it worked mighty well. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack
In this last episode of Season 2 BOSS-it podcast, Mark Edwards has a warm and engaging conversation with Sean Si, CEO & Founder of SEO Hacker.Early BeginningsSean Si introduces himself as a born-again Christian from the Philippines. He runs a 50 people digital marketing agency, one of the most-trusted and leading SEO companies in the Philippines.He founded SEO Hacker at just 21 years old with only about (1300 pesos) $65 capital and it's now grown, through grit, prayer, mentorship, book reading and podcast listening (including BOSS-it), to a $1 million company.From Failure to SuccessSean's route to setting up a business was anything but traditional. Having, in his words, "failed" at college, Sean was nonetheless able to land a job with HP.He stayed at HP only 5 short months because his 'side hustle' - SEO Hacker - was already earning him 8-10 times what his day job paid and, as Sean puts it, he "had to resign and jump on this opportunity before the train left."Evolution of Growing a Business‘Mom and pop' startups often remain as ‘mom and pop startups' for years, because change is difficult; it takes you out of your comfort zone and it also requires money.Many changes are required along the way, to ensure your company makes it through the first 5 years and beyond.SEO Hacker had no backers and has grown organically, meaning that, as founder, Sean has had to wear many hats along the way - even assuming all janitorial duties in his first office because he couldn't afford to hire people to do it. Humility - You have to have a lot of humility as a CEO. In his book, "How the Mighty Fall”, Jim Collins (link below) explains how hubris & ego are the main reasons companies fail. You have to make sacrifices in order to succeed and be humble enough to do whatever it takes.Sean believes everything has “Divine Appointment” - You have a purpose, desire and reason for living. You have a burning “Why” in your heart. To find out what it is, you have to have faith.A jovial, friendly character, Sean's closing observation gives great insight into his positive attitude to life's ups and downs and where they may lead - "Almost getting kicked out of college, quitting my job - How lucky can a guy be..?!"Great to meet you, Sean Si!Links:https://sean.si/ https://podcasts.apple.com/ph/podcast/the-leadership-stack-podcast/id1470219705 https://www.linkedin.com/in/seansi/https://www.linkedin.com/in/seansi/?originalSubdomain=phhttps://www.instagram.com/sean.si/?hl=enhttps://www.facebook.com/seansi.speakshttps://seo-hacker.com/Jim Collins' book - How the Mighty Fall
Niño: The next is: In either choosing a business or a career path, which do you think you should anchor it on: your passion or your skill set? Sean: In my opinion, business or career path, if you only had two choices, passion or skill set, I would go for skillset. Because if you're so passionate about something but you're not really great at it, that's going to take you a while to get paid well and to really enjoy the team, enjoy the work and enjoy the job. So I'd go for a skillset. You're really good at it and you have to learn to love it. Here's the truth. You're not really going to love 100% of what you do. That's why we call it work and not play. A lot of people think, "I should love my work, so I don't have to work every single day of my life. You know, it's fun for me because I love my job." You're going to learn to love it up to 50%. And if you love 70%, 80% of it, fantastic, great for you, but it will never be a 100%. Even for me as CEO of SEO Hacker, I've been doing it for over a decade now. I don't love 100% of my job. There are parts of my job that I don't like. It's really like that. Work is like that. There are some parts that you're not going to like. I wouldn't focus too much on passion. I know a lot of people, a lot of speakers would say, "Focus on your passion. Focus on your passion." But if I'm going to choose between skillset and passion, I'm going to choose skillset. So when I was starting out I knew I love writing and I'm really good at it. So that's great because I have both. But I'm also quite good at logic and understanding how code works. I can't build code. I can't write code that well, but I understand how it works when I read it. So I pursued SEO. One facet that I loved about SEO is writing. I'm not really that great when it comes to marketing. When I started out, I'm not really that great when it came to programming. So I'd say maybe 20% to 30% of the job I was passionate about. The rest I was not passionate about. I was not passionate about legal matters. I'm definitely not passionate about sales during that time. I'm an introvert, so I'm not really good at sales. I'm not great at drafting contracts and proposals. I didn't like a lot of things about the job, but I did have the skill set to take me to the next level. So yeah, my answer: there is going to be a skill set. I hope that helps. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack
Sean: From Erika. I know that networking is a big factor in growing my business, but I'm nervous to speak to more experienced business people. How can I become more confident? Join a networking group. That's one of the easiest ways. So some people who are afraid of public speaking actually join those masters and learn public speaking there, and at the same time, get to mentor other people who want to learn public speaking, and they could be business people too. I know a lot of business people actually join those masters because they want to get over their fear of public speaking and they want to communicate better to their team. I'm a JCI Manila member. That is a really good network for me. I meet a lot of really great people who have a big heart because JCI is all about giving back to the community. It's a charitable organization, but you know, there are a lot of people there who have big businesses as well. So consequently, we help the community, we help give to charity, but we also help each other out. And we trust each other because before you get into JCI, You actually have to have a big project done successfully, which is fundraising, turning over that event that you're going to be doing to give back to the community. So, members of JCI Manila, you know that they pass that test and that creates a stronger bond between us. So join those groups where, yeah, they're going to ask you for time. I mean, with JCI Manila, sometimes they ask me to connect a certain speaker to the chapter or sometimes I speak. I spoke recently for the JCI Manila podcast. You know, it's one hour. It's not big. I enjoyed it completely. But sometimes they're going to ask you for favors that you have to go out of your way and you really just have to do that because you love the chapter, you love the people there, you love what you're doing with them. And they trust you more. You build more rapport with them and they get your business more. That's how I network. I give back to the community. There are a lot of people and websites that SEO Hacker works for. And we don't ask for payment because we know that they're giving back to the community. For God and Country, we don't charge. So that's something that we strongly believe in. It's not all about money and that actually has paid us back multiple times. So yeah, hopefully you learn from that. What's your take on that, JM? JM: First of all, thank you very much, Sean, and for SEO Hacker for everything that you're doing for others. So Erika, my encouragement for you is to really challenge yourself. Because if you won't be able to challenge yourself, then you won't be able to grow. You won't be able to grow in your personal life and even in your business. So just like what Sean mentioned earlier in the year, join these groups and train yourself. Even go to YouTube. There are a lot of courses there that are free. You can learn from other people who already experienced this and who are confident in public speaking. So I think that is very important in order for you to challenge yourself and in order for you to grow more. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack
When starting a business, how much time would you spare for you to know that this business is scalable, or will it just be a waste of time, effort, and resources? For me, scalability is something that you don't really think about at the starting line. You don't think about that because you don't even know if you're going to succeed. You don't even know if you can stabilize it. So scaling it up is an afterthought. So yeah, I didn't think about how I could scale SEO Hacker up when I was starting out. In fact, I thought about just having like 10 or 13 people and that's it. But now we're 50 people. I really didn't think about scaling up. I thought about how I can stabilize it once it's so stable, well, not so stable now because there's a pandemic. But once it is a lot more stable, you think about scaling up. That's the time you think about scaling up. You don't usually think about it when you're starting a business. When you're starting a business, all you think about is how you can make it stable, secure, how you can pay my people, how you can make sure cash flow is good, revenue is greater than expenses. So when you're five years in the industry, I'd say. So you're no longer a startup because you're five years in, you're in that awkward stage of the business where you think, should you make it grow? Should you stay as is? Is it stable? Is it secure? So I think that's a scale-up stage. That's the stage where you think about scaling up. And SEO Hacker, I wouldn't say it's a very scalable business because one manpower is like one client. One is to one, so we need to keep on hiring and we need to keep on getting new clients and it's almost on a one-to-one ratio. A scalable business is a software business where you only have one server, for example, it's a cloud server and you're serving a hundred thousand people at the same time. That is a very scalable business. All businesses are scalable. That's a fact. All businesses are scalable. The question is, how fast can you scale it? How fast can you scale it? And how efficiently, in terms of money, in terms of capital and operating expense, how efficiently can you scale it? For a software business or a software as a service business, one server, a hundred thousand people, you can very, very efficiently scale it up. I mean, your costs could be Php 1.00 and your profit could be Php 100.00. So you could give a 30% discount, it doesn't matter, because you're still making a lot more money. But in a services business like SEO, the ratio is not the same. It's a one is to one ratio if you're a white hat SEO company like we are. So it's not that scalable compared to a software company. But if you're going to compare it to a real estate company for example, then SEO is a lot more scalable than if you're renting out hotel rooms, or if you're renting out condo units, because you can't just keep on buying hotels, keep on buying land and building hotels at a fast rate, I mean, if you're starting out or if you're just five years in the industry. So it's not as scalable. So it depends on what industry you're in. It depends on what business you have, but all businesses are scalable. It's just a matter of how fast you can scale it and how efficiently you can scale it in terms of OPEX and CAPEX. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack
Any advice to people who are starting a startup? Toni: Sean's the perfect person to ask. Sean: The most important thing is cash flow. Make sure your revenue is greater than expenses. Don't let other people tell you otherwise that passion is the most important thing, sleepless nights' the most important thing. It's not. It's cash flow. As long as your revenue is greater than your expense, you're doing well. If expenses are greater than revenue, you're screwing it up and you're bleeding out and you have to stop that. So anything to make sure your cash flow is good, keep on doing that. If you have to sacrifice your own lifestyle, to make sure cash flow is positive, do it because I did it. If you need to sacrifice sleep for it, do it because I did it. You have to sacrifice a lot. That's why they say your startup is like a baby, it needs you. It needs a lot of nutrition. It cries, you know, it brats out. Toni: Attention. Sean: It needs a lot of attention. There you go. So you have to sacrifice a lot for it. The word sacrifice. That's why they say passion is also important because passion, the Latin word is pati, which means sacrifice. If you're not passionate about your startup, you're not going to sacrifice for it. But that doesn't mean if you're passionate about it, it's a good business. If cash flow is negative, no matter how passionate you may be about it, it's not a good business for you during that time. So, yeah, that's my advice. You really have to save. Sacrifice. You're going to go through a lot, but here's the great thing about it, you learn a lot. You learn a lot, not just about business, but about life and you learn a lot about other people. That's your tuition fee. The tuition fees are your sacrifices, the tuition fees are your effort, and if you lose money, that's also part of the tuition fee. I know people who started up and lost money in their first few startups. Now it's a blessing for me, I didn't have to go through that. My first startup SEO Hacker is already doing good, but I still had to pay the price by learning a lot from the wrong people I got in the company during the first years. So yeah, maybe that's the second advice I'm going to give you, make sure you hire the right people. Prolong the hiring process. Take your time in hiring them and hire ahead. Don't hire when you need them, because you're just going to hire whoever comes along because you need them. So hire ahead. If not, you're going to be a hostage. And if you hired the wrong person, they're going to burn up your company, your startup. They're going to burn your baby. And since it's a baby, it's very vulnerable. So yeah, I hope that helps. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack
