jxs4GofH7kox21BU8rFSGet notified when any new episodes of TheSEOFreelancer podcast go liveIntroducing Patrick RiceIn this month’s SEO Freelancer podcast, Nick LeRoy talks with Patrick Rice, owner of Patrick Rice Co. Patrick has been in the SEO industry since 2018 and has a unique story in which he made the decision to go 100% freelance after only one year of SEO experience.How to connect with Patrick onlineLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-s-rice/Twitter: https://twitter.com/PatrickRiceCoThis Months Sponsor: BrightLocal.comBrightLocal is the all-in-one local SEO platform designed to drive traffic and leads from local search.Its focus on local SEO gives you what other SEO platforms can't: local ranking tracking, local citation monitoring, Google Business Profile auditing, local competitor insights, and review monitoring - it’s all here.BrightLocal offers review generation campaigns, a low-cost local citation-building service, and even helps you convert your site visitors into piping-hot leads. Perfect for any freelancers looking to scale up.The best part? It's super-affordable, with agency plans starting at just $49 per month and a white-label option to keep your reports professional and on-brand.Podcast listeners can take advantage of an exclusive offer. Sign up at brightlocal.com/SEOfreelancer and receive $75 in Citation Builder credits immediately. Don't miss this opportunity to level up your local SEO. Head to brightlocal.com/SEOfreelancer now.If you are a freelancer interested in joining me on a future episode of The SEO Freelancer podcast Please email me directly at [email protected]:Welcome to the SEO Freelancer podcast. I'm your host, Nick LeRoy. And today I'm excited to be talking with Patrick Rice, who has also been an SEO freelancer for a little bit longer than I am for going on five years. Is that right, Patrick? That's correct. Fantastic. Well, thank you again for joining us. We're very excited to talk to you today. I'm excited to be here. Thank you for having me. Real quick. Before we get into this month's conversation with Patrick, I want to do a quick shout out to this month's sponsor bright local, bright local is the all in one local SEO platform designed to drive traffic and leads from local search. It's focused on local SEO gives you what other platforms can local rank tracking local citation monitoring Google business profile, adding local competitor insights and review monitoring. It's all here.Nick LeRoy Bright local offers review generation campaigns a low cost local citation building service and even helps you convert your site visitors into piping hot leads perfect for any freelancers looking to scale up. You know what the best part, it's super affordable with agency plans starting at just $49 per month and a white label option to keep your reports professional and on brand. Our listeners can take advantage of an exclusive offer, sign up at Bright local.com/seo freelancer and receive $75 and citation builder credits immediately. Don't miss out on this opportunity to level up your local SEO, head to bright local.com/seo. Freelancer today. Thank you again to this month's sponsor bright local. Appreciate you guys very much. And let's get right into this interview. So first and foremost, for anybody who isn't familiar with you, can you give us kind of the elevator pitch of you know, who is Patrick rice? Yeah, soPatrick Rice I kind of have a strange story. But essentially, I've worked at an agency for about a year, so really not not long. And then I went off and on my own. My boss at the time was a mentor. And he kind of mentored me to, you know, having my own company and, and doing things solo. So I've been doing that for five years, as you mentioned, and it's just been a roller coaster. I worked with a lot of E commerce companies. When I started out I was very much a link builder. So kind of link building an E commerce is what I'm known for. And yeah, so it's a it's an adventure. But I've been freelancing for a while now.Nick LeRoy And that's amazing. I think you bring a unique angle that you're not a freelancer that had been doing agency or in house for 10 years, like I had and took that knowledge, you know, is it fair to assume you you probably had even just kind of scratched the surface? Excuse me, you know, you're probably you're continuing to build up your skill sets while you're venturing into freelance and figuring out the business side of SEO as well.Exactly developing the business skills alongside the actual SEO skills. Because of course, I was young and ambitious. So I thought I knew it all. But that just you know, one after another I found out Miss found out that sometimes the Guru's aren't telling you the truth.Nick LeRoy To at the very beginning, like you almost have to have that false sense of like, I know it all to be able to go in. Yeah, I feel like 10 years into my career jumping in, I was kind of having the, you know, the pretender syndrome was like, do I really know enough to be able to do this on my own? And that was 10 years into it. So I say good for you.Yeah, I appreciate that. And, and now I know I also have the imposter syndrome sometimes and stuff. So it's, yeah, the more you learn, the more you don't know. It's great, though.Nick LeRoy Yeah, what and before we jump into my my first question, I will just say, I've talked to quite a few people that will spend quite a bit of time talking about kind of like impostor syndrome, you know, pretending all that kind of stuff. And, you know, I've kind of come to the point where I feel most comfortable saying, when I have days where I'm no longer concerned, or that I'm not learning anymore, is the day that I'm probably truly going to be in trouble, especially in our niche.Yeah. constantly growing, you need to beNick LeRoy absolutely, it's like if you're not just a little bit nervous about that deliverable, or what you're saying, you know, that means you probably haven't thought through it enough, because we all know, it depends. So it's like really trying to think through it as much as you can.You're exactly right. Like, it's so nice. And that's one thing about being a freelancer that's difficult is you don't have as much as that back and forth between like a team and an agency, because it is nice, and sometimes I'll just call up a buddy call up a mentor and just throw around ideas. So Hey, I was thinking about doing this or I had this deliverable, what do you think? Cuz that can be so helpful to just run it by someone that you respect and that you know, that knows more than youNick LeRoy absolutely know, I do the same thing. There's still days, and I'm sure you've had this as well, and anybody who's in house or agency piezo, as well, it's like, some days, you jump on the computer. And it's like, you just kind of a brain fart. It's like, Why isn't this working? Right? Or you're just staring at a site? Or you're looking at the code? And you're like, I know, this isn't right. But for the life of me, I don't know. But if you send it to a friend or a buddy, you know, he or she might be able to be like, oh, yeah, Patrick MC with the heck's wrong with you, you know, it's right here, like, yes. Okay, thank you, like, I just need someone to help me out. So it's always good to get that second opinion. And without belaboring the point, I agree with you. It's like that can be one of the challenges as a freelancer.It is in it's a reason to build your board of advisors, as I was speaking with Noah Lerner, who you may know him on Twitter and stuff. And he did that really well. And that was his biggest advice is, you know, really build connections with people just ask to go on Zoom calls, you know, ask to do podcasts, like, get to know people. And then you can have this little board of advisors where like, Oh, I know, Nick is really good at this. I might, you know, call him up. I know that. This is the link building guy. This is the Econ guy, whatever. So it's really nice.Nick LeRoy Yeah, I love it. I think we'll jump into that more your networking, I think is one consistency across all of freelancers. But before we go deeper into that pattern, I got to roll back just a little bit to the very beginning. One thing that I like to ask all my guests here is just to give us an understanding of how you started your career. You know, I know you mentioned previously, you had a single year before going out, but can you walk us through a little bit? What was kind of that venture to getting into it. And if you feel comfortable, this may be a little different before like, I always love to ask people what were they getting paid the first job that they had? And then obviously, you have to share what you're making now. But I'm assuming it's more.Yeah, yeah, it's a bit more. Yeah, I loved I love my journey into SEO. And honestly, like, at times, I, I do recognize that it would have been even helpful to spend more time like an agency and other things like that, because you do learn a lot. I was really lucky. So it started way back, I had a really good friend whose dad was an SEO agency owner. And so he had an agency and I was actually had a Minecraft youtube channel at the time. And I hit 5000 subscribers. And I had one video with like, a million views. And so I was telling him all that I was like, Yeah, you can like post on forums, you can do this and that like, and he was impressed. He was like, okay, okay, this is kind of interesting. So he told me to come by the office, in just a small town in Georgia. And and I did in the story goes from there. He, he introduced me to SEO, he taught me it. And his name was Craig Lawson of click ready marketing. Okay. He's going but before that I had like, of course, I had, like, I worked at Pottery Barn, and I worked at like, all kinds of like, random jobs. But that was my first really agency job. And in marketing job, and I spent a year there, I learned keyword research, content marketing. And then at the end, I was really going deeper into link building with a content and outreach sort of perspective. And so when I, when I initially left that company, I was freelance, but I would still do some jobs for them. Sure. And I had a couple of people that I knew that I would do jobs for. So very much freelance at first, you know, building links here, doing some keyword research here, content stuff. And so I had a couple of years where it was very much kind of that you don't look, I have, you know, one or two clients of my own, and then a lot of freelance work. That's like pure, you know, like hourly. Well, now I do mostly just client work where it's on monthly retainers,Nick LeRoy right. So a lot of people that are looking to just get into the SEO space are kind of debating do you need to go to school or not? Did you go to college? Did you jump in SEO right out of high school? What was kind of the journey on the education side?Yeah, so I jumped in, right after high school. And I spent two years in college but I didn't finish my degree because I was everything was going really well with SEO. So I wasNick LeRoy can't argue with that. Right?Exactly. So I was like, I kind of want to put my foot focus on this, rather than, you know, diversifying. And yeah,Nick LeRoy and I think that's such an interesting conversation. You know, I certainly am a personal fan of like going to school, I think there's things where a lot of us learn, just critical, you know, people skills almost. But when it comes to like, how much of that transfers to SEO, like, oh, you can save yourself six figures in student debt, and start making, you know, a pretty respectable amount of money to,exactly, it seems like, I don't know what college programs are like for SEO, even digital marketing in general. I feel like it moves so fast, you would just be way better off getting an agency job if you can. And it seems like you can get an agency job if you're willing to do like the grunt work, and you're ambitious. And then luck, especially if you know, some people, you can get an agency job without a college degree. That sounds my intuition. Yeah.Nick LeRoy I've always told people that if I were to go back and get the ODU college over again, and it wasn't an option to not do it, that with SEO, I would actually probably go back and like get a psychology degree, like thinking about like outreach and how people react and share and interact with your website, and all these things that are so critical, you know, maybe I'm overthinking it. But I'd like to think that maybe some of the training, and you know, materials on that end would help us in our role versus, you know, I did two years of you know, General's accounting and then marketing and, you know, various coding classes that I probably don't remember any of it, but it helped me get the first job. So what do I know?Yeah, Nick, that's, that's very true. Because I have a very deep interest in psychology. And I was in college, I was going for philosophy of mind, which is psychology. But and I took quite a few classes in psychology. And and yeah, I think it's hugely important for SEO for for digital marketing.Nick LeRoy Yeah, I just think anytime you have an opportunity, not necessarily to read each other's minds, but to better understand why somebody may react or choose to make XYZ decisions. Yeah, I can just put you in a better position to react accordingly. So with that said, so I mean, you did this full year, your your friend's dad on an agency gave you the in, you obviously kind of start from the beginning ramped up pretty quickly. But what made you decide like, what, why one year, I would say, one year in a lot of people that I know, and I've had a lot of junior resources that have trade off the year, one year in, there's kind of this T in the road of like, do I like SEO or not? And I've seen people take both directions. But I don't think I've ever met someone that has said, I'm one year into it. Heck, I'm gonna go out on my own. What was the thinking there?So really, just because I'm an entrepreneur, so I had that in my blood. And, you know, you mentioned what I was making, and I wasn't making too much. Like, I was like, if I get to clients at 750 per month, I'd be making, like, considerably more than I am now. Like, I'm like, why not? You know, try to, and it's really about personality, because I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur, and I just felt like, I could do it, you know, I felt like, whatever it took, you know, if I have to, you know, go into buildings and cold call whatever else, like I was going to do it. So I was very ambitious. And just, I really wanted that for some reason. I guess, just personality.Nick LeRoy I absolutely respect the the ambition, like I said, you know, it makes me jealous, because I went through 10 years of working for somebody else before I truly pulled the trigger and convinced myself but I do think there's something to what you were saying of the risk is lower, when you're younger, if we equate cutting younger with your earnings, because a lot of people that I talked to, and I'm sure you've had these conversations, too. A lot of people think going freelance is, you know, working the four hour workweek and making six figures. So a lot of it's the inverse, especially at the beginning. So, a lot of times I do ask people, it's like, Hey, I'm not trying to be nosy, but what are you currently making? Because starting as a freelancer trying to make up a six figure salary, versus Hey, I make 30 grand, you know, working 40 hours a week for somebody, the opportunity to make that back plus more is significantly greater as a freelancer.That's very true. Very true. Because you can get Sleep makes six figures, as a freelancer, as you mentioned, it's not going to be the four hour workweek, that'd be a lot of stress, it's going to be some late nights, it's going to be all kinds of stuff. But yeah, compared to like a general 30k 40k job, the opportunity and freelancing is really big.Nick LeRoy Absolutely, and like you said to a lot of it is just being able to show your value. And once you get some of these retainers, you know, even if it's 1000 or $2,000 a month, again, when you're trying to make 25, grand, maybe even 50 grand, it adds up pretty quickly, you know, you may not have to work 80 hours a week to be able to do that. In a perfect world, you know, maybe you're working 30 hours, or you're working more, because you know, you don't want to be capped at 40 5060 grand, you know, and I think for me, that's one of the parts of freelancing I've loved and hated, is like, I never want to have a cap on my earnings. But I'm also somebody that's very rarely happy with what I've got. So, you know, there's always a balance of, you know, how much do you work? How much do you play?A really is, yeah, cuz I've had that too. Just kind of being too ambitious, and then kind of stressing myself out in and working a little bit too much. So it is a balance, for sure.Nick LeRoy Absolutely. So Patrick, one thing I want to press just a little bit, because I think you're gonna be able to help others where I have never been able to, I get a lot of people that come to me, they're interested in freelancing, maybe they've even made the leap. And one of the first questions I get, and it's every single time is, how do I get clients. And for me, I've been so fortunate and blessed that I had 10 years of working in the industry, networking, I built my newsletter, I kind of got to flip the switch and start freelancing. I was very fortunate. And I don't take that for granted. But it makes it very difficult for me to turn around and tell somebody, oh, well just go back five years into your career and start a free, you know, a newsletter. So what did you do when you started? You know, day one, you're like, Okay, Patrick rice, I'm freelance, SEO? Yeah. How did you start? And what kind of advice do you have for people looking to start?Well, so it is difficult, you know, there's no getting around that it's difficult to do sales, especially if you're just starting out, and you don't have a huge track record. But there are, I think of it as there's really three ways that I've found to get clients, which is content. So as you mentioned, with like SEO for lunch in this podcast. So creating content is great. If you can do that, within an agency, that's definitely the move to do, you know, that's definitely smart, you know, build up some sort of profile for a year before you you drop out, or whatever. So I didn't do that. So actually, I wish I started creating content way sooner. But I really did it through the two other ways. I'm so content is great. And I'm publishing now on LinkedIn, and some on Twitter and stuff. But other than content is really cold sales. And so everyone hates that, but some form of sales. So whether that's cold email, sending out videos, so like, even this morning, I was sending out videos on just companies that I really see an opportunity, just send them a quick video recorded in 10 minutes. And you know, the success rate isn't high. But if you do that five times a day, for a month, you know, you might get one, so.Nick LeRoy So that'd be it for a second. So when you say you're doing these, so this is so completely different than how I've done it. But like I said, I don't even pretend to say that I don't have an advantage from the things that I have. But when you say you're doing like these cold outreach, even with video, is it through LinkedIn? Are you kind of identifying local businesses to you and reaching out to them? Walk us through just a little bit more?Yeah, so I haven't gotten, you know, a huge number of clients from cold outreach, and I don't think it should be your number one source really, it can be though it especially if you're good at it. But yeah, so that's typically I'm reaching out on all platforms. So I'll if they have a LinkedIn, sometimes they don't they have a LinkedIn, LinkedIn is strong, especially if you have a profile. So if you built up a profile, you can connect with them, you can foster that lead, so you can just connect with them just you know, chat them don't pitch right away. And kind of over time, they'll they'll see some of your content, you can start some conversations, if it makes sense. And then you can send a video, which video worked really well for me, because you can show your expertise and the opportunity there actually is one. So that works really well. I also just cold email. So just you know Using tools to get the email seeing if they have a content, a contact area, and go in that way. So like building, it's like BDR sort of work, you know, like creating a spreadsheet, getting the emails, the contacts, the LinkedIn, and just doing it at some level of scale, because that's what people get wrong. And it's very hard because natural human tendency is do you do it like, two, three times, four times, and then you're like, This isn't working.Nick LeRoy I can see already, Patrick, why you have success with like the link building side of it, because you're so focused on the scale, and finding just a little bit of a unique angle. And I love that you said that you do video, because I will admit, and hopefully, people won't do it here. But when people on LinkedIn, when they spam me, I don't think anything of it, just delete, and I don't move it. But when people send a video, I open it up 99% of the time. But what I am really looking for is to see if they actually make it unique to me. Even if it's saying like, Hey, Nick, how's it going? Yeah, I want to pitch you on my services. Because you know, what drives me more nuts. And you probably see this too, is it's like people are getting lazy. And it's the same video. And they're just sending it to everybody. It's like, Hey, I'm Nick, I sell SEO, I've realized that your company needs help. And it's like, yeah, like you got my company. Yeah, exactly. It's like, boo, you had my attention. You could have made your pitch. I don't know if it would have worked. But you got a heck of a lot further than the standard. Here's my list of links, you know.Exactly. And we get so much spam in the SEO industry from LinkedIn. It's terrible. Hopefully, I think some clients in some industries get less. We haven't particularly bad spam. I think we backlinks.Nick LeRoy Yeah, I was gonna say that SEO pie one of the features I paid for most on LinkedIn, if there's a way to mute anybody who says like backlinks or you know. Yes, exactly.It's like, that is that is a true category. But it'sNick LeRoy well, so you're talking to us a little bit through that. So I'm sorry. So that's the cold outreach part.Yes. So really, you need to be if you're going to go freelance, you need to be posting on social media, and trying to figure out somewhat how that works. Don't get over, don't get obsessed with it, you know, just post your posts every week. And, and don't worry about it. Second, you need to be reaching out to people don't expect everyone to come to you. So you can sometimes get away without doing that. But especially if you're new and you need clients, you're gonna have to grind to kind of reach out to people, you know, call your network and, and see, see if you can get anybody that you know, and so that goes into the third part, which is networking, and referrals. And so we mentioned this at the start, it's hugely critical relationships or financial stability, you know, if you have, if you have relationships, and they can send you leads, they can send you work, I mean, if you have an hourly, they can send you a job here and there. It really, really helps to, to create that stability over time. So, those are the threeNick LeRoy ways. See, that's where most, if not all of my work comes from it's referrals, or other clients that have worked with me that I've talked or gotten to a different place, it's, it's critical, but the amount of people as you know, it's like every project that comes through isn't necessarily going to be a great fit for you. Or, you know, it might be a conflict of interest. So just even that working within like freelancers is great, because you never know when you might be able to help somebody out. And it typically comes, you know, full circle.Yeah, I found it has for sure. Plant as many seeds as you can, and some of them will grow.Nick LeRoy You know, I really like that analogy. I just like that is so critical. So we talked a bit about how you reach out to people why you went out on your own. But let's talk a little bit about your service offerings. How did you decide that you want to do SEO and link building, you know, versus, you know, SEO, local SEO and maps or, you know, any other angles?Yeah, so at the agency, we're doing mostly local SEO so I think to a degree I was I was listening to all the Guru's I was watching the, you know, reading the blogs, watching the YouTube so I was like, Oh, I have to like, I want to do this this big stuff with like ecommerce and SAS because those are kind of the two exciting fields. I feel like as a young SEO, so you see, like Zapier and you see, like, some of these big ecommerce websites just generating huge traffic numbers. And I still I think that was the killer. So I really wanted to kind of grow my skill set In start playing at the national level,Nick LeRoy sure. I love. Honestly, not only did you jump your wine essentially out on your own, but you were also like, I'm not going to take you, whatever meat is laying on the bones, I'm going straight for the Porterhouse. Like I want to make these big, you know, massive websites, ecommerce, Seo was some of the probably the trickiest, dirtiest SEO you could get. That's great.I appreciate that. Yeah. And I definitely had some some, you know, obstacles on the on the road for sure. Like, at times, there's problems I couldn't solve, I had to get help. For example, I've had a lot of good mentors. So another one is Emory Rowland. And so he's been in SEO, you know, since the late 90s. So he's a tech SEO. And so if I have a hard question I like to call him. And so again, relying so much on your network is, is really crucial. But yeah, for my service offering, I started as a link builder, pure and simple. And so I worked with some agencies I worked with, with a pretty big ecommerce store, and just building links month after month, that gets a little bit tiring, I still do it for clients, because I've found really good results from it. And I think that's some of my competitive advantage is, is putting in the grind to like, find these really nice links that competitors don't have, and that most people just don't have the time to try to get. Yep. And so I do love to link build into into get some quality links that can that can really move the needle. But then I just kind of started moving towards highlight clients needed other stuff than link building, you know, like my link building wasn't working because they didn't have on page, or like, there was just easy content opportunities. So I just kind of started to expand my, my areas of a guest service. And then ecommerce was always a pretty big client base for me, in terms of, I got referred to a very really big E commerce client near the start, so like four years ago, and so I've always kind of, you know, played around in E commerce and, and so that's become a little bit of a passion.Nick LeRoy And the one part that I've always enjoyed about e commerce and tell me if you agree is because the whole point of an e commerce website is to sell, it's pretty easy to be able to then show the value that you are providing, you know, let's say you're charging five grand a month, but you're helping them drive and incremental $100,000 in SEO revenue. Yeah, it's pretty easy to build that narrative versus if it's lead gen or needing to do phone calls, you know, there's ways to be able to kind of sniff around the quality of those, but you don't get that raw numbers easily.Yes, connecting it to revenue is so nice, you know, just connecting the landing pages to revenue to traffic. Yeah, that's a really nice aspect of E commerce, SEO is just being able to prove your worth like that really quickly.Nick LeRoy Well, and I think that's one of the like, the biggest mistakes that I see from not just freelancers, but SEO is as a whole, you know, we all look at the very beginning as traffic as a success metric, because you obviously need the traffic to come for them to then have an opportunity to convert, which then means, you know, making money. But I think so many of us get caught into worlds where it's like, hey, I can only drive the traffic, I can't help the quality of the product or your conversion as a whole. But I think if you are a freelancer and SEO, who's thinking with the business acumen of I want to retain this client, you need to always be looking at success from a dollars perspective. Because the new thing that I love telling everybody is like traffic does not pay the bills.I love that. You're right, Nick. It's so important.Nick LeRoy Absolutely. So one thing I want to ask you before we jump in just going back a little bit is one thing I didn't hear from you about how you're getting clients or even from the beginning or currently is have you used any network places like are using any Upwork? Are you working with agencies, you know, kind of white labeling? What success have you dealt with? Those are do not do that?I don't do that. But I have in the past like so I've done a lot of white labeling type of stuff near the start. It definitely works and it's a great way to get your foot in the door and get started. Get easier clients. But what I had happened to me, especially with Yeah, with white label clients, is that then you don't have that one on one relationship. And so that client is actually Much less stable than if you have your own client, it's much less stable. So you almost should just consider it like a three to six month engagement or something along that line. Because even if you're getting that monthly payment, the agency is paying you, unless you have a really good relationship where like you can speak to the client. Typically, those engagements are much shorter. So like, typically like five or six months, while if you build a true relationships direct to client, you can have them for years. So that was the issue I found with white labeling, or any kind of like, partnership type thing. Yeah, it's just really, it's hard when you don't have that direct relationship, there's so much out of your control. So like, there was an instance where I lost a client, because that client left a web design agency that was giving me the client. But then, so then it's always kind of where you're like, Oh, well, I didn't do anything, but I lost his client. So right.Nick LeRoy Now, I really liked how you kind of broke that out, because that's kind of my approach as well, you know, and what I've seen, and what I've told people before, is, white labeling is great in the beginning, in the sense of like, you're still chasing enough money to be able to pay your bills. And there's a certain amount of value to being able to do that. However, all of that work is a temporary solution, because and I'm kind of echoing what you've already said, these aren't your clients. So you don't get to use them as like a testimonial, you don't get to use them as a referral source. And you can't even make a case study because again, these are not your clients. And the whole point of being white label is most of the time the clients aren't even aware that you're either on the account, or that you're not employed by the agency, or whomever is hiring you. So that's the big thing that I like to say is like, a lot of people will say just strictly, don't do that at all. And I'm kind of a little bit more on the side of like, if you're going to do it, just be cautious of what the upside is. Because the other thing that I found is when I freelance, I kind of started over with my rates. And when I was charging, say 100 $125 an hour, agencies can pay you that. But once you get up and pass like $150, or over 200, you're gonna your hourly rates gonna be more than the agency charges. And there's never a mathematical situation where they're going to pay you more than what they're being paid, unless there's some extreme situations, which I've seen, but those are indeed, extreme situations. So Patrick, I think, I love that you really went into how you started this business, especially being, you know, younger at the time with not as much experience as you do now. But let's talk just a little bit more. And maybe it's just reiterating some of the things you've said, but people want to go out on their own. They're worried, you know, what were you post pandemic, at the end of the pandemic, however you want to call it? Like? What are your words of wisdom? Like, what would you recommend to people that are just interested in freelancing, but don't really know, they're kind of stuck in that? Do I go? Do I not? What kind of advice do you have for them?Yeah, that's, that's a hard one. Because, as a member of this, who been on this podcast, Ryan Derani, he recently posted, and he's been fairly open about this, freelancing is hard. You know, like, there's, you're going to be working late hours, in most cases, you're going to be working more, especially near the beginning, or within the first couple of years, you're going to be working more than a normal job, and you're going to have more stress. And, and so first, like, definitely be aware of the drawbacks. Like, if you lose a client, you might have to, you know, do cold sales, you might have to, you know, call everyone in your network and see what kind of work is available. So you got to be just aware of that. And then I would real, really, I mean, mainly, just the things I've said, like you can make a better income, and you can have more freedom. And especially if you're in a job that you don't like where you feel like you're spread too thin, because that's easy in agencies, where you feel like you're not even providing too much value to these companies. Then I definitely think you should, you know, start start considering the freelance route. You just need to start building up a profile, start building up a business case, an offer all of these kinds of things. And and learn the business side of things because that's really is going to be if you can speak well if you can articulate yourself and your offer. That's going to be really what makes the difference.Nick LeRoy So the very last part you said, is so critical. And I think it's one of the biggest gaps in the SEO industry. People can tell you what canonical tags are, we can even go through server logs and go through each one of those lines. But can you build a narrative that someone in the C suite that doesn't know and almost doesn't care about SEO, so that they would understand and take the right actions. And if you can't do that, that puts you at a significant disadvantage to the other individuals that can. So I think that's just a big opportunity. And one thing, Patrick, I'd be curious, your thought is, I'm always a big proponent of telling people not to jump into freelancing, you're kind of cold turkey, it's like, keep your nine to five and try freelancing on the side. Because as you had mentioned, freelancing is not for everybody. And I know plenty of people that I've given them a lead, and they've checked it out. And they're like, Wow, okay, I did it. Freelancing is not my thing. I'm done. Like, I'm gonna double down on my nine to five career, because this is more my path. Or it's like, you know, giving someone just a taste of something that they absolutely love and crave. They're like, I need to do more of this.Right? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I think that's the right path, for sure is start started, like thinking ahead and play the long game, you know, like, start building more of a profile, start taking on like a client or two, probably like a single decent client and and see how you like it. Don't Don't rush things. But at the same time, be brave and take the leap of faith of when it's the time, right, so So as people, you know, you'd be surprised how many people like me, like Nick, like all these people on LinkedIn, and Facebook, they're really open to replying to your messages, if it's authentic, and, and jumping on calls. And so like I said, I've had amazing calls with people in the industry. And you can you can straight up ask them like, Hey, this is this is what I'm thinking, this is how I've been this is this and that. Do you think this is right for me? Do you think I should make the leap now? Or should I keep on my job and build up? You know, my assets?Nick LeRoy Yeah, that's a great response. So I think with that said, you brought up Brian durante and one of the biggest conversations that we had. And I was just completely shocked that he wanted to talk about this, as he said, I may one day consider going back in house or agent, he said, probably not agency, but in house, you know that he wasn't 100% committed to freelance being his kind of forever solution. You said early on that, you know, you're an entrepreneur at heart. So do you see a situation where you go back and work for somebody? Or do you think you're gonna be doing some sort of consulting or entrepreneur, entrepreneurial adventure your whole life?So that's a great question. So I do think I'm, I'm building a company right now. And I don't really want it to be a typical SEO agency where you're servicing all these clients. But um, I am building a sort of consultancy right now. And I'm gonna stay on that path. But like Ryan said, I mean, I think the right company could probably convince me to go in house, I think agency is a, it's less appealing to me. Because you typically are so spread thin, right?Nick LeRoy You're gonna do all your freelance tasks anyways, you're just not gonna get paid as well.Right? Exactly. Like, it feels like if you're able to get freelance clients, it's pretty much st similar to agency, but better. But the exciting thing about in house, where if the right company came to me is that you could be working for a company doing very innovative cool things that you might not be able to get as a client. You know, maybe a very, you know, like Zapier type, you know, big SAS company, or this or that active campaign, you could be on a really cool company. And you could have massive impact, and way low stress. So in house could definitely be an option at some point. But I don't see it for the near future.Nick LeRoy And I think you echo pretty much my same sentiment, too, I'd be very, very hard to give up. The control, at least for me controls a big thing, whether it be my time or my earnings. But for every reason that you just said if you could do something really cool where you're learning and upskilling yourself from other smart people getting paid well and are not stressed out every day. I mean, isn't that ultimately what we all want if we have to work?Exactly. And that's a good point, too. It's like the education in it too. Because like if you're at an interesting company, there's going to be all kinds of it new people to learn from. So we know there's, there's definitely some benefit there.Nick LeRoy Well, it'll be interesting as we all continue to move forward, it's like one year after another, the best part about freelancing is you don't necessarily have to do it forever, fairly low entry, you know, the overhead is, is low. And, you know, what, as our goals continue to shift, you know, so can the solutions to meet those goals? Exactly. So, Patrick, this has been awesome. I want to leave you here with two last questions. The first one being, for anyone who is continuing, you know, they're listening to you, and they're like, Okay, Patrick has convinced me I really got to start looking into this freelancing more. Do you have particular like resources? Is there any books or newsletters or anything along those lines that you say, you know, what, check these out, they were helpful for me.So I actually would say no, none that are huge. Now, there's, you should keep up to the industry. And you should keep up with, you know, SEO for lunch. Of course, you should, SEO FOMO. All kinds of the, you know, standard, great resources available. But I think that one thing I found is, you know, like, I've purchased courses in the pack past, I've watched a lot of people I've, I've over consumed. And so you've got to actually be mostly careful with that is that no course is going to fix your life no course is going to, you know, do this or that. They're all selling you something, you know, every every LinkedIn post, every Facebook post, they're all selling you something, even if it's just selling you on this person's, you know, career and like them as an influencer. So, to a certain degree, you have to tune a lot of it out and just focus on what is my core offer? You know, what do I sell? How do I communicate, and talk to your your ICP, so ideal customer profile, talk to them. So if you're wanting to work for Home contractors, call them up and just say, Hey, I just I'm a young entrepreneur, or a middle aged entrepreneur, and I want to I want to talk about your business and just kind of run a pitch by you, or just ask you questions. You'll find some people won't be about it. But a lot of people are very open to helping out people. So I would say that's been something for me is like have have some trust and faith into yourself and into what you're doing. And to your own notes and your own thoughts. And then you should, you know, you should consume content. But my problem was consuming too much content. And I think a lot of people find themselves in that area, especially if you're very afraid of taking that leap. You might have just read and consumed too much stuff. And now you're kind of all over the place. Yeah. And Patrick,Nick LeRoy I think that is probably the best advice that anybody could give, and especially to that question who I ask everybody, ultimately, it's doing, you don't get paid to read, you don't get, you know, paid to learn. All of that is important. But I can tell you, at least from my experience, it's really easy to get into, you know, Twitter or LinkedIn threads into kind of that rabbit hole, it can get it's fun to get into chat GTP, you know, or, you know, whatever the newest thing is, but ultimately, you have to keep moving forward. And by doing SEO, in my experience, that's always the best way to learn SEO. So it's making sure that you're always kind of balancing it.100,000% Exactly. Last butNick LeRoy not least, Patrick, if anybody wants to reach out to you get in touch, how can we best get in touch with you?So you can you can reach me on LinkedIn. Patrick s rice. I'm also on Facebook. I have a website at Patrick rice co.com. And, yeah, those are probably the best ways to reach me. And you can we can start a chat and I'm always happy to talk to young people, young entrepreneurs, whatever you're thinking and you know, see what's best for you.Nick LeRoy Fantastic. Thank you, Patrick. So much. So I will make sure to put all those links in the transcript below. But again, Patrick, really appreciate your time, your story and just your your positive attitude towards freelancing. So thank you so much.Thank you, Nick. Yeah, I really appreciate my time on here. Yeah, thank you. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seofreelancer.substack.com

Get notified when any new episodes of TheSEOFreelancer podcast go liveIntroducing Craig HarkinsIn this month’s SEO Freelancer podcast, Nick LeRoy talks with Craig Harkins. Craig leads both the SEO and Content teams at Apartments.com. Nick and Craig talk about having a product mindset and how it can help you as a freelancer deliver more value. Craig has been in the digital marketing industry since the late 90s. While currently optimizing millions of pages on apartments.com, Craig has worked in-house for both large and small websites. Craig further shares his experience hiring both agencies and freelance SEOs. He also provides tips on how freelancers (or agencies) can provide maximum value within an enterprise business.How to connect with Craig online:Apartments.com - https://www.apartments.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/craigharkinsTwitter: https://twitter.com/craigharkinsResources MentionedThe SEO MBA by Tom Critchlow (check out my podcast episode with Tom here)This Months Sponsor: Sitebulb.comSitebulb has just launched their latest innovation, ‘Sitebulb Server’, which is like a hybrid crawler - combining the best things about desktop crawlers with the best things about cloud crawlers!Essentially, it gives you access to your very own dedicated cloud crawler - a cloud crawler that does not restrict your crawling with project limits or crawl credits.Your entire team can access Sitebulb Server, which means they can all work from the same crawl data in real time. Audit data and reports are all available 24/7 and accessible from anywhere, so data is always ready when you need it.It’s perfect for remote teams and agencies that need to collaborate on audit data or anyone that needs to regularly crawl really big websites.If you want to learn more about Sitebulb Server, you can check out demo video on YouTube, or if you want to have a chat about it, book a call with Patrick (Sitebulb co-founder) today!If you are a freelancer interested in joining me on a future episode of The SEO Freelancer podcast Please email me directly at [email protected] TranscriptionNick LeRoy Welcome to the SEO Freelancer podcast. I'm your host, Nick LeRoy. Today I sit down and speak with Craig Harkins, who leads the SEO and content team at apartments.com. Before we start this podcast, I want to say a quick thank you to this month's sponsor sitebulb.com. I want to highlight that Sitebulb is one of two crawlers that I rely on nearly daily. Specifically, I like to use Sitebulb for my SEO audit deliverables, I find that the user interface is incredibly valuable for taking quick snapshots and being able to provide narratives as to why specific technical issues exist, and what the issue is. And I tend to plop those right into my audits and then provide additional context in the report itself. It's a tool that I rely on regularly and is well worth the price.If you have a very large website, Sitebulb has actually just come out with sitebulb server, which is a server based solution that will allow you to crawl millions of pages. If you want to give sitebulb a try. Go to their website www.sitebulb.com and if you happen to be a subscriber to my newsletter, the SEO for lunch, go check that out, as well as I'm currently giving away two free annual subscriptions to those that are not only subscribers but pass on to additional members as well. Those details can be in the weekly newsletter, SEOforlunch.com. Thank you again to our sponsor. And let's jump into this conversation with Craig.Hey, Craig, how are you doing?Craig Harkins I'm doing great today, Nick, how are you? Nick LeRoy I'm doing fantastic. For those that don't know, you, can you give us a little bit of a background? You know, obviously, I had already jumped the bag that you worked apartments.com And that we used to work together but give us a little bit more information. Yeah, so I, I've been through the long and winding road of working for a company a startup back to myself. And then back to larger companies where I could play in the enterprise SEO space. So the last 10 years have really been on enterprise SEO, building out a local SEO and enterprise SEO strategies and working with dev teams. Fantastic. And as Greg had mentioned, you know, one of his skill sets is working at the enterprise level, as well as hiring and working with freelancers. Nick LeRoy So I invited Craig to the show today because we want to have a conversation about how you can deliver SEO value as a freelancer, with a product mindset for both small and large companies. But again, as I mentioned, you know, Craig and I had worked together for a little while. And you know, Craig just has a great perspective on what to look for in hiring freelancers that can support such a large-scale website, as well as what it takes, you know, Craig himself being a leader on the team, but also with freelancing experience himself of what it takes to succeed.So Craig, thank you again, for joining us. I'm very excited just to have this conversation. Craig Harkins Yeah, I think it's a good conversation to have. Yeah, something that I find when I've done freelance work in the past and with, like you said, hiring and working with a freelancers and agencies is understanding what is going to help the client the best and how to position that. You know, sometimes as SEOs, we can talk too deep into the technical and jump right into the weeds. And we leave our clients like wondering about the context and trying to figure out how it fits into their business strategy and what they've got prioritized for the next, you know, 369 months. And so the more we can come back and give that 10,000 foot level or that overview of, of why things matter and how it fits in the, you know, the better the recommendations are going to be. And the easier it's going to be to then see your recommendations actually get through the process and see the light of day.Nick LeRoy Absolutely. And I know we're going to go into this a little bit later. But the idea of, you know, if we look at this as client Freelancer relationship, how do I help you advocate for the SEO changes? I think this is the part of freelancing and like He said, even an agency relationship that is not talked about enough. We all assume that it's audits and massive recommendations and, you know, lines and lines of code to change. But before we even get to that point, you have to get buy in, which is communicating that only to your point of contact, but to leadership and sometimes even boards of advisers of why we should allocate resources and budgets. Nick LeRoySo Craig, to jump right into all this goodness, without having a quick conversation about your SEO career. I know you had talked about touching on each side of the industry. I know you've been doing SEO since I believe, was it the 90s? When you startedCraig Harkins Well, I worked for an internet startup, oh, they were one of the first independent internet service providers. And we had a web hosting product. And so I was managing that web hosting product and sales and marketing around it and said, Okay, why would a small business want a website, and then great, they want a website, they can expand a business, etc. This is still the early days of the internet. So then we had to also educate those customers on Okay, now you've got a website, how do you get someone to find it and see that so that you can generate business from it. So it's not just like, a waste, you know, so it's not a it's a real site, not just a hobby site. And so I actually put together a training guide on how to get search traffic for our customers, and then took that and did more with SEO, overall, you know, building out my own website, etc, for a while. And, you know, use that to level up each step of the way through my career.Nick LeRoy And I love that I think a lot of people kind of forget, I mean, even in the 90s, as before, I had started, but this was prior to Google, like you said, this is just trying to get visibility, once you have something live, how do we get people to find it? Yeah, you know, I feel like it's a whole chapter of, I guess, whether it's Search Engine Optimization, or I don't even know what to call like, awareness optimization, but it's fun to talk to individuals is yourself that kind of progressed as the internet. Yeah, I have progressed.Craig Harkins Oh, yeah, it's had massive changes. You know, now we're 100% on Google. But there were a lot of different sites we looked at back then. But it was like Yahoo directory. was a thing in the day before you had too many pages. And it's like, oh, wait, just like, a big page of links is not going to cut it for users anymore. You know, I doNick LeRoy still to this day, you're gonna spit out your copy out your jacket now. But I still kind of missed the Yahoo Site Explorer, when we used to use that as like our scores for inbound links for every site. You know, I thought when that tool was gonna die, you know that SEO was nearly dead. But I know, I'm certainly dating myself at this point. So it clicked one question, I like to ask everybody, when it comes to the first job, because there's been enough space for both of us, but you know, here you are, you're helping a company, you know, build out some of these websites and marketing them. Do you mind sharing what you were paid back then?Craig Harkins Oh, gosh, this is probably going to date myself even more, what starting salaries were but you know, my first my first role is actually in sales and kind of inbound sales. And that was in the, you know, that was making the mid 20s. Sir, which is a little bit low, but it was startup environment. And then it kind of went up from there as the company got bigger, and I was able to move from sales to marketing to product management.Nick LeRoy Absolutely. And, Craig, I think you probably have heard quite a bit of people talk about SEO can even kind of exist on both sides. There's the marketing side, and then there's more of the product side. In your experience. Have you worked on kind of both sides of those? And if so, would you say you I know a lot of people like Eli Schwartz will say the money is on the product side. Just kind of curious, from your perspective, if you could chase one of those silos, Which way would you go for an SEO career?Craig Harkins Oh, my God, I love being on the product side. I've been so I've been in both on enterprise level. And I will say being on the marketing side, you have more, you've got some more control over the ongoing content strategy and what topics you're going to write about. On the product side. You've got influence you have more influence into the site structure, page code templates, how the CMS how your content works with the content management system that your site has. So for me, the product side is great because I look at I want to make a change that impacts 10,000 pages, not build one page at a time. But that's because I'm, I'm in a mark, I work for a marketplace. Before that I worked for a brand. I worked for hotel brand. So we had multiple locations. And so you were trying to do things at scale. If I'm something like, if I'm on a publishing side, then maybe the marketing side makes more sense, because you're, you know, layering the topic strategy and building the content there. So I'd say I like the tweaking and the technical piece of content. And so product is is a great fit for me.Nick LeRoy I think that's probably why you and I have always gotten along so well, you know, as Craig mentioned, being a part of apartments.com. And there's millions of pages, there's no situation and Craig, correct me if I'm wrong, where you're coming in and trying to optimize one single page, because that only moves the needle so much, we're looking for rules and you know, dynamic values to change so that you can make changes across all million plus pages. Yes. It's the only way to do it. And those that are listening that work with enterprise level brands are nodding their head, and some people that maybe work with some smaller sites, you're probably, you know, shuttering at the idea of so many pages, but I promise it's not nearly as crazy as it sounds, it's just more of a mindset you have to adopt.Craig Harkins Yeah, and the other thing, too, is the impact and value to the business that you can show on on that side is huge. Like one of my, one of my directs, when he started out, he was going through like looking through the site found an issue with some internal links were breaking. And we were able to track that root cause that back to Oh, this one data system was giving us the wrong URL back. And so instead of going in and fixing one at a time, these links, were able to put through a code patch and it fixed 10,000 right away. And so that we were able to get to the root cause hit that and how it was affecting all of our templates, and so that, that type of impact. And especially when you're launching, you know, you're figuring out a way to target content that applies to multiple locations that you're operating in, you can make one change and have massive impact.Nick LeRoy And just to kind of build off of that. And I think that's why I love the enterprise world so much is like you said it can be what is kind of considered from an SEO perspective, a small tactic as in fixing broken links. However, in this instance, if you are a website that's generating millions of visits and making millions of dollars, imagine what an 1% increase across the entire site does not only for your bottom line, but for your organic traffic as well.Craig Harkins Yes, and that's what makes the value of a good freelance engagement to an enterprise. Easier to justify, is because if you're going to a small business like hey, this Mom and Pop florist, and you increase their revenues by 1%, that's okay, they can get one more cup of coffee. But you do that for a large marketplace or a large ecommerce site, then, you know, you've paid your contract outright there. So it's it's just kind of the scale you can work out. Now I will say when I've done some I do like when I do some freelance stuff off the side, I'll do some pro bono for some friends and stuff. But I like digging into the local to like the local SEO and the one off, because it's a very different. It's a very different game. And so that kind of keeps the skills fresh to see what's going to work on an individual location or an individual small site versus something large and the scale that I'm working on daily.Nick LeRoy Yeah, without a doubt. And Craig, before I move on, I always like to make one analogy. I always think it's significantly harder to take a brand new site from zero to 10,000 visits than it is to take a website that's already taking a million visits and to bring that up to 1,000,000.5. Just For all the reasons that you're saying, Would you agree or disagree?Craig Harkins I agree. But getting getting started is the the toughest part. You know, when you're entering a building a new site, or even with an existing site, using it to enter a new space, you're gonna have a ramp up period. And it's really, you've got to do a lot of activity to get that initial traffic flow going before you get all of those signals in place to start getting rewarded.Nick LeRoy Without a doubt. Okay, I want to transition a little bit into our big conversation here, just about freelancing, and how it works within kind of an enterprise level company. As I mentioned before, you and I were fortunate enough to be able to work together, I had actually been hired from apartments.com, prior to Craig joining. So all the tips that he's giving on how to assess out, I may or may not have passed, if he interviewed me himself, he kind of got stuck. But Craig, I'd love to hear like, let's just kind of kick up like when you're looking to hire a freelancer or an agency, we'll just kind of label it outside help. What's going through your mind when you are being tasked to increase a site like apartments that calm their organic presence?Craig Harkins Yeah. When I'm looking to bring someone bring someone in, I usually have a specific gap that I'm looking at. So when, if, early in early [email protected], we were, we were pretty resource strapped. So we were looking for some more generalized help. So I need someone to I've got 100 things, I'm looking at one another set of eyeballs on this to work with, to help go through some of this backlog and, and figure out some prioritization, because I've got to be in meetings all day. And I still need to spend another eight hours going through tickets and prioritization. And, and I don't have that many hours in the day. And so, you know, that initial started out is very general, and a lot of generic work, where I'm looking for kind of one type of, of SEO or an SEO that can operate on those general like, here are the things that we've got, you know, let's spit ball the prioritization. But then we had the team build had some processes in place. And then then the work pivoted to here are my specific gaps. I have a specific problem I'm trying to solve either with content strategy, or with kind of a content workflow or with a technical analysis for rendering and PageSpeed. So at that point, which is where we are today, is I'm looking at the those different gaps and saying, Okay, I need someone that's just going to focus on this and give me some give me the recommendations so that I can bake that into our roadmap and plan. And so at that point, I kind of vet out look for people in my network, or people adjacent to my network, that I do that type of work. And that I can bring in.Nick LeRoy And I think that is critical on both sides. I'll play the role as Freelancer now. And I'm thinking about this when I talk to prospective clients, or I'm pitching myself. And one of the things that I'm commonly doing when talking to someone like Craig is fully realizing that Craig only has 24 hours in his day, he can't squeeze that to be a second more or second less. So the ability of value add is what he's saying. It's like, how does he literally extend himself? So how do I position myself as an extension of him to help get all the things done, that he needs done in that amount of time? So I think with that, Craig, so when you're finding that person, and especially like you said, Maybe it's easier when you're looking for more about generalists, that's supporting you on everything in anything, but when things get a little bit more specific, you know, no, one, the technical side or the editorial side? How do you go about finding these contractors or an agency? Do you have a process that you typically are using? Do you like to use like your HR team and vet through interviewing, like, walk us through that a little bit?Craig Harkins So HR team, I'm gonna use more for, you know, when we're doing when we're hiring a full time employee for freelancing for a freelancer agency. I'm starting with my network. Who do I know that has done this type of work before? This is where building those relationships at conferences and events like play pays dividends down the road. Oh, Um, so talking to the network, finding out if people have capacity to come in and, and give me a, you know, pitch me for a statement of work. Or if they can't, they can refer me to other people because I don't really want to spend the time, say, Hey, I'm looking for a freelancer get a bunch of inquiries, and then have to weed through look through case studies, do detailed interviews, I want a trusted friend in the space to recommend someone to me, because then that that's like, half the work is done for me. Because, you know, the people in my network will pre screen that for me. So I'm not going to get bad recommendations from from my direct contacts. And then it's really going through, not so much of a prove to me you know what you're doing. But it's a conversation around, hey, here's the problem I have. This is the type of recommendation I'm looking for. This is the deliverable I want. And then we have a discussion on, you know what, so you and I would have a discussion on what you could provide or how you see that deliverable shaping up? And what kind of time commitment you think it would be like how many hours a week you would need, in order to meet the deliverables that I've got. And then we would go from there.Nick LeRoy Yeah, and I absolutely love hearing that. It's network based, I think, especially for large companies like apartments.com, we hear so many stories on the agency or freelance side that you have to go through these crazy RFPs. And it's going to be, you know, Flying Cross Country to sit in front of a board of people, when in reality, like you said, they just need one person to have a good recommendation to get you in the door. And I will share a fun story, Craig, hopefully you don't mind this. But I had been brought in before Craig worked out apartments. And he because we had been connected before, actually called me to kind of say, Hey, this is the gig that I think I'm taking, I'm really excited. But I want to see what you think like you've been working with them for a while. So it was a way for him to actually use his network who coincidentally was freelancing for the company that they were desperately looking to bring in someone of his caliber. But we were able to leverage our, you know, friendship, to be able to talk about it. I think both of us hung up the phone, and we're pretty darn excited that we were gonna partner for a little while. And then obviously, you know, apartments Ico is in a great position now, because Craig is they're running everything. And they don't need to be as reliant on freelancers.Craig Harkins Yeah, that's another. That's a great call out on how else you can use your network for you. Because in the job hunt, and in the job decision, being able to be able to have that back channel on what's it like to work with this company? Do they do they have their stuff together? Or are they going to be the crazy client that is like, well, I know that I told you to do X. But what I really need to see today is why and then your head is spinning on like, Well, wait a minute, what am I working on now? Yeah, I think that's where your network comes into play to you both for helping get you in the door, and also for vetting who you want to work with?Nick LeRoy Absolutely, no, I think you and I had a very transparent conversation. And I think both of us from the very beginning, were like, this would be cool. We could really work together. But let's talk about XYZ. You had questions. I had questions. And you know what, and then for a while, you know, there we had a really good opportunity to work together.Craig Harkins Yep. Now, I will say that it depends upon each team's budget and how they roll up on for an Enterprise site, how you're going to be able to get things through. So I've worked at another company where there was a pretty extensive process, like you said, on, okay, you want to bring a new person in the door, they've got to go through procurement get set up, and there's a vetting process, etc, etc. And that could take some time and it a lot of that is driven by what is the ultimate expected annual spend? Yeah, so I would say as a freelancer or a small agency coming in the door, when you're having those initial discussions, and you're putting your pitch together, get those guidelines like hey, what, what is the Signing Authority? Where do you what triggers that next review, and then you can scope out your work to me meet those needs now. Maybe they need the large engagement that's going to trigger that review and trigger the extra, you know, the extra processes. And that might be worth it. Or you may say, hey, let's break this up. Let's just give you a phase one and break it in and come in under that trigger point so that you can work off of what, you know, you're essentially hiring managers Signing Authority is, and that's going to differ from enterprise to enterprise, and even from year to year within the same enterprise.Nick LeRoy Yeah, so two notes on that one Cregg. You may not even know this. But that's actually how I got into apartments. I was signed, and went through procurement to do a one off project. And only at that point, when I was in the system went through procurement. Could we have larger conversations about ongoing but it was because it was already vetted. And, you know, services were rendered valuable. Yep. The other thing I will say to Craig is, you know, most people listening to this podcast are probably shuttering. As soon as you say the word procurement, it might as well be the F bomb. On the side, a good procurement team is amazing. But a bad procurement team is even worse, I will say apartment's procurement team is not bad, not in my experience, at least. But I've worked with some doozies with other companies.Craig Harkins It's it's all it all rolls back to what what their incentives are? I know some that, you know, they're, they're kind of I think apartments is more service based where they really want to help enable the business. There have been other other companies where it's kind of a, how do we keep the number of contracts low? Sure. And yeah, whoever you're talking to at the company, should have a feel for the process, and how to navigate that. And that's a sign that you kind of want to see to you, you want to see that the person you're going to be working for can can get through those gates pretty easily for you.Nick LeRoy And without sounding like an advertising, there is quite a bit of this talked about in the book called The million dollar consultant, where they talk about making sure that your point of contact is someone that has the power, the ability to quote unquote, sign or bring something directly to procurement, as Craig is saying, versus and Craig, you probably even have situations where you have people on your team, they're they're allocated, you know, decision makers, but only up to a certain point. And then you know, they need to go somewhere else. So it's important to know who you're working with. Right. So with that, I think that is absolute Golden. Thank you, Craig, for giving us that perspective, especially at the enterprise level, where I think things are a little bit more of a mystery box than some other companies. But more importantly, so we've already talked about how you are identifying the freelancers or agencies that you want to work with, how you kind of vet them out a little bit, you know, and then what kind of that interview looks like? And heck, we even talked a little bit about procurement and how you get a contract. But now let's assume all that goes through. We're working together. And now I want to understand how do big companies leverage freelancers? And how what tips can you give these freelancers to help them best support you or any other enterprise level company?Craig Harkins Yeah, I would say anytime that a company is bringing on either a freelancer or agency support, it's really to flex their headcount in a way that is that is more agile. So in order to get a if I have a need for SEO, and I need, my current team is overloaded, and I've got a need either for some specific expertise, or just more hours to get things done. It's going to take me months to hire that and bring in a new full time employee, it's going to be a much faster process to bring that bring that Freelancer in to supplement the work. And so, you know, as a freelancer, you're an you're an extension of the team's headcount to get things done. And so that's, you know, the big value is being able to come in and quickly get to work and start delivering. I know there in some companies, like some companies are philosophically much more aligned to if we have a need, we're going to hire for it. Other companies are very philosophically around. We're going to, we want maximum flexibility. So we're going to bring in freelancers to do all our work because we know that there are seasonal ups and downs and we Want to manage to the seasonality? And just kind of know which kind of company you're working for on? Is this going to be kind of an extended contract? Or is this going to be three months and out? When you're coming in? But does that answer what you were looking for there?Nick LeRoy Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, that definitely helps. Just that mindset of how a freelancer can come in. Because I think to your point, especially with a large company, it's much about, I guess, there's two different roles, and we kind of played both of them together for the time we work together. One is just feet on ground, we need more people to work on everything, so things can get done. And then for people that are more senior, you know, I know, Greg, you and I had quite a few strategic conversations. So you already have a vision for your brand for your website. But I know that at your level, you don't always have people outside of your team that you can bounce ideas off the wall. So I know you and I have had some crazy ideas. And I suspect at times, that's where you see value in an agency or freelancers as well.Craig Harkins Yeah. And, and it's kind of the joke that we always said, working in a product management organization, we would joke around either, you know, one of the big consulting firms coming in, it's like, all they end up and the joke is, well, all they end up delivering, is a PowerPoint deck. That is the same recommendations you already gave to the VP anyway, you paid a lot of money to be able to get someone else to say, but yeah, it came in for it came in from an external source. So it's not biased, and it's a strategic recommendation. Like I don't use freelancers as much for that. But there is value in that third party validation, and that external validation, and, and also in, running down, you know, all of the external sources for it, that I think is is very helpful when you're, when saved me is someone on the product side and an enterprise, when I'm building that case, to make those SEO changes, and map them into the overall product roadmap of all of the other product features that our needing dev resources. Yeah, that's it's another external validation to help build the case for the SEO for the SEO work.Nick LeRoy Yeah, without a doubt. And I think one thing, just add clarity to it's not just necessarily say, for example, Craig and I sitting in a room and bouncing ideas off of each other part of it is, Craig already knows what a lot of these opportunities are. Remember, he's going to be sitting in these meetings with other leadership, you know, being an asset and advocating for it. So if you're coming in, and let's say you're doing a technical SEO audit, you're really arming him with data and recommendations based off of that own websites information. So that's just another way. It's not about just saying, oh, Craig wants to change the title tags across 3 million pages. It's Look, these are broken on this much pages. And since this day, it's dropped, you know, five positions on average, or something along those lines, so you can use your own data to support you, who is advocating for, you know, a shift in strategy. Yeah, sorry. Sorry. Go ahead, Greg. Yeah, ICraig Harkins was gonna say we could talk now, I thought we, we talked before offline a little bit around, you know, those those deliverables that the, you know, the Freelancer can bring in and how to deliver that so that it's most useful for someone. And so, I'd say on that. We've seen a lot of, of chatter in the space around, you know, don't just give a, you know, list of here's 100 things wrong with your site. Because then there's, like, one, it's overwhelming, like, what what am I going to deal with this? But she doesn't tell a story. And so working in a product organization, this is a, a bit of coaching I did with an employee before. We had a bunch of tickets. Here are a bunch of individual small things we want to do. And they weren't getting any movement. They weren't getting priorities. They weren't getting prioritized. It was like we've we've got them in the backlog, but Well, this product feature has priority, so we're bumping this ticket to the next sprint. What got traction was we took those tickets, we bucketed them up into a feature to tell the story of if we do this group of things, it all rolls up into one theme. And so that theme becomes a product feature within the product management and Dev organizations. And that has collectively a lot more weight behind it, that you can then get into a sprint and get executed. And you know that I think, as a, you know, for newer freelancers, if you're used to like, having having those tickets, like breaking it out is great. But group them up into themes, so that you can tell the story around why you need to do that collective amount of work. Otherwise, it becomes like changing our oil and or just we call technical debt, things that you know, you need to do, but you'll get around to at some point. And you kind of keep kicking it down the road, because there's not a big theme or story around why you need to do it now.Nick LeRoy Yeah, and that is super critical. And I think the one thing that we could layer in there, tell me if you disagree is always keeping in consideration the level of effort versus the level of impact. So like you said, that part of the the narrative. So many times, anyone who's doing an audit, I'm sure Craig does this, too, we have things like image alt text, it's not about whether it's right or wrong, I mean, our best practice as your images should have them. However, Craig will be able to know working through his product team, wow, this is going to take 100 hours for whatever reason, and we suspect the lift to be 1% with an image search. With apartments, maybe that's not the highest priority. So despite it being a best practice, it's not going to be prioritized. Or vice versa. You might have 12 tickets that are gonna require full on Sprint and pointage. But, but you don't always have that point available to you. So you have to kind of, you know, seed them as appropriate. Right. So I think that that is super important. And I think everybody should honestly rewind and listen to what Craig had said before, because this is how you're going to provide the most value as an outside resource, helping an enterprise assign only identifying these opportunities through, say, an audit or even one off analysis. But it's breaking those SEO tickets into different buckets, and helping build narratives. So someone like Craig can go to leadership and get buy in. And again, part of that being what is the level of effort versus what is the potential reward? But I think Craig, would I would love to hear more for you is kind of that last part? How do we as outside resources, help you get buy in? You know, it's like kind of evangelizing for the SEO channel as a whole?Craig Harkins Yeah, so a couple of the areas that I find help a lot are one looking at how your client site is doing versus the competitive set. So you could say, like one thing, like PageSpeed, like that's been been the thing like, Can you can you actually one map, differences in Page Speed to any kind of decay in rankings or traffic or click through rates or engagement? But then it's a relative metric? So whether you're fast or slow, yes, you can be meeting correlate vitals are not, but how is that site doing versus their competitors? And, and how much of an appetite does the product team have to win that battle in particular, so being able to help your client in setting some metrics to measure so that once they do launch those recommendations that you have, and they push them live, that you've got something to go back to look at, and provide some more, you know, some more ammunition to your client on hey, we did this change. Here's what we saw, here's how we're now doing compared to the competitive set. And then that becomes part of that part of that internal story on, hey, I win, you know, I as a product manager, I went and got resources to have this thing done. And now we're doing better compare versus our competitors. So that's a story I can sell internally to say, the next time that I get another SEO recommendation and can put it together. It's like, oh, well, the last time Craig had a recommendation, we did it delivered and it was a positive impact. So we're gonna trust this next recommendation. A little bit more because he's already got Got a got a track record, and you build upon those. And really, as a freelancer, maybe you start with those those quick wins, like what's gonna require the least dev effort, the least lobbying to get through so that those bigger, more more audacious ideas can then come later as, as you've built up that trust and credibility?Nick LeRoy Yeah, I really, really appreciate that you had mentioned following through, it's not only getting those resources and kind of the checkbox of Yes, we did this SEO recommendation. But being able to track what was the performance gain, because as you had said, the next time you kind of go back to get these resources, when you can use your own data to support that this was a really good use of time and resources, that's going to help you, you know, get those resources again, in a later point. The other thing that I'd love your opinion on and I know we kind of had dealt with it working together is at the enterprise level, I think perfection can sometimes be an enemy. You know, you never want to necessarily go into production with anything. You know, that isn't perfect. But there are some instances where you're working so long, so hard, so fast. 80% Yield is significant improvement. So would you would you agree with that? I mean, obviously, we never want to not have anything be perfect, but there just are situations where, you know, not every recommendation can be met to the tee.Craig Harkins Right? And there. There are also some times where you've got to see does it doesn't really matter, like, image, alt text, it does it really, really matter. Now there are there's good accessibility reasons why we're doing work there. Maybe not, as great SEO reasons to do it, to spend a lot of time on it on something that, you know, is going to require a little bit more manual work than automation. And that's where you've got to make kind of your justifications like, like you said, getting 80% of the way there. That might be the win. Like how much how much more effort is that last 20% or 10% going to take versus how much gain you're reasonably going to get from it. And we've had to make that decision. You know, both of them. That's a that's a sprint to sprint decision, like, how much more are we going to push this? Right. And then every enterprise site has, because of the architecture and because of decisions that have been made in the past. Hundreds and hundreds of things wrong with it from a pure, you know, from a pure cleanliness, SEO perspective, especially the older sites, because they've got layers of layers of CSS and JavaScript and old code because they had to support legacy browsers and all this other stuff that you would love to get rid of. But how much time do you spend there?Nick LeRoy Exactly, you're always dealing with a finite amount of time and money. You can only have so much,Craig Harkins right? And you always have new things to take advantage of. So is there a new search feature? So with what's worth more cleaning up this this code that you would like to clean up? And probably the development team would love to spend some time cleaning that up? Just have a clean codebase? Or do you go after that new search feature? That's going to increase your click through rate?Nick LeRoy Exactly.Craig Harkins You know, I know what I know what my leadership would want me to do.Nick LeRoy But that's a great mindset. And a great reminder for freelancers and outside support. A lot of us tend to work on quote unquote, best practices. And it's a good reminder, it's always about you don't pay the bills with best practices. Yeah, always move the needle.Craig Harkins We're we're in SEO, because I'll say why I'm an SEO, I'm an SEO because I want to bridge that experience gap from a user starting a search, trying to figure out the answer to their problem, to delivering that content in front of them so that they can come to my site and have the solution. Every everything else is you know, just tactics to get there. So if one way of getting visibility for the user is going to be the best, you know, the most impactful one I have got in front of me if that's what needs to be prioritized and worked on and then you know, figuring in how do you To clean up everything else that you want to, you just have to prioritize that that's for the product teams to, to figure out. But most large sites have some percentage of time that they allocate to some of that technical cleanup. But you're just not going to do it all at once, you've got to be having a combination of going and acquiring more traffic or improving traffic. And then at the same time, cleaning up some of that technical debt. But you're gonna get it cleaned up faster if it has a direct improvement to the user experience.Nick LeRoy 1,000% Plus, you know, at the never ending list, we'd like to call that job security sometimes.Craig Harkins There's always more to do. Exactly.Nick LeRoy So Craig, starting to wrap up, I got two last questions. One, I'd love to understand Do you have any recommendations for aspiring freelancers, or people just looking to get into SEO, you know, specific books, courses, newsletters, or anything along those lines.Craig Harkins So I love the SEO MBA. So good online course that, you know, Tom does a great job of giving examples of how you make those business cases. And how you tell that product story. So for me, for people working with me, it's it's a great way because it talks about how to make those recommendations and how to forecast and how to then report back on on impacts after the fact. So I think that's a great one.Nick LeRoy And he was a podcast guest, so I'll make sure to link to that podcast.Craig Harkins There you go. There you go. I'm helping your internal linking already. Really, a lot of my other stuff that I've been spending time on has been really around relationship building and team building. So I not so much looking at the other Freelancer type of work. But what I also like to do is looking at video replays from different conferences, just hearing how other SEOs talk about the problems and solutions, you can usually pick up some ways that like, Oh, here's another way to explain this. Because I think this is where, where we, as SEOs get into trouble is, we get really excited about the details. And we jump in and we start talking about, you know, the weeds of like, well, there's this canonical tag and, and the rel nofollow and and this reference and the people we're talking to their eyes glaze over. They're like, what does this have to do with my top line ecommerce revenue? So having you listening to the different coffee, you know, different conference talks on how to people explain this same problem and solution in ways that are accessible to a non technical, non technical base? Because then you can try out some of that when you're talking to you're talking to prospective clients or your current partners and see like, hey, does this help explain what we're doing a little bit better? I think anything like that, just to help you be a better communicator is going to make you deliver better as a freelancer.Nick LeRoy I would agree with you. Again. 1,000%. Everything that you're saying is nearly exactly what I recommend to people as well. But thanks again for your time, Craig, I really appreciate you joining us today on the SEO freelancer. For those that want to connect with you or get a hold of you what's the best way to get in touch?Craig Harkins So I'm on LinkedIn, crack Harkins, easy to find. Also, I'm at crack Harkins on Twitter, and I'm there occasionally not tweeting as much because we're in the baseball season right now. But yeah, those are kind of the two easy ways to find me on social and get in touch with me.Nick LeRoy Fantastic. And thank you again, Craig. I really appreciate you joining us and always enjoy our conversations.Craig Harkins Awesome. Thanks a lot, Nick.Nick LeRoy Thank you. Bye bye. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seofreelancer.substack.com

Get notified when any new episodes of TheSEOFreelancer podcast go liveIntroducing Areej AbuAliIn this month’s SEO Freelancer podcast, Nick LeRoy talks with Areej AbuAli. Areej recently went out on her own starting her freelancing business Crawlina in January of 2023. Areej shares her adventure both agency and in-house side and how becoming a new parent played a role in her decision to go freelance full-time.How to connect with Areej onlineWomen in Tech SEO: womenintechseo.com/LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/areejabuali/Twitter: twitter.com/areej_abualiThis Months Sponsor: BrightLocal.comBrightLocal is the all-in-one local SEO platform designed to drive traffic and leads from local search.Its focus on local SEO gives you what other SEO platforms can't: local ranking tracking, local citation monitoring, Google Business Profile auditing, local competitor insights, and review monitoring - it’s all here.BrightLocal offers review generation campaigns, a low-cost local citation-building service, and even helps you convert your site visitors into piping-hot leads. Perfect for any freelancers looking to scale up.The best part? It's super-affordable, with agency plans starting at just $49 per month and a white-label option to keep your reports professional and on-brand.Our listeners can take advantage of an exclusive offer. Sign up at brightlocal.com/SEOfreelancer and receive $75 in Citation Builder credits immediately. Don't miss this opportunity to level up your local SEO. Head to brightlocal.com/SEOfreelancer now.If you are a freelancer interested in joining me on a future episode of The SEO Freelancer podcast Please email me directly at [email protected] TranscriptionNick LeRoy welcome to the SEO Freelancer podcast. I'm your host, Nick Leroy. And today I'm very excited to have our guests Areej AbuAli, who very recently went out on her own and today we're going to be talking about her freelance journey, her career to date, and also what made her take the leap. Real quick before we get into this month's interview with Areej, let's go over this month's sponsor bright local. Bright local is the all in one local SEO platform designed to drive traffic and leads from local search. Its focus on local SEO gives you what other platforms can local rank tracking local citation monitoring Google Business Profile adding local competitor insights and review monitoring. It's all here. Bright local offers review generation campaigns a low cost local citation building service and even helps you convert your site visitors into piping hot leads. Perfect for any freelancers looking to scale up. You know what the best part. It's super affordable with agency plans starting at just $49 per month and a white label option to keep your reports professional and on brand. Our listeners can take advantage of an exclusive offer. Sign up at Bright local.com/seo freelancer and receive $75 and citation builder credits immediately. Don't miss out on this opportunity to level up your local SEO, head to bright local.com/seo. Freelancer today. Thanks again to our sponsor bright local, and let's jump into this month's interview. So Rich, thank you so much for joining us today.Areej AbuAli Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Nick.Nick LeRoy I guess I'm super excited. You have known a Areej for several years. She's probably one of those Pinnacle y'all. And I'm using air quotes here, your online friends. You know, we've been able to work in a couple instances professionally, but it's always fun to see her in the industry. And as many of you may know, you know, she's spoken at conferences publishes quite a bit, you know, organizes women and tech SEO, which we'll get into all of that so much. But again, Areej thank you for your time today. This is gonna be a great opportunity.Areej AbuAli Yeah, awesome. Thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.Nick LeRoy Absolutely. So, uh, Areej. Let's jump in. You know, I'm kind of talking already, like, Absolutely. Everybody here knows who you are. And they probably already do. But do you mind giving us a quick recap? Yeah, who is Areej? What are you up to? How's life going?Areej AbuAli Yeah, I think it's going quite well. I mean, this is my first official month of freelancing, which is very, very exciting. I've been doing SEO for the past decade. I initially started out agency side, I did that for a little over five years. And then I moved in house where I worked on aggregator sites, property market, and then I moved over to ecommerce. And then yeah, last year, I was on maternity leave. And I was like, You know what, that's it, I really want to do my own thing. And other than, you know, my day to day SEO, my big, big passion project is women in tech, SEO. I created that a little over three years ago. And we do all sorts of initiatives. So that's something that I enjoy working on tons.Nick LeRoy I love it. And we're gonna definitely go into all of that separately. So all of it is just very exciting. But if you don't mind, can you give us just a little bit of history? I know you said already some of the in house, you know, agency side, but walk us through your first like, SEO job, like how did you get into SEO? And if you feel comfortable with it, like are you willing to share a lot of us laugh at what we were making for our first job? And compared to what we're able to, you know, find success with today?Areej AbuAli Yeah, I'd be happy to I mean, I, I moved to the UK Exactly. 