Sean: How do I know when it's possible for me to turn my hobby into a business? When there is a viable market. When they actually want to buy from you. When what they want to buy from you is something that you can source or produce. So speaking from one of the experiences that I have had, I turned my aquascaping hobby into a small micro-business. So I sell aquatic plants and livestock on the website, making the price very competitive by checking out what's in the market and it's doing quite well. It's doing quite well, I would say. Before I turned it into a business, I had an overflow of stock. And I know I'm going to have a weekly overflow of stock that I'm not going to use and I'm just going to throw away. So I decided to start the website so as not to throw away those plants and those fishes because they're overpopulating already. They're overgrowing the tanks that I have and it would be a waste. So instead of throwing them away, I put them for sale on the site. And I don't run ads. I don't want to oversell them. So I don't run any ads. It's just SEO. People search. They find the website. They add to cart, checkout, and we got a sale going for aquascape.ph. So for me, that's how I turned it into a business. I realized there's demand. And I realized that the competition is not really that great. They don't have their own website. They're not organized. And I figured that might be something that people would want to shop from, a really good website, good experience on mobile and desktop. And it just so happens that I have SEO-Hacker, and it's something that we can do. So there's my competitive advantage there. And we just shot at it, you know, gave it a shot and it's working pretty well. That's what I could say. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack
How can I save up enough money to start a business? Toni: I guess for me, once you're set on your goals, as I've mentioned earlier, I guess, and you've already established your foundation, then I would say to really organize your budget or really set aside or have a different fund simply for that goal that you have, which is to save up for your capital. And again, if you're working right now and let's say your income equates to your monthly expenses, I would say, find ways to cut back. And if that doesn't work, then you really have no choice, but to increase your income or find other sources so that you can be able to save more. Because at the end of the day, there is a limit to how much you can cut back, but there's no limit to how much you can earn. So that's what I would say, or advise someone who wants to save up money for a business. Sean: Great. It makes a lot of sense. That's actually the perfect answer for it. It's either you cut your expenses or increase your revenue. I didn't have a lot of money when I was starting. I had 1,300 pesos. That's my capital. You don't need a lot of money. That's the truth. If you think you need millions to start your own business, hundreds of thousands, that's actually not true. 1,300 pesos, believe it or not, I cannot make it up, that's how much money I had when I started out SEO Hacker. A lot of people would say I was in the right place at the right time, I'd say it's a series of divine appointments. And there was a need and the need was people wanted to rank their business online for certain keywords. And SEO does that. I had my blog. I learned what SEO was. I was able to supply that need. They were willing to get someone like a, nobody like me, you know, 28 feeling units, guys, from LaSalle. That's like a death sentence if you didn't know. 28 units slapped on your transcript of records, you're probably not going to get a great job. Right? So, yeah, I ran with that. I ran with 1,300 pesos. 800 pesos I used for the hosting per year. That's how much it cost. And 500 pesos I used for the domain name, seo-hacker.com. One year. That's how much it costs. And I started writing, people started inquiring. I started getting deals. My first deal, 50,000 pesos a month, six months locked in contract and I used that money to grow the business. Hire more people, get my first office, pay for the utilities, electricity, water, internet, you know. That's it. So it would depend a lot on what kind of business you want to start. But if it's a service-based business, you don't need a lot of money. Just need a lot of grit, a lot of guts, and you need to work really hard and you need to pray hard as well. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack
Sean: All right. The next question is from Patrick. How do you do market research for your business? What are the factors to consider to have a business that has a market? One easy way is actually to put the keyword for that business. So for example, if you're selling Taho, maybe put that keyword on Google and see how many people are actually searching for Taho. So I'm going to go ahead and open an incognito tab and share that screen with all of you. This is just one way to do it. I'm not saying this is how you should be doing it. So yeah. Why not Taho? Right? Calories, benefits. Okay. Vendor is there, right? It's one of the, what? Top one, top two, top three, top four, top five, top six, top seven. It's a top seven most searched for keyword when you type for Taho. And then for the eighth and ninth, you just know these three, these four, actually these four right here, these are people looking for the Taho. So do you have a market? Probably, yes. Right there and then that could be one part of your market research. You also have other tools that you can use. For example, like SEMrush. Just a disclaimer, I'm an affiliate. SEMrush is a partner of mine. I love their software and if you want to use it, you can use my link in the website: from.seo-hacker.com/semrush. Yeah so you have the keyword research here, or you can use the Keyword Magic Tool. I just go usually for a Keyword Magic Tool. The Philippines would be the country and you put in Taho. So right here, you would be able to see, oh, there's 33,000 searches every month for the word Taho. What's happening in there? So you could take off like south, chevy. These are not the words you want, because obviously these are keywords from the US. Right? So just exclude them from the results. You can do that. Yeah. And then you could just zone in on the keywords that you might want. Like the vendor. Definitely that's one. So there's a thousand searches per month for that. Strawberry Taho, probably. Homemade Taho, yes, probably. Strawberry Taho Baguio, yeah. And then you add up all of the volume and you get an idea right now that, oh, probably we have like, I don't know, 15,000 searches every month. That's a pretty good number. If I can service that with a website where people can order Taho and I can deliver it to them at home. Perfect. Then you have a working business. That's one easy way to do it. So Patrick. I hope I added value to you by showing you exactly how I'm going to do it. Yeah. That's how I do it. Why don't I do more business if I know how to do it this way? I can't manage more people and more and more businesses. That's the easy answer. I'm already giving my best a hundred percent with SEO Hacker. So just choose the business that you're going to give your all to. Focus on that. Right? You can't split yourself too much. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack
Sean: The next question from Erika is, do you consider yourself as a leader or a manager? Apple: I would really prefer that it would be my people answering this, but I would have to honestly say that I'm both. I am a leader in the sense that I know I could give them a bigger picture of where we're planning to go as a team. I also lead in the sense that I lead from the front. So when I tell them to do something, I make sure that I do it myself and that I do it alongside them. I lead, especially in a crisis that I'll make sure I'm with them when the going gets tough. So that's how I see myself as a leader. As a manager, a manager helps people get things done and tells people how to get things done. So I would suggest, I would answer it, not really suggest, but I would answer it as I am both. Sean: Brilliant. Maybe if you asked me a little over a decade ago, I'd say that I think all people should be leaders. But now that I've been running SEO Hacker for more than a decade, I've learned so many things and I would say the companies need both leaders and managers. And often if you're the C-level executive or the founder, you're going to wear both hats. Now, a lot of big companies don't need leaders. They need managers. And I learned that in one of our podcast episodes, actually, because they want the status quo. They don't want people who are changing things almost all the time in their direction. And leaders do that. A lot of leaders tend to do that. So a lot of companies, I realized, need and want managers. And they got the definition wrong, they keep saying they want leaders. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack
Sean: From Erika, how do you effectively manage your team mostly made up of young people, millennials or gen Z? I'm going to let you answer that first. Apple: We do it how we would like ourselves to be managed. So we don't micromanage people. We give, we set the goals and we respect how they will do it, when they will do it. Well, of course, that is also setting the deadline. Young people, older people would like to be respected, would like to be listened to, and would like to grow. So that's something that we promise our team. We grow them. We make sure that they won't leave our team as is where is how they work. They will definitely learn skills. They will definitely learn how to lead other people as well. That is if they have the initiative to want to learn that. But we always give that opportunity to other people. And we welcome suggestions as well. So how we lead is how we want to be led. And that is being given direction and being given the freedom on how to do things the way we do best. We also allow them to go from one team to the other to explore if they would like to do that. So another way we lead is to give opportunities for more growth. Sean: A lot of people, Simon Sinek and all the other speakers whose voices are generally heard about the millennials and the generation Z. Well, we've seen this in the YouTube videos that the difference between millennials and the boomers or the gen X-ers is that when millennials and that includes me, by the way, and Apple, we're both millennials. When we work, we want to work with a bigger purpose than just having a paycheck. We want to know that what we're doing matters in the grander scheme of things. And so in SEO Hacker, we do our best to show people, this is what your work is doing. Oh, you're writing articles. It's not just because we want to share that on social media. It's because that article that you wrote is actually getting traffic for the website perpetually every day from people who matter and who become customers for our client. So we connect those dots for them and that gives a sense of purpose that's bigger than the day-to-day grind. That's super important. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack
I was still getting started in Internet marketing when I saw his book and one of his ads. I finished his book in just one seating. From there on, I started following this guy and subscribed in his email list. This guy has inspired me to be who I am today. He's one of the best entrepreneurs in terms of Internet marketing, especially SEO. He is the CEO of SEO Hacker.This is Masters in a Box and in this podcast, our guest will help you start and grow a successful business in today's fast-paced economy.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Fibo Lim has built an 8-figure business through his websites in less than 2 years. He has refined a system that has helped thousands of entrepreneurs monetize their passion, earn passive income, and live the dot com lifestyle.His training and system have been widely regarded as the most strategic and innovative approach to growing an online empire.Today, Fibo Lim is recognized as one of the most requested speakers in his country, the Philippines, in the field of online marketing, business, finance, and personality development.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Connect with Fibo Lim on Social Media:Facebook: https://facebook.com/fibolimInstagram: https://instagram.com/fibolimTwitter: http://twitter.com/fibolimAbout:Sean Si is the author and editor-in-chief of SEO Hacker. The SEO Hacker Blog is all about providing the world with the latest information in the SEO industry. Whether it's about Google, Facebook, Youtube, you name it – SEO Hacker gives out only the best and freshest information from the webCheck Sean Si out at https://seo-hacker.com/.#FiboLim #SeanSi #SEO
https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/broken-bulbs-1416869 (Leave a review for Broken Bulbs!) Today, Sean Si of, The Leadership Stack Podcast, joins us again! BROKEN BULBS: https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/broken-bulbs-1416869 (Leave a Review) https://ocelot-grapefruit-9k42.squarespace.com/brokenbulbs (Website) https://www.instagram.com/brokenbulbspod (Instagram) https://twitter.com/brokenbulbspod (Twitter) https://patreon.com/alexwilliamns (Patreon) SEAN SI (GUEST): https://sean.si/ (Website) https://leadershipstack.com/podcasts/ (The Leadership Stack Podcast) https://seohacker.services/ (SEO Hacker) https://seo-hacker.com/ (SEO Blog) ALEX WILLIAMNS (HOST): https://www.alexwilliamns.com/ (Website) https://twitter.com/alexwilliamns (Twitter) https://instagram.com/alexwilliamns (Instagram) https://www.youtube.com/alexwilliamns (YouTube) https://www.patreon.com/alexwilliamns (Patreon) CREDITS: Host: https://www.alexwilliamns.com/ (Alex Williamns) Guest: https://sean.si/ (Sean Si) Music: https://artlist.io/artist/1075/brian-claxton (Brian Claxton) & https://artlist.io/artist/709/wesly-thomas?search=wesly-thoma (Wesly Thomas) Cover Art: https://www.redbubble.com/people/MadeByBKG/shop?fbclid=IwAR3H8YSNm8_zHMv5veeDY8hJxfoBXm73tRpDrM_jIxYSTgX_OHJsPq-ARuQ (Bethany Gustafson) Broken Bulbs is produced by MeCHo Radio. And we are, of course, a proud member of the Createvine.