10 years ago, actually, this month is my 10 year anniversary. I know it's really exciting. And I did a master's degree in business it my background was computer engineering. And then somehow I kind of, you know, stumbled across this world of SEO through like, internships that I was doing while I was doing my master's degree. And the very first role I got was purely because I'm fluent in Arabic. And so it wasn't a SEO agency that were that had just won an Arabic client. And so they needed someone who was fluent in Arabic to work with that client. So it was actually a content marketing executive role. But then, after the first month, they switched me over to the technical SEO team right away. And my first salary was 20,500 pounds a year. Yeah, I think that was back in 2014.Nick LeRoy Yeah. And people have now heard many, many times. But you know, when you take at least at the time that comparison you and I'd be making very similar Yeah, I was, I think it was $34,000 USD. Yeah. So we would have been very close by it was back in 2009. But again, this is one of my most favorite part is, you know, when we've all put the time into this industry, it's fun to look back and laugh at it. Back then I'll speak for myself only, you're just excited that you have a job and an opportunity. Yeah, so let's talk about your choice of going out on your own. I know you had already kind of told the CEO, you were pregnant with your child, you were kind of looking for other opportunities. But I'd love to better understand considering you've been in the industry, and you've kind of checked everything out the box, the in house, the agency, you've spoken at events, you've been published all the above. So why freelance like what made you say, this? Is it? I'm gonna do it?Areej AbuAli Yeah, I mean, to be honest, like, I've been overthinking it for a while, maybe a little bit in the last two or three years. The last full time role I had was pretty much perfect. Like I love the company I worked with, it was an in house ecommerce role, I was setting the tech team, I loved the team, we were getting a lot of stuff done. And I think it's what you said, like I felt like I checked most of the boxes there where I knew I would probably not be able to go out and find the role that was going to be as good as that one. But then like something still felt missing. I think a big part of it is because of all the work I do for women in tech SEO, being part of a full time nine to five job made it very, very difficult for me to work on some of these other projects, except during my evenings and weekends. And I really, really needed the flexibility of just owning my own schedule and being able to go like, No, you know what, today's Monday, but that's fine. I'm going to spend all of it on WTS, for example, and then tomorrow, I can pick up client work. So I feel like that was probably the piece of the puzzle that was missing. And then yeah, the other point was, I also really wanted flexibility, like around you know, now having a family and so forth and not being kind of, you know, I think a lot of things came out of the pandemic in terms of commuting, and, you know, the the luxury of working from home and so forth. And I just felt like it did, it didn't matter how good of a full time role you had, you probably were never going to be able to have as much flexibility.Nick LeRoy Absolutely. I mean, I'm nodding my head at everything that she said, you know, a lot of people are familiar with my, my story. And unfortunately, I was let go of my gig during the pandemic, and the alternatives, you know, we're going back to work for other people, and I didn't like it. But as you said, just the flexibility and ownership of your schedule is so amazing. And before we even jumped on this podcast, you know, we were talking, you know, a resume is fairly new to this full time freelancing role. And you always tend to overextend yourself, as you're kind of figuring it out, you want to over deliver, which is normal. But the good news as I reassured her it was, it gets better. Like as you kind of figure everything out, not everything is brand new kind of back to those days that we were talking about joining the agencies, your as your entry level positions, it gets better, and not to drag on here. But I remember what you're saying not to compare my newsletter to women in tech, SEO, because you do so much more. But I remember doing the nine to five, coming home, putting my kids to bed, and then having to write it, it felt like it was such a pain in the butt because it'd be like two hours. On top of it all. Yeah, and to be able, I do the same thing you had case that like Mondays are really kind of personal project days. So I wake up, I write the SEO for lunch newsletter, I am a little bit more engaged on LinkedIn and Twitter. And then I jump into projects and you know, all the way up until Friday, you know, I try to be a lot more available to clients and stuff like that. So, again, that was a lot of talking. But it just to say I agree and I completely understand. With that said, so I know you just gave us the full list. Was there any one particular moment knowing that you were considering freelance where you were just like, Okay, this is it like this is what pushed me over? Or is it just like walk us through just kind of that that actual moment where you made the decision and even put in your notice at work?Areej AbuAli I think probably being on maternity leave gave me some time away from work, which helped because then I could kind of sit back and reflect on you know what I wanted to do next? Whereas normally if I was doing my normal nine to five every day in and out, I wouldn't have had much time to kind of stop and think about it and think oh, you know, everything's kind of going well, why would I change it? I am Like, I'm very much into the whole, what do they call it a creature of habit? That's me. And, and I do, like stability is so important for me. So I'm very, very risk averse. So for me, it was like, you know, I had to kind of sit down, I remember I had a random evening where I spent several hours just like throwing out like a forecast, where I was like, Okay, if I get this amount of work, if I do this, if I do that, what's it going to look like in the year. And then once I had, it was almost like a life plan, which was literally just a very messy Google Sheet. But once I put that out, I was like, You know what, that's not so scary. After all, I think I can make this work. And I kind of gave myself this almost like a deadline, where I was like, give yourself the chance in 2023, just do it from January to December, and then see what happens. And you know, like, if it doesn't work out, doesn't work out. Like there are still tons of jobs out there. And hopefully, I'll be able to kind of see, see what's there. But even while I was saying that I knew in the back of my head that this, this is really what I want to do. And but probably I felt better putting down a plan and kind of documenting that for me to decide, Okay, that's it, let me You know, I really need to take the jump now.Nick LeRoy I think that's fantastic. And I had a very similar situation, as I mentioned before, you know, I was kind of out of my, my job. But as I was talking to other people and getting some offers that weren't so great, you know, I kept talking to my wife, and she had known that I've been interested in going out on my own for years. And for me, in the US, health insurance always scared me the most, because my family has some health issues that we can't afford to have anything but very good insurance. But we did a similar thing that you did, like I sat down and kind of forecasted. Okay, here's what I was making. If I could even make half of that by, you know, six months in, like, how would that impact us? And it got to the point where my wife and I went, you know what, for six months, let's go ahead and do it. Let's set a goal. If you can make it, give yourself another six months, if you can't, then you know what, boohoo you know, you have to go try to find a six figure in house job or agency job, right? Like the opportunity was, it was there. So I completely understand that. And, you know, up until going out on my own, I would say I was not very risk averse, either. So kudos to you is what I'm trying to say. And that's fantastic. And I think that really transitions us into the next question that I'd love to get into is, you know, you had mentioned that you were pregnant, and I'm on maternity leave and making this decision. And as a father, you know, I understand that freelancing, and parenting is not easy. You know, each one has their own challenges. So I'd love to just understand, like, talk to me a little bit about freelancing and parenting, you know, what challenges have you faced from the freelance side of it, as well as like learning the ins and outs of raising a family on top of, you know, this new venture that you have?Areej AbuAli Yeah, I mean, something I always like to talk about is, like, productive procrastination is kind of how I get anything done. Where I would, for example, have like, massive to do lists, but then I know, I have a list of 10 things to do. But there's one very important thing on there, but I ended up wasting time on the other nine, but it means that I get a lot of things done, but I don't really get the most important thing done. Now, I think what was happening like over the last few months, you have very, very limited time. And I would tweet about this a lot. Where for example, like my baby literally has two naps a day. Each nap is maximum one hour. So then it's like, okay, Areej you have two hours to get everything on your list done. And that was it. Like it's now or never. And it's kind of the same that's happening right now where she just started nursery, but she goes to nursery only three days a week. And then it's like, these three days are my three days to get absolutely everything done. And so I in a really weird way, I do think it has helped my productivity because then it's like, you know, I have no idea if I'm ever going to be able to get anything done on the other four days. But then at the same time, it's draining great. Like it's really, really exhausting. And I definitely have had to do the whole. I'm if I don't work on it today, like tonight at midnight, I'm probably not going to get the chance to work on it. So I need to pull an all nighter kind of thing, which made me feel like I was back in my school days again. So yeah, there's a little bit of everything but I, I do I mean, I work really well when I have, you know, tight timelines and I have like specific that kind of helps me become productive. So I think that's that's helped a little bit there. But uh, you know, it comes with its challenges like I wrote a LinkedIn post earlier this month where we were very sick at home. We keep getting all kinds of germs, from nursery of course and so you know, week I had like all this stuff planned out for my week. And then nothing, we didn't really get much done in any of us at home. Because, you know, we were really, really sick. And so that stuff happens. And I think I just need to become more accepting of that and have more like Plan B and Plan C in motion.Nick LeRoy Absolutely. One thing that I have found that being freelances, a lot of my clients in those type of situations, whether it just be parenting, you know, getting my kids on the bus or, you know, they're sick, they seem to be pretty flexible. Like if you're communicating and like, you know, your, your your again, just being flexible and informing people, they don't seem to care, which I think is, you know, one of the benefits of the pandemic. It's kind of humanized, a lot of us, especially with work. But I think there's a lot of us freelancers, that worry if you're not grinding, you're not meeting that exact deadline. You know, and it makes us nervous. But I think the reality is, is if you're communicating appropriately, a lot of people are actually willing to help and give you the flexibility to take care of family, which is definitely been your experience, too.Areej AbuAli Yeah, I've already had just this month, two different meetings that I wasn't able to attend last minute, because, you know, my baby was either sick, or had to pick her up early from nursery or we had to go to an appointment. So yeah, just in the last two, three weeks, I there are two meetings that I had to cancel last minute, which is so unlike me, like I would not normally do that at all. But as you said, I think people are super understanding. And I do think a big part of it was the pandemic where you know, that kind of a lot of people's careers and work and home and everything kind of merged into one. And so it became I think it's exactly what you're saying, like people just need to be honest and communicate upfront and just be yourself. And people are always going to be understanding about this. But again, there isn't this pressure of, oh, no, you know, my boss, or, or this nine to five, or I had to go in the office today or so forth. Like at least there's this flexibility of, it's fine. If I didn't get it done today at noon, like I can get it done in the evening if I need to.Nick LeRoy Absolutely. And the reality is, if you're doing good work, the timeline is less important than the quality of the results that you're getting. Now, again, the caveat, and I'm sure you would agree to this is you have to communicate like missing a deadline. It's not okay. It's about being able to say, here's what happened, you know, this is what I'm planning on doing it, please let me know if this is going to cause significant issues. And at that point, you know, I don't think I've ever had somebody tell me, you know, this is not okay. And if that were the case, as you know, it's like, okay, you pull the all nighter, or you figure it out, because it's not waiting until the deadlines missed before you're communicating. Yep. Batteries. One thing I just want to commend you and I did this offline is one of my personal biggest regrets from my career is I worked so many hours when my children were very little, and I missed so much time. And for me, I always had, you know, justified it because I was making the income and my wife was a stay at home mom at the time. But again, looking back at now, I really miss that I missed all that. So part of the biggest benefits for me, freelancing is I'm so much more available. And I see my kids all the time. And the fact that you have, you know, you're tackling two challenges of the time. It's like you're a mother, and you're parenting, and that's hard. But you're also building this freelance business that not only is really difficult in itself, but it allows you the flexibility to be available for your kids. So no particular question there. But just want to commend you for that. I think that that's amazing. And, and that a lot of people, you know, have that opportunity. So thanks for you inspiring a lot of us. And I know there's people that are listening to this and saying, I don't know how she's doing this, but I think that your family is going to be exceptionally thankful to you for that as well.Areej AbuAli Oh, thank you. Well, thank you for saying that. I really appreciate it.Nick LeRoy Absolutely. So let's jump into we talked a little bit about women in tech, SEO. You know, it's something that, you know, is near and dear to my heart. I think there's a lot of opportunity in this industry for you know, women to succeed and and they don't get the right opportunities. I mean, as a middle aged white man, I realized the privilege that I have in this industry and I try to be an advocate where and when I can and and part of it is pushing the women in tech SEO whether it's an open SEO for lunch sponsorship slot or a you know, tweet, but can you share with us, you know, how you start it, you know, the purpose behind it, you know, I just think it's, it's very special. So I'd love to hear more from you about that. Yeah, definitely.Areej AbuAli I mean, a little bit over three years now. I think it's going to be our four year anniversary. dismay, which is so exciting. And you know, like very selfish reasons to have why I started it. To be honest, it was kind of a time where I wasn't feeling super inspired to being an SEO anymore. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And it was very difficult to network and meet other people and kind of just never really felt represented, like in the different conferences you went to. And so yeah, I just figured, okay, why don't we start a group of you know, women who are interested in tech SEO, doesn't matter if they're beginners or advanced. They've been doing it for a while. And we can see where it goes from there. And, yeah, it just, it grew so quickly, way, way, way quicker than I thought it would. And we have so many initiatives that are running all the time now, including, you know, our workshops and podcasts and newsletter and mentorship program and our annual festival. And it's just, it's just been great fun. And there's a little bit over 5000 of us now, which is wow. But yeah, it's you know, it's just, it's made me feel very inspired and motivated to continue being an SEO just being surrounded by all these brilliant women. And it's just, it's a safe space for us to ask as many questions as we want without feeling judged. And everyone there is like super kind and helpful to one another. And we just support each other by like amplifying all the awesome work that we do. And yeah, I really appreciate like all the support you give us, I always send you a random email here and there and be like, Oh, could you please feature, this project or this initiative? So thank you for doing that and amplifying us to your audience as well.Nick LeRoy Yeah, of course, like I said, being aware of, you know, the benefits, and the privileges that I have, you know, I think the best thing that I can do, at least from my perspective is one being aware of it, but also being an advocate. You know, when I, you know, previously when I was leading teams, you know, any women that were joining the team, your group was one of the first things that I had recommended, it's like, this is an industry that is very amazing, but there are corners of the industry that can be very toxic. And as you had said, you know, obviously I am not in the group itself. But everybody that I have talked to has only said amazing things and what you have shared, and even how you are very aggressive to keeping the peace in your group. I've heard stories from you and other people that I've talked to about, you will make sure that if someone's causing trouble that they are either represented or removed from the group to allow for that safe area. And I just think that's amazing. And I don't think that has ever been replicated to the larger SEO space. So it's amazing to hear that, that it exists. And I'll just continue to always be an advocate for the group.Areej AbuAli So yeah, no, it's really it's really fun. And we're, we're actually planning our first US Festival this year, which is exciting. And we're gonna hopefully launch we're more things soon about that. But yeah, I'm really, really excited about that.Nick LeRoy Can you share a little bit so one of the tweets that I love that you had read about? You're saying, I think this is one of your events in the UK, you had said you're really terrified because you had to put a deposit down for like the smallest room in the EU. And you didn't know if 10 people would show up. And now you just booked like the largest room in the venue? Can you just share a little bit about that? Like, I just thought, yeah,Areej AbuAli our first festival in London was in 2020, a week before lockdown. And of course, I'd started planning it like nine months in advance, and then a few weeks before it was going to run. I was like, oh, no, I really hope it doesn't get canceled. And thankfully it did not. But yeah, back then I think the smallest room they had, I had to agree a minimum of 100 people and I was like that is a lot of people, I have no idea whether I'm going to manage to get 100 people or not. And, and just like that, I think within um, within maybe, I don't know, three, four weeks, we sold the 100 tickets. And I was like, Oh no, now we have a huge waitlist and I had to go to a bigger room. But I wasn't ready to commit to more than 150 I think in that first one because I was just really scared. And this time around, we were going for a room that I think can hold up to 1000 Potentially. And what I'm not going more than like I was like I'm not going to do more than 500. Like that's my absolute max I logistically I just want to be able to breathe and not stress out. But yeah, we have. I'm not I'm not afraid of like minimum numbers anymore, which is, which is quite nice. And we have a lot of members from the US, which is why this again has been like on my to do list for ages. But I'd love to start introducing it over there as well.Nick LeRoy So that's fantastic. And as I said there's quite a bit of women in my network and I'm always telling them to join and I've had people tell me oh my gosh, did you know that a region's come into the US together? Do it. I was like, that's amazing. Like, we need to figure out some way where you can slack the notes because like, it seems likeAreej AbuAli I'm just as terrified about the US one because it's my first. So I'm gonna I'll do my same tactic where I'll start small, the first time around until I kind of get familiar with it, and then I'll take it from there. But yeah, I love doing these festivals, I get to meet so many of the brilliant community members like in person, and it's just so nice. And it's like a nice celebration of our community.Nick LeRoy And that's fantastic. Again, I love everything that you do with the community, and I've only heard amazing things. So thank you for putting it on. And you know, being an inspiration to the community. You know, I know a lot of us really appreciate that. So thank you. So kind of wrapping up here a little bit going back to the freelance life. Can you walk us through any recommendations you have for aspiring freelancers, whether it be like a book, a course a newsletter, individual people that follow you, I'll make sure to link or, you know, tag people that you find valuable.Areej AbuAli I think one thing to say is like when I and that's maybe takes us back a little like when I did the whole life plan and all of that, one of the first things I did was actually like out to, you know, people who really inspire me in industry. And ask them if you know if they'd be willing to just jump on like a quick call and kind of give just kind of to hear from them firsthand and to get some advice from them. So you know, some of these people included like a leader, Hannah Smith, I chatted a lot to paddy Mugen. So yeah, quite a few people, Tori, Tori Gray from the great company. And these calls were really, really, really helpful. Because, you know, I got to kind of voice some of my concerns and hear from them some of the challenges that they had when they first started, but then also, like, feel inspired about, you know, how it can feel a bit scary initially, but then how it is down the line. I've read every single one of your SEO freelancer, emails and additions. Like I just, it's really nice to kind of hear from a lot of different, you know, folks from around the world, like how it was for them. So yeah, I think that that's, you know, part of the community is really helpful, where you can just kind of everyone is very, very helpful. And so I definitely recommend that like, reach out to people in your circles and your networks and just ask for a quick call. And they you'll be surprised by how valuable some of the advices. So yeah, that's, that's probably one of the things that I found most helpful.Nick LeRoy And that's amazing. I had very similar experience to grant I kind of jumped into the deep end, and then talk to people. But again, when we talked about this industry, you know, there might be some rough patches or corners on it. But when you get the right people, it's amazing. I know you and I have talked offline about several things. And you know, I bounce ideas off of you bounce ideas off from other people. And so if people are willing to share, so I love that you just recommend you're reaching out building that network. It's, it's invaluable. Definitely. But I really appreciate your time and sharing your story with us. Can you share with the audience how people can get a hold of you and connect with you online?Areej AbuAli Yeah, definitely. So my newly launched branded website coralina.com. And you can also find me on Twitter, Areej, underscore abuali, and I'm on LinkedIn, as well as regionally. So yeah, please do reach out. I'd love to hear from you. And if you're someone who is currently, you know, thinking of doing your own thing, or going freelance full time, like feel free to reach out with questions like, I'd be more than happy to give back just like others have helped me and supported me. So I'd love to do that as well.Nick LeRoy Thank you so much. And we'll make sure that put all those links in the transcript below, and Areej, again, can't thank you enough for joining us and we will see everybody on the next episode of the SEO freelancer. bye Thanks This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seofreelancer.substack.com

In this months SEO Freelancer podcast, Nick LeRoy talks with Nick Jordan. Nick, is the CEO and co-founder of Workello and Content Distribution. He’s also been in freelance consulting roles and is actively working on building out his (and his teams) social media presence. In this podcast we talk about tactics and approaches he’s taken to drive over 1 million impressions on LinkedIn.How to connect with Nick Jordan onlineContentdistribution.com + WorkelloConnect with Nick on LinkedInConnect with Nick on TwitterThis Months Sponsor: Sitebulb.comI am thanksful to all my sponsors. They allow me to spend time coordinating and recording these podcasts with my guests. It’s especially fun to work with companies that I’m already a big fan of, in this case Site Bulb.Sitebulb.com is one of my top SEO tools when it comes to auditing my clients websites. Not only do you get the traditional findings of running a crawl but Sitebulb does a great job of explaining the risk/reward behind each recommendation.Want to try Sitebulb? Get your 14-day free trial today.If you are a freelancer interested in joining me on a future episode of The SEO Freelancer podcast Please email me directly at [email protected] TranscriptionNick LeRoy welcome to the SEO Freelancer podcast. I'm your host, Nick LeRoy. And today I am talking with Nick Jordan, who is going to give us a background on his SEO career freelancing experiences that he's had, as well as how he's driven over a million impressions on LinkedIn.Before we jump into this month's episode, I want to thank our sponsor site, Sitebulb. So Sitebulb is a tool that I personally use for a lot of my clients and my auditing initiatives. It's a tool that I actually consider an SEO tax that I'm willing to pay and happily pay every single year, the Sitebulb team has made it incredibly easy to use this tool, not only just to crawl the site itself, but making sure that you understand why the things that are being called out as an issue are actually an issue. So it doesn't matter if you're running a crawl on a 10 page site. Or if you're in the progress of migrating million pages over to a new domain site, Sitebulb has got your back.So if you haven't already, go ahead and go to site sitebulb.com. And download the tool, you get a 14 day free trial, and put Sitebulb to the test. It's a tool that I rely on regularly. And I think you will too. Just give it a shot. It's sitebulb.com.Thanks again, Sitebulb for sponsoring this episode. And let's jump into this month's episode with Nick Jordan.Nick Jordan Hey, Nick, super excited to be here and share. You know, what I've learned growing. My career is is SEO consultant. And I'm really hoping your audience can walk away with some actionable tactical things I can start implementing tomorrow.Nick LeRoy Yeah, I think this is going to be a very exciting conversation here. Jumping straight in there. For those that aren't familiar with you. Can you give us a little bit of an introduction? Yeah. What's your name? Who you are? What are you up to these days?Nick Jordan Yeah, for sure. My name is Nick Jordan, I started an SEO agency called content distribution.com. But in the beginning was just me. Three, four years later, I've launched a couple of SEO products workout.com and cluster AI, I grew my agency from one to 45 writers and editors, we published more than 10,000 pages. And we took a project from zero to 1.5 million organics a month, enabling them to raise at a $210 million valuation. But I didn't, I didn't end up there, I was asked to consult just by myself, you know, in the beginning.Nick LeRoy And that's why I was so excited to have you on the show, it just kind of shows that, you know, freelancing can potentially be a starting point, and bringing it to where you are today. And it can be a career all on its own. And as some people know, it can also be, you know, just an additional opportunity on top of the nine to five. So I think with that, Nick, I'd love to hear from you. Like, where did you start with your SEO career? Like, you know, can you just go a little bit of a background?Nick Jordan Yeah, you know, I would say it's it's a non traditional career, but maybe it's not so much. So actually had a whole career outside of SEO, I got into SEO, only about five or six years ago. Before that I was a I was a sales guy. And I'm from Seattle. If you look me up on social, whether it's LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook, Nick from Seattle, is is my handle.Nick LeRoy Hopefully you don't move anytime soon, right?Nick Jordan The AI to AI future proofed it. So I could be Nick from Seattle and Europe. I could be Nick from Seattle, in Asia, from Seattle and Miami.Nick LeRoy I like it. So walk us through what was the first job that you got that was relevant to SEO, I know you had said you kind of started in a sales position, which I suspect gave you quite a benefit to be able to quote unquote, sell yourself and your SEO services, but walk us through a little bit. What that was like, Yeah, that'sNick Jordan a that's very true. So being from Seattle, it doesn't matter what you do, you'll end up in tech. And so that's what happened to me is I spent 15 years or 10 years, something like that building. You know, building early stage SaaS companies, sometimes for myself, sometimes for other people. And I joined this organization, we grew to 200 employees and for years bootstrapped. And I worked at incredible scale with companies like Rackspace and GoDaddy. And I looked at my skill set, and I realized I had built an enterprise business development skill set. And as someone who wants to be an entrepreneur, I realized, well, it's not a great skill set to have because I can't build enterprise anything, can't build an enterprise product can't build enterprise support team can build an enterprise legal team. And so I was like, Man, I Gotta learn this marketing stuff, it's gonna better service me and kind of the goals and aspirations, I have to travel the world. I'm currently in Europe, where I've been living for the last couple years. And as a sales guy, you gotta live on timezone, your value stops when you, you know, hang up the phone and log off for the day. So I was like, I gotta learn marketing. And it's going to be SEO. And I, I quit my super cushy, high status tech job making 100,000 a year to slang a local SEO services for a local SEO agency that my buddy was running for a bit of a wage, because I knew that in order to sell SEO, it's a consultative sale, you have to know what you're talking about, in order to know what you're talking about, I had to learn it. So I was like, I'm gonna sell it. But that's going to drive the learning. And that's under what ultimately what ended up happening.Nick LeRoy That's crazy. So was it literally just kind of like overnight, like you put in your notice making this cushy as you had said, $100,000 salary, and now you're, you know, bucks an hour or whatever it happens to be. Was it literally that that much ofNick Jordan it? So I ended up burning out after four years. And so I spent six months laying on a beach. And then I went into the SEO agency talking to my buddy, I was like, I was like, Man, I'm like four months in I'm pretty bored at this point. I like I need to do something like I think it's going to be SEO like let's do it.Nick LeRoy Well, yeah, no, that's, that's pretty cool. I've always had a lot of respect for people that have SEO as kind of a second career. You know, Marie Haynes is one individual that I always talk to you and she was a vet in a previous life and then switched? Wow,Nick Jordan I had no idea. Yeah.Nick LeRoy Yeah, it's really cool. Whereas like myself, you know, I had graduated from college and kind of fell into an SEO role. You know, and this was, before SEO had even been defined, you know, shoot, it's almost 15 years ago at this point. But it's just exciting to hear what everybody's stories are.Nick Jordan You know, it wasn't from a lack of trying actually tried to get into SEO a couple times earlier in my career, and I just never saw enough results to stick with it. And it didn't really click until the third time that I tried to get into it, which is when I was working for an SEO agency, and it was so much easier, you know, being able to ask my co workers, hey, how does this all work? Instead of trying to figure it out by myself?Nick LeRoy Definitely. So you, you quit this cushy job again, as you had said, you got a minimum wage paying local SEO, there's obviously a gap here. And we'll talk a bit more about the freelancing work that you had done. But can you walk us through a little bit more what what's kind of the in between, you know, from now running your own company to you know, the guy who kind of walks in and says, I'm gonna be an SEO today?Nick Jordan Yeah, so let's go problem. Let's go from making minimum wage selling SEO to kind of my SEO freelancing career. So I like I, in order to like, learn stuff, you have to do it, you can't just read about it. And so, you know, when I looked at the projects the agency was working on they're all pretty, you know, I would say, boring or unambitious. But they're all local service businesses with $1,000 a month budgets, and I just wasn't, I just wasn't interested in any of the things that they were doing. And so I was like, I'm gonna take control the blog, the agency blog, and I'm gonna grow that. And that's how I'm gonna learn SEO. And I ended up growing it to 100,000 Organics a month from about 100 pages of content. Some of the keywords that we rank for were pretty funny. We outranked Instagram for Instagram support, that article received 10s of 1000s of visitors a month. We did the same with Shopify, except we were right under Shopify, for Shopify support. Didn't make any money from it, but kind of informed, like my philosophy and approach to SEO today.Nick LeRoy Actually rank and drive traffic.Nick Jordan Yeah, yeah. And then we our agency wanted to get into E commerce. And so I was in charge of starting a small drop shipping website. So we could kind of learn how Shopify SEO works. And it worked again, and I was like, Hey, I think I kind of know this stuff. And for various reasons, I had outgrown the agency. All leave it their way out of my way out, I was like, alright, well, if I'm going to quit this agency, and like six months, I better like like, I'm just going to start my own publishing site. And so I started this website called doggy pedia. And then that hit 100,000, organic Summon, and all the kinds of success that I saw. I want I came in and I accomplished my goal or an SEO. But then too, I was pretty sure that once I left the company, I would still know SEO, and I'd be able to kind of figure out any new challenges that came. And so I left.Nick LeRoy I love it. I think that's amazing. I think too many of us we get stuck Back in what's considered comfortable, or you know, when you're not getting stretched anymore, it becomes a perceived Easy Paycheck. So for you to recognize that and say, Hey, I'm learning things I've shown success, I'm going to take it to the next level is huge.Nick Jordan Yeah, you know, the reason I was so comfortable kind of stepping down from this, like, my last job sent me to Europe four times in a year, and like selling the flower shops. The reason I was so comfortable with that is because the way that I approach every opportunity that I take is, you know, whether I get Richard not I'm gonna meet the people and learn the skills to do something even higher impact next. And so when I quit that high status tech job, I was looking at the five year plan, sure, next year, and not the next three years, but where am I going to be in next five years? And so it was very, it was a very easy decision for me to make.Nick LeRoy Yeah, and I think just looking at a five year, career trajectory is hard. I mean, there's so many opportunities, especially like you said, when you take and I don't want to say this, like directly, but from a salary perspective, you take the step back, but you obviously taking the step back with the idea of the six steps moving forward. Which Yeah, very exciting, but still difficult. Yeah, you know,Nick Jordan what's the five year plans kind of similar to SEO, like, seeds, you gotta, you gotta, you know, water them. And then hopefully, in five years, you don't get crushed by Google update. AndNick LeRoy there's nothing more disheartening than that. But maybe we can jump into a little bit. So like you said, there's still that little bit of in but in between, you know, before you had launched, the current company that you have, you know, where you were doing more consulting. But one thing that I really enjoyed, that you had kind of positioned to me was how you were able to build, you know, a six figure revenue stream, without having a website or a team to support you. Do you want to walk the walk?Nick Jordan Yeah, definitely. So I think in the first I don't know, is, I think it's the first year Southern 100, I generated about $114,000, before we had a website. So when I did a couple of things, when I was leaving this, this agency that I was working at that I recommend your listeners also consider. So I was like, Well, you know, this whole marketing thing, the beauty of it is that it's one to many, the sales thing I'm good at, it's one to one, I got to jump in there and have the same conversation again, and again, again, but this marketing thing is one of many. So what I started doing is I started building my brand before I left. And what that means is I went into Facebook groups like SEO signals lab and, and all the big ones. And I just started being helpful to everyone that was asking questions. And I did that same strategy on LinkedIn, I would both post content, and then I would spend a lot of time giving away as much value as I could on the newsfeed. And ultimately, I can attribute every dollar of revenue I've ever generated from consulting to building my brand on social.Nick LeRoy That's amazing. And I've said this before, plenty of times on the podcast and most people that are familiar with me are aware of my newsletter, the SEO for launch, and, you know, kind of a different approach, but very similar to yours. It's like I was building that, that personal awareness, that brand, and trying to give back, you know, I'd written that newsletter for like, three or four years before I had even dared, like, take an advertiser or ask somebody you know, fortunately, for me, it was kind of my insurance policy for, you know, when I would eventually be let go from my job. But then I turn around and literally say, Okay, guys, I've been doing this for three, four years, I and maybe need a little bit of help. Hopefully, you don't all hate me too much. And you'd be surprised. Yeah, how many people are willing to give back so I absolutely adore the fact that, you know, you were investing in your brand. And, you know, and just being visible online, I think it gives you that second career in this instance, someone's like that third opportunity, once you are done kind of with your agency experience.Nick Jordan It's It's pretty incredible. The leverage that you get from building a brand on social, like I said, you know, even after I launched the website, and even today, three or four years later, all my revenue still comes from social. Well, it originates on social and then I have this funnel that I'm gonna explain to you. That's pretty simple, but pretty effective. That turns all of those eyeballs into consulting dollars.Nick LeRoy Yeah, we're definitely gonna go into that more detail as we kind of kicked off. Yeah, Nick has generated over a million impressions, you know, through his content, and as he had mentioned before, it's generated a ton of money from it, too. So it's not just eyeballs for eyeballs sake. But before we jump into that, I definitely want to just testify that LinkedIn definitely works. It's one of those things that was kind of like everybody else. I was a little bit nervous to get out there. You Oh, that's the I'm using the air quotes now, your professional environment a little bit different than Twitter or Facebook, you know, not only are your co workers going to look at it, but you know, random CMOS or presidents, you think there has to be kind of a different voice and tone in, you know, I wouldn't necessarily say in my experience, that's necessarily the case, you know, being direct thinking outside of the box, is what gets people a lot of attention. And as I've doubled down in the last couple years on LinkedIn, I've gotten quite a few of my biggest leads directly from people reaching out and saying, Hey, I saw you know, your opinion on this. And I actually agree with this. I want to hear a little bit more, it's a topic that we are addressing in house. Yeah, so it's definitely a platform that I think, you know, I don't want to say it's underrated, but maybe underutilized by a lot of professionals.Nick Jordan Absolutely, yeah. You know, sales guys get LinkedIn recruiters get like dead, but a lot of other people don't get it is so much. And it's, you know, all the revenues attributable to LinkedIn, and Facebook, so you can't you can't sleep on it.Nick LeRoy Absolutely. Well, I think a lot of us and almost reasonably, so I think you become more active on LinkedIn, when the idea of a job change might be imminent, whether it be or not, so you start becoming, but then you jump off, or some peopleNick Jordan you know, and to be fair, like working in public is very unnatural, and it creates a lot of anxiety for me. So it's not free money. You need to work hard on building the community, and then you're gonna pay the data price and anxiety. But some people like me, and maybe you think it's a good trade off?Nick LeRoy Absolutely. You know, one of the scariest things that I had done that has probably paid the most dividends, is I wrote a blog post, and then threw it all over social that was literally titled, from being fired, to making like, 160k in eight months. And it went out on that, like, it's not that nobody hasn't been fired before, or that we haven't had bad experiences at work that is not abnormal. But the world kind of makes it taboo to talk about it. So if you are willing to confront it, you know, it's being in that awkward position where you're gonna say, Hey, I went through this. Yeah, it was scary. But I was fortunately able to turn it around and make it a really good opportunity. And here are some things you can take away from it, like people are going to eat that up all day. It's just, it's amazing the amount of support, and that in my opinion, and Nick, maybe you will contradict this or agree when you give us some of your tips. But being authentic, versus just trying to tell people what they think they already want to hear, for me has been one of the most critical components to finding success on social media as a whole.Nick Jordan You know, it's, you're right, it's very hard to be vulnerable on social and publicly. You know, like, it's, it's very tough. And I found that the only I can be vulnerable, but only after like, I take the L and then I bought the way back up. While I've taken the L I can't talk about it.Nick LeRoy Nobody and I want you to I mean, I kind of do the same thing. I'll take mini ELLs, you know, lowercase ELLs, you know, like this, and it failed, and that's okay. But yeah, I was definitely not like, Hey, I got cam today. You know, for me, it was only after being out on my own and realizing that it was indeed going to be successful. Yeah, I was my cell phone for a double LNick Jordan for free. For real. So step step one is is take the outs, but step two is get the W and then and then show it out. And then come back. Yep. Yeah,Nick LeRoy I think we've been dragging this on a little bit, people are going to be really interested. So you've driven over a million views. I think you had 21 point million specifically on LinkedIn this year. Can you walk us a million this year? Yeah, that's absolutely fantastic. Can you walk us through what your strategy is, you know, were you setting out to get this large number and kind of backed into it? Or is this just more of a? What happens because you followed some of your best practices that you'll share with us?Nick Jordan Yeah, I think, well, I mean, I definitely set out to get big numbers. Like when I started, I wasn't hoping to like hit 100,000 impressions or get a couple of likes. I was like, I want to, I want to I want to be one of the top gurus. You know, my mom wasn't super pumped when I told her I'm gonna be an SEO guru. But I was like, listen, Mom, I'm going for number one, and she's like, okay, sweetie, as long as you're having fun. Exactly.Nick LeRoy Do you need help with rent this month, though?Nick Jordan Yeah, so. So basically the strategy is you think of LinkedIn as a funnel, or basically a traffic acquisition source, maybe like the Google search results. You know what, how most people browse LinkedIn is they just sit on their newsfeed and they just scroll, and they comment and engage, and they look for things that are interesting. And so there's two things that need to happen. The first is, you need to create content, not only on your, your statuses, which is super important, but in the beginning, especially when you're fresh, the way that you're going to get attention is by being helpful on other people with a lot of visibility. So in the beginning, do like 10 times more commenting than you're doing posting. Today, now that I have the audience, I can get away with just posting and not doing a lot of engagement. But in the beginning, you just you got to put in the work you got and it has to be helpful, too. Or else it's not going to work. Now,Nick LeRoy what's interesting, I'll just say there to disagree, Nick is, I find that when you do that the the engagement, you find that you build all pods of I don't want to call them fans. But you probably see this too. It's like you post something. And it's that small group that you have commented on, they end up being the first ones to either like or comment on yours as well. It's like almost this reciprocal relationship.Nick Jordan That's exactly right. You just described how the LinkedIn algorithm works. LinkedIn gives you what you give it. And so the more time that you spend engaging on your feed, the more visibility LinkedIn is going to give to you. Because the you know, they're going to show your content to the people who liked your last content, and comment on your last content. And so if you can put the engagement in and people respond to you, your content will begin appearing in their feed, and they know how the game works. And so they're like, Hey, this guy boosted my posts with a comment, I'm gonna throw him a comment, kind of keep the relationship going. And you're right. And I, you know, I have, like, a lot of my like, I'd say, best friends and marketing are like people that I just like, started commenting on randomly on LinkedIn. And we're still talking, you know, four years later.Nick LeRoy Yeah. And it's amazing. I mean, I know, that's kind of how you and I had gotten connected. It was, Oh, hey, Nick, being Victorian, you I have written something that was interesting starts with a like, you know, then you like something that's like, Oh, I'm gonna throw in my two cents, then I was commenting on my stuff. And now it's like, as soon as something goes up, it's almost like an automatic, like, not only thing, but you're trying to give that extra visibility, because you know, there's going to be a benefit for them. And it's going to come back, you know, full force.Nick Jordan You know, I always say the nicest thing you can do to support your entrepreneurial, you know, entrepreneurial friends, it's just, you know, you don't have to buy their services, but we'll settle for a like, or a comment. Give us a little boost. newsfeed.Nick LeRoy Yeah, one thing someone had told me the other day that I actually found very intriguing, and it's flattering to is this gentleman named Dave. He is in another group with me, he does a lot of schema markup on the SEO side. And we met for a call and he was super nice. And he already did is like he wrote a recommendation for me on LinkedIn. And it basically just said, you know, Hey, Nick took the time to jump on with me, we had a really good conversation. He's a good guy. And what was interesting, and I only found this out the other day, when I was talking to him is he does that with like individuals that he basically is targeting to build a relationship with. Because not everybody uses the recommendation function there. And so when you receive one, you have to actively read it and choose whether you're going to publish it to your profile or not. So it's just an opportunity. Now, granted, you have to be legit, like don't try to pitch somebody or services in a recommendation. But for somebody to say, you know, Nick Jordan, I really appreciate that you took the time to, you know, call me and you gave me recommendations that were valuable. Like, who doesn't want to be able to promote that on their own thing. And now you remember me as an individual who has applauded you for being awesome.Nick Jordan I think, you know, I think it all goes back to the, you know, one of the best ways to grow your career is just give to other people. And if you give enough, eventually you'll, you're the 1% who give back will change your life, because it's like a Gary Vee quote or something. So okay, so there's a second part to this. All right. So you're creating content on your posts. You're, you know, you're posting content, you're also engaging and commenting on other people's comments. But the very next step is you need to actually like, you know, you don't stop there. So if you go to my LinkedIn profile, it's linkedin.com/in/nick. from Seattle, or if you just search Nick from Seattle or Nick Jordan, you'll find me. You'll see that my headline is zero to 1.5 million organics a month, in 24 months, and then flash and then my company name workout. And what this does is first of all, I'm getting all this visibility. LinkedIn putting me everywhere I'm appearing on everyone's newsfeed, whether it's a post or a comment. But then they like see, like the craziest number, maybe one of the craziest numbers I've ever seen in SEO. You know, not everyone is friends with the SEO director at NerdWallet. So, zero to 1.5 million or gigs a month is great for most people. And they're like, What hack, and then they'll click my profile. Great, I treat my profile like a landing page. If you look at my like my headline image, it's like a big fat graph of zero to 1.5 million. And then it says, like, no backlinks, no technical BS, like this great content. And then, and then I use the LinkedIn feature like the featured media, and it's like, Hey, here's the case study on zero to 1.5 million. And then when they go to the My, like company, the, you know, my work experience on my profile, I also attach