How do you track your progress? In growing the business, there are a lot of ways to track your milestones. It could be your monthly recurring revenue. So that's definitely one of the things that I track, how much revenue do we have every month coming in. Since we're a service business and our contracts are at least a year and we're paid every month by our clients, so if our monthly recurring revenue is growing, that is one of the best ways to measure if we're growing as a company. Another way to measure if you're growing as a company or a business, is your people. Are you growing in the number of people you have in your team? So it used to be just one person working in SEO Hacker. That's me. And then, I would hire freelancers during that time. Because I couldn't afford an office, I couldn't afford full-time people, I couldn't afford utilities during that time, so I don't hire freelance people. I would do the work a hundred percent and then it became too heavy for me. I couldn't do all the work anymore because the client base was growing. You know, it was being blessed. It was growing. I suddenly decided maybe it's time to get my first office. My first office, it wasn't big. It was actually super smaller. The rent is P10,000 a month for that space, but it was good cozy office. You know, I still remember it and I was able to hire my first people because of that office. We operated there for a while. We grew as a team. I had to rent out my next office, which is a bigger office. Actually it's one house. It's a residential house and that's where we worked for a time again. And then we grew and grew again. Kept on hiring people because the work became more, we're getting more clients, more inquiries, and we had to move to another residential office, which is bigger. This is way bigger. And it took a number of years where, when we stayed there and then finally we move to where we are now. The third floor of the building that we're renting out along Aguirre in BF Parañaque. But yeah, we moved there 2017. So it was actually seven years of work before we were able to get through our first commercial office in a building. Everything that we were renting out was residential. Humble beginnings, because I didn't have venture capital. My parents didn't back me up. They didn't give me money to start the business or grow it. So it was all, “Oh, we made profits then we invest, made profits, reinvest, made profits, reinvest, save, save, save”. And we're able to finally renovate and rent out the commercial office. And then, we rented out the second floor as well. So we're renting out two floors of the office. That's because we've grown to 50 people and that's a lot of people already. It's beyond my wildest dreams. I thought I would have like 10 people, 12 people, and I'd be happy with that. And I was happy with that. It's just that we have a lot more work that's given to us by God, you know, and we have to do it. So we have to get more people. So definitely a growing team, that's another way to track progress. There are more ways to track it, like your voice or market share, but that's tougher to track. It's easier for you to track if your monthly recurring revenue is growing, or your annual recurring revenue is growing and if your team is growing. Those are two things that you can use to track your progress. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack
Since you started your business at a very young age, how did you make your clients trust you? Does age discrimination still exist? I think so. When I was younger, I think that when they ask for my age and I do say that I'm in my twenties, that it does affect their decision. I do believe that. But then again, SEO is a very blue ocean before. Not a lot of people knew what it was and those who wanted to do it during that time, early 2010, those people were forward-thinking. They were early in the market, early adopters. So they were ready to try out someone who's in his twenties. So I think that it was there, the age discrimination or the lack of trust because you're young. But I also think that they were willing enough because they know that it's the younger generation that's really tech savvy. And it's the younger generation that's really going to be knowing what SEO is and how to do it. How I made them trust me is, whenever they have questions, I'll make sure to answer them with integrity and honesty. You just look them in the eye and say what the answer is and how you get to that level is, you study a lot. You experiment a lot. I was extremely obsessed with ranking and SEO. And I studied the ins and outs actually from way back when, up until today. And whatever it is that I learned then, I think that a lot of them you can't learn deeply now because there's a lot of stuff now that they will tell you, but the foundational truths are not being pronounced. So there are a lot of things that I know that are valuable and they saw that and they felt that, and then they saw the results as well. And I was able to partner with the biggest brands here in the country and produce results for them as well. So that kind of snowballed into other clients trusting me, even if I was in my early twenties during the, I'm 32. So I just turned, I just turned 30 a couple of years ago. So I think that the portfolio did me a lot of good. So you have to build that portfolio. How can a hobbyist increase his or her credibility to their potential clients? If you have a portfolio. I think that is the best way. You have to have a portfolio of past projects that you've done. It has to be impressive. Of course, big brands or good brands would help a lot. And case studies. How you helped them and took them from point A to point B. So with SEO Hacker, our case studies are usually, this is where client A was. They were making like 200 sessions a month. And when we came in, they're now making 200,000 sessions a month. And that's huge and they're making millions out of that when they were making zero before. So that kind of case study and how I wrote it and how I had it designed is a big deal. And we close deals that way. So that should help you out. Especially Sarah, I know that you are very good with graphics and video. I'm a hundred percent sure you can do a portfolio. If you're finding it difficult, then get in touch with me. That is why we have the discord channel. I can help you out. Just let me know if you want to check out our portfolio as well, that could be a template for you, and you could do an easy one. No problem. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack
What are the top techniques for SEO? How to drive organic traffic? All right. I always say SEO is a discipline. There's no magic to SEO. If Google sees that you are improving your search engine optimization for your blog or your website every single day, then you're going to get better and better rankings. But if you're not improving it, then you're going to remain stale or you're going to drop in the rankings depending on your competition and your industry. Top techniques. It's hard to say that it's a technique, it's more of a discipline. So I would say top disciplines would be freshness. You have to keep writing copy. You have to keep publishing copy. It has to be in healthy frequency, maybe once a week, maybe twice a week, whatever it is for you or your industry, it should be in good frequency. And you should always ping Google whenever you have something new, so that they come back to your website and crawl your website again. Links that you build from other websites to your site, how you build yours, I'm not sure, but one fantastic way is to contribute to other websites that would accept guests posts, especially if you're an authority in your niche. For example, I'm an authority in terms of SEO. It's easy for me to get guest posts on other websites. That's because they want me on their site. They want my content there and I get links from the in content links. Other things that you should watch out for whenever there are algorithm changes or core fixes that they're doing. So next year, they're going to hit the core web vitals algorithm and that has a lot to do with site speed. They broke down site speed in terms of the first interaction of the user, the biggest images or static files that would load and how long it loads. They broke it down to kind of like micro pieces. And if you pay attention to the web core vitals algorithm, there's a lot of work right there. So you have to pay attention to the technical part of SEO on your website as well. Now, doing these three disciplines, the links, which is marketing, citations, and then the copywriting and then the technical. Doing these three things and fixing these three things every day, that's what gets you up in the rankings. That's what me and my team does for all our clients every single day. If you ask me, what are the ranking factors? There are over 200 publicly known ranking factors in Google. Do we use every one of them? No. We only take the weightiest ones. Are there factors that are not known to the public? Yes. And how you find it out is through experimentation. We have done experimentations year after year after year. SEO Hacker's already 10 years old and we only apply an all ethical approach to SEO. Anything that's grey, anything that's black or unethical, we never do that because our clients are also big brands, nakakahiya kapag napenalize sila. So we only do white hat, ethical SEO for them. And again, it's a discipline. There's no tactic or technique to it. It's just an everyday thing that you have to keep on building and building and building. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack
How do you reward your employees? Do you give bonuses? Reward? We have perks. So we have what we call patches. We award them with patches, medyo military. Yung mga military patch, Private, Sergeant, Three Star General, Lieutenant, so we have those kinds of things that we stick to their jackets. Of course, we're the ones who produced the jackets for them. This was way back when we were in the office. Now kasi we don't hold office anymore, we work from home. So we're still figuring it out how we're going to do that. And per patch, we have a perk. So we give them a perk, could be like a, you have extra minutes for breaks, something like that. Right? So this is just an example, or you get one paid vacation leave, something like that. So those are perks. Those are rewards. But you know, what's important there? It's not really the perks. It's not really the jacket. It's not even the patches. What's important is you recognize them for their effort. We give them patches when they practice the core values. So we have six core values. We have grit, respect for work, and we have unity, challenger experimentation, and then clarity. If they keep on practicing any of these and we see that the practice it and the votes are in their favor because we do vote, the leadership team votes, who is deserving of the batch. Then we give them the patch. And they get recognized in front of the entire team. So that's in front of 50 people. There is a saying that the last time a person gets applauded is usually during their graduation day. I was quite sad when I heard that, because when you think about it, it's quite true. The last time a person got applauded is during their graduation day, it's quite sad. So we tried to figure out how we can fix that in SEO Hacker. We have our clap sessions. We really applaud people. We really recognize them. I'm sure other companies do it in some other way, like employee of the month or employee of the week. I don't know if you have employee of the day, but I'm sure other companies do it in some other way. But we're very intentional in doing this. Because for us, yeah, you can give bonuses. Yeah, you can give monetary rewards. Yeah, you can compete in the salary market. But we don't want to compete that way. Because the one thing that's hollow in the hearts of a lot of people now, is a team that really cares about them and a team that really appreciates them. Ayon yung kulang, hindi naman yung pera, so we do it that way at SEO Hacker.
Sean: Most of your traffic from Slingshot, VOIP, especially in the early days, came from word of mouth. And then right now what's sustaining you. Is the digital traffic, SEO, social media marketing may be for doing that or ad words. I'm wondering. Since you are generating a perpetual amount of leads right now you're getting business, whether you're awake or asleep, how big is the team? And the reason why I'm asking this is I want to know how you lead them? Edwin: Yeah. So first thing, Sean, we're actually a small team or we're about 10 people right now. That's including things like the tech team and stuff like that because B2B sales, it's still a slung along sales cycle, even as the lead comes in, because sometimes the move is not in for three months or two months and do that. So when it comes to leading, we're actually all, we, we consciously made it a remote company when we launched way before COVID. So when it comes to leadership, it's all about communication and understanding and trusting everyone to do their job and having all the communication tools to allow for it, right? And having a common goal. But, yeah, I mean, that's, that's it, in a nutshell, I'm not sure if you had a specific question on leadership or managing. Sean: So I am going to stem from your answer there, a lot of companies right now actually shifted to remote work. You know, it just doesn't make sense to risk your people coming to the office. I mean, SEO-Hacker, we used to have an office here in, where I live in Paranaque and all 50 of us would be there. But, when COVID hit January, me and the Execom, we decided let's just make everyone work from home because it doesn't make sense to risk them. Like this is what they're getting in their salary and, you know, hospitalization, this is what they'll be paying for one, one day in the hospital, leading remotely is, is now an essential skill. How do you lead? You mentioned a couple of things earlier. I want to deep dive on that communication tools. How do you use it? How do you communicate? How often should you communicate with them? What do you talk with them about what are the tools you use in your, in your team to be able to do that? And we want to learn from you because you mentioned that you've been doing this way before COVID so we want to know how you're making your company work and grow by leading remotely? Edwin: Yeah. So, I mean, with the execs and my partners, we meet once a week, cause we are all do different responsibility things. And the way we work is, you know, we use Slack channels and we zoom, literally. I mean, that's it and then we always have our weekly meetups, but when it comes to the sales organization, I meet daily. I do like daily calls with my sales organization just to see what,where we are? What could we work on together? What do you need my help on and do those types of things? Cause I think that's, that's important in terms of us when it comes to that tools. And we also it's, it's the same things we use Slack and we use zoom and we also have a tool we're partnering with another organization. That's building out a lot of our collaboration tools - that's integrated with Slingshot, that's coming out and building on more so, but that's it. I mean, when it comes to customer service, there's not much management on that side. I just check in and see how things are going on there, but that I think. I mean that, that's it like, that's literally our cadences when it comes to that, when it comes to it. So my time is mostly on, on the sales side. And then I meet, I meet weekly with the rest of the execs.