media there. And so everywhere that they're looking on my profile, I'm like, Hey, go to my website and check out this case study. And so then they click through, and then they what we call it indoctrination content. And the reason we call it that is because by the end, by the time someone's done reading it, they're like, this is the only way to approach SEO, this is the only guy I can hire to do it. And so it's 5000 words. And it's very tactical, it's very actionable. It's, it's, I give away 99% of the stuff. And throughout the content, I have email captures, and I have links. And I have my YouTube channel. And so people originate on Facebook, or they originate on LinkedIn, or Twitter, but then they get to the website, they indoctrinate themselves, and then they end up following me on every platform that I'm on. And so it doesn't matter if the algorithm on LinkedIn doesn't show them my content today, because Facebook will show it to them today, or YouTube will show it to them today. And I'm kind of I'm all of a sudden, I'm on the president.Nick LeRoy I like everything that you had said, and especially the idea of capturing that audience across multiple, you know, owned in all kinds of column rented spaces, you know, LinkedIn, with you, as we saw with Facebook, it's like your organic reach is like nothing these days. So it really, but, you know, being able to capture people on YouTube and LinkedIn and Twitter and you know, I love email, too. I mean, now it's easier to get somebody's social security number that is their email. So anytime you could do that, you know, that's a great opportunity. So I think that's absolutely fantastic. And that simply to your point, having a captivating headline, getting people to click into your profile, and then feeding them what they already want, because they're intrigued by that headline.Nick Jordan Yeah, yeah. And then pushing them to all your other channels. So you can't lose them if one of the platforms goesNick LeRoy haywire. Yeah, no, and that's fantastic. I've had to a little bit lesser extent, I recently in the last six months had added like kohner of Seo jobs.com. And when I see people publishing, help wanted ads, or new job descriptions on LinkedIn, a lot of times, I'll go in there and ask them, you know, hey, do you want like a free listing, you know, or an ad for that, check it out on my LinkedIn or like go through, and they may take me up on the free one that time, but then they'll come back and do a paid spot the next time. So it's a really good opportunity to help, while also secretly kind of being promotional. Because anytime they take me up on the free one, I'll go back to that conversation and be like, Oh, hey, and here it is in the comments. So cool.Nick Jordan I like it. It's a long term game, you know, like, I've had people that have viewed my content for years before finally booking a call with me. And by the time they get to that call, they're like, so warmed up, and they feel like they know me. And they feel like they can trust me, because I didn't just have one successful project. I've had a bunch over these four years. And so they've kind of seen me grow and progress and never kind of stop all and, and leave the industry. And so by the time they reach out, there's so much trust. I remember when I first started consulting, the one of the first deals I close, he wired me $5,000, within 24 hours of DMing, and Facebook, and I had no idea who he was. But he knew he had been following me for like a year and a half at that point. And so it didn't seem quick to him. But it seemed very clicked to me.Nick LeRoy And that's the best way. And I think this kind of goes back to what you were saying about building that personal brand and visibility. Because you know, especially with your sales background, this is what I was kind of alluding to earlier, when you are starting a conversation from scratch. It's difficult, like nobody really wants to be sold to ever. So if you can go in and it's more I don't want to call like buddy, buddy, but it's like you've already just kind of broken down that barrier. And it's more like Hey Nick, just talk to me like what is indeed the issue that you have, what are you trying to solve? And then you can come to brainstorm collectively on like what the solution is. And naturally, if your solution happens to match the services that you offer, like you said, people are ready, then you're not hard selling them.Nick Jordan Absolutely. And when you're creating content, people get to know your approach to SEO. And so when he jumped on the phone, it's a lot more. All right, well, what are you working on then? Alright, well, let me start, like from when, you know, Google and Stanford's like dormitory kind of history of like, here's how I got to where I'm at. People just, they know how you work. And they just want to know how you can apply for their project. And that saves you a lot of time. And it increases your close rate and, you know, increases the deal sizes that you get access to.Nick LeRoy Without a doubt, I can tell normally, within five minutes of conversation with somebody who's interested in my services, you know, whether it's going to workout or not. And mostly it starts with either I was referred to you by x, or I saw your newsletter, which I know that you're going to be good. Like, if it's a good fit, we very likely we're gonna close us, versus if I get the Okay, now, tell me a little bit about yourself and your services. It's like, you know, you're starting from absolute scratch.Nick Jordan Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And you're right, the conversations where people haven't read my case study on zero to 1.5 million always go way worse. Because like, I do have to spend all this time just like, explaining why everything that they know about SEO is probably wrong. And why am I like,Nick LeRoy exactly without telling them directly? That it's wrong?Nick Jordan Yeah, there's just so much to say it's, it's helpful if they already know most of it by the time they show up.Nick LeRoy Right. So like, I have a bunch of LinkedIn questions to get your opinions. But I don't want to interject. Do you have additional tips outside of that? Or can I go straight into my questions?Nick Jordan No, I think I think I'd say the last tip I have is that as a freelancer, you know, unless you're like Kevin and Digg, or Steve Tov, and you're just coming off a really hot grand on a really hot campaign, chances are, you're starting at the bottom, you get access to the worst opportunities, the worst clients, the worst budgets. And a lot of people get stuck there. You know, I know some people who started SEO the same time as me who are still servicing, you know, those $1,000 A month flower shops. And I think that the reason that I'm not is because I had a very purposeful approach to my career as an SEO consultant. And essentially, you know, going back to that thing that I said earlier, every project that every opportunity I take on needs to, if it doesn't make me rich, and it can't retire me, then it needs to, you know, enable me to learn the skills and meet the people to do something even higher impact max. And that's, you know, how you should treat project work till, you know, in the beginning, you need to take on whatever projects you can get, because you need to pay the bills, but if, you know, your capacity is limited, and if you're filled with unambitious projects, you're really not going to get the case studies that you need to move up market. And what I found is that it's very hard to build a living on $1,000 A month projects, people can do it, I can't, I just I can't even have significant operational excellence. And as a new SEO consultant, you probably don't have any operational excellence,Nick LeRoy right. And you're trying to set proper expectations. So it's not about crushing and driving the 150,000 visits per month, it's about almost trying to set the almost the opposite, it's like at $1,000, this is fake engagement. Therefore, you should only expect 100 visits or whatever the equivalent is. So it's like you're not delivering quality results per se, but trying to match the expectations to the budget.Nick Jordan The thing is, yeah, you have to match the expectations to the budget. But the thing is, is, you know, SEO, the case study takes a year at about and so as the year goes by, and you don't have this case study that can take you to the next level, like you didn't really make any momentum in your career. And so, you know, take on the project for the short term cash flow, because you need money to pay the bills, but then stop before you're tapped out. So you have capacity to take on more ambitious projects, you have to earn the right to move up market by succeeding at the projects you have access to at your current level. And so like, whatever it takes, you need to get the graph that's gonna allow you to get $2,500 a month, $5,000 a month, $15,000 a month clients. And it's gonna take a couple years to be able to get that kind of pricing power is assuming you're consistently moving up market.Nick LeRoy Yeah, and without a doubt, it's absolutely every single time a situation where the rich get richer. You start with your success at that $1,000 rate turns into 2000 and then before you know it, you're closing your pitches. strictly because they'll say, oh, who else? Have you worked? And if and if you were gonna sit there and say, Oh, it's Shopify and Adidas and Nike, but not like, they don't even need to see your, your graphs, you know, they, you know, Norwich, those type of things, but it's definitely one of those situations before. And, you know, I can attest to exactly what you had said, you know, I came from agency world where as a director role, my rates were north of 350 $400 an hour. And when I went out on my own, you know, I had some personal branding, but I was unwilling to use previous agency experience and results to sell myself. So I had to start, I literally took the $1,000 And it's like, oh, okay, look, but I built this. And then it was, yeah, I did that. And then yeah, it's like, before you know, it, I was so excited, like, chasing the logos was super exciting for me, because it's like, all you need is to be able to get one good brand that you can do some really good stuff with. And your opportunities explode at that point.Nick Jordan It's so funny. Well, it's so I don't know if it's fight. Well, it's funny to me, but probably not to a lot of people. But it's so funny that the better at SEO you get the easier projects you get to work on, you know, like, I feel is way easier with massive budgets on super high authority projects. That's they hire the best SEOs. SoNick LeRoy I tell people all the time that I have so much respect for individuals that do SEO or small businesses, because they are probably better at that than I am with these largest because to your point, went from zero to 100,000 visits is infinitely harder than going from a million visits to 5 million visits.Nick Jordan Yeah, yeah. It's just you just have less budget. Like, there's just there's less stuff to work with. AndNick LeRoy exactly what do you mean, you don't have a content team of 30 people to write today?Nick Jordan Exactly.Nick LeRoy So Nick, let me run a couple LinkedIn specific questions. These are things that I tend to believe, but I can't say that I have anything to validate. These are best practices, specifically when it comes to posting. So I'm going to split fire a couple of tactics, and you tell me kind of thumbs up or thumbs down on whether it's good for the algorithm, okay.Nick Jordan Okay. By the way, I want to throw, throw this out there. I got a million visitors this year. But last year, at the end of the last year, I started making my executive team build their social profiles to and one of them got a million visitors this year using the everything that we talked about on this call.Nick LeRoy But that's even better. That's like, again, in my agency experience there was there's always fun to get those wins. But there's nothing more exciting than somebody that you're coaching to learn and watching them win. Because that's how you can continue to scale outside of just your name or your success.Nick Jordan That's exactly right. I want to I don't want to be the only Rainmaker in the organization.Nick LeRoy Exactly. Alright, so going back to these hard hitting questions that because I guess I'm curious, what's your thought on linking outside of LinkedIn, in your blog posts, or sorry, in your LinkedIn posts,Nick Jordan never do it LinkedIn or Crusher reach LinkedIn is goal is to show you more LinkedIn ads. And LinkedIn can't do that. You click my link to my website. So don't ever post an external link.Nick LeRoy If I wear my tinfoil hat and think I'm circumventing the the system and say, click in the comments to see Link, do you think that circumvents it, or?Nick Jordan I think I think it used to, and I don't think it does it anymore. I think it doesn't last but if I was going to drop a link, here's what I do. If I was going to drop a link, I want the post to get a lot of engagement first, because then it kind of has some momentum before you know before the link stops. So get the momentum, get the comments and then maybe go back and update the post, add the link and then let everybody know you also added the link.Nick LeRoy And you so you just stole my next question. If you publish something and you start seeing traction or don't, how often do you want to go back and edit it like is editing it and potentially even modify how it views before you hit the the ellipsis to drop down?Nick Jordan So I think I'm concerned about trends and how the content is performing in general and less about any given post and so, like, I will very rarely ever go back and edit just because, you know, I posted 365 Day days or the last 365 So like any given post isn't so important to my kind of presence.Nick LeRoy Right? I actually really liked that one because admittedly I sometimes can get caught up on the because I think for people like us that have read quite a few posts. You have a pretty good idea of what's going to show and then the what will display after somebody can click the ellipsis but every once awhile you hit publish and you're like oh shoot my first tip you know is showing above the fold. Which isn't necessary.Nick Jordan If I mess up the ellipses thing where like I like reveal, like the the hook, like instead of making them click the ellipses said I'll go back and delete it and like, but I know that will from what I understand if you added up how shortly after posting it, LinkedIn about Facebook actually reduce the reach of that. So I would just go ahead and delete it and then repost it. So that'sNick LeRoy a good tip right there. Because I admittedly have been doing editing. So I think I will try outright deleting and reposting and those onesNick Jordan that it's fuzzy for me, I'm not like 100%. But that's kind of just what I've seen with Yeah.Nick LeRoy And admittedly, like I said, these are just the hard hitting questions that I personally have for you. And we're not going to hold you accountable. But it's here other people, especially like I said, you and I see each other's materials on LinkedIn. So we obviously know what's going on and what works. But it's fun to people, you know how you think about this? So I'm not going to I'll do maybe one or two more of these questions, but what's your thoughts on attaching an image? And does size matter? And does that have an impact on reach?Nick Jordan Yeah, I think it goes down to a user engagement metric. So if the media can drive better, you know, click throughs comments, likes, shares, lepsy clicks, then it's good. You know, I think like didn't Well, occasionally, when they want to push a certain feature, they're also give those features more reach. So there's a period of time, I don't know, six months, where LinkedIn was like, we need more polls. And so anytime you made a poll, it didn't just give you so much more reach than any other post type. And I get like, 20,000 impressions. And then the next day with my regular posts, I get like, 5000.Nick LeRoy Right. No, and that makes sense, too. And I think that does kind of show that you've got to continue to be aware of what all the features are what's kind of working, you know, even you know, when I see something in my feed that's got, you know, 100 comments or 100 likes, I'm immediately kind of reverse engineering at trying to understand what are they writing about? And is it the content or is that the interactions? Yeah. Okay, two last questions, and then we'll, we'll move on to some of your recommendations for the listeners. Okay, here's one I've always been curious about. If you're having a post that is having success? Well, I'll use the word viral loosely. Do you think there's negative comments? Or is there any negative to posting a new post while that one is like going viral?Nick Jordan So I think that there's like, frequency Kathy camp post 20 times a day, like, eventually there's diminishing returns. My co founder, Boyd, who is the one who got the million impressions, he actually beat me this year. He experimented with three posts per day for about a month, maybe two months, maybe three months, just recently, and it really drove up his his reach initially. But then it fell off a cliff. So he went back down to one a day.Nick LeRoy Wow, I love that. I think, again, you're beating a dead horse at this point. But it's like, just continue to watch and monitor your statistics.Nick Jordan Last, exactly what it is.Nick LeRoy So last question for you. When you do get responses or questions, obviously, when somebody is asking you a question, it makes sense to respond to them. That's just, you know, being nice. And that's part of social. But when people sit there go like, Oh, great tip, Nick, do you think benefit to you responding to that, you know, oh, hey, thanks for thanking me for my tip, you know, as in the frequency of interaction on it. I don't want to play like super detailed, but I'm just again, curious, your thoughts?Nick Jordan No, I love it. So you know, my headline is there to 1.5 million organics a month. My goal is to LinkedIn marketer is to get that headline as many places on the feed as possible. And so I like at this point three years in, not all my comments are super helpful anymore. Because I can kind of write on my brand. And so a lot of my comments are just like emojis like three rocket ships or like a heart or like, I'll do huge with a bunch of caps. Because I'm excited about everything. Just to get like, again the headline on people's newsfeeds so they click through the profile and kind of kick off this funnel. So I think it's, I would definitely recommend at the minimum just replying with like a heart.Nick LeRoy Yeah, I like that. Don't overthink it.Nick Jordan Yeah, I want to I want to touch base on a couple different things are a couple of thoughts I have on the algorithm before we move on, so one of them is, you know, earlier I said LinkedIn gives you what you give it. The more engagement you give your newsfeed the more engagement you'll get back. What I've seen is that you can take a break for about a month before your engagement starts to dip. So you know I spent a bunch of time and effort building building momentum. I went on PTO, and I scheduled a bunch of posts using cobbler and those dripped out and they continue to crash. But eventually I hit a point where I could, I can see the amount of reach that I'm getting declining, declining and declining, it's actually the lowest it's been in a couple of years, just because I stopped putting in the effort into the newsfeed and engaging with other people's content.Nick LeRoy Yeah, that's a good reminder, again, I've even seen it, you know, you go out for a week or two, and it's like, all of a sudden, you're gone. So it's a reminder to always be there, always kind of keep feeding that fire.Nick Jordan Yeah, the last thing is, there's actually there's two more things. So the first is, you know, I don't do any outbound sales. You know, when I connect with someone, I don't, I don't pitch them. But I do have a CrunchBase subscription. And I'm constantly basically adding founders of VC backed companies who just raise money in the last X days, that's my target audience, if you should do it, the same for your target audience, find a lead source and just connect with those people maybe use LinkedIn itself, and you just connect with other people commenting on the same status as you're commenting on. But, you know, continue to not only should you be engaging, but you should be expanding your network to. But as you're expanding, you're not pitching because cold pitching is one of the easiest ways for someone to never look at your content again. It's really, you know, it's really just like SEO, your SEO career is a long term game. So you know, the person you connect with today, they're gonna give you money three years from now, that's like, that's fine.Nick LeRoy It is fine. I agree with you, the long game is where the money is.Nick Jordan Alright, last thing is, you know, going back to the type of content that's engaging, it's always, you know, the most interesting b2b content has a strong opinion, I come from personal experience. And so, in order to create effective content, you kind of have to have effective accomplishments, or at least share the journey on your way to accumulating these effective accomplishments. If you're out there on LinkedIn, posting that and voice search is going to be relevant and 2023 are that, you know, the difference between SEO and PPC and just basically common knowledge about the industry that people have already said, you know, you're not going to no one's gonna engage with your content. So, so you have to have some sort of empathy for who your reader is.Nick LeRoy Yeah, I think I think that's huge, you know, I do try and encourage people to just start by posting, because I think there's a hurdle simply to get into the habit of posting. So I do encourage a little bit of the elementary stuff, because it's not always brand new to everybody. But to your point, if it's gonna be a tactic that you want to rely on for quite a bit of time, if not forever, you got to get deeper. And I think that goes to just be in the vulnerable, whether it's me getting fired to you making, you know, 100,000 sessions, in a month, like, you gotta you gotta go there. Absolutely. So it's so starting to wrap up here, neck, one thing that I love to ask all my guests, I just recommendations that you have for anybody who, who is an aspiring freelancer, or may want to do things that we're talking about today. You know, this could even be with the LinkedIn tactics, but do you have like courses or tools, or anything in particular that you would recommend? Um,Nick Jordan you know, just follow up people in the space that are crushing it, Steve talk is crushing it, Kevin, and DAG, Eli Schwartz, boy in Mark, my business partner, I have good content. And he just kind of just fill your feed with people that you want to emulate. And eventually the robot fine. Yeah.Nick LeRoy Yeah, no. And that's so true. I think any opportunity you have just to talk to people, you know, I've interviewed Steve, you know, I've talked to Kevin, quite a bit, Eli, I've mentioned many times, giving away a couple signed copies of his books on my newsletter right now. You know, and building those type of engagements are huge. And those are the type of people that will come full circle and, you know, help you with leads or referrals, or, you know, we all regularly like and comment on each other's comments to which you know, yeah, just really helps. Yeah, nice. Well, Nick, I really appreciate your time. I think LinkedIn, as we talked about is really underutilized in all these tips. And, you know, kind of quick answers you provide are super helpful for people that want to get a hold of you, what's the best way for them to contact you? And I'll make sure to include all of this in the transcript in the post too.Nick Jordan Yeah, great. So if you're on Facebook, or like Dan or YouTube, sorry, Facebook like did Nick from Seattle YouTube content distribution. My startup workout.com helps you hire writers and on my website, content distribution.com. For a lot of minutes, too many resources. I gotta consolidate We have all sorts of like tactical actionable guides on how to do crazy fat graphs. We give it all away. So hopefully the links will be in the description because I'm confused myself.Nick LeRoy No prob like it's not this will absolutely be in there. And neck. Like I said, Thank you so much for joining us, and we look forward to the next episode of the SEO freelancer.Nick Jordan Had a great time. Thank you so much. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seofreelancer.substack.com

Get notified when any new episodes of TheSEOFreelancer podcast go liveIntroducing Sara TaherSara has been doing SEO for 8+ years. She started out by building an online magazine that she built from scratch to over 90k sessions and getting local media attention. Her interest in entrepreneurship only grew from there. Sara was excepted into Ycombinator and further doubled down in her SEO career in both in-house and agency roles (and freelance projects).Sara’s Resource Recommendations* Listen to The SEO Freelancer podcast * Find smart people to network with - both in-person and online (LinkedIn is great)* Build a small group that you can trust and meet with regularly. this can end up being your best source of referrals and or simply run ideas past them.How to connect with Sara Taher onlineSara’s official websiteConnect with Sara on LinkedInConnect with Sara on TwitterThis Months Sponsor: SEOChatter.comDo you want to jump into SEO freelancing?But not sure if you’re good enough to make it work?At SEOChatter.com you can get the expert training you need to succeed for free.SEO Chatter is one of the fastest-growing sites in our industry that teaches every aspect of SEO. You'll find hundreds of free guides on keyword research, on-page optimization, link building, and more to help you maximize any website's rankings and traffic.Visit SEOChatter.com to see it for yourself. And click the subscribe button to get your free SEO training gift.If you are a freelancer interested in joining me on a future episode of The SEO Freelancer podcast Please email me directly at [email protected] TranscriptionNick LeRoy welcome to the SEO Freelancer podcast. My name is Nick Leroy, and I am your host. And today I'm very excited to have Sarah ta her with me. She's going to be talking a bit about what it's like to do freelancing on the side in addition to a nine to five SEO job. Before we jump into this month's episode, I want to do a quick shout out to this month's sponsor SeoChatter.com.Do you want to jump into SEO freelancing, but not sure you're good enough to make it work? At Seo chatter.com You can get the expert training you need to succeed for free. SEO Chatter is one of the fastest growing sites in our industry that teaches every aspect of SEO. You'll find hundreds of free guides on keyword research on page optimization, link building, and more to help you maximize your website's rankings and traffic. Visit Seo chatter.com to see for yourself and click subscribe button to get your free SEO Training gift. Got Seo chatter.com today. Thank you again to this month's sponsor, SEO chatter. Now let's jump into this month's episode.Thank you, Sarah, for joining us today.Sara Taher Thank you for having me today. Here, Nick.Nick LeRoy Yes, absolutely. So for those that aren't familiar with you, are you willing to share a little bit about yourself? Obviously, we know your name. We know you're in SEO, but give us a little background about your who is Sarah?Sara Taher Okay, so I've been doing SEO for eight years now. I stumbled upon it accidentally, I launched an online magazine, I was managing a team of editors and we were creating great content. And it was like okay, so how do we get more people to read it. That's where I started to learn and you know, take boot camps and so on. And within a year, I took it from zero to 90,000 visitors per month. And a lot of things happened as well. Like the it became popular in my community. The I was interviewed by the local radio, the biggest it was an Arabic so the biggest one of the biggest Arab Arabic content portals starting to start to repost our content on the website, which was like really, really cool back then. Some of the people who contributed to the website, were invited to TED talks, for example, again in so it was like, pretty cool, right? I was like, wow, that's really fun. And then that wasn't Egypt, I moved to Dubai. I was, I was in love with SEO. But I was also interested in entrepreneurship and startups. And when I say startups, I mean, like, technical startups with an innovative component. So again, like I launched a tech startup, I was managing a team of developers in Ukraine, and I was able to take it to grow it to a, as a, in a seed stage startup, very reasonably with SEO. I was doing basically everything else other than development. So it was like a lot. And I was able to get accepted to Y Combinator, which is like the world's best startup accelerator. They had an online startup school launched that year. So it was like, wow, that's my chance. And I got into it. And I started, it started to grow, really. But I ran out of funds, and I wasn't able to raise funds, and I was too shy to ask people to pay for the service. I know that sounds ridiculous, but that was that. So I moved from that I had a lot of SEO experience in my pocket. So I, I loved it. So I moved into an in house role in Dubai, it was the biggest travel agents in the Middle East. It's like Expedia, which was pretty cool for me to get into that. And I to this day, I am so grateful for that experience. I had a lot of great managers that helped me grow there and understand a lot of things and dynamics, how SEO sits with other and works with other teams and so on. As well as being able to connect with enough developers and understands a lot of technical stuff that were not commonly talked about back then, like programmatic pages, for example, right? So I moved from I moved to Canada. I freelanced a bit and then I started to work at an agency and then in house and then I moved back to agency, which is where I am today.Nick LeRoy So that's, that's a lot of experience. Beginning and I'll just say a comparison. You know, here you are building a website that is driving what do you say 90,000 visits when you? Yeah, my first website outside of leroy.com was was best holistic dog food.net. And I didn't make a single penny off of it. So it just shows how we all start from somewhere but some of us have a little bit more success than others. SoSara Taher maybe I was lucky. Maybe I was just lucky. You know?Nick LeRoy There is no luck. Hard work is always valuable. I think I just chased the money, whereas you chased a passion.Sara Taher Yeah. I think, literally, I had a problem monetizing anything. I, I would, I think, and that was a part of a struggle in my freelancing journey. So back when I was working in house in my first role, I also freelanced and worked part time within a local SEO agency there. And that was good for me, because I didn't have to deal directly with the clients and ask them for money. Like this is a skill I had to grow into literally.Nick LeRoy Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think, you know, that consulting aspect of it is such a unique skill set. I mean, learning SEO is hard enough. You know, there's a lot of things that are constantly changing, as you myself, and everybody on this podcast already knows. But the people element of it the communication, I think, truly is one of the components that turns us from being a good SEO to a great SEO. But if you don't, let's jump a little bit. So you've covered a little bit about your first job. So do you want to talk just a little bit more about how did you and we heard about your past, but how did you get this job? Did you apply kind of with the experience sharing, you know, the success you had with the site? Yeah, how long were you there for? And then everybody's favorite question, if you don't mind sharing what you were earning at the time.Sara Taher Okay, so I was able to get the job because of what I've done, you know, in my startup, and previously in my, the magazine write it, it was like really differentiated me a lot, compared to other candidates who just a lot of them with started in SEO, they were in the role that somehow, you know, doing social media and some SEO was, so it was differentiate me when I applied. I stayed there for a year before moving to Canada, and I was earning so in UAE money, it's 10k, which is, it was it was good back then. That was okay. For a junior position. Sure. Yeah. 10k would be like, I think back then it was around three U. K, USD, per month,Nick LeRoy per month. All right. Yeah, we could certainly live off of that. You know, I know, we've been talking about various guests. And it's interesting when it has come down from everything from making. You know, I think Christina was saying that she was making the Aquila like 500 bucks a month to, you know, we have people like Steve Toth or you know, making, you know, 40 grand a month. Yeah, it just all over the place.Sara Taher I think I was lucky because in Dubai people, at least back then when I was there, people tend to have bigger salaries, then, you know, because that's people go to Gulf countries to make savings. So that's probably why it was like that. But when I was freelancing for the agency there, I was getting like for 20 hours per week. So total 80 hours per month, I was getting paid around 500 or $600 per month for that work. SoNick LeRoy and that's a very good transition. So naturally, one of the reasons I was very interested in having Sara on the podcast is she still has a nine to five job. But she freelances In addition, a lot of my guests previously have been freelance SEOs for a couple of years now are just kind of starting out on the journey, but they're 100% dedicated to it. And I think the opportunity to discuss how freelance can continue to augment our our earnings and learning opportunities is super important. So if you don't mind, Sara, will you share with us a little bit? What encouraged you to freelance in addition to you know, that first job I think you're saying it sounds like you were making some decent money at the time? Was it strictly money? Was it learning, I'd love to hear a little bit more.Sara Taher I wanted to learn as much and do as much as I can. And I wanted to see how other people are doing SEO as well. Right? So this was like a very good opportunity for me for that. For that because the money wasn't like I was I had a decent salary and the money I was getting paid from the agency wasn't that much. And it was actually a lot of work because I worked like one hour driving and because back then we used to go to the office to work full time. So one hour driving in the morning, and then nine to six, not nine to five and then one hour back and then you have to do your freelancing and I literally Some nights I would and I have my family as well. Right? So literally, sometimes I would sleep or sleep on my laptop literally I would be like, my head would be dropping and and the money was like was not enough motivation for me to do that. But I wanted to, I wanted to do it because I wanted to learn as much as I can. And I wanted to see what others are doing and be able to get feedback, right?Nick LeRoy Yeah, and I think that's, that's one thing, it's not that everybody should have to be, you know, doing the 8090 100 hour, you know, months. But it seems like we don't see that quite as often I kind of did the same type of thing. You know, it was work, you know, 4050 hours during the week, I came home, and it was like launching a website, taking out a project. But I think it was very similar to what you were mentioning, it's much more about learning. And for me, it was almost fear of like, what don't I know? Yeah, so I was always same reason. But I think this actually brings us to a really good conversation, I can share some of my thoughts, but I'd love to hear from you. How do you handle the conversation? Or is there one about freelancing on the side? When you have a nine to five SEO job? Is that something that you've had conversations with your bosses about? Or did you kind of do it on the sly, like, walk us through a little bit your experience?Sara Taher I definitely every time I apply for a job, I definitely discuss that and make it clear. And I've seen situations where people say we're not comfortable with that. And, and I've seen people will say we don't mind that. So, right. And it's funny when people say they're not comfortable with that. Because I mean, in their mind, they're afraid that this is gonna jeopardize the work the full time job. But I mean, if you're being honest with them, and you're disclosing it, you're not hiding anything. And they should see that you're a responsible person, but they don't see that. So I mean, and and this is where you need to make a decision. I mean, the best path is just be clear about it, because I'm really, you know, I'm on LinkedIn all over the place. And I know me talk about clients, like, I do name them, obviously. But I may mention that I have a current client or something around that. So the best bathroom is always to talk about it and be transparent with it. So. And I've seen also situations where companies include that in their contract that you may work as much as you want, outside their hours and not on people like or not on businesses that are competing with the current clients, which is fair enough as well. So yeah, so like my current agency in the in the contract, it does include talking about working outside, having your own consulting work, right. So yeah,Nick LeRoy when you say when, when that's in the contract, it's saying that that's okay. Like they approve of it. Yeah,Sara Taher as long as there is those, you know, you're not working for a competitor or having this conflict of interest or those situations, as long as you're not in one of those situations, you're good.Nick LeRoy Absolutely. And I think that's kind of been my experience as well, you know, there's naturally a non compete, you don't want to work for the competitors to your day clients. And you don't want to put yourself in a situation where you're ruffling any feathers at work, I would say and Sara would love for your opinion as well, one thing that I did not do a good job early on in my career when I worked at the agency, but it was better. You know, more recently, and obviously now that I'm freelance full time is making sure that you do separate, like your technology and your tech stacks. Because there are some companies that will get very upset if you're using your work computer to be sending emails, even if it's outside of your work hours, or if they have a SEMrush account and you're using it. You know, I think that again, in that full transparency, if you're going to freelance, it's really trying to separate it so that you can be very intentional in both efforts and not have them, you know, reflect upon one another or leverage resources etc.Sara Taher Yeah, I mean, for me, I have separate laptops, obviously, like the company's laptop companies tools are theirs, mine, I have my own Screaming Frog license, my own sem rush, and so on. And I mean, it saves a lot. And if like, for me, in my mind, if this conversation ever pops up, you have you can show your you have your own license, you have your own stuff, and you know, I I like to have this, like separation and have it helps you have if if that discussion ever pops up you have the evidence to support that you're not doing anything wrong, but I mean, at the end of the day again, I generally speaking, I do feel that employees should trust their employees. And I mean, if you disclose that This means that you're being responsible and, you know, taking the necessary steps to make sure that they don't impact each other.Nick LeRoy Yeah, without a doubt. And I can say, as a hiring manager, most people by now know that I was on the agency side for 10 plus years. And on the latter half of that I had hired quite a few people. And anytime that I saw that somebody was interested, or currently had freelanced, or built their own websites, or just basically were even building like a personal like persona, like I was 90% interested in those candidates, like right off the bat, like as long as you're good with, like, a culture fit like that, to me, excites me, because there's something to be said about, you can be really good at your job, nine to five, come in, come out. But if you're actively trying to learn outside of work, like I can't force you to do that as like a team lead. But if you're gonna do that to yourself, so that you can either get more experience make a little bit extra money, that inherently is going to help you with your nine to five. So I wish more people if they're not would actually embrace this, obviously keep in consideration what we had talked about before with non competes and technology. But I think that is more just general respect for one another.Sara Taher Yeah, I mean, I think we do need to change the conversation literally about having a side gig, in addition to your full time job, but it should be normal, it should be seen as something positive. It should not be like, and I actually, you know, when you get go into an interview, this is actually one way I do check. What the way people respond to that, because I would like to work in a place where people trust you right off the bat from day one. I. So, it for me, it's also like a way to interview them as much as they're interviewing me. Yeah, I totally agree with you. Yep.Nick LeRoy Yeah, and I think that what you had said, is super important, the idea of interviewing them, I mean, similar to what I would do, you know, with my clients, you know, I'm interviewing them as much as they are. But, you know, going in, especially now, with the SEO market being as hot as it is, and nearly any SEO can get any job they want, you know, go in and ask these type of questions. And it's not about being a bully, but it's making sure that you're set up to succeed with them, and vice versa. Yeah, I remember taking calls, you know, sir, as, as you kind of alluded to, as well, things would be going really, really good. And then, you know, they ask you some of these questions. And naturally, I would bring up some side clients. And I remember one individuals, specifically it was for an agency had said, oh, so I see that you do freelancing? Yeah, I just want to let you know that we have a strict no freelancing policy here. And I was just kind of gutted by that. I just told them, I was like, honestly, this is kind of a deal breaker. Like, for me, I had always used freelancing as the ability to make and I'm using air quotes here, your extra money, this is what I spoiled my kids with, you know, get bought the candies all all trips. You know, it was never something I relied on. But I was unwilling to put myself in a situation where I was 100% dependent on a salary. So I just hope that, you know, other people that are being in that situation, to your points here are having a broader conversation about why is it that you're not encouraging this?Sara Taher Yeah, I feel they just maybe they never freelance themselves. So they you have doubts on how you're going to be managing that or I feel it's a matter of trust. And it's something it's not comfortable for me personally, to go into a role knowing that they wouldn't trust me if I wanted to have a side project. And again, when we talk about transparency, again, even with your freelance clients, if you have another freelance project that comes up that would have like some, like I had a makeup client, and it's for woman it for 50 plus women, and then I had another makeup client reach out and I had to disclose that to my first client. I told him, Okay, guys, this business, they want me to work with them. Is that okay with you or not? So they checked outside, it's a different different target audience. So they were okay. But, I mean, it's not just for a full time job. It's also even with your freelancing clients, you need some time, like if you get in those situations, I mean, we have invested so much in our careers and put out poured our heart into learning SEO, I would not jeopardize that for an extra client. Do you know? Yeah, like I really don't care. I'd rather lose declined, then have someone say, Oh, you tricked us and you have another client and you've been like, you know, this is like a conflict of interest. I would never do that. And myself and I mean, every single good se Oh, that invested so much time and effort into this would not? Would not, I cannot imagine someone wasting all of this over, you know, a client that you can get another one later, you know?Nick LeRoy No, absolutely. I think it kind of goes back to personal branding, which we'll talk about, you know, we only have one name associated with us. And it takes years and years and years to build trust and expertise. But I mean, you can make one decision in a split second, and it can ruin it overnight. Yeah, yeah. It's not worth cashing it in for a quick buck, just for that.Sara Taher I mean, you work on a website for a long time before you start seeing any results. And then you ask them to give you like your viewer recommendations, I'm not gonna waste all of these, you know, efforts just for, I don't know, a consultation client or, and yeah, I mean, that's, and that's, that's one time I discussed this, actually, with another SEO, like a really an expert SEO and even in this mindset, it does impact a lot of the work you do. And even when, when I was working in house, and you start getting pushed away from you know, the typical, like, you're not being involved as you should be. One time, I just told them guys, no good, good SEO is gonna sit on the bench and watch, that's not gonna happen, you know, like, you definitely hired the wrong person, I'm not going to just sit there and watch you do a migration. That's, that's not gonna happen, you know. So I, for me, like freelancing is it's a lot of things, but one of them is it's I genuinely like what I do. And I wouldn't jeopardize that.Nick LeRoy I think your analogy of sitting on the bench is so true. I've mentioned this, I think before on the on the past to on the latter end of my agency career, you know, when I was kind of at the director level, you find that as you scale up in these positions, the amount of SEO you do goes down. And to the point where I was sitting in meetings for, you know, 678 hours a day, and I wasn't doing it was delegating day in and day out. And, and trust me, I mean, if I don't have to do manual redirect mappings ever again, I'll probably be okay with that. But you miss, you know, doing the work. And when I went out freelance full time, I was surprised at how much I actually missed it. Like, I knew I missed part of it. But I liked getting my hands dirty, I liked doing more than just talking about best practices and talking about strategies. So I completely understand that. And I think that's potentially one reason why someone may want to consider freelance as well, in addition to learning more, and potentially making some extra money, but again, as you kind of are climbing a corporate ladder, historically, that means you were doing less, so if you love getting your hands dirty, and being deep in those crawls. Your Freelancing is just an opportunity to talk about or to discuss.Sara Taher Yeah, and I mean, even when you're and I mean, even if you're still getting your hands dirty, hands dirty to an extent that in an agency, there's still some restrictions on and, and pressure on pleasing the client in a way. And you don't have sometimes you don't have the saying that, like the client wants this, maybe that's not what best for them, they want that we're doing that, you know, you don't have that, like had have much say in certain situations. But when you have your own clients, you do have to say like, and maybe that's why I actually I also feel, having my full time role and having clients on the side gives me that opportunity or make it easier for me to not worry about pleasing the