Can you share with us problems you encountered in starting and handling Leadership Stack? Starting the podcast? I actually started it in a very crude way. If you watch the very first podcast episode recording that I did, it was with my wife, Apple, and my brother, Kevin. And it was just in my office and we had a lot of reverberations, we had a lot of noise. May mga kotseng dumadaan. We started it very crudely like how you would pretty much start a startup. You know, when you start a company it's never going to be perfect. I started SEO Hacker from the attic of my parents' house. Maalikabok. Madalas hindi ako pwedeng magbukas ng aircon kasi saying kuryente so pawis pawis ako doon. It's nothing glorious. I didn't have carpeted office. I didn't have like toys in my background. I didn't have any of these things. I had an eight year old ASUS laptop. That's what I had. An eight year old ASUS laptop and I had to make do with that. I had to, that's what I used. And by God's grace, it has grown and grown and grown all the way to what it is now. When you start it up, ganoon talaga eh. So I wouldn't say it's a problem. I would say it's starting pains or growing pains, right? It's part of the process. It's not really a problem. It's part of the process and you learn from that. So I learned how to reduce reverberations, like right now, if you think that the audio output is pretty good, it's because I use a mixer. I use Focusrite 2i2. I'm not getting anything from this. So just a disclaimer, I'm not a promoter. Buy at your own risk. Yeah. I had the chip from Amazon and all the way here. And then I make sure that the gain is low so that it doesn't get any feedback or white noise.And then nilalapit ko yung bibig ko doon sa mic to make sure that my voice is clear. So if you're happy with the audio output, that's what I do. So I'll only learn these things because of the many mistakes, growing pains, startup pains that I went through. I think those are the only things because by God's grace, the Leadership Stack team, my editor for the podcast, my editor for the video, you guys do a fantastic job. I don't have problems doing that. These guys do a fantastic job. All I do is create content. That's it. I record this. I answer your questions here. I record podcasts with guests. I don't edit, I don't do the transcriptions. I don't animate. They do everything. And why are we doing it for free? Well, they're funded by SEO Hacker. I pay them their salaries through SEO Hacker. But I'm doing it for free. So actually this, I'm not doing this really for free, I pay a lot to produce the Leadership Stack, but it's my way of paying it forward to you guys. All right. So you guys learn a lot as well from what I went through.
The more supply there is, kasi linagay mo siya sa grocery stores, the less demand. If there's less demand, then your price, you cannot increase it really that well. Okay. But you're right, I realized after you answered my question, iba pa rin ang direct selling. I should find distributors, resellers sa iba't-ibang area. My fear is hindi lahat may freezer to store it. Also thinking of offering the product sa mga shabu-shabu restaurants, but I don't know how to start with that. What's your opinion? In my opinion, you are in a scale-up process. Parang startup siya na you're trying to scale it up to see how you can balance it out. This has happened to me before in SEO Hacker. And this is because when we have new clients tapos saka palang ako maghire, magtrain pa kami ng mga bagong tao, maghahabol kami. So what I do is, there's a dilemma. Do I hire first? Para pag nakakuha ako ng bagong kliyente, may tao na akong ready to take on the client, ready to take the load. Para hindi kami overloaded, kaming mga team members na nandiyan na. Or do I wait to get a new client before I hire? Because hiring a new person tapos wala naman akong bagong client papasok, is more of an expense. So it's like a chicken and egg problem and you're actually there in that area right now because you're actually selling 1000 packs. Yeah, 1000 packs for one year going to and from Singapore, you made it at least sell it out. You don't have a problem there. But now you're thinking if you're going to get the MOQ or the minimum order quantity, papadeliver mo dito via container, 2500 packs na ‘yon. And you're not sure kung kaya mong ibenta or ubusin lahat agad. In terms of freezer, if you're going to buy freezers, CapEx na ‘yan, capital expense. Meaning you're gonna have to pay for it, you're going to have that equipment for a long time, assuming you bought a good quality freezer, so hindi naman ‘yon nabubulok. My opinion is, if you really want to scale, there's risk there. My book, 50 X Your Business, which you can buy from Amazon, that's the latest book that I published. That's all about scaling up. That's all about the risk of growth. The capital injection you need to put in when you're growing your business or your company. There is a new risk, there are new capital injections when you're scaling up. It is much like starting up, unfortunately, sadly. So it's difficult, but it's also a very exciting time because right now ang maganda naman doon, may pondo ka na kasi nakabenta ka na ng 1000 packs. It's not like you didn't have money, now you have money. It's just that you're going to risk it again. That's where we get the term na, pinapaikot ang pera. You have to reinvest that money you made into assets, equipment like freezers. Don't spend it on new cars. Don't spend it on new gadgets. Don't spend on things you want. Liabilities. Spend it on assets. My suggestion, if that freezer's going to go a long way and it allows you to sell the 2500 packs, definitely go buy the freezer. If you're going to want to have distributors, my suggestion, you get a franchise consultant and ask the franchise consultant, how am I going to do this? I'm not an expert when it comes to franchising, but that's one way you can go. If you want distribution centers who will help you distribute your product, they have to have a profit margin, they have to have their own freezers, which you may provide, or you may ask them to buy as their capital expenditure or their capital investment. And then, you have to have a system of transporting that product to them, making sure they're stocked up, hindi sila nauubusan ng inventory, making sure that they can sell online with whatever channels you're using or you may be using right now. Those are things that you can do.
Was there a time in your life when you question your confidence in the business you're running? Yes. There were lots of times in my life na naisip ko, am I really fit to run this business? Did God really make me CEO of this business? It's so hard. There were a lot of times when I failed. And there were a lot of times when literally I was on my knees, locked in the room and all I can do really is humble myself before God and pray. And I tell him, “Lord, hindi ko na kaya. Hindi ko na kaya gawin ito. Hindi ko na alam ang gagawin ko”. And one clear picture of that is at the start of this pandemic. And my business, SEO Hacker, was also affected. Workplays, my fourth startup was also affected. Qeryz was also affected. Everything was affected. So that was one time when I recently got on my knees and had to pray and I just was honest with God. And I said, I don't know what to do. Please help. And, you know, God gives you wisdom. Talagang galing sa Kanya ‘yon. And so we were able to keep all our team members in the team. We never fired anyone or trenched anyone. We made programs to adjust big rates, but we also made sure that kaming nasa execom, we took pay cuts. Zero. We did not get a salary and I even took out from my own safety net to make sure that people got paid the right amount, even when our clients weren't paying us right. So most of my clients are local and I understand. Nagkakaproblema din sila. Their customers are also not paying them. We have to understand during times of crisis, you can't do business as usual. It has to be relationships. That is when you use the relationships you have built with your clients and kailangan niyo intindihin ang isa't-isa. So with my clients, same, I understood them na hindi nila kayang magbayad. I also had to haggle with my people. This is what we're going to do. Better for all of us to suffer a little than some of us would have to suffer a lot and lose their job. So we all agreed to that. And that's how we made it through. No one got axed in our organization. We kept everyone in the team. Another thing that helps me is I journal. That helps me to process what I'm feeling. So instead of me being angry and just exploding to other people, could be my family, could be other people in the team. I don't know. But I try my best to keep that from happening and thank God, wala naman maraming instances ‘non. And that's because I journal. When I am not rested, I feel restless and I feel like there's something really bothering me. I pray and I journal. Those two things helped me process and help me release and vent out the emotions that are just overwhelming for me. Now, a lot of people I know don't do it that way. Instead, they would post statuses on Facebook, Twitter, and doon sila magrarant, doon sila magleleak. We call that leaking out and it's not good. You know why? And there are some employees who do this, sadly. I tell people, especially business owners na, if your employees do that, they leak on social media, you now know it's fair game. Because it's public domain. Social media is a public platform where the public can see what they're posting. Yeah, it could be their friends, but their friends are part of the public. It's not they're not part of a secret private organization. They're part of the public. Twitter? The same, it's a public platform. So that's what I say, do not leak your emotions, especially on social media. Write it down on a journal. Pray about it. That way you have dignity and you have honor to keep things yourself, not exploding to anyone, and you didn't hurt anyone in the process, but you were able to let it out. You were able to vent it and you feel better and you can process things better and you see clearly, and overall it is a much better, more sophisticated way to handle your emotions.
We have a question from Em. We have a product and siya and bread and butter ng company namin for five years now. Plano naming mag expand. Magkano ba ang dapat na ilaan naming sa marketing? Ilang percent ba ng income ang ideal? My answer to that Em, and since I run a digital marketing company and I do marketing and advertising myself, I don't really put in a percentage of the budget. That's not how I do things. So I cannot tell you na you have to put like 10% or 20%. I'm sure if you Google it, may mga sinasabing best practices out there. But if you asked me what I'm going to tell you is, if there is a campaign that you can run, that would give you good returns on the investment in that marketing or advertising campaign, go for that. Especially if you're five years palang in the market. Startup ka pa, nasa startup phase ka pa. So the marketing budget, in my opinion, has to be invested in things that would bring returns. I know it sounds biased cause I own SEO Hacker, but really if you're going to look at the return on investment, SEO is the best return on investment. Because if you advertise on Facebook or Instagram, these are people who are browsing, kasi wala silang magawa. May oras sila, may oras tayo. Whenever we're on Facebook or Instagram, it's because we have time to kill. It's not because we have a mission or we're trying to complete a task, it's marami tayong oras and okay lang sa atin na mag sayang ng oras sa Facebook or Instagram. So imagine if you run an ad there, however targeted it is, kahit sabihin mo ang target ko, male, age range is 30 to 40 or 30 to 50, and mahilig sa relos, but they're browsing just because they have time to kill. Compared to Google, people in Google are searching for something. They're laser focused. They have an intention to buy. They have an intention to spend. And so the difference in intent is huge when you're doing social media marketing, versus when you're doing SEO. Now there's a question, Sean, why don't I run Google ads na lang kaysa sa mag SEO kami, kasi mas mahal ang SEO kaysa sa Google ads? You're right, but Google ads is like renting. The moment you start paying Google, your search listing disappears. SEO is like owning. Even if you stop paying the SEO company, your rankings will stick. Also with SEM, you know how it is, the millennial generation all the way to the younger ones, Gen Z, were ad blind. We're ad blind. We don't like clicking ads. We don't like ads being on our faces. So when we see that it's a Google ad, we don't click it. I don't know. Ikaw ba, do you click Google ads? I don't know about you, but I don't click on Google ads. I click the first organic result because I know I'm not going to be sold something when I click on the organic result. But when I click on the page results, I know that they're going to sell me something, cause they're running ads. They're going to want to make their money back. Right. If we're talking ROI, SEO is definitely the best, if not, one of the best. That's where I'm going to put the money. So I'm not going to tell you to spend only 20% of your marketing budget or 30%. For me, invest in good SEO. If hindi niyo kayang mag invest ngayon ng ganoong klaseng money, then do it yourself. DIY niyo muna yung SEO niyo. There's so many resources out there for you to learn and do SEO yourself. Because you can do it yourself. I'm saying this and I own an SEO company. I started out doing it myself as a freelancer, and then I built processes and right now we're a 50 man team. We're handling around 50 plus clients and we're doing it because systematize na siya. And my playbook works, but that's not to say that it's the only playbook out there. You can make your own playbook. There's a lot of ways to do SEO. My suggestion is do it ethically or the white hat method, rather than the gray or black hat, which is unethical or a mix of ethical and unethical.
https://ratethispodcast.com/bulbs (Leave a review for Broken Bulbs!) Today, Sean Si of, The Leadership Stack Podcast, joins us to share experience failing 28 college units. His unhealthy habit of gaming took over his life while he was in college and it took some time before he woke up to his need to focus on the things that mattered. BROKEN BULBS: https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/broken-bulbs-1416869 (Leave a Review) https://ocelot-grapefruit-9k42.squarespace.com/brokenbulbs (Website) https://www.instagram.com/brokenbulbspod (Instagram) https://twitter.com/brokenbulbspod (Twitter) https://patreon.com/alexwilliamns (Patreon) SEAN SI (GUEST): https://sean.si/ (Website) https://leadershipstack.com/podcasts/ (The Leadership Stack Podcast) https://seohacker.services/ (SEO Hacker) https://seo-hacker.com/ (SEO Blog) ALEX WILLIAMNS (HOST): https://www.alexwilliamns.com/ (Website) https://twitter.com/alexwilliamns (Twitter) https://instagram.com/alexwilliamns (Instagram) https://www.youtube.com/alexwilliamns (YouTube) https://www.patreon.com/alexwilliamns (Patreon) CREDITS: Host: https://www.alexwilliamns.com/ (Alex Williamns) Guest: https://sean.si/ (Sean Si) Music: https://artlist.io/artist/1075/brian-claxton (Brian Claxton) & https://artlist.io/artist/709/wesly-thomas?search=wesly-thoma (Wesly Thomas) Cover Art: https://www.redbubble.com/people/MadeByBKG/shop?fbclid=IwAR3H8YSNm8_zHMv5veeDY8hJxfoBXm73tRpDrM_jIxYSTgX_OHJsPq-ARuQ (Bethany Gustafson) Sponsor: https://www.williamsredlich.com/ (Williams Redlich Content Marketing) Broken Bulbs is a co-production of Williams Redlich & MeCHo Radio. And we are, of course, a proud member of the Createvine.