clients versus telling them what they should be doing. Right. So it's a lot of things. Yeah.Nick LeRoy Yeah. And I think we're kind of gonna blend a little bit personal projects versus freelance projects. But I think you would probably agree to me if not, what you can learn and what you can test on, say your own websites isn't necessarily something we're always comfortable doing on a client's website. So we have to push ourselves to be able to learn so we know what we shouldn't do as much as we should do for, you know, our nine to five like agency clients.Sara Taher Yeah, definitely. I remember one time a few years ago, I got a manual action on one of my websites right now. And now I learned what not to do. Right.Nick LeRoy Right. And so it's terrifying. Again, something like that, but it's also terrifying. I mean, you can only think of you probably think, oh my gosh, I'm gonna lose my job. How am I gonna pay my bills? Five, whereas now you're just like, What the heck happened? Like, I'm going down the rabbit hole today.Sara Taher Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I mean, it's Having this combination and having also personal personal projects are really important for any good SEO or anyone who wants to be an SEO with good SEO to develop, you have to have this ground zero where you, you know, try things and make changes and you're just, you know, whatever. I'll just see what happens. It does help a lot. Yeah.Nick LeRoy So knowing that you've done all the I mean, you've done everything you've been agency you've been it has, you've done the freelance, you've had your own projects, I'm going to ask a pointed questions that I'm sure a lot of people are thinking right now. So Sara, have you given consideration to going freelance full time? And if you have, or haven't, can you share a little bit more like what your thinking is?Sara Taher So I thought about it, I, I just don't see myself doing it. And here's why. And I know it works for people great. And that during the times that I was when I was shifting from one country to the other, and I freelanced fully full time. It's awesome. It's like you have all the flexibility. Like I like that right? What about hearingNick LeRoy fruit? Talks about what a bad we did have a whole nother episode just about.Sara Taher It's awesome, right. But few things I noticed. First of all, you're pretty lonely. And even if you build a team, it's very easy that you become the expert in the room, you're the boss. Even if no matter how friendly and open you are to discussions, people will always prioritize making it pleasing you in a way or another over having like those hot debates. So I just don't want to be. And it's not that I don't want to lead an SEO team. But I don't want to be like the the owner of the business or owner of an agency in a way that because I've also since I've also worked in small agencies before and I've seen this situation, and I it's not, I don't feel this is a setup I want to be in like I don't want to be the expert, the the, it's good to be the expert, but I want other voices as well to challenge what I say and show me when I'm wrong. So these two things do impact, like, make make it not as attractive to me. And then you have the stress of making sure your sales funnel is always full, making sure you know your clients are happy and so on. And I just feel like I'm the type of person who would like to just focus on doing SEO without all these other things. So yeah, that's why at least for now, I don't see myself doing it full time. Maybe that will change. Sure. But notNick LeRoy everything can change in a day. I mean, as been very vocal, you know, I've always liked the idea of freelancing. I never had the guts to actually do it full time. And then I got fired. And it's like, I started going through the interview process, got some really junky offers and sat through a sixth round interview for a job I really wanted and then didn't get it. And you know, basically had to get so frustrated to the point where I was like, That's it, I can do this better. But I think you truly if you were a good employee, which it sounds like you are, I was never a very good employee. I was always hard to manage. But there can be a best of both worlds. ISara Taher think working I'm actually I've been actually laid off before so yeah, I'm I'm hard to manage as well.Nick LeRoy Both of us.Sara Taher I mean, I would I would say the thing is with people who have if you have this freelancing mindset even if you're working full time or if you have that it means there's a lot of other traits in your personality you're in and and sometimes it's actually means you really love what you do and that's why you know, you took so this does not necessarily align with a lot of from my experience and interviewing for jobs and so on. Some people will not hire you just because they're intimidated by you so or maybe they would you be laid off just because your coworkers are not comfortable around you because they just intimidated they just feel like you know it I've seen that I don't want to dig into that a lot but sometimes you're just making people uncomfortable just because who you who how much you care and how much you love something and you're so obsessed with it and you know they they're not on the same level and they just so they feel that you're gonna like when the corporate race or something and that's that's not what what was on your mind and then they start getting in your way and yeah, things happen.Nick LeRoy Yeah, and you know, and no one can see this because this is audio but I've never been you know, shaking my head up and down. on so much, and what and like you said, we certainly don't have to go into any more. But I think a lot of what I allude that to is just corporate politics and politics exists, whether it's a very large company or a very small company. And what I alluded to not being the best employee at times, I think it's because I never was really good at the games. Yeah, that's.Sara Taher It's just yeah, I totally agree. I'm listening to this book for the eight rules of power. And it's ridiculous. It talks about politics in a way or another. And it's ridiculous how many people in history when like, literally were killed, or because people would not were intimidated by them just just just because there were better or look, apparently outshined. Others were one way for one reason or the other, literally killed. So yeah, we're lucky to live.Nick LeRoy Yeah, and you and I certainly, you know, don't want to compare the those extreme situations. And here you go, you should freelance. But I think what it does show is that freelancing can sometimes be an outlet for people that sometimes maybe feel a little bit limited within their company, but maybe don't have the want the need, or even the interest in running a company. So I knew Sir, this is gonna be a great topic, and why I was so excited to have you on this podcast. So thank you for going into a lot of those details.Sara Taher You're welcome. I'm happy to talk about it.Nick LeRoy Yeah, I think one thing that will be super helpful, you know, a little bit of transitioning is, you know, you have done a great job and, you know, public speaking, and kind of building up your, your personal brand. Can you talk to me a little bit about how you're on public speaking, being on like this podcast, like, how is that impacted, you know, the success behind your nine to five career as well as like your freelance work.Sara Taher So building my personal brand generally helped me many times, get to the first round of interviews, or sometimes even the second, right, it did take me through the door, you have a lot to showcase, I if I'm interested in role I can connect with like the hiring manager, or the marketing director, for example, and start a conversation and they can see like, what's, you know, my profile my, my podcasts, or webinars and articles as well. So it does help me get through the door, but nest and give an established, because they can see how confident or how confident you are in your skills and what you can talk about and so on. So does get you in, to pass in that in that area, then there is the fit, as you know, as we discussed, maybe they're not interested in freelancing, you freelancing and so on. So did help me in that, it from from that standpoint, another thing for my clients, I noticed every time, so I published four articles so far, to One Search Engine Land and to on Search Engine Journal, I'd like to publish more, but my time is sort of limited anyway. So every time I publish, I at least get some one person reaching out for consultation or retainer, at least one person. And I mean, that's the power of personal brand, right. So I, the reason I started investing in my personal brand, so much is I was so invested in SEO and I was giving my all to the companies I worked for, and I almost never felt appreciated. In fact, it was crazy, though, like the the things I literally would have people reaching out for me, there was one point in my career where I would get clients. And instead of taking them for myself, I would give them to the agency. And I was still not appreciated, which was the people who were appreciated were the people who are good at playing games, and that sort of thing. So that's why when I said okay, I am still doing my best at my job because I care, but I also need to invest in myself. And I never that's the best decision I ever made in my life so far. The only thing is it there's doing SEO is one skill. And then there's so many things that you need to grow into to be able to have a personal brand, and I'm not there yet, but I hope i i get there sometime. So yeah, yeah. Well,Nick LeRoy we're all building on that. I think again, you guys can't see this. But I mean, my head's hitting the ceiling and hitting the floor. This constant Yeah, yes, yes. Yes. Because I think you know, this was very much the the situation that I was in when I was working agency side and doing freelancing on the side agency full time but freelancing on the side. You know, there is a lot of if you don't play the games, or maybe the politics are strong or you just aren't feeling like you're, you know, a perfect fit, you know, and then you're doing this extra effort and you feel like you're kind of rewarding the company where you don't feel 100% validated. It's hard. But I think the personal branding the writing, is really an opportunity, from my perspective has always been almost like insurance, you know, I looked at as if, and thank goodness, I did this, but it's like, if a day where I was like, go or, you know, removed from a situation, where do I go? And, you know, without going too into detail, well, heck, I'll just go into so like, last time I was, you know, I've been like, Oh, my job twice. The first time I was like, Go was terrifying. I lost my mind, I had no clue what I was gonna do. And then thank goodness, because of, you know, the work that I had put into the SEO for lunch newsletter, you know, I've written for Search Engine Land that, you know, follow a lot of people on Twitter and have this network, I was able to get my new job in 10 days, I literally was sitting in the new seat 10 days later. Now, I'd be like, go from that job to at the end because of COVID. However, you know, it's just another situation where it's like, I feel like, it's good to be loyal to your company. But you need to be loyal to yourself first. Because if there's ever a situation where they have to pick between their business and you, they're going to pick the business, just like you should pick yourself over the business given that situation as well. So and rant, but I feel like that's it's really important. I think that further validates kind of what you were saying about, you know, investing into your public speaking and personal brand. Yeah, ISara Taher mean, the first time it was let go, that also was on my mind that, you know, I was like, so stupid, giving them to clients, I thought they would appreciate that and and that never happened. And, and I was also recently let go from an agency. And I there was no reason actually, like, on Friday, I was getting on boarded for with a client, I had a client meeting went well, oh, well, this is like it was an existing client. So and I was new, I was just a new hire. And I met the client Monday, all good Tuesday, layoff. What happened on Monday is that they lost some PPC clients. And then I was like, the newest hire probably, and I think it was the one of the highest paid maybe on the team. So last, oh, yeah. I was not happy, to be honest. And, and, you know, I put a rule for myself that I will never, ever join a company with less than 50 people like the less population or employees, there isn't a company, they tend to be very responsible with hiring and letting people go.Nick LeRoy Right? Yeah. And I think there's a whole nother conversation about that. And you're Ryan, anyone's like, I would even love to have a third head in this conversation, because I'm sure, from someone like you and I come from one position. You know, we obviously have some strong opinions. And I'm sure from a leadership position or an owner of an agency, it comes from a different side as well. But, you know, it's it's very interesting. It's very hairy, you know, and part of it, I this is honestly, part of the reason why I personally, as of today have no interest in starting an agency, I just, that's not where I want to spend my time. I like having the business associated with being a consultant. That is fun. But it all kind of revolves around me and impacts me and it's not taking food off of other people's plates.Sara Taher I see that I know. Yeah, I agree with it. It's just for me, as I said, I need that feeling of security. Maybe I know it's false. ButNick LeRoy hey, you know what, I was the first one to say, you know, I wrote the blog posts that a lot of people probably have read here about, you know, the false dichotomy of job security in a nine to five job, but the reality is, is in the right situation, you know, there are companies that are trying their best to be loyal and support, you know, their, their support staff, you know, and they're trying to and, you know, businesses hard. I think we especially saw that with COVID. But I think, freelancing on this, I think if there's anything that we're taking away from this is freelancing on the side, it allows you to just have more opportunity, you know, given you know what, someone who maybe doesn't have that?Sara Taher Definitely, yeah, definitely. And I use the income I get from that freelancing and taking courses if I need it, and buying go, like I bought two dropshipping websites to experiment with them last year. That sort of thing, right. Yeah. Because I mean, for me, I have a family and I need to make sure that I'm not touching that sort of because, like, I'm always on my phone. Why didn't you do me? You know, what are you doing? No worries. Don't worry. JustSara Taher one more small project, don't worry. Like, it's not like I'm buying Amazon or buying domains. And once you buy a domain, there's the whole project coming out of it. SoNick LeRoy oh, so I feel like talking about freelancing, there's a little bit of a chicken and egg, you know, obviously, you got to have the skill sets to be able to deliver. But you have to be able to kind of demonstrate it for people to be interested in you. And I kind of put that together with like a personal brand. And I know, you have a pretty, you know, big following. You're especially strong on LinkedIn, can you give us some tips, you know, if there's somebody that you know, let's just assume they're already and all star and SEO, they have this nine to five job, they're happy, but they want something a little bit more. But nobody outside of their clients, you know, at this agency or their in house Job knows about them? What recommendations would you give to start building that personal brand?Sara Taher Yeah, I would, first of all, I would tell them never copy anyone. It's not going to work because people want to connect with you as a person. I mean, if you copy the best performing posts from everyone, this is your not your that people will not see a person at the end of the day, like they will engage with your posts, you get engagements, but who are you? Because when I get people connecting with me, or people asking me questions, I do feel they know me, they've read, like, read few of my opinions, my personal opinions before and they're discussing them. But if you're copying posts that work, how would you discuss something that does not come out of your own experience? Like it's, it's not going to be really genuine. So don't copy anyone. Keep trying to find your voice, right? I kept trying different approaches. And then what worked for me is I write about something I'm working on at the problem or a challenge I came across. So that worked for me, because apparently it resonated with a lot of people. They're working on stuff and they come across similar things. And from there, I was like, Okay, what, what if I start SEO riddles, and I started that hashtag repost, head scratching, or why not sure. What's the right word? captures that people are like, okay, yeah, we never thought about it that way before. So you keep and if you look, even if when you go on LinkedIn, on Twitter, like I've recently stumbled upon Christina Zanku, talking about that, when she started, she was just giving a summary of Google's John John Miller's videos, she was just summarizing them and posting them on Twitter. So it can be something very simple, simple, doesn't have to be complicated, you're just, you know, making information more accessible to people. But if someone like comes today, and tries to start, for example, newsletter about latest and greatest in SEO, well, they're competing with Elida. And, you know, it's, I don't see there's a lot of potential there, for example. So be yourself, definitely keep trying to find your voice and find what you can bring that that people will connect with, right. And that's when you meet those people in real life or in events, they'll be talking to you about the things you've posted, that this is their image, the image, they have a view in their mind, and it's only gonna, like, when you build a personal brand you want people to, to remember you and connect with you, right? And the only way you do that is just finding what is working for you and then resonates with people.Nick LeRoy And I love that if I think I could sum up a lot of that in even one word, I would just say like, be authentic, like authenticity is huge. And I think you really captured one thing that I believe strongly and it's like, just put yourself out there like you, it's very vulnerable to go out there. Because I guarantee you and I hate this, if I could protect everybody from it, I would, you're going to hit a troll before you will hit a fan. There's going to be like I I tweet and I talk on LinkedIn, a lot about freelancing and something that I'm really passionate about. And as Sara and I had just talked about, like when you have some of the experiences that it sounds like we've had in some our nine to five roles, you know, it really makes you want to be an advocate for the topic, but I am regularly told that I glorify SEO or freelancing and that I don't talk about the bad things and you know that, you know, maybe I'm making things up. But really, it just comes down to put yourself out there anything that you assume somebody knows, you can't assume that because there's always gonna be somebody who's thinking about that just says too afraid to speak up.Sara Taher Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah.Nick LeRoy So So on that note, one thing that I get is, especially with some younger individuals I've been talking to lately, you know, I'll sit there and say like, we'll be at an event. And I'm like, You should throw on LinkedIn, you know, because they'll always look at like, My followers or something. And they'll say, Oh, I'd like to do that. And I'll go over to them and be like, Hey, that was like a really good nugget in that presentation, you should tweet that out or throw it on LinkedIn. And they look so puzzled. Like, they just have no clue where to even start, like, what did you do to kind of just, I guess, just, it's that start line? Like, what did you do just to start going?Sara Taher I just, you know, just do it, don't overthink it, do it and learn it as you do it. That's, that's the only way it can be done literally. Because if you keep planning and analyzing and overthinking, you will delay your start and may not start at all, then you can just think about, okay, how would I make this in like a short post, I would summarize or highlight that and they keep they post one time they see, okay, was this good or not, maybe next time, they you know, change the format a bit, and so on. But my advice is just to start executing don't overthink it. And so far, I've seen a lot of people that are like, a lot of people are nice, and will encourage you in your own network, right. And I like, even for me, like I've been trying to write this ebook for, like, 1000 years now. And I just said, don't know how to start and then actually took the day off to do this podcast with you. And to that, okay, I'm just gonna sit there and start, I'm just gonna write and whatever happens, you know, what's the worst thing that can happen? At least I'll know where, where's the challenges or why it cannot start. So just do it.Nick LeRoy I think that's fantastic. And honestly, there's like Nike. Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking they shouldn't have to sponsor this show for that. Just do it. And the only other thing that I could recommend is honestly, like, throw up a splash page, like, like, if you can buy your domain, you know, Nick leroy.com? Yeah, Sara, Dash taher.com. You know, put a picture of your face who you are in a contact form? Because you'd be surprised that you know, who's gonna reach out? Yeah, it was just on LinkedIn this morning. I got to know what that was, like, I liked one of your messages followed to your website, and I got to dig what you're doing. You know, let's talk and I have a call later today. Yeah, so it's like, just do it, you know, get up there, you know, just, you know, shoot your shot. So, so let's, let's move on a little bit more into what recommendations do you have for anyone that aspires to freelance and again, it doesn't have to be full time make up your whole salary, even if they want to do on the side? Job, particularly like a book newsletter, any courses that you've taken that you just think are, you know, really good for somebody to look into?Sara Taher Yeah, first of all, this podcast, they have to listen. That's the first thing. I would say also. Yes, so you don't necessarily need to wait for people to reach out to you. You may look, for example, for freelancing gigs, job posts on LinkedIn, for example, you may start to approach people just you know, be ready to answer their questions. Because they'll ask, okay, what what's your How does it work? What, what's the fees? Or what's the budget for that? So they have those questions, and you need to have those sort of sorted out. Because you don't want to give the impression that you don't know what you're doing. So that another thing I recently met another in house SEO, that's also freelancing on the side. And I was surprised when they told me they have four clients, because that's exactly the number of clients I can only that that's the maximum number of clients, like retainer clients that I can work with for months on the side on top of my without going being crazy or losing my mind that so keep that in mind and that you only can have four clients. Not necessarily that I mean, for me that this is a specific number of clients. So feel free to be picky. And I mean, it's not easy getting clients when you're starting, obviously, and even sometimes even now, it can be challenging. It's not always easy. There's a lot of great SEOs out there as well. But it's it's better to be picky and to work with people you know that you're interested in working with them. There's there they actually are ready to execute. And so you'll get some results that you can showcase, because that's one of the mistakes I did a while back. I He took on clients that I liked. I liked the businesses. But as we worked, I started to realize they are not ready to execute and recommendations started piling up. And I literally just had to tell them guys, in my mind, I'm sorry, I cannot continue taking your money. Because I mean, you're not ready to execute. Let's connect later when you're ready. So as I said, Because you have a limited, you don't want to overwhelm yourself and have no life at all. So be picky. Even if you don't have a lot of clients. Right from the start, make sure you're working with the right people that will help you have those case studies or something to showcase. It's it's not. So it's not just about the money if you really want to grow your freelance, it's also about having those stories to tell. Right? Right. So yeah, that those are two things. And I would say also, like I built, I started a small meetup monthly meet up with other SEOs. Some of them, one of them is in house. One is an agency owner, and then two are freelancing. And three are freelancing. Yeah. And we meet to discuss things and challenges and find yourself a small tribe like this, right? You need people to talk about any challenges you're facing. And you'll be surprised how much support you'll get. I personally forwarded a client, I did not have capacity to to one of the people in that group, right and find your friends or creative group of SEO friends that you meet with regularly, it will help you a lot.Nick LeRoy Yeah, you know, that last tip is phenomenal. I mean, honestly, that's very much how I have gotten some of my best clients, it's other individuals or agency owners that I know and have a relationship with, and they can't take it on. Or they may have a non compete, you know, with another client. And you know what, I'm a big proponent of never just saying, No, it's always no, but like, no, but I know somebody who I think might be a good fit, and I trust. So I think that's a huge tip. And I'm really glad that you made that recommendation.Sara Taher And yeah, one more thing, you don't need to wait for clients or find clients who want may want to start on your own affiliate website, or maybe, you know, buy a $500 existing affiliate website, and you have like, it's not like a fresh domain, it has some work done there. And you can try to make it grow. And that would be a small side gig till, and it would still help you to probably have a tiny bit of income, but at least you have stories to tell. As I said, Yeah.Nick LeRoy And you know, what the best part is about affiliate sites or ad revenue sites is if they don't work, you have nobody but yourself to say why they don't work. Whereas when you come from an agency side, or even on the freelance side, as Sara had said, sometimes people just aren't ready. They don't buy into it. You know, there's budget constraints, there's always a reason why it doesn't work. But the best part of an affiliate site is when it works, it's really validating that you know, your stuff. But when it doesn't work, you got to give two big old thumbs to yourself and say that as long as that work,Sara Taher yeah, and that's the stuff you've been sending to your clients, right. This is what they will be telling themselves. So this is what I've been telling my clients to do. And it's obviously it's not enough, right. So I literally, if what someone wants to start today, the easiest way is just an affiliate website. And don't overthink it. Just start you know. Yeah. Yeah,Nick LeRoy maybe you don't start with payday loans. But you do you prove me wrong. And come drive by me and your new Lamborghini. I'll be the first one to be drooling. Well, thank you, sir. I really appreciate you joining us today. I think this has been a fantastic conversation. For anybody that wants to find you online connect with you reach out, can you tell us the best way? Yeah,Sara Taher they can either reach out through my website, Zara hyphen, doll hair.com or LinkedIn. I'm easy to find on hashtag SEO riddles, or just search for Serato here and hopefully I'll pop up.Nick LeRoy Fantastic. And I'll make sure to put all those links below in the show transcript. But Sara, thank you again so much for joining us. Again, all these notes are going to be available as well as this recording on the SEO freelancer.comSara Taher Thank you so much. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seofreelancer.substack.com

Get notified when any new episodes of TheSEOFreelancer podcast go live Introducing Kristine SchachingerKristine Schachinger is a veteran of the SEO industry that has talked at numerous conferences and written for many of the top industry websites.In today’s podcast episode, Kristine and I talk about her career starting in front-end dev/design and transitioning into SEO. Kristine further shares a story where her freelance client took her to the district court attempting to sue her for $10,000.00. You’ll have to listen to the full episode to hear what happened!Kristine’s Resource Recommendations* find smart people to network with - ask questions and seek advice!How to connect with Kristine Schachinger onlineConnect with Kristine on LinkedInConnect with Kristine on TwitterThis Months Sponsor: SEOChatter.comDo you want to jump into SEO freelancing?But not sure if you’re good enough to make it work?At SEOChatter.com you can get the expert training you need to succeed for free.SEO Chatter is one of the fastest-growing sites in our industry that teaches every aspect of SEO. You'll find hundreds of free guides on keyword research, on-page optimization, link building, and more to help you maximize any website's rankings and traffic.Visit SEOChatter.com to see it for yourself. And click the subscribe button to get your free SEO training gift.If you are a freelancer interested in joining me on a future episode of The SEO Freelancer podcast Please email me directly at [email protected] TranscriptionNick LeRoy  00:14welcome to the SEO Freelancer podcast. I'm your host, Nick LeRoy. Today I sit down and talk with Kristine check injure to discuss her freelance SEO journey, as well as a unique situation she was in, in which one of her freelance clients had attempted to sue her for $10,000. She'll discuss this in more detail as well as what her actual out of pocket expenses were at the end. Before we jump into this conversation, let's have a quick note from our sponsor, Seo chatter.com. Do you want to jump into SEO freelancing, but not sure you're good enough to make it work? At Seo chatter.com You can get the extra training you need to succeed for free. SEO Chatter is one of the fastest growing sites in our industry that teaches every aspect of SEO, you'll find hundreds of free guides on keyword research on page optimization, link building, and more to help you maximize your website's rankings and traffic. Visit Seo chatter.com to see for yourself and click subscribe button to get your free SEO Training gift. Go to SEO chatter.com today. Thanks again to our sponsor, Seo chatter.com. And now let's jump into this month's conversation. Hey, Kristine, thanks again for joining me today. Thank you for having me. So for those that don't know, Kristine, she has been in the SEO industry what feels like forever, you know, probably before I had joined, and I've been around forever, as well. But she's spoken at most, if not all of the large conferences, any conferences that she hasn't spoken for, she's probably read articles that you've read. And you know, she's definitely a fan favorite on Twitter and the rest of the social media. So, again, thanks for joining. And Kristine would love for you to just give a quick introduction on top of what I had just shared.Kristine Schachinger  02:10Sure, that was very nice. I didn't know I was a Twitter fan favorite. I started longer than I care to remember actually, as a front end designer developer, before I got into SEO, and I was working for a company in Vegas, and I was bored with my skill set. So I had read about this SEO thing is like 2004 2005. And we were spending two or 3 million a year on Google clicks for you know, ads, and we weren't doing anything with SEO. So I asked my boss if I could do it. And she said, sure. But this new agency we've been using is doing it right now. But they've made some sort of error. If you can figure out the error, I'll let you do it. And I figured out the error. And so she let me do it. So that's how I got into SEO. So and then I went word SEO work all the skill sets until about 2008. Nine when I went out on my own. So and then I still did front end development and design and stuff too. But WordPress kind of killed anyone wanting to pay me to code their website. So so I just went full, almost full time SEO, I still do some of the other things in small amounts, you know, for small clients, but it's primarily us you.Nick LeRoy  03:24Well, and that's awesome. So you had mentioned previously working for a company and kind of taking on the SEO before then. So was it literally one company one role that included SEO? And then you went out to freelance or did you have other like full time SEO roles in between?Kristine Schachinger  03:41You know what, before I went out to freelance, I didn't start freelancing as an SEO. So I started freelancing as a as just whatever projects that my skill set and they paid me for, like my first recoating, the front end of superpages.com. So I recoated their HTML from like, 50,000 lines to like 2000 lines, and yeah, so that was like my first freelance project. So but I think as a freelancer, often if you're a generalist, it's good because you can take on projects based on the market. You know, so at the, at the time, SEO wasn't something that a lot of companies were paying people to do. And I wasn't like a rock star, you know, like some of the guys like Bowser and, you know, Sugar Ray who do like affiliate marketing and like Blackhat and stuff, it was just like, hey, I do this for you. But I can also do SEO and they're like, cool, so. So I was actually so I was actually working at a company when I went freelance. So I started in adding SEO as a skill set in 2004 2005. And I cut my teeth on the Vegas, hospitality industry. So it was a pretty aggressive place to start, which was good. So I learned a lot. But then I became the director or where it was a startup so I had like, multiple titles. But for the bill Have a startup's website. So she included everything from SEO to accessibility to, you know, proper development requirements, things like that. And then that environment burnt me out, because I was working 100 hours a week, like sleeping in my chair and getting up at 6am. I'm starting to work again at the office. Like, that's crazy. It was. So So I had gotten the superpages dot job. And they, when they went to pay me, sorry, I'm probably elaborating too much here. But just real quick, so and then when to pay me. I quoted like 70 an hour, and they're like, the person I knew the person there who wanted to premium for it. And he's like, they're never hire you at that. And I'm like, what that's like the standard rate for, you know, a contract, you get a company that goes, No, it's too cheap. I'll trust you put a one in front of that. And I'm like, what? A one, right? Why would you charge? Why?Nick LeRoy  05:50hourly rate? No way?Kristine Schachinger  05:54No, it's normal, right. But back then I was like, what? So I did. And we settled around 135 an hour, and my boss was burnt out from that company. And he was not pleasant to work for anymore. And he was just really ugly one day and, and I really liked the guy, but it was just the environment was just killing me. So I wrote my mentor and SEO and I said, Hey, should I jump ship? And they're like, I can't tell you what to do. But you have that 135 hour job right now. So it'd be really good time to do it. So I just jumped. SoNick LeRoy  06:22I love it. So at that point, was it was that jumping to was that when you start doing that additional freelance work? Or were you just taking an hourly gig, but with the expectation that you're working 40 hours for that? No, I,Kristine Schachinger  06:35I took it to jump. Yeah, I took the gig. And then I knew that would give me like six months of money I put in the bank, because living in Vegas at the time was pretty inexpensive. And, and so I could use that to launch I was not one who ever thought they would do consulting. Sure, or freelance, I thought I'd always work for a company. But when I had that opportunity, I was like, you know, maybe we should try this for a little while.Nick LeRoy  07:00It's fine that you say that because little quick story about myself when I was in college, I remember they had just opened up like a new entrepreneurship like degree that you could get within the business school. And I remember walking by and like sticking my head in and just being like, these guys that do fusses like, we're gonna start a company and do this, I'm gonna go work for some company for 30 years and cash my check. So the fact that turned around, and now I'm a pretty big proponent of working by yourself. Those are probably the classes that I should have been in, who knows what they were learning or what value they were, it's gonna be kind of like taking SEO courses in college, it's only going to add so much value. A tangent there, but just very appropriate, given what you're saying. But Christina, you know, so you've had this, all these experiences, you truly were a Jill of all trades, you know, you had been able to do everything from the coding to SEO when it first started. But can you tell us, you know, what precautions did you take once you were making that decision to become a consultant? Or freelance? And were you saving in advance for that? Or did you kind of just jump into it and go crazy.Kristine Schachinger  08:16Contrary to my contradictory to my entire personality, I just jumped into it and tried to swim. So I wouldn't advise do I go defensive?Nick LeRoy  08:27On my approach, I was I mean, I ended up getting canned. And that's why I had to do it on my own. But I've been very defensive and building up those savings blocks. So as I keep talking to more and more people, I love hearing just the guts that these people have to choose, you know, people sometimes will say, Nick, I can't believe you did it. It's like, well, Whoa, let's be clear, I kind of got pushed out of a window. And then I landed in like the freelance world. But there are people like Kristine, that are saying, To heck with you, I'm gonna do this on my own. SoKristine Schachinger  08:57if I didn't have that contract, I never would have done it. So it was a six week, 135 40 hours a week contract, which meant I knew I was covered at least for three to six months. If I didn't get anything else, right. I knew my bills were covered. So I do always tell people when people ask like, what's the number one thing I need to know about going out on my own? And people give them all sorts of learning advice and stuff like that. And I'm saying no. I won't say the swear word, because I don't know where this is shown. But the old Howard Stern, have your fu money? Yep. Because you have to be able to choose your clients. And if you don't have that money in the bank, and you know, your bills are covered for the next at least two or three months, then you take clients that you shouldn't take because you're desperate. And those are the worst clients always to have they use up all your time and your resources and stuff like that.Nick LeRoy  09:46I love that. You said that. I've had a blog post that's three quarters of the way done and I'll just say it's called like the benefits of f**k you money. And as you know, it's not about millions of dollars in the bank. What it Is is enough to where you can say no to somebody, because it's gonna be a beneficial or an add to your life versus subtracting. And, you know, the first probably year and a half I didn't have I didn't say yes to a lot of things. I even had my own story, you know about a bad experience because I told someone No. And they convinced me to say yes, and end up being very much not worth my time, and I gave him half his money back. I only experienced so far freelancing. But honestly, like now, you know, when you have that fu money, the ability to say no, really just empowers you to take the best clients, and you're not competing on dollars. Because once you start competing on dollars, you've lost the race as well, my opinion. So thankKristine Schachinger  10:45you, I agree, you can, you can charge what you're worth and not and have to, to take some job for half of what you know, you should be paying that you're resenting by the end, because, you know, you never should have chicken in the first place.Nick LeRoy  10:56Absolutely, if you're gonna ever cut costs, do it, because you really are just like, you know, super into a particular company or a nonprofit, you know, where you're gonna be able to do some good for this world, it's like, don't do it just because someone else is being cheap and wants to make more money off of your services.Kristine Schachinger  11:13Also, something else boss told me at the time, which I ignored, my first couple years in which I do not anymore, is never do work for free. Because if you want to give somebody your work, because you believe in the nonprofit or something great at the very end when you give them the bill, and then you say I take up 100% He's like, but never give it for free. And I ignored that as a new I was like, oh, you know, I can do this for free, I'll do this little extra work for free, which always turned into a disaster because it was never properly vetted out or, you know, requirements weren't done well or whatever. But never give work for free. Just don't do. It's not an easy way into clients and easy way into a bad client or a bad client relationship. Because even the nicest people in the world when they don't pay for the work or something psychologically, that makes the value of the work seem lower. SoNick LeRoy  12:01I don't know if you've read the book, because have you by chance read million dollar consulting by Alan Weiss?Kristine Schachinger  12:07I haven't? Um, sounds like, well, so that's oneNick LeRoy  12:10of his things as well. And honestly, it was Eli Schwartz who had told me to read that book. And yeah, I know, it's not his book, but his book is great, too. But that was like the one thing when I talked to I'm not a huge reader, myself, but he said, if you're going to be freelance for any period of time, make sure you read it. And that's one thing that Allen says he's like, it's okay to give your skill set away and write certain circumstances, but like, don't do it for free as and you're not showing the value or heavily discount, you know, your offerings is like, make the scope proportionate to where they want to reduce spend. And it's fair because yeah, it's like, if let's just say, hypothetically, you're charging $1,000 per project, and they say their budget is 500, don't just say you'll do it and do the full scope, have them better understand what half the scope actually looks like. And then at that point, make them make the decision because more times than not, they're gonna go back and pay the original fee. But a lot of people don't say that. So I think that's just another one of those things. Like if you want to talk about like some some mantras, or opportunities just to be like, more powerful from a consulting standpoint, you know, it's like, don't don't work for free. Or if you do make sure that you are communicating the value and don't take like a partial payment, either take, make it like a donation, you know, or charge full. And then that after you fund it truly is the most powerful thing. And I don't I can't speak for you, Kristine, but I don't have a gold mine and I my backpack, I just, you know, have enough to be able to say no, which is incredibly powerful.Kristine Schachinger  13:49Yeah. And then just one last thing I would suggest, before we move on is years ago, it's a very long, detailed, funky story on why I got stiffed on $13,000. But and included the criminal history of the person paying me which I didn't know about. And anyway, they I talked to my friend who worked at Cisco as a manager, you know, as a director. She's like, why are you getting postpaid? And I go, Well, that's how you always get paid, right? She's like, No, she says, You don't post pay, you get prepaid. And then like, prepaid, like, people are gonna pay me ahead. She goes, yes. If they're not willing to pay you ahead, you do not want them as a client. And I said, okay, and I've done that ever since. And now there's some things like an audit, I might do half upfront and a half. I think it's very short time period. But there's no postepay there's no pay me 90 days ahead away. Like if companies like we have a 90 day pay for him, I'm like, well, then I'll start in 90 days because I'm not waiting for somebody to pay me because sometimes you think like, it's a big company, so you're safe. I worked with one of the biggest companies in the world. And it was a $2,000 payment and it took me 10 months of chasing it down to get the payment. So So, so some people like hourly, I don't. But there are ways to do hourly on a prepaid like maximum hours if we don't use them all roll them over for one month or something. But prepaid retainers are really the way to go.Nick LeRoy  15:13Yeah. And Chris, yeah, I'm glad you brought that up, too, because that's just another topic that we have yet to cover yet, either on the blog or this podcast. But, you know, the idea of just like, how do you charge you know, there's obviously the hourly, there's retainer, and then there's like value based pricing to, you know, everybody obviously wants to get as close to value based and as far away from hourly as humanly possible. But I think what you're mentioning, the pre pay, post pay is a big conversation, I've even found myself getting stuck kind of in the middle, you all do a lot of Bill halfway through the month. And if I don't get paid by the end of the month, I don't start the next month. But that still allows myself that's what I personally am okay, with potentially, and I'm giving air quotes right now, you know, losing. It's what I feel comfortable doing it. And, Christina, as you have alluded to, I know you've worked with large brands too. But I tend to focus more on enterprise level clients, and a lot of them have a lot of net payments that are just crazy. And by the way, those are totally negotiable. So always push those. But but you know, so there are times, you know, I've had that 45, but says I'm going to, I told I'm going to bill, you know, day one. So I'm going to invoice you in advance. So even if I don't necessarily get paid before day one, you know, there's just my point being is that there's a lot of ways toKristine Schachinger  16:31do it. Yeah. And I will do like if they say we're net 45, and they can't get accounting to change that, then we'll go ahead. And we may start some of the preliminary stuff that doesn't take a lot of time and effort. But it's still I still won't start without the payment of at least at least out of new clients 70% down or on a existing client 50% down.Nick LeRoy  16:51Yep, no, I like it. I think that's a really important, Christina walked out. Have you on the show again to talk about that? It's no, no, I love that conversation. I'd love to dive more into it. But I think we have an equally as exciting conversation today, because Christina is here. But for everybody who's listening, I reached out to Kristine based off of some recommendations she had given me that I flat out ignored if I'm being completely honest, I had just started out as a freelancer. And Christina and I happened to be in a group of individuals talking together, I can't remember exactly what it was, I think was one of those like COVID happy hours, you know, back when people used to actually do it. And everybody, including Kristine has been super nice talking to me about how freelance slack was going, you know, you know, how's everything going, you know, what questions do they have anything that can do