What is the importance of branding for you? Tips on how to establish it. What is your brand? Branding is important because that is how people perceive you and know you as a company. I remember I thought about this. The most important thing in branding is consistency. You're consistent with what you do with how you show yourself to the outside world. If you remember Nike and they ask you what's their logo and what's their tagline. It's easy to answer. The checkmark and the tagline is just do it. It hasn't been consistent, consistent, consistent over the years is the same, but I'm going to name Adidas though. Now I know that the logo might be the same. But the tagline. I don't really remember. You might not remember, but the last tagline I remember yeah. That they made that was really good is Impossible is nothing. Problem, they have a different tagline now. The consistency is gone. That's what I think branding should be all about. You have to be consistent. If you're not consistent, you will have weak branding. And one of the biggest advantages of branding is if you have good branding, you can demand the price. Honestly, how much should sneakers cost? It should not cost a lot. And yet Nike for a lot. Their markup is huge and they're making a lot of money out of it. They're even listed in the stock exchange in the U S. Same with Adidas, even if they're not that consistent with their tagline, they still have pretty good branding. They're also listed in the US stock exchange, which means they have billions in the market cap. And one of their sneakers costs a lot. And that really is just because of branding. Yeah, they have good products, they have good sneakers, but a lot of companies also have good sneakers without that kind of branding and they're selling for a much cheaper price. Branding is important because you can demand price. Same with SEO Hacker. I think we have pretty good trending. So we demand price and a lot of our competitors follow our pricing model on our website. That's because of, again, good branding. So it is worth investing in your brand. Be consistent. Support the show (https://tribe.leadershipstack.com/)
Do you think emotional quotient is more important than intellectual quotient? I think both is very important. It's not IQ smart. It's EQ smart. That's it. Patrick Lencioni mentioned humble, hungry, smart. That's what they look for in a hire. That's also something that we look for in SEO Hacker whenever we, I have to hire someone. How we're able to look for these things is to ask questions. How do you know when someone's humble? You ask them, what's the biggest mistake you've done in your past job? You ask them what's the reason why they left. You ask them what is the biggest thing that disappointed your leaders in your last company? If they're humble, they will tell you the story. Then you have to probe, you cannot take things at face value. You have to ask the same question in different trousers. What that means is when you ask them, is there something that disappointed your leader or your direct leader or your direct report during your tenure, in your past company? And so they tell the story and then you ask, so what did you do to fix that? And then you ask, so what did these people say about you? Cause they can, they can make stories up. They can invent stories. But if you keep on asking these probing questions, pretty much the same question, just ask them a different way or ask in a deeper way. Then they'd have to tell you the story. If there's inconsistency, you know, that this person is not really that humble because if they were, they would tell you the entire thing. They would have the integrity to tell you the entire thing. How we measure hungry is we try to figure out if the person really did his or her research. Do they know things about us or not? Are they from a rich background or not? Are they here for just a couple of months and then will they leave? Will they just try to learn from us, make us a stepping stone? We cannot grow with people who are mercenaries. We cannot grow with people who are just going to make us stepping stones, it can be a good trade. Six months of work, six months off this amount of salary. It could be a good trade in some cases, but most cases, we would rather hire someone who is going to play and work with us long term. That means they have to be hungry enough. Usually, we check the person's background. What do their parents do? Are their parents working or are they retired? Are they married? DO they have kids? Are there other people depending on them? How hungry is this person? Will this person choose their job or pick jobs or say, that's not my job? Will this person have a winning attitude, a winning drive? Because usually, in basketball, the center player does not tell the point guard that it's not their job to dribble the ball and vice versa. The point guard doesn't tell the center player. It's not my job to rebound the ball. Why? Because they play to win. If you play, when you're, you're not going to the other people in your team, that's not my job. People who are not hungry enough will say, that's not my job somewhere in their tenure with you. Smart. Lastly, we see smart, easier, because for me, if it can not be straight in the eye during the interview, if you don't know how to answer my questions during the interview or if you don't have questions after all the interviews and it asks you, do you have questions for me? If you don't have questions, usually I consider that it's not being smart enough because you should have questions, right. For me, for the company, because you don't know so much about us and you should know you should be curious enough. To be able to relate with us better. You should ask questions. So that's another thing that I'm looking at whenever I interview someone. Support the show (https://tribe.leadershipstack.com/)
Would be are connection's important? How important? Well, I answered a little about it a little bit a while ago when I said it's not about what you know, But who you know. Yes, it is important. And actually you would know this because you have exited your first company, having these connections. I couldn't stress enough how important connections are. There are a lot of clients that I've closed that were referred to me by a connection. And you know, when a client is referred. That's the easiest client to close and to deal with because you have a promoter already, who might also it'll be another client that you have, or a long time client, or a long time a friend. This person is just promoting you to other people in their network. They're just saying you should try SEO Hacker. I've closed one recently and it's a referral from. Mr. Anton Laborte. Thank you, Anton. If you're listening to this, if you're here right now, super important, you will generate a lot of leads and revenue If you have a lot of good connections. Master Miko Pena, how does one learn the skill to sell and where do we start? Our learning? There are many places to learn how to sell. But first thing you need to know is how we can build trust and likability in others. There's a very old but timeless book that I've read early on in my life and that's How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. Honestly, that book is the best book. And it's not even about selling. It's how to win friends and influence people. That was the only book that I've read when I started as you hacker and started selling. So I could actually attribute my entire selling skill when I was starting out the company to that book, if you could download that book on your Kindle, you have an ebook or you can buy the hard copy. Do yourself a favor and do it's super-duper, easy to read. You will enjoy all the examples. And that's the book that helped me to be able to deal with people and treat people well so that I can sell a lot easier. That's definitely the starting point for me. That's what I'm going to answer that question. How did you start growing or gaining? Your clients? Well, we would have referrals because of connections and we ranked for keywords that were really good for our industry. Keywords, such as SEO Philippines, SEO company Philippines, SEO services Philippines. In fact, if you try searching for that now using your browser, you might find our website, SEO hacker, ranking. There. A lot of our clients find us this way because we're ranking and it makes sense to them to hire a company that's actually ranking for their own keywords. You don't want to hire, for example, a pest control company, you know that they have an office full of pests. It's not a good testimony that you're good in controlling pests when you're own building is full of pests, right. If you're a pest control company. For me, it's that simple. We're an SEO company. So we must rank for keywords in our industry. And that's SEO Philippines, SEO services Philippines, SEO company Philippines. We went for that keyword. We're still ranking for those keywords. We still get a lot of lines from those keywords. There you have it. That's the answer. Support the show (https://tribe.leadershipstack.com/)
Are you struggling in your leadership? Are you a young leader looking for ideas on ways to enhance your leadership? Do you want to build a business with a great team and culture? Our special guest Sean Si (Manila, Philippines) answers these and other questions about entrepreneurship, leadership and culture. Sean Si is the author and editor-in-chief of SEO Hacker and the SEO Hacker Blog is all about providing the world with the latest information in the SEO industry. Sean is a blogger, entrepreneur, SEO specialist, public speaker and an inbound marketing expert. Notably, Sean started his business at the age of 22 with just $22, and now leads an organization at age 32 with 50 team members (all younger than him). He's also the host of LeadershipStack, a podcast focused on entrepreneurship, leadership and management. He's also the founder of QERYZ, a software as a service venture Listen in as Sean shares his wisdom and experience on what it takes to build, grow and lead a great business. The Impact Leadership Podcast is brought to you by Cardivera, the leadership development eco-system that helps your grow your people, grow your business and grow your life. Show Notes Episode highlights… Ethics matter even in the midst of business challenges Leadership lessons from the Avengers The importance of relationships in business (relationships come first) The importance of taking care of your people especially during uncertain times The importance of being empathetic with clients and customers The importance of being authentic and vulnerable with clients, customers and team members People leave companies because of bad leadership (and turnover is expensive) The importance of using assessments with your team (i.e. Reiss Motivational Profile) Culture and core values is vital for any business Value of using a values survey in the hiring process Leaders are intentional about their people, culture and values The role of humility in leadership Leaders must have people around them who will be honest with them and point out blind spots Leadership lessons learned from parents and their career and business choices The importance of hiring people that compliment your strengths and supplement your weaknesses What to look for when hiring people and the importance of having a rich hiring experience Building a culture where you can make mistakes if you learn from them The top three things to look for in people: 1. Humble 2. Hungry 3. People Smart Unique ideas for living your culture and values Keys to leading and managing millennials Two powerful and difference making interview questions The importance of making it about the team (not yourself) as a leader Leadership is about sacrifice Resources: Sean Si SEO Hacker Leadership Stack Podcast with Sean Si 50x Your Business: How to Grow your Business, People, and Revenue the Right Way book by Sean Si CEO at 22: The Risks, Challenges, Success and Failures of Starting up Young book by Sean Si The Impact Leadership Podcast Cardivera
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is often the most misunderstood marketing practice there is. Over the years, there's been so many shady practices and shortcuts trying to game Google. But more sophisticated marketers understand there are no shortcuts. Today's guest, Sean Si, founder of SEO Hacker, talks about no-nonsense, super ethical SEO. Although the name is SEO Hacker, Sean is the least hackiest guy I've ever spoken to.
It's hard selling your first company. A lot of entrepreneurs have their identity intertwined with their first startup. In the Philippines, when you say Sean Si, people would think SEO Hacker. My next question is what your advice will be to people who are wondering whether they should bootstrap and start a self-funded business or take a loan from the bank, from friends and family? Bryan's business was debt-free when they were acquired. That's why they were able to sell. That said, some businesses need you to take on debt or have someone invest in you to get them going. That's a bad bet for most business owners. It's a beautiful thing when it works, but that only happens about 5 to 10% of the time. That's a very small percentage. I, myself, would encourage people to do a bootstrap so that you get to sleep well at night without worrying about your debt. Low and low works well for most businesses. There are exceptions wherein you have to take big risks to win a lot of times. However, sometimes, you'll just be driving off a cliff without leaving any skidmarks. Another thing that Bryan mentioned was that people should Leverage, Not Leap. If you know your business inside out, it's easy to find great opportunities. If you know your numbers and you know that you can go get a thousand more customers for a hundred dollars each. All you have to do is borrow a couple of hundred grand that you know you can pay back in six months, then it might make sense to do that. When you bootstrap, the worst thing that can happen is that you default to nothing. You won't dig your own grave because you can only go to zero, no less. Just six months after your exit from Peachtree, you started a tech-centric company in the same industry. What pumped you up to do this? Bryan always had this quote on his mind by George Patton: “If you're not gaining ground, You're losing ground.” Bryan just had to get back into the ring because he came to realize that it was his vehicle for personal growth. He would never be who he is today if his business did not for him to become that. Be it the type of leader or the type of manager that he has become. So many of the skills and lessons that Bryan picked up along the way were because his business required it from him. He missed that while he was on vacation. When he decided on what to start next, he thought of GreenPal. It's basically the Uber for lawn mowing. If someone needs their grass cut, they jump on Greenpal, they get quotas, and they hire the guy that they want to come and cut their lawn. All of which is paid through the app. This idea hasn't changed much from 2012 to 2020. The vision has always been the same. That it should be easy to get this one simple household chore done by pushing a button. When Airbnb and Uber were gaining traction, a lot of people had the same idea. What made you succeed? Bryan and Green Pal built a marketplace from the bottom up. It's a place where homeowners can get multiple quotes from service providers in their town and then hire the services that they want to work with through their app. There, they can also pay, schedule, and rate them. This is the difference between Bryan and the other people that try Uber for X business model. Bryan built a marketplace whereas some of the others just want to build a better version of a specific company. Support the show (https://tribe.leadershipstack.com/)
Sam mentioned earlier the quote that goes along the lines of “you miss a hundred percent of the shots that you don't take. That leaves us to just take the shot and learn from it. Learn from the missed shot and recalibrate. Sam had his own share of failures as well. He had his own startup projects that didn't succeed such as a platform for photographers. He didn't succeed in several of them, but it was still fine because those failures taught him a lot. He learned a lot of things about how he should build his next startup. He would have missed out on all that education if he didn't fail at the others first. For him, entrepreneurs and startups should build their own projects or their Minimum viable product as much as they want. If it doesn't succeed, then you will be learning from it. It is something you learn that is more valuable than any university education. The lessons you take from it last a lifetime. The same goes for entrepreneurship. It is a journey. It is not just a destination. Entrepreneurship is like an infinite game. One thing that I always tell my team in SEO Hacker. We are composed mainly of 20 to 30-year-olds with me being the oldest guy in the team. I always tell them that this company is your university. I am the one paying for their tuition fee, I sponsor them. They are my scholars. I allow them to make mistakes except for two kinds: Repeated and Fatal mistakes. Fatal mistakes are when you lose a client. Repeated mistakes lead to Fatal mistakes when you keep doing it over and over again. The same goes for entrepreneurship. We entrepreneurs are in our own university, we are our own sponsors, and the more times we fail, the more times we should learn. What advice can you give someone who is afraid to fail? One of the reasons why people fear failure so much is not because you have to repeat something, as is the case for college students, but rather they are worried about their own insecurities and what people would say. Entrepreneurship, by nature, is accepting the risk and moving ahead regardless. One of the things that Sam mentioned is to introspect yourself. Why is it that you are afraid to fail? Is it because you care too much about what people are going to say about you and how they're going to perceive you? Or will you choose not to care about what they say? What advice can you give to people who are currently doing nothing amid this COVID-19 Lockdown? Sam has two points of interest in mind. He highly recommends that people look into these two things: What they are good at and what they're passionate about. When these two things align, they will create extraordinary results. Whether it's coding, design, or whatever, as long as you have that innate ability for something, then you should go ahead and learn it. How do you know what your passion is? How do you know what you're passionate about? Sam never had to think about his passion before. He says that that is one of the signs. Maybe you don't have to think about it because it's something that you do without looking at the time. You don't even think about getting up for a meal or setting a reminder for it because you get so engrossed in that activity. What is something that you are working on and where can we find you? You can find Sam Kamani via LinkedIn. He is also currently working on his FinTech gaming product and building an esport product for trading and investments which is supposed to be coming soon. He lives in New Zealand. He is from India and he has been rejected 500 times but is now a serial entrepreneur, an author, a speaker. Talk about resilience. Talk about getting up. Talk about learning from failures. Well, we did learn today from Sam and we are better for it. Support the show (https://tribe.leadershipstack.com/)
Today's guest is none-other than Ms. Jazz Rivera. She will be the one asking questions to me about leadership, entrepreneurship, and management. What if I don't have the capital to start a business? The thing is, a lot of people will tell you you have to have money to make money. I don't completely agree with that because I did have money, but all I had was PHP1300, which you probably have on you right now or sometime this week. It's easy for you to spend that. You don't need capital. What you need is knowledge and wisdom. You get that through investing in yourself, by reading books, listening to podcasts, going to seminars, conferences, getting mentors. How many times did you fail and what were those failures? What did you learn from those experiences? When I started a business, I failed so many times by starting up. One of my failures was hiring. I hired some people who were not good, yet I trusted them. I've hired a lot of wrong people and the wrong people will make for the wrong team. The wrong team will make for the wrong company. The people that I hired initially, I failed in the interview process because of my strength and weakness as an entrepreneur is that I trust them too much. I learned from my failures, when you look back and people look at me now and tell me, oh, you're so high up the mountain, you're standing at the summit of your success. This mountain is a mountain of failures and a lot of people get buried under it and just quit. But I was able to pick myself up and climb on top of it until I got to the summit. And still more failures are coming down on me. I have to have that discipline of just picking myself up and climbing up again. What are your principles? What is the structure that you use to get people to work for you? Other principles that I have would be mastery. You have to have 10,000 hours of practice. That's really how to go about it. 10000 hours is usually five years. For SEO Hacker, I went overdrive. I went for 80 hour work weeks and I would always consciously and deliberately improve myself in terms of my craft in SEO, writing, and conversion optimization. This is a culmination of deliberate practice. That's something that I want my team to also be able to do. And with all of these principles, we wrap them up into our core values. So we have Grit, Unity, Respect for Work, becoming a Challenger. You challenge the status quo. You challenge yourself. Challenge other people; having Clarity when you communicate with each other and with the clients; and being able to always try new things in the spirit of having a positive outcome, Experimentation. We have six core values that are the pinnacle of all of these principles that I have. What is your personal brand? How do you think people see you? I have been working at my brand for a long time already since I had the seansi.org website. At the start, it looked really bad. It looked like all of my stuff was there because I intended for it to be an online resume. When I was starting as a public speaker, a lot of my inquiries for talks would ask me for a résumé, which is weird now because no one does it now. But if you look at seansi.org now, it is nothing like a resume for me. It is about who I am and how I do it. I am best known for SEO Hacker because it is a business that I started up. A lot of who I am still tied up with. And, you know, for me to be able to build that, it took a lot of years and consistency. The thing about branding is you have to be consistent. If not, then it's a hodgepodge of different things. What can people identify with when they see you or when they hear your name? Mine is “digital”, “entrepreneurship”, and “author”. These couple of things, it's not going to reach ten items. It's just a couple of items that they can associate me with. Support the show (https://tribe.leadershipstack.com/)
Gossip is the antithesis of unity… I can't tell you that I know each and everything that's happening in the office. But my team knows my stand on gossip. What is your Why and how did you find it? Our purpose statement is different from our mission and vision. Our Why statement is we exist because the world is underserved by digital marketing companies. There are some out there that are not good, not outright, and even go as far as scamming companies. There is a huge gap that is yet to be filled by digital marketing companies. We exist because of that gap. We want to serve the world, in the best way we can, through digital marketing. My Why is directly related to my identity. I am a child of God and we have a mission. That is to go out and make disciples of all nations. It's not easy to influence millennials. We're not all Christians in SEO Hacker. We hire any and all kinds of people with different beliefs. It's just that one of the things that I want very much to happen is for them to get to know the Lord. That will always be my Why. How I will be able to do that is dependent on where God has called me. Right now, God has called me to be a businessman, an entrepreneur, and a voice in the Philippine startup market. People will not listen to you if you're not good at what you're called to be doing. You'll just be another person with an opinion. People will criticize you. Society will tell you to become successful. But when you are successful in a way, people are going to criticize you. What I realized is that you should just go the path that you're called to and don't pay any mind to the critics. There have been so many times when I heard voices from critics all around. If I let it get to me, then I wouldn't be here today. You have to realize that you've been fighting a worthy fight. There is a reason why you exist. It's your choice to allow what they say to get into your heart or not. Unity is an important thing. How do you plan to keep everyone unified while still maintaining professionalism in the workplace? First, we have to educate them on the five enemies of unity. The first enemy is gossip. It is the antithesis of unity. With it, you can never have unity in your team. It breaks down trust. Without trust, you cannot have unity. I can't tell you that I know each and everything that's happening in the office. But my team knows my stand on gossip. It's an everyday fight. You have to make an effort to keep these things at bay because if you let your guard down, these things will really wreak havoc within your team. The second thing I really don't like is unresolved conflict. If there are people between teams that don't see eye-to-eye, have bitterness in their hearts. They might even go as far as to sabotage each other's output. When that happens, both you, your clients, and your shareholders will suffer. This can lead to letting go of people just because you're not making enough revenue. When you know something is happening between two members of your team, get them in a room and act as a mediator in their alignment. I don't require my people to become friends, even outside of work. What I require is that they respect one another. The third enemy of gossip is sanctioned incompetence. If you tolerate incompetence in your team, they will follow suit with it—creating more mediocre output. They will hate you for it because you're protecting a donkey, while you let your stallions suffer, or worse, leave. You'll lose loyalty and your unity will breakdown. Support the show (https://tribe.leadershipstack.com/)