to be helpful? And what are for some reason we got into the conversation and Christina das Hey, do you have like errors and omissions insurance or any business insurance? And I said, No, and I'm kind of smug and thinking to myself, I only do good work, and my clients love me. It's not going to be an issue. And I don't think Christina even told me the story at this point, but had mentioned, you know, that's just something you might really want to consider. I personally ran into a situation where, if I remember correctly, errors and omissions were not necessarily solved this one, but it was a legal issue that has popped up. And I when I wanted to talk more about this topic, I naturally went to Kristine to see if she'd be willing to one so I could publicly kind of flogged myself for being arrogant, smug, because I really went and got insurance shortly after she had told me back in the day. But I think there's a big story here to be able to share with the listeners here. So Christina, if you don't mind, I'll hand it over to you share us a little bit of what clients do. Did they really sue you? How did this work? Yeah.Kristine Schachinger  18:50Now, this wasn't an SEO con. This was a website, build client design and build. And I had gotten that company I left you know, with jumped into freelance. It was not it was probably about a year after that. So I had a super duper $600 An hour contract that he had given me if I ever needed it. And so I use that superduper 600 hours super contract like 30 pages. And in that contract, it said if you were not giving me what I needed to complete the project, and I made excommunications over x time, then I could walk away from the project. And this was someone who was just extremely difficult to work with. And they were totally that organized. They didn't know what they wanted. They weren't giving me the things I needed and I had waited 45 or 60 days. For the next part. Remember back then I wasn't doing prepay. So I was doing paid on completion of sections of the site. I couldn't get the payment because we weren't completing if she wasn't giving me the stuff I needed to doNick LeRoy  19:51for one second regardless whether you do the pre pay or post pay, never have it be tied to anything where it's completion on a a customer's action. Yeah, whether it be immigration or an audit or anything like this, because I think where you're going at is.Kristine Schachinger  20:08It's really true. All my audits are due on five days after delivery. Delivery up. Yeah, nothing else. Yeah. So yeah, so I was new, I didn't understand all those things that people will do, because I'm like a decent person think people be decent. And you know, of course, always case. So the original contract was like, for 7500, or something, and I dropped her. And she didn't have a website, because I dropped her. And I couldn't keep waiting for payment, I needed to get new work. And so when I did that, I think she was afraid I was going to sue her for the remaining payment. Because I had done all that work up to that point, I was just waiting for her for the payment. And so she sued me for $10,000 in district court. And so in small claims, you don't need a lawyer, that small claims is basically just a magistrate, you go in front of them, you present both sides of the case, and they make a determination. When you go over 10,000. In my state, every state is different. Now you're in district court, and you can represent yourself, but you're stupid if you do, and you have to get a lawyer. So I got a lawyer, and the fee was going to be about $10,000, by the time we were done. And if I lost, I could also the person $10,000. And so fortunately for me, I keep excessive documentation. Something I learned about back when I worked in corporations, and a friend always told me make sure you document everything. So if you ever have a problem with HR, or VP, or somebody who never deals with you, that you can produce everything you need related to a project. So I brought in the documentation lawyers like oh, my gosh, she worked with her, what three months? How do you have this much documentation, but I had every thing we communicated, I summarized every phone call we had and send it back to her. I had every email, you know, and it's really important. That's the biggest thing you can do to protect yourself is have that documentation and when things are done in phone calls, not recorded, summarize what you said and send it back to them and ask them to like reply that they received it so that that way you can prove in court, you did tell them this, they did get that information. So So anyway, so I wind up in district court. And I'm like I wasn't an original quote from the lawyer of 10,000. It just was kept going. And unfortunately, all my documentation, I had the effects of the contract and effects and the contract had the dates on the headers on the printout, right? Well, she had four should probably change the contract after sending it to her. And they could, yeah, and because hers didn't have the effect setters, they knew that it wasn't the real contract. So I got very fortunate that the lawyer took that to the judge, and he dismissed the entire case, because you can't base the case on a fraudulent piece of evidence. And that's what she was doing. Unfortunately, in the state of Nevada, the only way to get your money back is to go into court and have it heard. And the lawyers like I would probably win, but we could get a bad judge and you may not win, do you have another $10,000? Because that's what's going to cost? You know, and I can charge your my fees if we win, but if not, you're out 10 $20,000Nick LeRoy  23:15Right. So regardless, yeah. KristineKristine Schachinger  23:21said she was really honest with me, you know, and I made the decision, I would eat the $10,000. But that $10,000 Remember that contract I had and I put all that money away. That was my, that was my fu money. She took all my fu money. So after, after that happened, I had to take whatever client I could get. And there were some really not good clients and they're really stressing me out and were very difficult to work with. And but but the point about that is what I learned from it was one documentation is awesome. Because had I not had that documentation. Had I not used effects had I not made sure there was something with timestamps on it with the important pieces of information, then I would have lost right because she had a lawyer that she was her boyfriend was a lawyer by the way.Nick LeRoy  24:05Yeah, actually paying for her legal fees like you areKristine Schachinger  24:10so she wanted to charge me the money to pay somebody else to build a new website.Nick LeRoy  24:13Yeah. Clarification I was gonna ask so she was basically claiming that probably because of the not deliverable because you dropped her as a client given your contract and what was stipulated in there you could do she basically was saying because she was out of that time you know, website it was gonna cost her 10 grand to build the website and now this is your cost for dropperKristine Schachinger  24:37exactly but on the other thing my lawyer told me to at the end of this was no that contract I said this $600 An hour lawyer contract 30 pages. She's like Don't ever do this again. Like why she goes everything in here something to see on every single thing. So she's like, she's like, make sure you have like in a statement of work like You know, do dates, things like that, as attached to a contract, make your contract as simple as possible. If it's more than two or three pages, it's too long. You don't want to give them things to sue on. And if they write it, then it benefits you. Because there's a thing in law about whoever writes the contract, obviously, he's writing it in their benefit, right. So there's a, there's a little bit of leeway for you in there for there to be error. But so that was the other big thing I learned. So I have never had a contract that I've written since then it's more than like two pages, and then a statement of work that's attached to it, that tells them what's going to be done.Nick LeRoy  25:31And Christy, I love that because, you know, this is shows again, someone on my audio, I've been doing SEO for a long time, but I've done the business, the freelance side of it for going on three years now, because I literally just got done talking with my lawyer, that's like $450 an hour. And I sent him my two page agreement, which is basically a a scope, plus a small standard used an SLA service level agreement. And I told him, I was like, you're probably gonna laugh at this, it's kind of a hodgepodge of some agreements, I found online and some other friends that I have, but look at it, like, tell me where I am causing issues. And he literally responded and said, This is fine. He goes, this is what you need to do. He goes, whenever you create your scope, your goal is to make sure that you have the least amount of requirements and like deadlines. And your customers should always be going for an extensive list. And that's where you're gonna win or lose, quote, unquote, you know, within your agreement. So it's really interesting how that works. Because I think a lot of us coming from the business side, you know, we see the $600 an hour contracts, the other 800 pages in length, and we assume that that's what you need. And you're kind of, you know, you're pretending and you're fake it till you make it, you know, as a freelancer or consultant. So, you know, that was a very interesting experience Amaya. That's great to hear, Kristine, you have.Kristine Schachinger  27:01She's like, No, the other thing I tell anybody, especially if you're new and you don't have much money, is you can go to a lawyer and ask for a consulting hour. So you can go to them and lay out your issue. And they will give you advice as whether you know what you need to do? Do you need them what your next steps are, things like that without fully hiring them with a retainer. So in this case, I needed to fully hire because we went to district but if this was in small claims, I might have just paid her, you know, 250 an hour, one or two hours to get her legal advice on what I needed to do in court. And the other thing I tell people is laws, your friend, if you know what it is, law is not your friend, if you don't. So if you're in a situation where someone is suing you, like I was, do not attempt to do it yourself. There were things that she told me that I didn't know I needed to do. And I can't remember all the details right now. But I know there are certain things like the emails and things I had to produce that the courts will accept. And it's usually not common sense. So like, oh, I can do it. It's not that big a deal. You know, I have my emails, whatever. But if you don't have that lawyer saying, No, this is how you have to present it, this is what they need to see, this is what they need to know, this is what the judge will listen to. And you can get that from a consultation, if it's not a big deal case, you're in small claims or something. If you're a district, like I was in every state, it's different. What's in small claims, what's in District, it's usually $1 amount. You can also go to the lawyer though and get a consultation. And they can tell you whether you really need to retain them or not. Usually they make enough money that they're not like, Hey, I'm gonna get this freelancers, cash, right. So usually be pretty honest with you and say, you know, you really don't need me, you can review your contract, and you know, you can't be reviewed this or I'll advise you. Or they'll say, you know, we're gonna have to go to court, so you're probably gonna want a lawyer.Nick LeRoy  28:43Right. But and that's amazing advice. And, Kristine, you might agree with me here. I think as a service provider, especially on the SEO side of things, we know that those details are so important, you know, even things like an XML sitemap, you know, we think it's pretty straightforward that every page should go in there until it's, you know, doesn't include a canonical tag or it's, you know, but things that, you know, we as practitioners and people who are even listening, you know, they're pretty obvious, but I assume that's kind of how it is on the legal side, and pretty much any other niche that we are experts in. So if there's one thing that I've learned to appreciate, as I've been going out and charging for my skill set is making sure that I'm not trying to do things that, you know, I'm just not, you know, have any expertise in and legal would be one of those.Kristine Schachinger  29:33Yeah, and then the other thing, like you said, is to get omissions, insurance errors and omissions. So it's a little hard to sue in our industry based on you made an SEO error because it's a black box, and they're never gonna be able to get Google to tell them what that is. But you could let's say I did an audit for a very large investment firm in the country and they wanted to see about acquiring a site and that's They decided not to. And six months later, that's like I've hit by a core update. That was one of the ones that were talked about. And I had said that they could be in the audit. But let's say I didn't catch that, and they purchased it. And then they come back on me and say, part of what we purchased. This one is your audit, and you did not tell us they were subjected to a core update issue. And that can be made a case of import, because core update issues are talked about by Google, right, and there's analysis of them. And so if I missed obvious things, so errors and omissions insurance will help cover any chances someone can lean back on you for something like that.Nick LeRoy  30:40But and this in itself could be a whole nother topic. And I never thought about till now is like when you are doing an audit or an assessment of a type of site, you know, what kind of things you should be in there just to kind of protect us as SEOs, because like you said, we can't do anything about algorithm updates. I mean, even core updates, you know, we kind of have an idea at the highest level, you know, what could or could not be impacted? But really, it's just until that next component that we're not yet thinking about? Part of it. So that'd be interesting. But I won't go into that today. Again, you know, we'll have to have you on for a third time to talk about that.Kristine Schachinger  31:19Yeah, I want to I do put this at the end of all my documentation, all my audits is a disclaimer, that basically, I can only know as much as we know, this is my best, basically educated guess. And Google's a black box. So it is incorrect. You cannot blame me. I mean, basically,Nick LeRoy  31:35nope. So I'm super glad, because my next question was going to be basically, from all this experience, you know, how has it impacted your affiliate freelance work, legal contracts, insurance, yada, yada. And you kind of stole the one that I have, you know, within my two page agreement, I do have a line item. And that's the only thing I told my, my lawyer, I said, you can change anything in here, but I will not have anybody sign this or I will not work towards a loss, this is involved. And it's more or less what you would secrecy and basically says, You cannot hold me accountable for organic search performance based on the fact that it's a proprietary algorithm that Google or other search engines will not display or disclose. So it's a little bit of a burden, but more so on the people signing the contract to the customers, because they're basically saying we're gonna pay you regardless whether you do a good job or not. But from our perspective, always, like in our job to kind of like the the weather people, you know, she could be talking about how it's gonna be raining tomorrow. And we all know, at least here in Minnesota, if they say it's going to rain, it, it's not going to rain, if they say it's going to be a sunny, beautiful day, it's going to be a hot, muggy, you know, with with rain, there's just no way that you can guarantee those type of recommendations. So just kind of building off of that tangent, Christina, I'm just curious, again, with all these experiences, and appreciate you sharing your story, you know, what type of things would you do? What have you done now to kind of protect yourself? And what would you recommend to other individuals that either are freelancing or would want to freelance in the future.Kristine Schachinger  33:17And back to the original thing, make sure you have your fu money because one if you ever need a lawyer, and you have money to pay one, but also because then you choose your clients. And one of the ways I vet clients is I don't do any SEO long term work without an audit first. Now this won't work for everybody. That's how I do it. And that audit time, I determined whether they're a difficult client, whether the litigious client, whether they're easy to work with hard to work with clear on communication, you know, are they sticklers for what they said and ignoring maybe they didn't, whatever it happens to be. So it gives me really good feel for the client. And if I don't feel that the client is a good fit, and when they could cause me trouble is just in general, you know, bad headaches every day because of the way they handle things. I just don't take them on as a full time client. So we do the audit and that everyone I haven't taken on as a full time client is for that reason, a lot of clients so there's just not a fit for me and the work that they need. But that being said, it's a really good way if you can find something you can do a preliminary effort that you can get paid for don't do it for free. That allows you to assess the client relationship with the client themselves, then that helps because then you don't get in a situation with someone who's likely to see you alright, because that's a big part of it is people who are likely to see you most people aren't litigious in nature. But there are people that are and so you'll know from working with that client are they really just a we call I call it a PETA pain in the arse. There's a PETA fee if you're going to be difficult client you're gonna cost more because you're gonna make me do a lot more work for the same result.Nick LeRoy  34:53And KristineI will speak for myself but I bet I can almost guarantee this will be a true for you. It's always the client that you You make an exception or cut your rate or do something as a favor every single time. It's like without a doubt that I have paid with the highest retainers the things that are probably even though I'm just the highest, like the highest of high, I've never had anyone ever be at that level. Worked on the minimumKristine Schachinger  35:22is very true. And I had a, I've had that issue. Yeah, it's like the stuff I did for free, extra stuff to help to be a good resource for them. It always blew up in my face, always love them asNick LeRoy  35:34well. And I think like you said, it's really tied to, you know, that perceived value, I think you and I think logically, if I'm doing this for free, or very discounted, that your expectations should be really low, therefore, you almost can't be unhappy. And what I've tried to explain to a lot of people, at least in the freelance world, too, is like, you also very likely don't want to work with people where your SEO investment is like their entire marketing investment, because they simply just can't wait for SEO to work. And those are the people that are gonna get really upset about their two 300 bucks a month or 500 bucks a month. It just SEO is not the right solution for them at that time. And a lot of SEOs, whether it be agencies or consultants are really bad, and they'll continue to sell that. And that's just a really bad relationship for both sides, it's going to be a lose lose for everyone.Kristine Schachinger  36:27It is another type of people, you just can't please You know, I'm, I tried to be as frictionless as possible for clients, I work with them on all sorts of levels, and I need to change engagement, we change it, I mean, don't even have long term contracts. And most of them, they can get out at most months, and with 30 days notice, you know, and so I don't have much friction with clients, it's very rare. But when I do, it's always that kind of situation.Nick LeRoy  36:49Because he I do love that you brought out like the out clause, because that was the other the only other thing that was contentious with my lawyer, I literally don't have to change it, this is fine. Make sure you keep your scope as limited as possible. And he also says you need to remove this out clause, like 30 to 60 days, he's like you want people to get you to sign this contract, and they owe you legally the money. And I said I clearly understand what you're saying. And if I was probably a better quote unquote, businessman to maximize dollars, that'd be the case. But I have no interest in working with individuals that don't want to work with me. So I do the same thing. I do require a contract most the time, I'll do like six months at a pop. But I think only for like one client and I put them at like 60 days, but most of them I have it 30 days, just because simply if this isn't working, you know, I? I don't want to work for you if you don't want to work with me and vice versa. That's just Yeah,Kristine Schachinger  37:45exactly. And I do have some longer term contracts with like the migration project, I say, because that's going to take six months to a year and actually turned into almost two years. So if dropping me in the middle would cause a bad result for them and for for, you know them ever working with me again, because it wouldn't go the way this thought it should. So I do have some like three months or six months, but there are SEO companies, like I've met some of their clients not knowing I was an SEO and they're like, we're stuck in this two year relationship. We hate these people, we want to work with them, but we can't get out of the contract. Like I said, I don't want to be that person. Why do I want to work with you if you hate working with me, but I do need notice that you're leaving so I can replace you. So 30 days 60 days notice is fine. So I find it makes the relationship easier, because I just know they can get out if the things don't work. But if it is something like I'm doing off site recovery, well then there might be a six month contract because we know the update has to run again before you know before they will see any results. So there are there are some time limits but I'm trying not to trap anybody into it and like you said all those also have like 30 or 60 days outs after an initial period of like three months or something.Nick LeRoy  38:51Yeah, I mean, it's just like I think education is one of the biggest opportunities we have just on this SEO space. I think there's a lot of agencies and you know freelancers that make their money by quote unquote trapping people and you know, it sounds like for you that's not really how you want to be known. That's not how I want to be known. So I think that's just one way from the legal side again, you know, it goes away a little bit that's more us trying to be good people and protecting what the best interests for our clients. But going back to the other side when it comes to protecting a freelancer or even say an agency owner you know, we talked about the the fu money you know from the legal side is making sure that we have the bases down you know if you can get a simple scope great. But let's touch base real quick just on the the insurance again, because I think this goes full circle from you know, here's Nick thinking he's doing pretty good on his own year one, rolling his eyes, Christina and one other woman that was kind enough to help me was saying do you might want to just invest in this. Curious on your perspective, is there any sort would have insurance or business coverage that you typically invest in would recommend for somebody that's realizing,Kristine Schachinger  40:06no, but just because I carry a lightweight of overhead, so the omissions and errors really covered, because of what we do, if I was doing website builds, that might be different, because there's whole sorts of like, my dad helps design hospitals. And there's all sorts of things he can be sued on based on a design error, right. So that would be different. If I was still building websites would be different. With SEO, you know, it's a black box, there's limited things that they can sue on. So as long as you didn't make an error or an omit something that needed to be done, then there's really not much ground legal ground unless it's just failure to perform. But there's your business covered for thatNick LeRoy  40:46kind of goes hand in hand with people that want to see what they want to see at that point.Kristine Schachinger  40:50Yeah, exactly. If people are litigious and coming after you they're litigious and coming after you, there's not not a whole lot you can do there's just limited insurance. And the question is, the clients you have or that type. Now, if I was dealing with like, the massive, whatever fund manager had none of their hedge funds, I forget. But anyway, they're very big name, buying companies. And I was doing that all the time, that I would probably have much heftier insurance because I have a lot of lawyers, and they're very wealthy, and they can see me out of existence. So I always carry more weight. But generally, the clients I'm dealing with, they're not interested in suing, they would just fire me if they didn't like me, let alone, you know. So I think it also depends on the type of client you're working with.Nick LeRoy  41:29Yeah, and I think you did nail it, you know, I, in a previous full time job worked for a marketing company that did SEO exclusively for lawyers. And so I've spent many, many, many, many hours talking to lawyers, and legal and Sue is their middle name, and people. So it's like, for me personally, I know a lot of great lawyers and a lot of agencies that do great work for lawyers. I don't take them. And just that's not worth it, you know, when you want to tell them bad information or be controversial? Or say, No, I'm just not interested in the back pocket card being I'm going to sue you. Yeah. I do think on the insurance side, from my perspective, my personal insurance, I get like $500,000 of coverage for like 60 bucks a month or 49 bucks, whatever it is. And I think it's just more of I can't recall if we talked about this in the interview, or if we talked about offline, but just even with audits, you know, if somebody were to ever say that something were omitted, or they decide that something should have been in there that isn't, and now they're hit by a penalty. Again, I think, really back to what you had said, Christy, I think it's talking about the type of clients and people that you're working with, they aren't going to sue you or not so you because you have it. But I do think it's worthwhile. And I will say I do actually have one client. And it wasn't a big deal for me because I had it but they stipulated that the only way they would work with me is if I had an errors and omissions coverage. And we kind of went back and forth because actually they asked for a lot of money in that coverage. And I kind of just said, this is what I got take or leave it. And we settled. But you know, it may also just open up some opportunities for some larger companies if they are truly looking to provide themselves as much safety as possible as well.Kristine Schachinger  43:20That touches on a point to that. I don't know any personally, I don't know, personally, anyone who's had this happen, but I did do some reading on it. Like what amount do you get? Well, you think I should get the most possible, right? No, because like let's say that hedge fund bought this company and they went down and they want to recoup some of their loss. They know you have this insurance, they'll come after you right. So there's a balance between like coverage and target coverage, where if you have too much coverage, the company may decide they want to recoup some of their loss for you. So, so generally, they advise 1 million or less in errors and omissions for for the kind of stuff we do like, like for my dad, I think his policies in the millions, but he's helping to build hospitals. That's a different story.Nick LeRoy  44:07And that would make perfect, because I think the company that I am currently working with when we were doing that they were asking for 2 million, and I had 500 But I thought I only had 250. So I went back and said I'm willing to walk away from this deal. I have 250 which should be more than enough to account for anything I would possibly happen, especially since you have like an in house SEO team. I said however, I understand that I am willing to amend this to have that be a requirement. But I literally did say for me personally it was that was kind of my fu part. It's like I didn't need to take that I didn't have to go back and for x my my errors and omissions, and they came back and said okay, we can make that work. So I guess it's just something to talk about, you know, Kristine, you're saying maybe you don't need to errors, omissions, I'm saying it's kind of a cheap, you know background, youKristine Schachinger  45:00know, you should have it, you shouldn't have it. I'm just saying that you don't necessarily want to have the most coverage possible. Make your target, you should definitely have it. I'm just saying that outside of Arizona mission, you probably don't need a lot of other business insurances. Unless it's like, based on you having people in your office. Right?Nick LeRoy  45:18Yeah. Fantastic. So two more questions, just to wrap this up. We've already talked and you gave a lot of good information for individuals that want to become like aspiring freelancers, or people that are maybe even freelancing part time. But are there any specific like books, courses newsletters that you would recommend people checking out?Kristine Schachinger  45:37No, actually, I don't have any good information on that what I would say would be find leaders in the industry and see who they have recommended. You know, as far as freelancing, I don't mean Yes, yes. But unfortunately, most of us just I learned along the way by asking people, so like I went, and that's a really good way to is ask other people who've been in it longer than you. So I was at a conference, we were at the Google dance back when they had those. And I told a friend, I was really having a hard time I had all these clients that really difficult and, and he's like, you're working with small businesses, right? And I go, Yeah, how'd you know, I guess, I've seen they pay it out of their bank accounts, every dollar they give you. They want a slim and young for hamburger price. No, there's not any, because we want to help small businesses, we want to help good people, we all know how it is. But you have to pick your small business clients is really carefully. And he was right like not that you shouldn't help small businesses, you should, if that's what you love to do, but just make sure you pick them. Pick those carefully, because the big company is just coming out of account that they're given. And they give you the money, right? So that's why like the big ones you said, are so easy. Like we hired you to do something, you did it, here's the money, what is a small business, you have to educate them a lot, there's a lot of things you have to do so. So just I would talk to people, because once he told me that, and I realized that was my big problem, I started being much more careful about the small businesses, and I started adding larger clients to balance out and having problems with the smaller businesses.Nick LeRoy  47:01Really good advice. And just to kind of wrap up what you had said, I think just reaching out and talking to people, most people are willing to jump on even if it's just 1015 minutes of your time, if you have just enough time to ask two or three pointed questions. And maybe one of those is like Who else do you know, that you think might help me? I mean, that's basically how I built my entire SEO career might not work. It was trying to beg, it was just like, Hey, can I openly ask you for some advice? No judgment one way or another? And who else do you think I should know, and especially in our industry is so nice, and so kind, like, you can go very far, if you're willing to pick up the phone or write an email,Kristine Schachinger  47:46I totally agree. And that's why conferences are so great when they're gonna have them in person again, now, if you can get to a conference in two, three days, you can talk to so many different people. And you can even find maybe a mentor for yourself, definitely ask a lot of questions at the bar at night when everyone's having a drink or something, you know, drink soda or have to drink beer. But you know, when everyone's there socializing. But that's how I'm the same way, I found out everything by talking to other SEOs who are more experienced than me, and listening to what they had to tell me.Nick LeRoy  48:14And it might sound silly, but the amount of people that I've ended up having like great conversations with and maybe hadn't talked to, or known in advance, I'll pull up my phone and just make sure like, hey, is this you on LinkedIn, and I'll follow up. Just because it's people that I want to make sure that I'm connected with, you know, even if it's just in six months ago, you know, you never know sometimes it's liking a couple tweets, or, you know, making a comment on LinkedIn. And you never know, when they go to a new company, or they have a new boss. It's like, those are the people that are gonna come around, and they're gonna send you some of the best business to your SEO rankings.Kristine Schachinger  48:51No, it's not actually confession, don't have a website, all my businesses.Nick LeRoy  48:57See, it's all referral. But no, I spent a lot of time on my website. And I would say 2% of the value of it is when someone is googling my name and tries to. But yeah, I agree with you. It's funny, given what we are selling as a service and theKristine Schachinger  49:15reward, right? Yeah, I like well, the website's another client, and I'd rather work with ones that definitely payNick LeRoy  49:22a fee. Yeah. You never know if your self is going to actually pay. Those are the words your boss.Kristine Schachinger  49:26Exactly. We're terrible.Nick LeRoy  49:29Okay, see, thank you so much for joining us today. For everyone who is listening today? How can they best get in touch with you, whether it be LinkedIn or Twitter or email?Kristine Schachinger  49:37LinkedIn is probably the best way? Yeah, I don't have like, I don't have enough that. I'm actually going to put one up this year. But the big disclaimer that this isn't meant for SEO, just just so you can land on it the discard. But yeah, it's probably the best way is LinkedIn is the best way or you can contact me on Twitter. My LinkedIn is on Twitter. So but I'm the only me on the internet so I'm really not hard to find no other meNick LeRoy  50:02and I'll make sure to include both of those links and we'll come back and update it when she gets that website or landing page even live. Okay. Thank you again so much for joining us. Appreciate it. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seofreelancer.substack.com

Get notified when new episodes of TheSEOFreelancer podcast go liveIntroducing Mike EssexMike Essex is the owner of Devise Marketing offering both SEO and PPC services to his clients. In today’s podcast, Mike and I talk about his career in the digital marketing space and how he struggled to see a long-term career in SEO/PPC transitioning to a more traditional marketing role. Spoiler: he came back to the digital world!We further discuss whether individuals can become proficient across multiple digital channels or if it’s best to be laser-focused on one skill set. You might just be surprised as to the direction this conversation goes!Last but not least, Mike and I talk about mental health and burnout. It’s a topic that I wrote briefly about and we both feel strongly about.Mike’s Resource Recommendations* Marketing Meetup * Ad contrarian* Million Dollar Consultant How to connect with Mike EssexMike’s personal website mikeessex.comMike’s client management course.Connect with Mike on LinkedInConnect with Mike on TwitterThis Months Sponsor: SEORadar.comWe all know how many clients end up making changes that are bad for SEO without them talking to SEO pros first.  SEORadar puts you back in control of your client’s issues.Whether it’s weird rendering issues that crop up or a content editor that changes titles that have been optimized for Google, SEORadar’s alerts will help you stay on top of what’s changing.Get alerts via Slack, Email, or text message. And when that bad alert hits, you’ll have full HTML archives and screenshots to easily revert quickly.Get Started Today with SEORadar at seoradar.com.  If you are a freelancer interested in joining me on a future episode of The SEO Freelancer podcast Please email me directly at [email protected] TranscriptionNick LeRoy  00:14welcome to the SEO Freelancer podcast. I'm your host, Nick Leroy. This month I sit down with Mike SX to talk about his career in SEO, how he started. He took a seven year break, and then he has returned. So specifically, we'll talk about why he took the break. What it was that kind of sparked the interest in coming back to the digital world, and recommendations he has for other people in similar positions. Before we jump into this month's conversation with Mike, let's hear a quick word from our sponsor, Seo radar.com. We all know how many clients end up making changes that are bad for SEO. Without them talking. SEO is first, SEO radar puts you back in control of your clients issues. Whether it's weird rendering issues that crop up or a content editor that changes titles that have been optimized for Google SEO radars alert will help you stay on top of what's changing. get alerts via slack, email or text message. And when that bad alert hits, you'll have full HTML archives and screenshots to easily revert quickly. Get started today with SEO radar at Seo radar.com. Thank you again to our sponsor, and let's jump into this month's episode.Mike Essex  01:29Hey, Mike, thanks so much for joining me today. Thanks, Nick. Yeah, thanks for having me on. Just to start off, do you mind giving us a little bit of a brief introduction? Yeah, who are you like you said, you started in kind of in the SEO world? Do you laugh? Give us just a little bit of background of your career? Yeah, no problem. So I'm currently the founder of device marketing. We're a marketing strategy consultancy, but we also do digital marketing. So SEO, PPC and content marketing, and training as well in digital marketing, but also marketing fundamentals to prior to that I've been a bit of an SEO jack of all trades. I've done technical SEO, link building content marketing, you name it, I've pretty much done it. As well as PPC as well, I was lucky to work for an agency where they let me kind of do whatever I wanted to try, which was really good and kind of helped being a more wide rounded marketer as well.Nick LeRoy  02:24That's fantastic. It is interesting. And I think a lot of people place a lot of value in being able to experience each of those particular channel, just out of curiosity, before we jump into your, your career, but more what was it that made you kind of double down on SEO given that you've played in some of these other channels as well?Mike Essex  02:45Yeah, so probably helps if I tell you about one of my first roles, so it was a business project manager for Johnson See, like company, Johnson and Johnson company, rather. And it was your typical Junior role where you get like, 20 different things to do, and you get paid peanuts. And they're like, Okay, Mike, today, we need you to film a video or do graphic design, or write this article, or do a brochure or take minutes in a meeting or whatever, you know. But that was really good for me. I didn't actually mind that. I know people kind of criticize start a roles where they asked you to do 100 things. But for me, it was nice to kind of see, what do I actually like, you know, what have I got an interest in? Which of these things am I never gonna touch again. And I kind of narrowed down on that in terms of like, okay, the web is something I'm really interested in digital marketing is really good. Seo was kind of very early days then. But across sort of my next agency roles. I sort of learned it through Moz, and kind of really got interested in it. Yeah, I just kind of love this idea of like, beating the system and beating Google. And you don't really get that in a lot of other jobs and the community so nice as well, you know, it was really good to work in a community where everyone's kind of trying to level up everyone else's skills and share that knowledge. So yeah, I just really loved working in SEO. At that time in my career.Nick LeRoy  04:07Yeah, the community is by far one of the best aspects of SEO. And it's interesting the amount of people that I've talked to that are in SEO, and maybe even just like an in house individual contributor that isn't active on Twitter or isn't actively following people on LinkedIn or going to any of the meetups. And I always just continue to push them because I think there's such an opportunity to learn from smart people. And unlike some potential other careers, I would say most SEOs are willing to share there's not really a quote unquote, secret sauce. So I do 100% What I also agree with you to as you had said that there is a huge benefit to starting out in kind of a jack of all trades position, and I personally would agree with you. My first job while I always call the Kevin SEO job was officially a little bit of Everything web related as well. So I did do a little bit of coding. And when I say that it's like HTML, a little bit of PPC, and probably 92%. Seo, I think that's what really just kind of, you know, got me excited, then it led me to my career today. But I will agree with you. I think being able to touch a little bit of everything early in your career is amazing. I think once you maybe get a year or two into it, then you're better off specializing. Would you agree?Mike Essex  05:30Yeah, I would agree with that. And I'd sort of say in my second job role, I maybe spent too long in a company where I was still in the sort of learning what doesn't doesn't work phase. I was like, super worried about having a bad CV to the point where I would stay in roles for like, years and years and years, when you know what, I think now I'm at the point where I'm like, if I stop learning, I'm gonna quit. Like, if I'm not trying new things I'm gonna go. And yeah, definitely, in the early roles, I was just doing the same tasks day in and day out, but not really getting better at them, and not really getting any more enjoyment out of them. So yeah, I think it was that time where it was like, Okay, I need to move on to something else.Nick LeRoy  06:09Right. And I can speak only for myself. But I think when you first start out, at least for me, there's a certain amount of excitement of, you know, being an air quota here being a big boy, and you know, getting a paycheck, and kind of checking the box of like, I'm working. And then as you alluded to, I think with a little extra time, then it turns into, ooh, this is a little Monday. And this is a little boring. You know, I had days where I was just waiting for that clock to hit for four o'clock so that I could go home. But enough about kind of my experience, going back to your junior, so this, this junior rule that you first explained, Was that your first digital career spot? Or where did you start out?Mike Essex  06:52So I had a couple of personal projects that were quite fun. So when I was 13, I ran a video game website called gamers wave.com. And never got paid for, but I got a lot of games sent for free. And it was kind of just this thing I just did for the love of it. And yeah, it was just great just to I mean, it taught me a lot about kind of speaking to PR companies and communicating with them writing for the web. Seo was not really part of it back then. Definitely a lot of things I do differently. If I did it now. Had a team of other writers as well and paid them in games.Nick LeRoy  07:29For 13 years old.Mike Essex  07:31Yeah, get back from school, see what game would come in the post, try it out, write a review. Yeah, that was good luck. Good luck. Did that for a few years, went to university and we didn't even have Wi Fi in the student dorms. So it was like, Well, I can't carry on with this. I'll stop it, which was a shame.Nick LeRoy  07:47But once I got a quick question, because I had kind of dabbled in building sites when I was young, too. Curious what your technology stack was like, what were you using to build that website?Mike Essex  08:00Front Page Pro and FTP surfer?Nick LeRoy  08:04Oh, so you're even more advanced than I was. I was just using like Angel Fire and literally a blank page. Okay, I had to ask because I knew you're gonna have an interesting response to that. But yeah,Mike Essex  08:16please continue. And the site was built with frames as well. So it was pretty much dead in the water. By the time I stopped it anyway. Because there was no way I was unpicking that mess.Nick LeRoy  08:26But like, it's such a fun experience. And, you know, a lot of people don't know. But I used to tell people that I kind of taught myself a little bit of SEO before I even knew what SEO was just through like eBay listings. I used to go to like garage sales pick up like rough pro wrestling memorabilia, like posters of wrestling figures and VHS tapes, and go home and throw them on to eBay. And you kind of learned quickly that it was the right words in the title or the name of your auction, you know, had a correlation with how you would rank on it. And it's it's funny, because you know, that, you know, kind of at its purest form is SEO as well.Mike Essex  09:06That's a great analogy. Yeah, I did the same with Pokemon cards back in the day, should have kept should have kept hold of them because they're worth way more. No,Nick LeRoy  09:13that's that's kind of yeah, there's so many things that you know, we used to be able to see in the store. That's if only we picked all those up and never took them out of the package. Right? Yeah. All right. So let's go. Let's go back to your career. So you had that you had your, your a couple of websites or your website when you were 13. You have this junior role. You had mentioned that you had jumped to Oh, sorry. Let's talk one thing that everybody loves is in that first Junior rule. Do you mind sharing what your salary was?Mike Essex  09:44Yeah, it was 14,000 pound. I'm not quite sure what that is in dollars. But at the time, that was perfectly normal for starting roles.Nick LeRoy  09:53The dollar and pounds right now are pretty much in parity. So I bet that'd be like 14 $15,000 Somebody Yeah, yeah, at me on Twitter, if I'm completely botched on that, but still, you know, I'd love to be able to pay some bills, right? Yeah, definitely,Mike Essex  10:09definitely. And it was a placement year. So you basically do University for two years, and you do the placement year for one year. And then you do the final year of university. So you're only there for a short time, you just really got to maximize as much out of it as you can. And then yeah, first job at university was working for a magazine publisher, so uploading their content onto the web, and also working with their agency that they had in house as well. So supporting clients through various projects, dabbled in web design for clients. But yeah, it wasn't the best at it. But a lot of clients were asking about SEO, you know, what is it? How can we? How can we use it? And yet, that's really when I kind of got onto Mars and Search Engine Watch, and just sort of self taught myself through that and had a couple of a personal projects that I experimented on as well. Because I didn't want to just immediately try everything on on client websites. And yeah, I did that for a few years to the point where my next role after that was one where I was like, Okay, I'm going to do SEO, full time, is definitely the most enjoyable aspect of this job. And around that