What kind of traits do these people have to have for you to entrust the gatekeeper position to them? We have two Human Resource personnel. They do all of the hiring and legal work in terms of application. They do a thirty-minute drive-by interview just to get to know the applicant. After which they're sent home. If we need to talk to them again for a second reason, then we'll call them. The second interview is all about the DISC and culture tests. Everyone in the next steps will look at these exams. The third step is the exam for the position that they're applying for. The team leader is the one who will interview them. The next step is the interview with my wife. She has this amazing gut feel that I listen to. If the applicant is not good with her, then she doesn't need to bring the applicant up to me. I trust her 100%. What is the culture like in SEO Hacker? Culture is the product of the DNA of the founder. When I was starting out SEO Hacker, I was still a freelancer. I had to respect what I was doing by respecting my time and efforts. When I did that, I finished everything ahead of time and I was able to experiment after finishing meetings and my legwork. I would always push myself to learn something new. I wanted to have a dream team. I wanted us to be united, have one vision, and one direction. All of these culminated in our core values. That is the direction of our team. Our core values are Grit, Respect for Work, Challenger, Clarity, Unity, Experimentation. We depreciated some because we realized that they're not core values. Integrity is a necessity. Beyond Technology is all about hard work. Empathy was not used correctly. To live out the core values, it should first be set in your mind so that it will settle in your heart. Culture is something that you just realize once you step into the room. I think it's best described in a YouTube video called the Smell of the Place. I can't tell exactly describe what our culture is. What I can tell you is that It's young, dynamic and unified. How does one cultivate this self-awareness? What are the right questions that you have to ask yourself? The first time I was able to draft a set of core values was in 2014. I've changed them three times now. The first one was a huge failure. It wasn't working. One thing I learned in a podcast I listened to was that it was a gift from the past. It was something that your past self gifts your present self. But it's your choice whether to accept that gift or not. My first core values sounded nice, but it wasn't working, and it didn't make sense. It was useless. Jim Collins, in his book “Built to Last” says that you can only have six core values. 7 or more will be to remember and practice. The first ones that came to mind were integrity beyond technology and empathy. They are so important that if someone doesn't have them, then they shouldn't be here. These became necessities that we set aside. We chose core values that not everyone would have at the get-go. There are three kinds of core values. Aspirational, Accidental, and Permission to Play Integrity and Beyond Technology are both Permission to Play. Our core is Grit and Respect for Work. Challenger, Unity, Clarity, and Experimentation are Aspirational values. We want everyone to practice it, but not everyone has it as of now. These core values are a culmination of a lot of things including my experience and the books that I've read. I didn't give much attention to accidental values. I learned these things from big mentors like Jim Collins, Patrick Lencioni, John Maxwell, and Dave Ramsey. I read their books, listened to their podcasts, followed their advice, you develop this court sense meaning you'll know when and who you should pass the ball to in your team. It's that court sense and the many experiences that I had over the years that culminated in our core values. Support the show (https://tribe.leadershipstack.com/)
Why Should You Do SEO for Blogs? There are tons of traffic. There are billions of searches happening every day. All the eyeballs that see you are very important because they're already done with the discovery phase. They know what they want. Now, if they find what they want, there is a high chance that they're already going to buy, read, download, or convert into leads. I love search traffic much more than what we get on social media. This is because people in social media are at the discovery phase. They don't really know who you are, what they want, or if they want to engage with you. However, people who are already searching for something are already in the interest phase. When I started my blog, I didn't have a lot of visitors. Of course, I asked Google how I can increase my traffic. It kept telling me to do SEO. I was an On-The-Job Trainee back then. I had to do a lot of things. I was hired to do SEO stuff, but I didn't know anything. They didn't teach me anything, the two people with me during the day shift didn't know anything about SEO as well. Everything that I wanted to know, I had to learn alone. I studied. I experimented. I applied what I learned. In time, I got to rank for a certain number of keywords. They were and still are very important to me. Right now, we rank number one in the keyword “SEO Philippines” which is a very difficult keyword to rank for. We also rank for SEO services and SEO companies. This means a lot because we are able to get leads this way. These keywords are how our clients find us. We had a steady increase in traffic. I started with blogs alone and that was enough to grow SEO Hacker. It's a blog that publishes two articles a week. Recently, we've been publishing articles about SEO during the time of this coronavirus pandemic, a few case studies on how it affects certain industries. SEO does not need to be complicated. It's a discipline more than anything else. There is no magic behind it. I have no bag of tricks to give you. There are no tactics that will tip the scale to your favor. SEO is an everyday discipline. You have to keep fixing and producing every single day for your effort to compound. When it does compound, your rankings will solidify in the future. SEO is a zero-sum game. Only one can take the top spot. And the rest should settle for second all the way to last. The winner takes all. The lower your rankings, the chances that you get the clicks are really low because Google is becoming so much better in identifying relevant search queries. Support the show (https://tribe.leadershipstack.com/)
What's your vision for Reality Box? When they started, Reality Box was named Boxed reality. They wanted to cover people's events and everything that happened. Afterward, they will send it to their client in a box. The box contained a USB, a DVD, and Photos of the event. They focused on shooting what's real and direct as little as possible. As the years went by, the market dictated something that Harry and his partner didn't expect. Flexibility became a very important thing. As much as they wanted to leave a mark with their own style of creativity, they had to adjust their ways to fit their clients. Because of that, they switched their focus to telling the story of their clients. Harry learned this the hard way with one of his previous clients. They took care of almost everything needed, but when the client checked their output, the branding was not the same. Harry then had a discussion with that client explaining why it ended up that way. Ultimately, that experience led to the creation of their current processes. Where did you learn how to price that way? Before Reality Box was founded, Harry's dad tapped him for an SDE service. Their client was at a wedding in China. Once they showed the video, the client complained that it was too short, that it was not worth the PHP15,000 that they paid extra. They did not appreciate the value of the SDE video. Harry did this to educate his father's clients. That what they're paying for is not solely about the length of the video or the number of pictures. Rather it's in the quality of their work. After that, Harry decided to part ways with his father's business because those clients did not want to pay the real price for Harry's services. Now they work with different kinds of clientele. If they want same-day edits, growing up photos, and the like, his father will pass the client to Harry. Meanwhile, if harry gets inquiries that only need labor, he passes it to his father. Has photography always been the business of your dad? Harry's dad has always been providing photography services. The problem was that his father never increased his prices for a very long time. The problem was that some of his father's clients were outright abusing him. Even now his father's clients still don't pay the real price of the effort involved in his services. The lesson here is that by branding yourself as cheap or affordable, you will get clients at first, but without any growth, it will affect your business negatively. You don't want to be described as a cheap business. Sometimes people would correspond to a cheap business with a cheap product. And that's not a good thing. In SEO Hacker, we positioned ourselves as a premium because we provide the best SEO and digital marketing services. We strive to give the best, which in turn requires a budget. Because of this, the word of mouth of SEO Hacker is not that they're cheap, but that they work. Support the show (https://tribe.leadershipstack.com/)
One of the things that is most difficult for startups is getting the right people for your team. How do you get the right people? First of all, Anthony believes that you have to pray for the right people to come into the business. Without prayer, you won't know who's coming into your business. Second, he concentrates on the character of the person even before the technical skills of the individual. Anthony believes that when a person's character is good, everything else will follow. How do you develop leadership in your company? Anthony believes in leading by example and puts his people first. Anthony thinks of the situations of his people and takes appropriate actions from there. SEO Hacker is full of millennials and all my team members are younger than me. Imagine the chaos that happens in the office. You can't take out the fun because of everyone that's there. I've read the book Developing Leaders by John Maxwell recently. There's this one quote that particularly stuck with me. It went: “Hiring is like skydiving. Once you jump out, you're committed.” You have many applicants to choose from. But when you make the hire, you're stuck with that person. This is why you have to take your time in hiring that person. For Anthony, it's largely about his gut feel. Out of all the people that he hired, he can only think of less than three people that he truly believes was a mistake to hire. The rest was easy enough to ease into the company. When did you know that it was time to have an office? Anthony started at the conference table within his dad's office. After a few projects, around two or three years later, he was able to get his own office right beside his dad's office. His dad once told him that if they rented an office, it's just going to be another expense, he would rather invest right away so that they won't have any more expenses in the long run. It was only a small office because most of Anthony's employees work out in the field. How far into the business were you when you purchased the office? Anthony was able to purchase their first office just four years after starting operations. Have you ever worked for your dad? How was that experience? Anthony used to work for the family business when his own business began to show signs of good stability. He started with business development and helping out with the operations. Back then, Anthony had a pretty good idea on how to manage his time between working for his dad and working on his own business. Unfortunately, after his father's passing, the workload became quite difficult, especially since he had to deal with all that was happening. Are you the next in line to take over the company? How does it feel? Anthony is the one who will inherit the company and it's a big responsibility for him. He feels a lot of pressure especially since he will be the person with whom hundreds of employees will rely on. He has inherited the obligation of making sure that the company thrives and grows. He believes that even with these hardships and him becoming the new president of his family business, there is still one true CEO that will guide him along the way, God. How were you groomed to take on this role? Most second-generation family business owners would say that they are not yet ready, that they're not yet prepared when in reality, you will never find the best possible time to enter it. The perfect time is now. They should start doing it now and learn most of what you need along the way. These people only need to gather up confidence and have a bit more faith in God. With the passing of your father, how shocking was the transition for you? Anthony and his father w Support the show (https://tribe.leadershipstack.com/)
Who is Anthony Laborte? Anthony Laborte is an entrepreneur who started up his company while he was just a second-year college student. The name of the business was IIPI which stands for International Industry Partners Incorporated. What's interesting was that during that time, Anthony did not have any direction concerning why he named his business as such. It was a very generic name because, at the time, he didn't know what to do yet. He was only sure that he wanted to start his own company. IIPI was founded in 2009 and was incorporated in 2010. To keep up the growth, Anthony had to do a few things. Anthony studied the ins and outs of the company while also trying his best to search for his own path which was essentially his mentorship period with his dad. Unique to their relationship was that Anthony didn't have to ask for anything from him. Rather his dad would shower him with knowledge and wisdom in every opportunity that he got. Anthony's dad was a mechanical engineer. At first, he did maintenance and installation of equipment. Eventually, he was transferred to sales and became the country manager for that company. It's because of this that their family business was incorporated. His dad's company needed someone to help install their equipment locally. He had been doing this for about 30 years. How did your father come about the opportunity to start your family business? During that time, there was no installer of the equipment that his father was selling. Because of this, his father thought of setting up one such business himself. The equipment that they sold was very expensive. It was the whole package, all the machinery involved in the turn-key. Anthony's father was in his 40s when he started their business. Aside from that, he managed it while still working for a European company. In the morning, he would be there managing his business and during the evening, he would focus on his duties with the other company. Why didn't you go into the family business? Anthony didn't want to do so because it was difficult and confusing for him. He wasn't an avid supporter of the concept of his dad being his dad at home and being his boss at work. He thought it was hard on the relationship that he and his dad already had. It was different in my case. It wasn't exactly because of my father's temperament, but it was the advice that he has given to me over the years. Growing up he would tell me to look for another business or climb the corporate ladder. In the long run, he discouraged me from going into it again because the profit was small and the processes were complicated. It stamped into my mind. So when the time came, I tried to enter corporate for five months, I couldn't take it. At that time, SEO Hacker was at its infancy, and after a lot of prayers and what felt like a really long time, I finally got my father's blessing to focus on SEO Hacker. It wasn't because my father and I might not have been able to work together, rather the business was not thriving, so it didn't make sense to continue it. What gave you the initiative, the mindset to start a business early? It was mostly because of his father. Anthony's father told him and his siblings that they only had two choices after they graduated from college. It's either they become an entrepreneur or an employee. Anthony and his siblings saw both from their father. There was a time when he considered going corporate. He never had an experience of his own. Everything that Anthony did was based on trial and error or what he's seen from his family business. You studied engineering at De La Salle and Business at CSB. Which of them did you like the most? Anthony heavily enjoyed business more than the former. He sta Support the show (https://tribe.leadershipstack.com/)
In this interview of Sean Si, you will know about his personal journey of starting a business at age 22. He invited me to speak at Philippines to speak at his conference and he is totally passionate person who loves to help people in their business :) Sean Si does speaking engagements throughout the Philippines. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of SEO Hacker, an SEO and internet marketing company. His expertise in the field has drawn the attention of business and company owners, internet marketers, event organizers, bloggers, and other people interested in penetrating the booming internet market of the Philippines and abroad.