time, I think there was starting to be competition for s good SEO people as well. I think agencies were starting to realize like, okay, you know, there's a growing demand for SEO, we want people who've done it before, who can kind of bring up the skill level of other people in the team and, and do it at a good level without sort of being micromanaged. And that's when I moved down to the south coast of the UK to Koozai, which is a SEO and PPC agency. And yeah, that was probably the one of the best decisions I made in my career. It was great to just do SEO projects day in and day out, and really experiment with a lot of different things and to work with other people who did SEO all the time was a game changer for me, because, you know, I could constantly learn off them. I also got the satisfaction of training other people as well, I found that I really liked that aspect of you know, training up the new people in the business. And Kyuzo was great, because they let you do SEO and PPC, like some agencies sort of say you can only do one or the other. But they would gladly teach you evil one, if you did want to learn. So they basically taught me PPC from scratch. And that's probably one of my biggest services. So if I'd never gotten there, I probably never would have even touched it.Nick LeRoy  12:32And that's exciting. I think there's a lot of people that are split. In fact, I had a conversation on LinkedIn, because as you may be aware, you know, I'm a co owner of Seo jobs.com. And one of the debates that I have with my co founder is should we be allowing mixed positions? Yeah. Are we doing a disservice by pushing SEO and PPC jobs? Because then are you a Master of None, you know, and invoke both epic? Curious your thought I mean, now that you know, you're running, you know, kind of an agency together being able to offer many of these services for people just kind of starting out a school or looking to get into digital, would you promote learning multiple channels? Or would you say you should double down and be, quote unquote, really good or master? At one?Mike Essex  13:24I think it's down to individual preference, I definitely don't feel there's a downside from either option of those. And I think, you know, SEO is so specialized now that, you know, you've got people who've literally only ever done link building, but they are amazing at link building. And I kind of like that idea of like the T shape the T shaped marketer, so you kind of look at the skills you've got, and you can choose to either progressive in our organization, so go from junior, to senior to manager, etc. Or you can expand to the side and say actually, I'm going to just get really, really good at this specific skill. And the good thing is there's so many SEO jobs now that are to such a nice level where you can just be a really amazing person in analytics, for example, there's agencies that just do analytics now. And if that's all you've learned, you've still got some good career opportunities out there. Or you can be like me and be a jack of all trades, and kind of use that to pivot into like, larger marketing roles where you've got good experience of lots of different things. I mean, I do SEO and PPC services for clients now. And I don't feel like I'm offering a compromise service because I have to deliver both of those types. I can still keep up to date on the latest trends in each of those sectors, and still do a good service even though I'm split.Nick LeRoy  14:44Absolutely. And you bring up a really good question. This is a conversation Jeff Kenya and a buddy of mine and I were having it's kind of this idea of it doesn't ever seem taboo to you know, work across multiple channels at the beginning as we're trying to To get a foot in our career, and then kind of in the middle of it, you know, a lot of people will argue, and I think I said this earlier that you really should maybe specialize or as you're saying, you may not be able to. So there's obviously a debate to have there. But then if you want to get above this, like director, Senior Director, let's just say a CMO. Like at this point, if you want to be a chief marketing officer, you need to kind of go back to not necessarily being an expert in every channel, but you have to be aware of those best practices, you have to know kind of what works and doesn't. So it's just very interesting conversations. You know, one, you know, if you asked me a couple of years ago, I probably would have been really, bullheaded, you know, and saying that you should be really happy and one. But I think it really comes down to what are your goals, you know, if you want to be the best PPC practitioner Best SEO, and you don't ever want to become like a CMO or, you know, potentially owner, maybe, you know, going across multiple channels doesn't make sense. But if you don't want to be an SEO for the rest of your career, then I think all that makes sense. So let's jump back into your work experience. So you've gone through a couple of different roles. You were at this agency, you're becoming proficient, you probably you really have kind of figured out, you know, what you're trying to do in this career. And then, and this is one of the main reasons I wanted to talk to Mike, you left, you literally, I say you left the SEO space for seven years. Can you walk us through? What was kind of the thinking behind that was that you didn't like search anymore? Is it just a different challenge? And then I'll bombard you with other questions about why you came back. But give us a little bit of the background.Mike Essex  16:50No problem. Yeah, I mean, it wasn't really like one specific reason, it was more like a perfect storm of different things. So from like the SEO level, this was around the time when Panda and Penguin updates happened. And like I don't, you know, all the updates since and all the updates before, I don't feel like anything's really been as transformative as those two were. And at the same time, Google also did not provide it. So they were kind of like, Oh, we're not even going to give you your keywords in Google Analytics, which, obviously, you can get them through search console now. But there was a period of one to two years where you really didn't have any keyword data at all. And I think the combination of all of that made it apparent to me that to compete on in SEO, you couldn't really do those kinds of one day, a month, half a day a month projects that I'd kind of learned on, you really, were going to need more resources, more people, a good strong brand, and all these things to have good SEO. And the agency certainly had the resources for that. But you know, I was having like 15 to 20 clients a month at the same time, it didn't really feel like I could suddenly adapt to this new world order that was coming. And also Koozai offered me the opportunity to be their in house online marketing manager. So I'd essentially be rather than working on lots of clients, I could just work on one client. So that kind of gave me a taste of what in house life would be like. And yeah, I really liked it. You know, I like this idea of just having the one business that you focused on all the time, you know, I've only ever worked on lots of different clients all at the same time for for a long time. And I've kind of got used to that mentality of like, you make lots of recommendations, and they never get implemented. And you never really see like the other side of things and the clients perspective. So I really just wanted to get that. And also, at the same time, it felt like the SEO career path wasn't really as defined as it is now, it felt like you essentially became like, as skilled as you could in SEO, in an agency. And then you either went freelance, or you became a marketing manager, or you stayed at that level, and you fought for pay rises, but you really were kind of limited. You're capped around sort of the affairs and 35,000 a year, it didn't seem at the time, like SEO or PPC jobs, were going to allow me to get beyond that point. So it was kind of just you know, what's in the market? What jobs are there at the moment, SEO didn't look like a long term career to me at the time. Obviously, it clearly is now times have massively changed, which is great. There's more options than ever, which is really, really good to see. But you didn't really get like there weren't many in house SEO roles and there certainly weren't like in house SEO manager, SEO director kind of roles, like you get today. At least not in the area that that I lived anyway. So yeah, I went from an agency role of 20 people to work in as a marketing manager for a company with 20,000 employees. So it was kind of like a rapid shift overnight but you know, I wanted to see the wider marketing mix, you know, I didn't want to be one of those digital marketing people who says, digital marketing is the best and every other channels terrible, you know, TV is dead, this is dead. And it's like, Have you actually used those channels? No, well, you can't say that, you know, you can't make those assumptions that digital is the only game in town, if you haven't looked around a bit, and seen what the little things are like. So I wanted to get that experience. I wanted to see how other bits of marketing work, and also how SEO and PPC fit within other parts of marketing. You know, what do those client challenges look like, from the other point of view? And yeah, I got to work for a couple of really great companies doing their marketing for them, got to travel to Dubai. And, and do marketing out there, which was really, really fun experience. And see sort of different cultures, different marketing channels, to set marketing strategies and budgets and understand, you know, I never stopped doing digital entirely whilst I was in there, but it wasn't at the level of kind of how I was doing it before I still sort of kept one, one foot in the door with SEO, just keep an eye on it. See what was changing? But yeah, my main priority was to see okay, you know, what's it like being a marketing director? What are the goals of cmo has? What's it like working directly with a CEO? What kind of priorities had they got? So it's really fantastic experience? Yeah, no regrets.Nick LeRoy  21:30It does. It definitely sounds like an amazing opportunity. Because as you had mentioned, I suspect as you're working in other channels, you may be either you saw directly how paid search or organic search might have an impact, or, as you know, kind of a marketer yourself, you could see how this would have an impact. You know, one of the stories that I enjoy sharing with people is I had a client back in one of my previous agency roles, where we saw a brand just kind of drop off a cliff, like overnight, you know, when it came to like a year over year comparison, and we were looking at it, we were trying to figure it out, it really was tied to the homepage. And then one day, we kind of just had a conversation with some leaders of this brand. And we were just saying what happened last year, like what was different? And they were like, oh, you know, Bob, you know, Sandy, do you remember that we dropped $10 million on, you know, video, you know, or sorry, TV ads? And it was like, oh, okay, well, that would explain why last year, you had this, you know, big jump, and we weren't able to replicate it, because that went away, you know, and those are the types of things that if you're not necessarily thinking outside of broader search, but you know, the bigger marketing aspect of how do we get your brand out there, and how that can turn into additional, you know, search visibility and search demand. And just like I said, it's very interesting, I can appreciate that.Mike Essex  22:58Definitely. And you're competing with the budget against all the other channels the business is using. So the more understanding you can have of those channels and the ROI of them and how they work, the more potential search budget, you can get, you know, if you can prove that the CPA is better for your particular channel, and understand how the other ones work, then you can obviously fight for more budget, and fight for better rates. So it's great to have that bigger picture thinking as well.Nick LeRoy  23:26100%. So now I feel like the million dollar question. We've already let the cat out of the bag, you're back, you're doing you're focusing on digital, so seven years of wave, but like you said, you kind of kept your toes in it. Because once you get the taste of search, you never can let it go. What was that? Was it kind of another epiphany where you're like, I need to make this switch because this seems a little bit more sustainable, where maybe the seven years prior, it was not or walk us through just a little bit?Mike Essex  23:56Sure. So I think one of the original reasons I left SEO as well was I was getting a bit burnt out of kind of trying the same things over and over. And having that time away kind of renewed my passion for search as well. I saw the amazing things people were doing with digital PR, all the great case studies people were sharing on LinkedIn and Twitter. And that kind of sparked that demand again of like, okay, you know, I want to try some of these new things people are doing companies that were certainly more prepared to do the budgets and the resources that are needed now, which I was kind of scared about. At the time that I left was maybe they wouldn't want to do that. And the whole SEO industry had really kind of matured to a point where it's very, it's taken very seriously, you know, lots of levels in an organization. So it felt like a good time to come back. I mean, when I first went freelance, I certainly had a range of services I wanted to offer including marketing strategy as well. But because when I was in the SEO industry I'd spent spent so much time building up a personal brand by speaking at conferences, by doing blog posts by doing videos, people still knew me as an SEO guy. So even seven years later, when I came back, it was like, oh, Mike's really good at SEO, you know, he's the person you should go for. And I still had a good track record that I could promote myself with. So it made sense. I kind of resonated me and Tom Critchlow is when Harry said that when he came back, he worried that SEO was going to be below him. And I can definitely relate to that. Because I obviously spent seven years in a senior marketing manager role. I didn't essentially want to go back to do the exact same thing I was doing before. But that's why I built strategic consulting into the SEO offering that I have now and made it more about okay, you know, how can we make it work with the rest of the marketing options you've got? And what is your marketing strategy? You know, what are you actually trying to achieve? And how can we use SEO to to help you with that?Nick LeRoy  26:03I'm glad that you brought that up. People may have listened to my interview with Tom Critchlow. And he says exactly what you're saying, you know, he was worried about coming back and that he was gonna be stuck with SEO audits. And that wasn't a good representation of his experience his value, you know, he had just come back from Google. So really, there is this? I don't even know if it's like a new coined term, but the strategic consulting, you know, that's what Tom says he's doing, you know, Mike, you're saying this, I know, Eli Schwartz is, is saying this. And I think really what it is, is that's kind of distinguishing SEO and digital marketing as a whole today, versus as you alluded to seven years ago, it's like Seo was kind of your title tags and some links, and it was almost like process driven. So it's really interesting to think of that, and like you said, being able to go freelance, how do you make sure that you're able to communicate that broader value that you're able to provide, versus just going back and saying, I'm an SEO, forget everything I had done for seven years. So with that, I'd love to dig a little bit deeper, because I think you have a little bit of a different story about first you went freelance, you didn't decide, I'm gonna go back to SEO, I know all these people in the agency world, you probably could have had your choice of in house gigs. You chose to go freelance, which is why you're on the podcast today. But as far as I understand, in our previous conversation, you know, you didn't have you know, six figures saved in the bank, you didn't have 20 customers that you already were working on, you kind of just flipped the switch and jumped in. Can you walk us through that journey a little bit?Mike Essex  27:46So yeah, my story was a little different. I mean, I always wanted to wait for the perfect time to go freelance where like, say, I had the money in the bank, and I had the client list ready to go. But I was made redundant in my role. And I got given three months notice. So the UK is actually really good for that. Like, I think in the States, you guys don't get the best notice periods. But yeah, luckily, a lot of digital roles will give you one month, maybe up to three months of notice. So it was sort of like, okay, I don't have this dream scenario, you know, I had 20 grand of debt. My wife's disabled, so we only were a single income family. And I've got a mortgage to pay. So it didn't really have the dream situation. But it was like, Okay, I've got premiums notice, I'll apply for jobs, but also look for freelance work and see what kind of comes in and what's the best option? And yeah, I did find that I got freelance clients fairly quickly. And once I got a couple of those, and it was like, Okay, I'm gonna commit just to this freelance seems like it might work. And if it doesn't, at least I've tried it, you know, I always wanted to try it, so why not? So I think there's always going to be people who are thinking, you know, I'd love to go freelance, but I need to have all of my ducks in a row. And life isn't really like that. Doesn't always work at that you've got everything perfect, but there's no reason. You know, I sort of see SEO as being like, easy mode of going freelance, which hopefully doesn't offend anyone. But what I mean is, because it's a retainer based model, you essentially, you know, once you've got those clients, and they generally will stay until there's an issue where I say a graphic designer has to go out and get work every month, or, you know, not every other industry has this nice luxury of retained clients and consistent work. So, again, there was that element of like, once I get the clients in, I should be fine as long as I keep delivering a good quality service. And I've had pretty much the same clients for a year and a half to two years. So it does work.Nick LeRoy  29:50Well, and to your point there I mean, that is one of the best parts of you know, SEO or digital retainers is as long as you can provide that ROI. There's Got a reason to be able to, you know, move to someone different. Whereas I think your example of graphic design is a perfect example. You know, some people have, you know, retainers, but they're not going to be as large as you know, a marketing budget, you know, and very likely they are going after project after project, which would be exceptionally stressful for me personally.Mike Essex  30:23I agree. Yeah. I don't know how web developers do it, either. Because the amount of scope creep and timeline changes on that kind of project, it would keep me up at night, all the time.Nick LeRoy  30:33Yes, yeah. Worse, you know, we're dealing with how come we're not ranking for this term? Or why did it happen overnight, right. So one of the topics that I want to talk about with you is you're a big proponent of mental health, and attempting to balance kind of the pressures of freelance life, can you share with us how you go about just prioritizing mental health while still giving that great service to your clients?Mike Essex  30:58Absolutely. So my previous job before I went freelance had a four and a half day working week. So that was something I kept straight away. I knew if I go straight into a five day week, I probably would never dial it back again. So I really wanted to keep that from day one. It's not quite a four day week, like people recommend, but still having that early finish on a Friday means I've got more time for life admin, or if I want to do something fun. I've got that there. I also generally try to work with clients who understand that I don't work weekends or out of hours unless something's absolutely critical. And again, 99% of SEO work doesn't really have that out of hours emergency or it shouldn't do you know, if it does, you might want to question why your clients are putting that specific pressure on that it has to be solved. Right, that time, some clients just love to have conversations out of hours. And they're not the kind of client for me. And the other thing I realized was, you know, I started with a very rigid, eight to five, working day, just because I was worried, you know, if a client rang me, I wanted to make sure I was available all the time, because they were the hours they worked. And over time, I've realized that actually, I don't have to be at the end of the phone all of the time. You know, clients can wait, if you were in a day job, and you were in a meeting and a client phoned you, you wouldn't be there straightaway. And again, so some days, I'll work seven till 11. And then take a two hour gym break or walk the dogs or have dinner with have lunch with family or friends. So again, it's kind of realizing that if you're in freelance, you don't necessarily have to stick to the nine to five, or the eight to five clients can wait around you. It was really transformative for my wife as well, Marie, because of her disability, she found working in traditional employment hard, but being freelance meant she could come back to it on her own terms, she could set our own hours depending on our energy levels that day. And she didn't have to jump back into an eight hour day. And yeah, the clients love her. They love the work she's putting out. And you know, it's really helped her mental health as well. So for both of us, it's been great. And for me, it's been nice having someone else to talk to when I'm at work, and to kind of share the stresses of it, where we're a husband and wife agency, which you don't really see very often, but it's nice to kind of share that and know that she's got my back and I've got hers.Nick LeRoy  33:28I love, love, love, love all that. That's one of my biggest mistakes in my previous agency career as you had kind of alluded to, I'm sure you have plenty of your 6070 plus hour weeks, you know, you miss quite a few dinners with the family, you know you're traveling and it seems kind of exciting in the time but really it's just like a mental health drag. And I think to your point you bring up you know this nine to five and I've kind of coined it or heard other people call it and I'm using air quotes here, the nine to five freelancer you know, the one of the biggest benefits, as you had alluded to Mike was you can kind of control when you're going to work. You know, I personally have talked anything tweeted about how much I enjoy shopping with senior citizens on Tuesdays at 11 o'clock, you know, for my groceries. Because the I get to kind of go around when the when it's not quite as busy. But I do think that that is really hard. And one of the things that you learn in the freelance life of balancing and my button seats simply because I've been trained for you know, 510 15 years of work is nine to five, or are you there doing meaningful work? And what I personally have tried to approach it as if I'm not getting paid. Why am I here? Because that is like one of the benefits that I get, you know, that's time with my face. Family, you know, with my kids or, you know, going out in networking even, you know, and I think that's just a huge benefit to freelancing, and not a lot of people are being as big of an advocate of what can be some of those mental health benefits that, you know, I tried to be online, and I don't mind you have been really good, at least from what I've seen on like LinkedIn of being a promoter of that. So thank you for pushing that too.Mike Essex  35:27Yeah, no problem. And the funny thing is, as soon as you leave a company, all those late nights and all those extra things you did, they don't mean anything. So you know, they're great at the moment. They solve a short term problem, but they don't really help with long term career.Nick LeRoy  35:43So very true. Yep. I don't miss driving one hour each way every single day. It's amazing. The car the amount of miles I have not driven since going freelances is impressive. So like to kind of wrap this up a little bit. I like to ask all my guests just any recommendations you have for freelancers, whether it be specific books or courses, newsletters, or even individuals that you would recommend they follow? Do you have any recommendations?Mike Essex  36:14Yeah, no problem. So if you're looking to explore life outside of SEO, the marketing meetup by Joe Glover is a really good community where they have marketing talks on a whole range of different things. I also found that the ad contrarian and Dave trot are really good blogs as well that talk about advertising and reaching people. And again, they'll give you some of that experience of outside SEO and stuff that's really useful. A lot of SEOs really love Dave Trott. And he actually spoke at Brighton SEO. So he's really, really good figure. And for me, the million dollar consultant book was really useful when I started out, I've not quite got to value based pricing, like Alan would recommend, but it has some really good stuff about building a brand and establishing yourself and having kind of a scarcity, a scarcity mentality where the work comes to you, because of the time you've put in and the brand that you've built. So you can pick the best clients for your mental health.Nick LeRoy  37:12There's a pattern here at people that I've been interviewing lately, and that everybody has been reading the million dollar consultant. It's a book that I have read, and I'm not a huge reader. And you know, Tom, and I kind of joke because Alan kind of has a brass she'll personality a little bit. I know, I've talked to you like Schwartz, who has actually talked directly with Alan quite a few times. But it's interesting, you know, that book really does change how you view things. And even if you're not going to adapt everything that he tells you to do, I think it really does help you at least consider, you know, some alternatives to what you're doing. And many of them, at least for me, you know, have worked out in the positive. So definitely recommend that. And I'm going to look into those other books and resources that you recommend as well. I'll make sure to link those in the description below, too. But Mike, thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate you joining the podcast today. For people that are listening, can you share with us the best way for them again, touch with you?Mike Essex  38:14Sure. So I'm mostly active on LinkedIn, search for my Catholics, and I'll be the one that works for device marketing. Or you can visit Mike essex.com to sign up for my mailing list as well.Nick LeRoy  38:26Fantastic, and I will make sure that all of that is included in the show notes below. But Mike, thank you again. Really appreciate your time. And we'll catch you next time on the SEO freelancer.Mike Essex  38:39Thanks, Nick. It's been fun This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seofreelancer.substack.com

Introducing Kristina AzarenkoKristina Azarenko is a former freelance SEO turned full-time course creator and trainer.In today’s podcast, Kristina and I talk about her career journey starting as a junior SEO making $250 per month in Belarus to moving to Canada and going out on her own freelance.Also, do you love or hate the term “freelancer?” Kristina and I have a fantastic conversation about the perceived value when referring to yourself as a “freelancer” vs “consultant.” Let us know in the comments below which side you are on!Kristina’s Resource Recommendations* The win without pitching manifesto (book)* ditching hourly podcast* Follow SEO Consultant Aleyda SolisHow to connect with Kristina AzarenkoKristina’s consulting site Marketing SyrupCheck out Kristina’s courses TechSEO.pro and SEOChallenge.coConnect with Kristina on LinkedInConnect with Kristina on TwitterThis Months Sponsor: SEORadar.comWe all know how many clients end up making changes that are bad for SEO without them talking to SEO pros first.  SEORadar puts you back in control of your client’s issues.Whether it’s weird rendering issues that crop up or a content editor that changes titles that have been optimized for Google, SEORadar’s alerts will help you stay on top of what’s changing.Get alerts via Slack, Email, or text message. And when that bad alert hits, you’ll have full HTML archives and screenshots to easily revert quickly.Get Started Today with SEORadar at seoradar.com.  If you are a freelancer interested in joining me on a future episode of The SEO Freelancer podcast Please email me directly at [email protected] TranscriptionNick LeRoy  00:12Welcome to the SEO Freelancer podcast. I'm your host, Nick LeRoy. This month I talk with Kristina Azarenko to discover her journey getting into SEO, moving into freelance SEO, and then making an additional move to becoming a full-time content creator. Before we jump into this month's interview, let's do a quick word from our sponsor, Seo radar.com. We all know how many clients end up making changes that are bad for SEO. Without them talking. SEO is first, SEO radar puts you back in control of your client’s issues. Whether it's weird rendering issues that crop up or a content editor that changes titles that have been optimized for Google SEO radars alert will help you stay on top of what's changing. get alerts via slack email or text message. And when that bad alert hits, you'll have full HTML archives and screenshots to easily revert quickly. Get started today with SEO radar at Seo radar.com. Thank you again to our sponsor, and let's jump into this month's episode. Thank you so much for joining us today, Kristina. Kristina AzarenkoHey, everyone, thank you so much for inviting me. I'm very excited to be here. Absolutely. Nick LeRoy  So people may not know Kristina, and I have our kind of that definition of “having a relationship friendship online”. You know, I think we've been following each other for Twitter for quite a while. I know she's been a subscriber to the SEO for lunch. You're offline. We were kind of joking about how I attempted to do some early virtual happy hours when COVID was still thing with the SEO for lunch crew. And, you know, I think that was one of the last times Kristina and I had kind of talked Yeah, online. You know, mine is just kind of our offline, or sorry, you know, Twitter conversations. But again, Kristina, so great to have you on, you know, thank you for your time.Kristina Azarenko  02:05Yeah, sure.Nick LeRoy  02:08So, Kristina, just to kick us off here. Can you give us an introduction and a brief description of your background?Kristina Azarenko  02:15Of course, so, um, again, Hey, everyone, in case you missed the beginning. I'm Kristina, Azarenko. And I guess I used to, I used to introduce myself, I'm an SEO consultant, and you'll learn why I'm confused now. But I see, I'd say that the best thing that describes me it would be SEO hero. That's what I happen to know. I've been in SEO for over a decade, and I've been on all different sides. So I was at an agency side, I was working full time in companies, I was a freelancer, a consultant, and now to do AI, course creator, so I transitioned full time, the course creator earlier this year. So I teach people how to do SEO properly, because I really want to upgrade the level of SEOs that are out there. And to help people understand that SEO is not only like keywords or like weighing specialist families, it's so much more, and there is strategy frameworks behind it. So that's my mission plan, oh,Nick LeRoy  03:31you should just let the cat out of the bag right away in the show. This is one reason why I was very excited to get Kristinaon the show. You know, we talk a lot about individuals who previously had kind of worked a nine to five job maybe came from agency or in house. And now they're enjoying the fruits of their labor as a freelancer. And Kristina and I had talked offline about this is almost a secret graduation, where Freelancer typically is a exchange of your services for a specific hourly rate or even a retainer. So where Kristina is going now is focusing more on I would say it's even more scalable, you know, being able to do training is obviously larger groups of individuals being able to do courses. And it's very, very exciting. So I'm very excited to dig deeper into that. And Kristina, and I also want to have a conversation about the term Freelancer versus consultant. Oh, yeah. Before we jump into that, I do have another question because I know we're gonna have fun with that. And I'll forget to go here, but Chrystia one of people's favorite parts of this podcast is talking about your first SEO job. Can you walk us through, you know, maybe what a couple of those jobs look like? And if you're able to, can you share what some of your starting pay was?Kristina Azarenko  04:49Yeah, so, um, well, my first SEO job, so okay, I started in SEO. Accidentally. I think like, almost all SEO is good for me. I was like calling. I was working as a debt collector as at a clock factory. And I was not beating people. It was not like that I was just calling remind them. Don't be afraid of me. So but I knew that there was something more that I need to be something more I had no idea what it was going to do. I just like tweet from the university because I didn't like it. So I was like, Okay, what's next? And then one day, I accidentally so of course, as your course, I have no idea what SEO was at that time. I have no, I had no idea what the website was like I would was not tech savvy at all. So if you ask me, why did you decide to join the course? The answer will be I have no idea. So I can just sign up I think I paid to my my two monthly salaries for the course or something. It was crazy. And I loved it from the very first lesson. I was obsessed about it. I was like, I was obsessed. I was reading about everything, especially for technical SEO, because I think that's how I green things. So and then I landed a job as a junior SEO at an agency. It was like a junior engineer position. And they were showing me some video. It was more more about links. I think almost all SEO was started like years ago, they have contributed to some spam online. Okay. Um, so yeah, for me, it was like, the router links, like something, something like that. SoNick LeRoy  06:46for one second, did you have an easy in Article account?Kristina Azarenko  06:50Oh, Cory.Nick LeRoy  06:54I was just showing the other day that it's, it's something that I intentionally leave up because it's, it's embarrassing, and it tells you exactly what you were doing at the time. But okay, I will not interrupt you anymore. But I knew you were gonna have one.Kristina Azarenko  07:09Yeah, of course, it was. So it was so fun for me still. So like, I was like learning all these things. And within, I think three months, I realized that I kind of knew more than people working there for, for for longer than me. And they quickly started to be like, non official team leads. And it was teaching people. And I was I remember one thing that there were articles, one of the websites like so people would write articles, and then I would need to pause those articles everywhere. Right, exactly. To your point. And that was like sitting and thinking, well, it doesn't seem right to me. I didn't know why. Because at that time was just starting, but it was like, well, that doesn't seem right. Something's wrong. I think that SEO should be something more. But yeah, it lasted for a year. Within this year, I learned a lot, mostly because it was easy to learn. If I had free time, it was Google learning, Google Analytics, and all this. All this interesting things. And I remember one day, I realized that, Oh, my God, that's truly what I want to do is what I needed to like I provided recommendations for duplicate content issues, and we needed to implement canonical tags. So I was like, I got the message that they were implemented. I was like, okay, okay, checking in and checking in all the time. And at that time, I did not even have access to Google Search Console or that time, it was my Webmaster Tools. Right. So yeah, and I remember was like, wow, but it's not working. It's still Google is not picking it up. And then I looked at the source code, and they realized that instead of h ref, in the link in the canonical tag, they put h fair so someone was just typing at this time. So that thing showed me that there can be one minor thing that can go wrong. Well now it's so much easier with all the tools and even Google Search Console but at that time, I was like wow, I want to be an investigator I want to do this so we're gonna go with talking aboutNick LeRoy  09:26you know, and I'm gonna continue to do this because Steven, but do you remember utilizing like the Yahoo Site Explorer for looking at backlinks?Kristina Azarenko  09:34Yes. It is. Okay. Now I also think thatNick LeRoy  09:42she had her hands overrides for your sem rush and hrs and, you know, I think you some of the majestic might have just been set up, but I remember when they started sun setting that, you know, a lot of SEOs are freaking out for you know, only the 100th time whereas we're on the million throne now.Kristina Azarenko  09:59Yeah. I remember trying to get into the mods directory. It was like, oh my god, only, like super cool people can go to the mods directory.Nick LeRoy  10:12Oh, yeah, yeah, I was just talking to someone the other day about it. Or maybe it was a tweet that I sent out. I was like, you know, your cool old school when you cared about your DMOZ link? Or if you just had one or not? So Kristina, just to put the little cherry on the top? Do you mind sharing what your very first salary was for that junior Junior SEO position?Kristina Azarenko  10:31Yeah, I think it was around $250. Something like that. It was steel back into a goose. It was to a very low salary. And like, we had many things there, there in terms of like salaries and conversion rates. But it was just happy to start some new journey.Nick LeRoy  10:56Well, I think, to your point, I mean, this shows, I'm almost guaranteeing nobody else is gonna be able to join me, I do have a number below 250. But to be able to show that that's where you can start and you're hungry for more, and to find the success that I know you've had today. Not only you know, with consulting by creating, you know, courses that are over, you know, 250 as an individual purchase, like how exciting I mean, talk about a real, you know, from ground up all the way to success. Congratulations on that.Kristina Azarenko  11:27Yeah, definitely. Thanks so much. I think that it's, there's always a way and if you if you're really passionate about what you're what you're doing, and if you learn the right skills, well, success is inevitable. That's one of the phrases that I really love.Nick LeRoy  11:43And I think that's one thing, I'm gonna probably cause a little drama here, but it feels like one thing between when we started So Christy and I both are probably right about the same time I started in 2008 2009 ish. And there wasn't that much information. I mean, honestly, like Moz Whiteboard Friday was like the highlight of my week. But I remember getting my first SEO job. And I went to Barnes and Noble, and there was an SEO book, and it was like a dummies guide to SEO, and I didn't have the money to be able to buy it. So I literally sat in a chair and read the whole thing. And now it's like a lot of people, they don't necessarily have to fight and scrap for all this information, you know, whether it be Cristina's courses, or, you know, other websites with this information? You know, SEO is just so much more readily available. And that's just kind of Yes, exactly. It's just very exciting. So yeah, so go, go take us through a couple more years. So you've worked your agency side, how far into your career was it when you made the decision to go out on your own? And walk us through a little bit what you were thinking? And did you save up to go out on your own? Or really what did you do to kind of prepare for? I'm going to use the word freelancer and then we're going to jump in.Kristina Azarenko  12:57Okay, so there are two parts, whose question I will start with, like how I decided to go on my own, like what baggage of knowledge I had at that time. So my career was not playing here. I actually had a setback when I moved from Belarus, to Canada. And that's what usually immigrants go go through when they moved to different countries. But I was lucky that I still like I seen in my career, because I know that many people come to Canada and like, oh, I can find job. So I still I go like working in McDonald's. I know. For me, it was like, No, I'm not going I'm doing this. I've been doing so for a long time. And I'm honestly, not more like one point resounded only for English markets. So it was like I was doing the same thing that people do here, but from a different country. So like, why wouldn't they use this chances? And I'd see that as you helped me a lot to just, you know, find myself here in Canada and I moved OMO over four years ago. So what at first, like you don't start from the position you started when you have your country. So there I was leading a small team of people. And I was working in house. And here I came here and I first worked in house for a really small company, very like but I also I also do the paid ads. So I did a lot so up that as he away it was still too boring for me because the company was quite small. And I was like, I want challenges. I would I want that to challenges and technical SEO challenges. And I would I won't find lots of them with these like 20 100 pages but not not even hundreds, like just like 20 pages website. And so I moved to a senior SEO specialist position here at an agency and in Toronto, and I really loved it. There was not invulnerable that and I was really enjoying it. And I learned a lot from the founders of this agency because it was a really small agency. I love small companies, because then you have a continuity, and all these nice things when you can, like enjoy working with the founders directly. So prefer these type of companies. And I learned a lot from them, from the founders from observing them. And then I was like, well, now I'm ready to go on my own. Because I know how to work with clients. They know how to deliver the results. And then we're jumping to the second part of your question, what did I do to prepare myself to go freelance to going on my own? And dear listeners do not follow my advice. Nick LeRoy  15:54follow mine don’t follow Kristina!Kristina Azarenko  15:58I did not do anything. That was not because I like I'm overthinking things, right. And I have processes on processes, and taps on steps and to do waste. So that's the kind of person I am. But the reason why I left the agency without, well, I had a safety net, that I very, like, had previously. And I had my husband who supported me who supported my decision. So like, well, if you you can try, if it doesn't work, you can always get back to your job. So that was really, really important to me. But other than that, nothing. And I just felt that I was I was so stressed out, I had, like so many things to do all the time that you didn't even have time to like to have a side hustle. Because I think that having a side hustle before you are leaving a job would be the best scenario. But for me, it just, it just didn't wouldn't work. Because I was so overworked that I couldn't get a side hustle, hustle. So that's like, you know, I decided to just leave, and then build things from scratch versus trying to like to accomplish it. Sound quo.Nick LeRoy  17:19I think that's an amazing path right there. And I think that's one thing that a lot of people don't necessarily consider is the option of, if you have a spouse or a significant other, who is able to, you know, make enough income to be able to pay the bills, you know, you might not be going out to eat every single night. But I mean, that is a good opportunity to be able to go out and freelance, especially if you are hungry, and you want to try this and something that, you know, you're just never going to be able to give 100% of yourself to any company until you try it. I mean, honestly, having a spouse or significant other that can kind of be the quote unquote breadwinner, you know, really does afford you this amazing opportunity. You know, Kristina, I'd be curious from your thoughts. I remember talking to my wife when I went out and I am the breadwinner. But what we did is we kind of established a timeline of if you aren't able to replace, say 80% arbitrarily of what your regular salary was you go and try to get another job. Did you have any conversations with your husband that was kind of similar?Kristina Azarenko  18:25Well, no, we are always we are always like, one of us is going ahead than the other one reaches this point, and then goes ahead. So that's how it usually works. And then I supported him in leaving his job. So it's like, support is not conserved, meaning that he like, Okay, I'm now paying for everything. And you don't need to do anything at all. Like, it's, it depends like on how we know each other pretty well. So he didn't need to tell me that, well, you need to replace your salary. He was like, He's yourself everything. He's like, Oh, my God. So we did not have this conversation. But I say it happened within Google a few months. So it was not painful at all. What was painful is that I quickly realized that in addition to my skills as an SEO, I needed business skills as well. So that's something that I did not account for. But this means and I love learning. I like I'm learning geek. So it means that I can learn in key topical things quickly. So I did it quickly. But if you do if you do have business tools before you leave, to to go in on your own, that will be helpful to you don't need to do this thatNick LeRoy  19:52way. And that is very true. And you know as much as I kind of rib on SEO agencies these days and you know If you can survive in an agency, you're very likely can survive as a freelancer. But I think the caveat with that is is twofold. One, without a doubt, you have to be good at what you're doing. If your skill set being like whether you're an SEO PPC or writer, like if you're not good at that, it doesn't matter how much you can sell, because in the end, you're not going to meet your, your client's needs. But then as Kristina had alluded to, it's really this business acumen, you have to understand how to be able to talk to people, you have to be able to take something that's complex, like SEO, and distill it down to bite sized pieces that the C suite is going to gobble up. But just even be able to sell you have to collect payments, you know, set taxes aside, you know, all these things. And admittedly, they're not the most fun part of, of my job, but it, it really, it's kind of a package deal. So like you said, I can definitely understand why that is, or was a concern of yours back in the day.Kristina Azarenko  20:59Yeah, definitely. I mean, there's so many things that like so many skills that you need to pick up and suddenly European, your own taxes, and you're like, Oh, my God, oh, my God, I did not earn that nice to be that sounds taxes, but then Well, thanks, Mike out.Nick LeRoy  21:14So quick story. And then we're gonna jump into our Freelancer versus consultant conversation or debate, if you will. But one of the best tips that I had gotten was, if you're going out on your own is to invest in an accountant. And I still believe that it's the best money that you can, but I'll never forget, I was probably four or five months into it, my accounts working with me on how to save for taxes, and he calls me up. He goes, Nick, good news and bad news. And I'm like, oh, shoot, like, I'm literally 10 out of 10 anxiety right now. It goes good news, you're gonna give yourself a $10,000 bonus. And I was like, wow, this is fantastic. And it goes, the bad news is, you're gonna give it right to the IRS, right. So that you can pay your taxes. So yeah, it's funny, you know, that I, you know, it's funny now, but back then, you kind of freak out a little bit. So. But I do, guys, because the let's jump into the conversation we started to have offline that I think is really, really interesting. So for people that obviously were not a part of that conversation, Kristina and I started talking about the term freelancer, and especially how it kind of compares to a consultant. And Kristina was kind of shaking her head a little bit, just saying, oh, you know, I really kind of grimace, I hate the idea of using the word freelancer. And as we know, it's like, that's what I'm kind of using for the podcasts here. You know, I kind of go back and forth calling myself an SEO consultant, a freelance SEO consultant, just a freelance. But Christine, let me turn it over to you explain to the audience what you were sharing with me about why the term Freelancer frustrates you?Kristina Azarenko  23:00Yeah, well, it's not it's not like it's not frustrates me it just like, I see that. Oh, my God, I don't know even registered. So a freelancer, for me is more a person who is who is trying to understand that all the business skills behind behind the being a partner for their client. So they just like they are on the way to becoming a partner and they don't necessarily value themselves as they should now, and they don't, they're not necessarily paid how they what they deserve now, and they do not necessarily have all this knowledge to build the boundaries and with clients and communicate with clients and CO sell their services properly. And one important distinction would be to like, knowing for sure who your ideal client is, is and be okay to walk away from even like good clients but on projects that do not serve you that you will not enjoy doing. And those clients that have red flags and red flags does not necessarily mean that they started yelling. It was a sales conversation No, but like minor things that you are just not comfortable with. But you are okay walking away from this. So that's one of the I like I I do not have a red distinction between Freelancer consultant but for me, it's more like the consultant is more like a business like you see yourself as a business and as a partner to the clients who hire you. So you are on the same horizontal line. And with freelancing, what I find is especially clients implied too many times is that it's more vertical relationship when the I hire you to do something for them. But they don't necessarily value your expertise. And the might try to mark micromanage you again, it's not, it's not an official. It's not an official description from like, some dictionary. And I there is no judgment behind calling yourself a freelancer or a consultant or whatever serves you, in just my opinion, from my experience, what I've seen,Nick LeRoy  25:28I 100,000 million percent agree with you. And honestly, this was the last comment I made before I said, Hey, this is a really good conversation. Why don't we save it for the podcast, because I can't speak for you, Kristina. But for myself, I've been doing this freelance consulting work for going on three years now. And people still will come up and ask me what I'm doing. And it's interesting to kind of AB test it. It's like, I'll sit there and say, Oh, I own my own company, which I personally don't like, because I feel it's like over serving what I personally have accomplished. I've, I've also said, Oh, I'm a freelancer, where I think this goes a little bit more to what you're saying. And people almost kind of look at it as like, Oh, so you're under are not employed. I feel like it's almost like a, you know, a way to say that, you know, maybe you're in between what you really like to do. And then there's, you know, you're a consultant, which I think has this, this perception of higher value. And I think what Kristina had really said that resonated with me and kind of where I view the differences. And I don't know if I ever viewed it as Freelancer versus a consultant. I know, we're not trying to split hairs on the actual term. But I do think maybe this is just the difference between a successful individual consultant or contributor versus someone who might be struggling a little bit more. And it really is that are you indeed a partner with your client in your companies? Or is it hierarchy where they are truly paying you by the hour, and you're just there to knock out some work and, and be done? So I think it's very, very interesting. I be curious, you should definitely, you know, tweet at Kristina and myself when you're listening to this and tell us your side of it. But I don't know if there's a right answer. And as I've kind of alluded to, I'm often referring to myself as a freelance SEO consultant, because I don't know if I'm ready to go 100% One way or another.Kristina Azarenko  27:26Yeah, I mean, okay, it's like, in SEO, right? If people understand Freelancer better, and you can you have knowledge to sell properly, to position yourself properly, you understand that a sales conversation is an interview for both sides, not just like you need to perform there. You can call yourself a freelancer, that's fine. It's just like, if people understand him better, then it's okay. One of the seven favorite examples here like about naming things, even though you might hate this name, but it works is free gift. I worked with a company who developed Magento extensions, and we had Magento extension, which was called free gift, like, free gift does not make any sense. It's a tweet. So like, why would you name it, but people were searching for it, they were searching for magenta for gifts. So as an SEO, like as part of the marketing team, you name the product to gift because that's what people want. That's what people are searching for. So um, and as an SEO, you should understand that so if your potential clients are looking for freelancer, that's okay. You just need to And you call yourself real freelancer, that's okay. You just need to have this business skills to position yourself properly. And you definitely need to be good advice for doing as we said, and if you call yourself a consultant, you need to be really great at what you're doing. So that would be my, I think, final words about this.Nick LeRoy  29:05Again, 100% agree with Kristina, and just to reiterate exactly what she said, it really comes down to, you know, selecting the clients that are best fit for you, every time you're talking to them, or you're interviewing them just as much as they are interviewing you, you know, set up those appropriate boundaries. And just because you are a freelancer consultant, doesn't mean you're available. 