I was visited by a team from Indigitous, a global community that engages with ideas and each other to advance God's Kingdom through Innovation. As I have always put God first in everything I do, they take it a step further by encouraging and fostering a growing community to spread the word of the Lord. In this podcast, we will be discussing what my best practices are in leading a team of millennials and the role of innovation in propagating the word of God. First thing's first. I believe that we millennials might be the most complex group of people within the workforce. We millennials are not like any of the previous generations when it comes to work. We are very passionate individuals. We say what we think and believe is true and we argue about our perspectives with people who have a different point of view. Take a look at social media platforms where some strong-willed millennials make a stand whenever their beliefs are being targeted. These Social Justice Workers are likely to defend their beliefs to the very end. What happens when those beliefs that we are so adamant to defend and protect are wrong? What if they are not anchored in a good principle? What if it does not have any good moral standard? Millennials are incredibly passionate to the point where it can possibly hurt them. It will be difficult to change their thoughts and opinions on something that they truly think is right. It's because of this that the notion that millennials are believed to be entitled—a statement that I personally think is not absolute. Honestly, there will always be those who feel as if they deserve to be spoon-fed everything on a silver platter. That being said, there are more millennials who understand the value of hard work and grit. These people celebrate every little thing and are satisfied with small, consistent growth. Start with Indoctrination As soon as millennials join your team, you should train them immediately. Have an onboarding process that is fashioned for millennials. In SEO Hacker, we have a boot camp where we tell them our history. They learn about how the company was founded, how we had no investors to start, and even the fact that the first-ever office was just in the attic of my parent's house. We inform them that we started out at the bottom and we slowly but surely grew thanks to my team's continuous and rigorous grind. All new hires will also be introduced to our core values. I encourage my team to embody them as much as possible. We provide them with all of the information that is necessary to become part of our team. You should not let them fall stagnant. You should dictate the pace. Otherwise, the entitled will remain entitled, and the good ones might become entitled. As a leader, it's your job to make sure that they hit the ground running. And one of the ways for you to do that is to implement an onboarding process that shows the new hires how things are done in the company—and how they should do their tasks while they work with us. Everything needs to be clear from the get-go. Improve Your Hiring Process One of the best ways to handle millennials is to actively choose only the good ones through a strict hiring process. When your team is already filled with millennials who have the same goals and perspectives as you, it will make handling them incredibly easier. We at SEO Hacker have a six-step hiring process that we have designed to filter out the good from the crazy. This is something that takes inspiration from the great Dave Ramsey. Of course, it's not foolproof. It's not guaranteed to work 100% of the time. For every 50 applicants that we have, only five, maybe even less, finish the hirin Support the show (https://tribe.leadershipstack.com/)
By the year 2020, it's predicted that millennials will comprise around 50% of the workforce. In fact, it's already the case in a number of young companies in the country. SEO Hacker has a team that is composed of 90% millennials. That includes the management team that is all around 30 years old. I have two guests for this episode. The first of which is my wife Apple. She's been working with us for almost a year and has been enjoying handling our primarily millennial team. The other guest is Kevin, my brother and the COO of SEO Hacker. He's been working with me for around seven years and has helped build up the success of our company. For this episode, we'll be discussing mostly about Millennials along with many negative stereotypes that have been directed to them. The first question for the podcast is simple: What is the problem with millennials? A lot of managers believe that their millennial employees have a lot of character flaws, but they don't necessarily know where these came from, or how they were developed. Kevin states that the majority of the problems that we've come through with millennials would come from their reliance on their parents. As a rather pampered millennial himself, Kevin is very familiar with this line of thinking. He also believes that the majority of our team, as well as some probationary teammates that chose not to stay, had this problem. That they are very confident in their abilities, but their actions don't showcase their true capabilities. We have a lot of potential, we have a lot of knowledge available on the Internet, and we have a lot of things we can learn and grow to. Majority of the time, we're not there yet, but we think that we are. And one of the most driving factors for us to develop this mindset is because our parents loved us so much as the way that we are, that we never really tried to excel. We think “good enough” is good enough. Kevin particularly shared that in his past, instead of striving for experience and learning to excel, he always settled with getting a mediocre grade. I'm not trying to fail, and I'm not trying to succeed either. That's been his life. A lot of studies show that Millennials are the way we are because baby boomers and Gen X-ers have groomed us in such a way that we are able to live our dreams, do what we want, and follow our heart. I think that pretty much shaped the millennial generation. That we are the generation that can do whatever we want. This led to some people settling on just being okay and being complacent. This is because they want to live life like they did growing up. Unfortunately, that's not how the world works. Apple pointed out that some parents wanted their dreams to be lived out by their children, the Millennials. Some of them didn't want us to experience the difficult times that they had. The parents of the Millennial generation wanted their children to enjoy the fruits of their labor—which in some cases turned into entitlement. This then translates into the workplace. In order to effectively manage our millennial workforce, we also have to manage our parents. This is something that we've observed over the years of having a 90% millennial workforce. As Kevin stated, we have always considered them in how we process events and how we communicate our messages. We make sure that whenever we provide perks and benefits, we consider what impression it will make to the parents as well. A lot of parents have their hands around the lives of their millennial children. And so, whatever the parents decide will ultimately affect the career of the millennial worker. It's also worth pointing out that there are millennials who have found a way to rise above this influence, and you'll Support the show (https://tribe.leadershipstack.com/)
By the year 2020, it's predicted that millennials will comprise around 50% of the workforce. In fact, it's already the case in a number of young companies in the country. SEO Hacker has a team that is composed of 90% millennials. That includes the management team that is all around 30 years old. I have two guests for this episode. The first of which is my wife Apple. She's been working with us for almost a year and has been enjoying handling our primarily millennial team. The other guest is Kevin, my brother and the COO of SEO Hacker. He's been working with me for around seven years and has helped build up the success of our company. For this episode, we'll be discussing mostly about Millennials along with many negative stereotypes that have been directed to them. The first question for the podcast is simple: What is the problem with millennials? A lot of managers believe that their millennial employees have a lot of character flaws, but they don't necessarily know where these came from, or how they were developed. Kevin states that the majority of the problems that we've come through with millennials would come from their reliance on their parents. As a rather pampered millennial himself, Kevin is very familiar with this line of thinking. He also believes that the majority of our team, as well as some probationary teammates that chose not to stay, had this problem. That they are very confident in their abilities, but their actions don't showcase their true capabilities. We have a lot of potential, we have a lot of knowledge available on the Internet, and we have a lot of things we can learn and grow to. Majority of the time, we're not there yet, but we think that we are. And one of the most driving factors for us to develop this mindset is because our parents loved us so much as the way that we are, that we never really tried to excel. We think “good enough” is good enough. Kevin particularly shared that in his past, instead of striving for experience and learning to excel, he always settled with getting a mediocre grade. I'm not trying to fail, and I'm not trying to succeed either. That's been his life. A lot of studies show that Millennials are the way we are because baby boomers and Gen X-ers have groomed us in such a way that we are able to live our dreams, do what we want, and follow our heart. I think that pretty much shaped the millennial generation. That we are the generation that can do whatever we want. This led to some people settling on just being okay and being complacent. This is because they want to live life like they did growing up. Unfortunately, that's not how the world works. Apple pointed out that some parents wanted their dreams to be lived out by their children, the Millennials. Some of them didn't want us to experience the difficult times that they had. The parents of the Millennial generation wanted their children to enjoy the fruits of their labor—which in some cases turned into entitlement. This then translates into the workplace. In order to effectively manage our millennial workforce, we also have to manage our parents. This is something that we've observed over the years of having a 90% millennial workforce. As Kevin stated, we have always considered them in how we process events and how we communicate our messages. We make sure that whenever we provide perks and benefits, we consider what impression it will make to the parents as well. A lot of parents have their hands around the lives of their millennial children. And so, whatever the parents decide will ultimately affect the career of the millennial worker. It's also worth pointing out that there are millennials who have found a way to rise above this influence, and Support the show (https://tribe.leadershipstack.com/)
The first episode of my podcast is focused on my guest speaker and brother, Kevin Si. We have been working with each other for as long as SEO Hacker has been alive. Let's get to know more about Kevin Si, as well as his role as the COO of SEO Hacker. Kevin is the Chief Operating Officer of SEO Hacker. It is the first and only place where he has worked ever since he graduated from college. He used to be the website and development head. Nowadays, with all of his technical know-how, he is considered to be the technical expert of the company, while I oversee all of the marketing aspects. One of the notable projects that Kevin is doing right now is that he is creating a company called Tomoe where he sells bead bracelets. Now you might be wondering, what's so special about these bead bracelets that Kevin decided to start a whole business selling them, when in fact, it's something that is very accessible to everyone? It can be found in a lot of malls, and markets, and even in small corner stores more commonly known in the Philippines as Tiangge. Kevin explains his learnings from a seminar conducted by Leadership Stack, one of my recent startups, that any idea that is not physically present with you is nothing but an idea. It lingers—and oftentimes, it gets lost in translation. Kevin describes the bead bracelets he is selling as a means to symbolize these ideas. He wants to help people have the same mantra of materializing their ideas and goals. In essence, these bracelets are used in a more spiritual way as it can give you supernatural wisdom. These bracelets are made to empower people because, as Kevin believes, everyone has the ability to do so many things. It's just a matter of reminding them that they can do it. He further explains that the bead bracelets are in no way an original idea. It's easy to find the beads on the Internet. What sets Tomoe bracelets apart are the difference in combinations and the message behind them. Tomoe aims to cultivate and empower people who use these bracelets to make sure that they're reminded of what they can become. One of the few things Kevin wanted to highlight was that he and his company is looking to create a program where they ask their customers to commit to something, and they'll be asking for regular updates from them. In this age where social media has taken up a large chunk of our time, seeing influencers, and other people who flaunt their luxurious lifestyles so much can be depressing at times. A lot of people can feel helpless, but in reality, we are empowered to do so many things. Empowerment itself is an amazing concept, as long as it is done well. Going back to Kevin's position as the COO of a young tech company, he shares that his work is mainly about handling both operations and people. Operations is easy. As long as there are clear rules and regulations on how things are supposed to be done. He also notes that there is a very defined standard separating good quality, excellent work, from the bad ones. That being said, the hardest part of his job is defining which is good, and which is bad work, processes, and outputs (which is, as stated by Kevin, still fairly easy). It's a matter of reaching quotas, while also exemplifying quality work. Another point worthy of consideration is that it's actually the people in operations that make things hard because you have to motivate and encourage them. I personally make an effort to get to know them well enough to empower and encourage them. SEO Hacker is a young tech company that has a relatively young workforce of approximately 40 individuals. Being the COO of such a company is quite a unique experience. In Kevin's case, he can pretty much sum it up to be a very fun experience. That is with the condition tha Support the show (https://tribe.leadershipstack.com/)
In episode 49 of #TDLS, I had the opportunity to sit down with Sean Si. Sean is a Serial Entrepreneur, Founder of 4 companies here in the Sunny PH such as SEO-Hacker, Qeryz, Sigil Brand and WorkPlays and his also the Author of a book called CEO at 22. In this episode we talk about: - His ground-up stories - How he was able to monetize his passion for writing - The importance of dreaming big - Simple writing and SEO strategies for you to get started - Productivity tips for struggling creative entrepreneurs - and much much more... You can learn more about Sean by visiting seansi.org and let him know if you love this episode by following him elsewhere @sean.si. CEO at 22 Book: seansi.org/book Productivity Tools: For SEO stuff (seo-hacker.com/best-seo-tools) Google Calendar and more... Other Links: seo-hacker.net qeryz.com sigilbrand.com workplays.ph Visit the podcast now at thedesignlifeshow.com to get all the episodes 100% FREE. Have a question in mind? Submit your question to be answered on the podcast. Send your questions (at least 2-minute audio clip) at hi@jaychristteves.com PS: Please don't forget to leave your reviews and/or feedback. It'll help the show reach more people. Huge thanks for the support! PPS: Go and get the podcast it's 100% FREE to download on any of your favorite podcast apps using your Android or IOS phone. Links below for your reference. Apple Podcasts/iTunes: https://goo.gl/b74xuR Google Podcasts: https://goo.gl/GqpQhF SoundCloud: https://goo.gl/UcqHUv Stitcher: https://goo.gl/bVxHs7 TuneIn: https://goo.gl/9MAvpi RadioPublic: https://goo.gl/MY7uiQ
© 2020-2025 Ivy Podcast Discovery LLC