24/7 you know, make sure that you, you know, appropriately create and get sign up on your statements of work. And don't be afraid to raise your hand if you're going above it, you know, and also hold yourself accountable if you're not meeting them. And I think that was one of the biggest takeaways from this conversation is, you know, really, it's just about are you polished, are you good at what you're doing and are you providing value? Exactly. So Kristina, you had shared with us at the very beginning and I'm very excited. So congratulations said MCA you are sharing with people by time they will listen that you're transitioning kind of from now. Now I'm going to kind of go back and forth between Freelancer consultant, the individual contributor role to what you are now defining as a full time creator. Outside of like the average or is the obvious like going away from client engagements? How does a creator differ from being a consultant or freelancer, if you will,Kristina Azarenko  30:29I would say that, if it's completely different, in my opinion, it requires even more skills. So like, think about that, when you leave your full time job and you become a freelancer consultant, right? You need to learn all this new skills of like a current team, talking to clients and like a lot of things. But I'd say from my experience, we are much easier to sort of like free words around them to prophesize. And to put them into processes, and then just repeat again and again. So like, of course, you, you will always improve them. But still, it's at some point, it's pretty straightforward. And you just like go and do this, and that it yields predictable results, more or less. With course creation is requires even more skills. So it's like jumping, exactly like jumping from full time to Freelancer consultant. And then the next jump is to course creator, it's completely completely different. Because you also need to be more like entertaining on social media, right? You need, like, I'm now an email marketer, I know ConvertKit I'm using ConvertKit. Now, like, I'm an expert in ConvertKit. And it was so so many things, and I'm like, I'm a copywriter too. And marketing person in general behind all of this, and also the creator and also instructional designer, because all the courses need to be build. It's not like a salad of like random things that you put there. It's a program that you follow. And at the end, you see the full picture. So that's their immediate things. And also from a mindset shift. Again, like we talked about the auntie consultant mindset, she's also a lot of mindset shifts, when it comes to Course Creators too. So I can I need it. And I'm still going to manual those.Nick LeRoy  32:40And that's very exciting. As we kind of kicked off this conversation. I think a lot of people even including myself, you view, you know, freelancer, being a consultant is kind of that, that next step in your career. Yeah, you truly have to know your skill set, you have to build upon it and skill sets that are very complementary. But this shows that there truly can be yet another stuff if that's what you're interested in, kind of a V two of Freelancer is moving away from individual training salty to the course creation. But can you walk us through a little bit? You have the SEO challenge and tech SEO dot Pro that you have? Yeah, what was kind of the driving factor behind each of those? And what are some learnings that you've had today?Kristina Azarenko  33:27Yeah, so I cleared as a challenge back in 2019. When I left my job, it was actually one of the things that I was doing when I left my job. So I was learning business skills, getting clients and also creating a course. Because I used to teach people at work, I used to, basically on board, people say want to put everything together, and then I was updating course all the time. So that was one for the athlete challenge course it was my initial initiative was like, putting everything together, like everything, but I know putting everything together and so that people who go through this course they feel their knowledge gaps, if the if they are in marketing, and the they heard about SEO, they like going through this course and like oh my god, okay, so now I can be an SEO so that that's for people who want to move into SEO positions, or who want to get promotions at their job. So for me, it was putting everything together all the knowledge that I had, like not all of those, but like most of the knowledge they have. And then I found that so many people enjoyed that technical SEO part in that course. And as I said, from the beginning of my career, I was thinking my brain thinks on technical SEO terms I find so it just like so straightforward and easy to understand for me. So people have been asking me for a course and specifically technical SEO for For two years, and I didn't have time, and I didn't have space to start it, because I know that creating a course is a journey. But then I was like, Okay, I really want to transition. And I think it's, it's going to be a point of no return for me if I, when I watched the scores, when they put everything together when it comes to technical SEO. And yeah, I just answered to all the all the asks from people to create a dedicated technical SEO course. Here, here, yeah.Nick LeRoy  35:39I have so many follow up questions I would try to target with a couple of times, it's gonna be a three hour long podcast here. But I think first and foremost, my question is, so no, I know, you've launched some courses to different degrees in the past, including ones that we just talked about, do you think to have a successful course where you're able to take the feedback and support people that are purchasing it? Is it required to do it full time? Like, do you see that you could easily do this while having a full time job or as your Freelancer having individual clients?Kristina Azarenko  36:14I'd say, well, it's totally doable. When you have when you have like, totally doable as a side hustle. That's what I did for almost two years with SEO challenge. But it just depends on where you want to move. If you see that clients is human main priority, then it means that, okay, you need to, you need to somehow easy simplify the delivery of the course, you need to somehow I don't know yourself or find someone who is required to support support questions. And I'm not necessarily talking about being with students all the time out there and answering their questions. But I'm also talking about like, what if somebody, what if somebody can't logging into the account, like all this kind of stuff. So especially if your courses are at higher price points, it's more important to like have a support, if it's at low price points that can be on Gumroad, or somewhere where they will generally I have my ebook on Gumroad. And I don't have like, don't have emails, maybe one or two emails, like three years about people not being able to access it. So yeah, it just depends on where you want to go, it's possible to do this full way to do this as a side hustle. But for me, I want to move further.Nick LeRoy  37:40And that makes a lot of sense. I think this next question, I'm going to cheat and it's going to be like a million billion questions and one, but as you would kind of alluded to with freelancing, it's like you have to be really good in the skill that you're selling. And then you have to adapt and learn the business side of it, too. I would assume? How do I even say this? Like, what is the most difficult part of creating the course, because similar to what we just talked about, you have to create the content, or I'm sorry, you have to know the content, you have to create the content, you have to distribute the content. And you have to like, I'll just call it customer support, you know, which one of those historically, you know, maybe it has been more of a learning curve for you. And, you know, how have you gone about learning, you know, the the content side? Thanks.Kristina Azarenko  38:28Yeah. So, basically, I find that the hardest thing for me is to switch constantly switch between two mindsets. One mindset is a creator. Because I really, I really love tweeting, I would sometimes be like, like, for the previous model, because I'm recording the technical SEO pro course right now. And I was in the, like, in the bathroom, and I was like, Oh, my God, I have an idea for an example of how to explain crawling, indexing, and everything. And he's going to use a house and like, and pictures and photos. Oh, my God, that's so cool. And yeah. So that's, that's the mind of creator and I love like random examples. I use them all the time. I used to use them with clients, and now we're using them with students. But yeah, so like, it's the mind of creator. And also like the mindset, the Creator. And also there is mindset of a marketer. And that's really hard. Like that's sometimes hard to market your own things. First of all, and secondly, you need to be out there, you need to be online, you need to be promoting because otherwise, no matter how great your course is, nobody's going to buy. That was the hard truth that I have to accept. Because it doesn't matter if you're amazing. It's like, if you're gonna saltan if you're amazing, but you, if you don't talk to clients, if you don't have prospects and leads coming to you, or if you can't sell on the sales calls, nobody will benefit from your expertise. That's exactly what happens with courses, if you don't sell people don't buy. So that was one of the things. Another thing that he had to accept here is that it can be copied, it can be resold is just, it's very painful to see this. But I treat it as like, you know, there is karma anyway. And if people are buying things, it's like, it's robbery, it's like people are robbing, basically tweezers when they are doing like that. But it's not me who can who can impose karma on them. It's happened having it will happen anyway. So well, this is something to accept. So yeah, I would say these two things were the hardest.Nick LeRoy  41:03It's interesting, you bring up kind of the the piracy side of it, it's just not something that I had considered. But I've seen quite a few people talk about any event, you know, call out message boards, or, you know, towards where people are getting access to. So I think the way that you approach it makes a lot of sense. It's not that you ever want to say it's okay, but it's really just trying not to sweat it and live by the 8020 model. You know, it's like 80% of people, hopefully doing this the right way, you can support them, and they become your biggest advocates, whereas these individuals who aren't paying or flat out stealing your content, you know, they're probably not the people you necessarily want to be advocating for you to begin with.Kristina Azarenko  41:44Exactly, exactly. And I have clear values inside of my academy. All the diversity of inclusion of no judgement. So it's important to me that only the right people are entering my space, and we are my academy. So those people who prefer stealing, they're not my students. Anyway, it just sucks that there are so many websites who just resolving stolen content.Nick LeRoy  42:13And I think that's, that's awesome. And again, just to be very clear, yeah, I don't think either one of us is advocating for anybody stealing. It's just a sad reality that in this world, anytime you put hard work, you know, upfront and you sell it, to be able to get any, when people are getting value, there's always going to be somebody that kind of circumvents the system just so wrapping up here that Kristina walk me through some recommendations for you know, additional freelancers or content creators that inspire you, you know, any books courses, newsletters that you think people listening here should sign up for, you know, if they aspire to either freelance or become a content creator themselves?Kristina Azarenko  43:01Yeah, sure. So, um, basically, well, again, freelancers, consultants, and different content creators, I think I've spanned, okay, I've spanned around 15 key learning course creation, and all this stuff. So it's, it's a lot. But when it comes to, I think that your audience will be mostly interested in freelancing consulting. So that's where there's so many amazing resources. And what I would recommend is to read without teaching, that's an amazing book, by me, by Blair ends, he's actually who actually lives in Canada. And that's, that's the book where I learned that like, were sort of like I learned, it's just, it was just me tweeting my thoughts that I do not need to perform for the client. And I was reading it at the beginning when I was just like, starting to pick up those business skills. So it's a really, really quick book to read. I'm not affiliated we will. I love it. I would also recommend Jonathan Stark. He is amazing. He has a podcast and he has a newsletter. Ditching ditching hourly, but like you can Google just Jonathan Stark, he talks a lot about value pricing. While value pricing is like a very advanced level of pricing, that would not suit everyone. And it doesn't necessarily mean that like you need to do value pricing right away and that you will need to do value pricing at all. It depends on what like how you saved for yourself. But what I love Jones Johnson Stark is because he talks a lot about against hourly, right, I will read and that's another topic that I instill passionately, love charge hourly, most of the cases. That's the only thing that I would say. But yeah, so we loved his newsletters and his podcast, as well. And yeah, I think, I think just find people who inspire you, for me, I really loved watching how Aleyda Solis Does, does her staff She's amazing. She's amazing as a consultant. So it was, I was watching, I was watching her, of course, I still I was talking her, then I became friends with her. As you're watching her all the time, and think she She's amazing. So just like find people who share content about, like, how the free ones do how or how they are consultants. And yeah, stalk them online, if they have products about freelancing, buy those products learn because it never hurts to see different perspectives. Yeah, that's what I would recommend.Nick LeRoy  46:06So I'm definitely going to look into those books, and I will include them as links to Amazon in the wrap up here. But I would definitely agree everything you said about Elena, I would say she's kind of the gold star, especially as it comes to the SEO industry and freelancing. You know, not only is she just exceptionally nice and is always sharing, you know, her just information or techniques or strategies, but she just, it seems like she's always doing everything right, which is absolutely fantastic. And I think we all should try to be doing 90% of what she does. And like I said, just fantastic. But Kristina, thank you again for joining us today on the SEO freelancer. For people that are listening today. How can they get in touch with you in addition to your let us know about your courses? And the next one coming up?Kristina Azarenko  46:57Yeah, of course. So you can reach me out at marketingsyrup.com or Twitter @azarchick or LinkedIn. You can see hit me up there if you have any thoughts about this podcast or have any questions about the courses.Nick LeRoy  47:16Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Kristina. Really appreciate you having on today. We'll catch you next time. Thank you.Kristina Azarenko  47:24Thank you so much. Bye, everybody This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seofreelancer.substack.com

Introducing Tom CritchlowTom Critchlow is a freelance Strategy Consultant and creator of the very popular courses for SEO professionals at SEOMBA.comIn today’s podcast, Tom and I talk about his career journey where he started in a support role at an accounting practice. He would later join his brother Will at Distilled and even be hired on at Google. We continue to discuss his reasoning for leaving Google and how he ended up in his current independent consultant role.Articles referenced in our discussion:* Reflecting on things I failed to get done at Google* The Jigsaw of Independence* Let’s Talk Revenue DiversificationTom’s Resource Recommendations* Think Boundless - Paul Millerd* The business of expertise - David Baker* Million dollar consulting - Alan WeissHow to connect with Tom CritchlowTom’s newsletter/courses siteConnect with Tom on LinkedInConnect with Tom on TwitterThis Months Sponsor: SEORadar.comWe all know how many clients end up making changes that are bad for SEO without them talking to SEO pros first.  SEORadar puts you back in control of your client’s issues.Whether it’s weird rendering issues that crop up or a content editor that changes titles that have been optimized for Google, SEORadar’s alerts will help you stay on top of what’s changing.Get alerts via Slack, Email, or text message. And when that bad alert hits, you’ll have full HTML archives and screenshots to easily revert quickly.Get Started Today with SEORadar at seoradar.com.  If you are a freelancer interested in joining me on a future episode of The SEO Freelancer podcast Please email me directly at [email protected] TranscriptionNick LeRoy  00:13Welcome to the SEO Freelancer podcast. I'm your host, Nick LeRoy. This month I speak with Tom Critchlow SEO and strategy consultant, and also well known for his courses at the SEO MBA. Before we start this month's interview, a quick note from our sponsor, Seo radar.com. We all know how many clients end up making changes that are bad for SEO. Without them talking. SEO is first, SEO radar puts you back in control of your clients issues. Whether it's weird rendering issues that crop up or a content editor that changes titles that have been optimized for Google SEO radars alert will help you stay on top of what's changing. get alerts via slack email or text message. And when that bad alert hits, you'll have full HTML archives and screenshots to easily revert quickly. Get started today with SEO radar at Seo radar.com. Thank you again to our sponsor, and let's jump into this month's episode. So thank you, Tom, for joining us today.Tom Critchlow  01:19Oh, thanks having me on the show. Tom, just to kick us off. Do you mind giving us a little bit of an introduction? A brief description of your background? Yeah, sure. So I got started in SEO working for my brother will Critchlow who started the distilled who some of you may or may not be familiar with this is back in the UK in 2008, let's say something like that. When I think we were at the right time in the right place, SEO kind of took off. So so we went very quickly from doing SEO for like a local hairdresser and a local restaurant. I remember there was a Castle in Scotland that I was doing SEO for a long time ago. We very quickly went from that to doing enterprise level SEO for high street brands in the UK. I remember we did a big engagement with Amazon, UK, when they were kind of launching into the UK with a dedicated team. And so yeah, it kind of took off from that. So that was where I cut my teeth, both from learning and learning, SEO, and kind of getting into the SEO industry, but also from wedding business, learning how to manage your team, learning how to close client deals, all that kind of stuff. You know, we went from me well, and Duncan, just the three of us running to steal two, I think when I left in 2011, we were I don't know somewhere about 5060 people across London, New York and Seattle. And that was the thing that brought me to New York. So I've been in New York for a decade. And, you know, I ran the New York office for distilled for a little bit. And then in 2012, join Google. So I want to go to Google for a couple years. That was very much a, an attempt to kind of get out of SEO, in a weird kind of way i i was i was very interested at that point in my career, it just kind of broadening my horizons, seeing what else was out there. And I think being in New York, I was surrounded with a lot of kind of creative technologists and people doing interesting stuff on the web more generally. And so I was kind of interested in pursuing that. Going further on that. So I went to Google for a couple years where I did a whole bunch of random stuff, including like TV ads, and internal innovation videos and product strategy stuff, most of which I was highly unqualified for. Yeah, and then like you said, since 2014, I've been out on my own doing, doing kind of freelance independent consulting work. And that's fantastic. You know, I knew of you, Tom and your brother, you know, back when you guys really started integrating with moss, you know, directly, I suspect that played a significant role into moving into the enterprise side of things, you know, and then you kind of dropped the bomb on us that you were, quote, unquote, leaving SEO and to go to Google at a non SEO role, which I always thought was interesting. And I'll link to it in the description. But I actually came across one of your posts that just said, what is it like three or four ideas you came up with? The some of them were crazy. Some of them were before their time, which again, I thought that was just really interesting. And I could see going from kind of an SEO exclusive role to a role that doesn't have to do with SEO, but is much broader in business, you know, kind of going full circle. Now. You know, I know you do broader consulting, but being able to create this SEO MBA, I suspect you would say that, that that experience at Google, and you're running distill with your brother, like those softer skills, you have to play a considerable role. Yeah, yeah, I think I've certainly got my brother to credit for a lot of that he worked in a management consulting firm before he started distilled and learned a lot of kind of foundational skills about how to communicate with senior executives, how to add polish to your work in a way that I think a lot of folks in the SEO industry in particular at that time, at least, weren't really thinking about, you know, Have, and just kind of professionalizing the work, making it ready for senior level executives, thinking about business strategy and business models more closely. And my brother insults him. And I think to me, I got interested in that stuff. And, you know, the more that I was in the SEO industry, the more that I kind of created this foundational point of view, which was that, you know, SEO is consultative, whether you're working in house or an agency, you have to persuade other teams to invest their resources against your projects, right? You know, you need the content on the PR team, the engineering team, the product team, the data teams, we need all these other teams to allocate their resources in service of our goals. And so soft skills, right, persuasion, negotiation, pitching, cross functional collaboration, communication, those things are just in my mind, those are almost the hard skills of SEO, right, those were almost the most useful bits. And that was what you know, ultimately led me to launch in the SEO MBA was, was feeling like, there was a gap in the industry that that I could I could be useful in and that I can help others learn some of those skills. And and yeah,Nick LeRoy  06:10yeah, without a doubt, you know, this is one of if not the main reasons I want you on this podcast, Tom was I think you were hitting what is one of the biggest opportunities for all SEOs across the board. And it really is, you know, in this executive presence or soft skills in general. I mean, one of your your first post was talking about just taking standardized SEO data that you and I would look at it export a Screaming Frog, and it all makes sense. But you know, what, once you take a screenshot and throw it on a PowerPoint, and expect C suite to understand what that means, let alone how that's gonna impact their bottom line, like you've completely lost them totally. And it kind of goes back to the conversation that I have, you know, as a freelancer, and I tend to serve as more of the enterprise also a lot of the C suite conversations. And I always say that it's 20% of my job is actually doing the SEO, it's 80%, of communicating, getting buy in and moving the boulder so that they can succeed so that they don't get in their own way. And again, this is where I become such a huge fan of the SEO MBA and a part of the SEO freelancer, I try to communicate that, you know, this is not where you go to learn SEO, you're learning some of these soft skills, and that is what's going to really differentiate you from being a good SEO, from being a good SEO consultant.Tom Critchlow  07:29Yeah, yeah. No, I love that what you just said that distinction between between being a current technical practitioner to actually being an effective senior level consultant, or professional, I think is that the skills gap that, that I think both of us are kind of pointing out?Nick LeRoy  07:43Yeah, and, and I think you would agree, we all know, some individuals that are just crushing SEO, they're gonna rank for various casino sites and affiliates, and they can make a ton of money. And that's not going to be a priority for them. It's that's the communication because, you know, they found their little niche. But I think for the 98% of us whether, as you mentioned before, whether your agency side in house freelancer, this is just a skill that you can't run away from. And I definitely want to spend a little bit more time jumping into that a little bit. But if you don't mind, let's take one step back. One question that I asked all my guests that people love this is can you explain to us your first job out of school, your professional career, and what were you earning at the beginning of your career? Yeah,Tom Critchlow  08:28so my, my first job out of college was working for an accounting team inside a big, it was a big call center organization. And, you know, when I say I worked in accounting, what that meant was scanning invoices. I used like, one by one, I took a piece of paper and fed it into the scanner, and then I stamped it with a rubber stamp. And I did that all day long. I don't remember exactly how much I was earning. But it must have been somewhere like 14 16,000 pounds in the UK. SoNick LeRoy  08:57obviously making a ton of money, right?Tom Critchlow  08:58Yeah, I mean, it wasn't a highly paid job at all. And then I quickly went quickly went from that to working in a digital agency a few years later, where I don't remember again, exactly how much I was earning probably somewhere in the 16 to 18k range. Because I had no digital experience. Right. That was again, it was your level job as an account manager. And so that was kind of, yeah, that was where I got my start.Nick LeRoy  09:21Just out of curiosity, so I'm assuming this was prior to joining your brother with a steel.Tom Critchlow  09:25Yep. Yep. So I joined a digital agency as an account manager. And there were a full service agency. So we do SEO, PPC web design, what build and open account manager. So I was, I used to be the first point of contact for clients. And what was interesting for that was, you know, our SEO function at that agency, at the time when I joined was terrible. And in fact, two people in the SEO team left the day that I joined. And so I was the one on the phone to the angry clients all day long, who are demanding SEO results. So that was really the first exposure I had to being like, well, maybe I can figure this SEO stuff out myself, because it seems like people are already annoyed at it. And we don't have a team that does it anymore. I got to do something because people are yelling at me all day long. And that was that was kind of where I first started to dip my toes into reading Moz and, you know, reading the forums and being like, what is this SEO business anyway? And then went from there to join my brother's company back when it was kind of barely a company that was willing Duncan, the two of them started a web design business. And I kind of joined to to add on the kind of SEO component, and, and the rest is history. That's to say,Nick LeRoy  10:31I love that story. I think what's interesting, though, is unlike some or most SEOs, where you jump in and day one, you're starting with the Moz, or the Whiteboard Fridays, you know, jumping into the Yahoo Site Explorer, like most of us back in the day, did you know you were actually dealing with the people skills, the sauces, you're talking to people hiring, what the issues were. So it'd be interesting, because I think, little to nobody ever starts their career focusing on that aspect. We all grab, you know, the Moz, SEO, beginner to SEO guide, and you're trying to learn those skills. So like I said, I wonder if this kind of full circle, if that plays a significant role in you know, what you're accomplishing today?Tom Critchlow  11:12Yeah, yeah, quite, quite possibly. I mean, I certainly think that customer service, as a kind of foundational frame is something that sticks with you for a long time, right? Anytime you've had to be directly client facing, you know, helping helping them navigate their problems, sell things to them communicate things through them, clearly. I think that that is a that's a really useful skill that that setsNick LeRoy  11:35without a doubt. So real quick, just kind of wrap it up some of your experience. So you are part of this still, you guys are growing like crazy. You're having a ton of great experiencing growth in your career, you know, as we've kind of saw through the digital realm, but then you decide, like I said, from an outsider perspective, it kind of felt like overnight, I'm sure you and will and others that are closer knew this was coming. But you left to go to Google and not in an SEO role. Can you walk us through a little bit like what had you kind of go with that? You know, angle? And then more importantly, after you spent that time there, you left Google? So yeah, walk us through that a little bit, if you don't mind?Tom Critchlow  12:12Yeah, yeah. So I think, you know, there was a moment in time, around 2009 2010, where, as SEOs, we had some of the kind of most, most access and most control over digital dollars, right? So there was this moment in time when SEO was the thing driving companies to go online to launch an E commerce part of their business, and so on and so forth. And as SEO professionals who've been working on the internet for a while, right, we will often very senior, were bought into very strategic senior conversations, and we would look, we would turn it, we would look down our noses at all the other teams, right, we'd be like, well, PR teams, they didn't know how to digital stuff. And, you know, web designers, they don't know how to do digital stuff. And ad agencies, they don't know how to do digital stuff, you know. And so I felt like there was a moment in time 2009 2010 When SEO was kind of most ascendant, right? As an SEO, you could get access to very, very serious decision makers, you can be involved in very strategic projects. And when I moved to New York, and it doesn't 11 I think that was really a catalyst for me to understand that the tides were changing. And that there were just as many people who worked in PR, who had grown up with the internet in the same way that we had, and the ad agencies were doing really innovative digital stuff. And web design agencies and web development agencies actually knew how to do SEO pretty well now. And so I think what I saw the writing on the wall was that where SEO had been one of the most effective ways to get access to the senior levels of business, I saw the SEO was only a way to do that, and that there were all these other disciplines doing really interesting things. And, you know, there was a little bit I think, maybe, maybe a frustration or so right at the back in 2011. I would go to SEO conferences, and people would hold up these kind of quote unquote, examples of content marketing, or like, you know, great, great content campaigns. And I looked at them all. And I'd be like, they were all made by an agency. None of these things that were holding up in the inside the SEO industry, as good examples of contact were made by SEO, and they're all made by content agencies, ad agencies, or PR agencies. And so again, that was kind of just opening my eyes to maybe there's a bigger world out there. And again, so that was kind of the industry shift. And that was coupled with a personal just shift of feeling like I've been in that industry for a long time, I was still kind of young, and I was like, I just want more experienced across more things, you know, and so the the job of Google kind of kind of fell out of the sky and it kind of serendipitous way, which we can talk about another time, but yeah, kind of opened itself up. And I was like, this seems like fun. I'm gonna go do it. So yeah, I went to go work at Google for a couple of years. And that experience was, you know, I mean, I learned a ton inside Google. It was a it was a super, super formative experience in terms of opening my eyes to all the things I wanted to open my eyes to, right. You know, I ran TV campaigns and I got to rub shoulders with some of the, like best designers in the world, you know, the guy that redesigned the Google logo, like sat two desks away from me. And so it was like, it was great. And I really enjoyed that stuff. I also felt like a kind of a, a fish out of water, or a sheep in wolf's clothing or whatever, like, Yeah, I kind of felt a little bit like the odd one out, surrounded, but in particular, by a lot of creative types, with, you know, and I was trying to bring a kind of an analytical and business mindset to the work. So, you know, I never really found my place at Google. But you know, don't really regret my time that it certainly did what it what I set out to do, which was, you know, give me a stepping stone into a new career, a new path, give me a new range of experiences. And then, you know, it's funny, you talk about freelancing. When I when I left Google 2014, I had this kind of high hope that I would do freelancing work around, the kind of stuff that I've been doing is like, a Google right is kind of like, you know, digital transformation, innovation work, you know, blah, blah, blah. And, of course, nobody knew me for that work, right? I didn't have any reputation, or audiences, or the very first contract that I got after I left Google Web SEO projects, right. And that felt a little bit demoralizing, honestly, you know, at first, I was like, Oh, am I gonna go back to doing SEO audits, having just spent two years with Google that feels like going backwards in my career. And what I, what I realized was that being independent, being a solo consultant, versus being an agency gave me much more freedom to get deeper inside clients, organizations deeper inside clients problems, you know, the structure of the kind of work that I was doing was, I would say, Well, I'm not going to do an SEO audit for you. But I'm going to come sit in your team, three days a week, right, and I'll be in your office, I'll be in your flowers. And and that gives you such a richer context for what the problems are solutions, or soft skills that we talked about, you know, getting buy in and budget and winning over stakeholders. And so over the years, my consulting work evolved from what you were kind of affectionately call SEO consulting, into what I now call strategy consulting, although, you know, where do you where do you draw the line? But, you know, that grew out of that, that kind of SEO work. So anyway, that was a long winded answer to your question, but that was kind of the journey that I went on.Nick LeRoy  17:14Yeah, I think everything you said was fantastic. And the first thing that you said that you noticed, back in 2011, that I think is coming around full circle, again, as you know, ad agencies and PR, are doing a lot of work that is essentially working for SEO. Right. And I think before you called out its content creation, but I would argue all the like Link Building wins that we are seeing now. Nobody's talking about going out in manually outreaching. You know, they get six links, and this is winning, and they're creating PR campaigns. Right. And it's really amazing to see not only that you were forward thinking and seeing that 10 years ago, but that is still I don't want to call it an issue. It's the evolution of SEO, SEO has gone so far beyond, you know, let's do your on page SEO, let's structure everything, let's create some content, and you quote unquote, when it really has evolved, so I definitely understand, you know why that can be frustrating, you know, especially when you're on the agency side. Yeah, I'm a recovering agency guy, too. I did 10 plus years on it before going out on my own. So you and I definitely understand that. But going back to what you're saying, I think a lot of people would look at getting a job at Google, that's kind of like a pinnacle career point. You know, that's a huge job at a huge company, you know, and assuming salary kind of goes along with that. I think a lot of people that are interested in freelancing look as an opportunity to double down on the freedom and you know, the the earning potential, but so you're coming from what I understand the pie to be a sizeable income at Google, and you're having to go out, and that's what I'm sure was kind of the baseline for you defining success. So with that in mind, I'd love to know, like, what precautions if any, did you take before you went out on your own? And like, at what point in time did you kind of realize, alright, I'm on my own. And this is going to work like I can keep going versus I need to, you know, throw my resume back in to the cesspool?Tom Critchlow  19:20Yeah. Well, I definitely had a good safety net, you know, I think and that safety net takes a whole bunch of different kind of kind of forms, right? I had money in the bank, which was nice and necessary. I'm also like, a white dude, right? Like, you know, like there are kind of opportunities available. And I don't take that for granted or try not to take that for granted. But I think definitely a part of it right. There was a kind of a general safety net or some feeling of safety that I could get a job if I needed to, if this thing didn't work out, had some runway. If I remember correctly, back at the time, I think I had somewhere between three and six months. Kind of, you know true runway, a feeling like If I don't earn a single dollar for three to six months, I'll I'll be okay. After that things, things start to get rocky, as I hadn't had some some cushion, I had some safety net psychological safety and financial safety. I also had kind of preliminary client relationships. So like people are, I'd already had some discussions with folks about maybe doing some consulting work. And that gave me the confidence or feeling of safety that client work was there without any effort, right that I could, I could draw that up. And so all of those things kind of combined to when I made the leap. You know, I mean, honestly, the big trigger for making the leap was that you haven't been at Google for a couple of years and not feeling super happy that it was when I finally got my green card, in my hand, sure, gave me the final bit of kind of safety to feel like I could actually go and do my own thing rather than having to go and get another job. But it wasn't all roses, you know, I stepped out on on my own. And it took me it took me a bow a year or year and a half ish to get back to the point where I was replacing my Google salary. And probably took me another, let's say, 18 months to feel like I was kind of like, alright, this is the path that I want to be on, right. And in the middle of all of that there were ups and downs and highs and lows, as I'm sure you're familiar with. You know, I remember I did some interviewing right and sent my resume to low spots, I remember there was a low spot was a summer of 2015 2016. So a year or two in a lot of my consulting work dried up just just the way it went. And I sent my resume, I sent my resume out to you, I was like maybe I want a job. Maybe that's the thing that I need to be doing. You know, had some job interviews and job offers, and got very close to taking some of those and ultimately decided that the freelancing consulting world was too enticing and client work pick back up and then, you know, so I don't think it's quite so linear or straightforward. Or, you know, it's not so black and white as we as it maybe looks in hindsight, right. You know, this was always the path. And this was what I was doing the whole time, you know, you kind of zigzag across these things, for sure.Nick LeRoy  22:07But it's great, you know, someone that, you know, has the success that you've had, it's great to hear that, you know, like you said, it's not black and white, you didn't, you know, leave day one make a million dollars, and it just continues to go up go up hill every day. You know, I think for everybody listening to this, and, you know, read my newsletter, it's like, there's always this picture of freelancing is only amazing. And I try to kind of balance it off with you know, things are crazy. You know, I've talked about health insurance, which I'm sure you would have very strong opinions coming from the UK to New York, where you're having to talk to your family. Yep, no, I literally just posted the other day, it's like a screenshot from my bank, I pay $1,800 a month for my family of five. You don't have I know you have a family. It's probably just too expensive. But like I said, I won't necessarily go down that rabbit hole. But one thing that I would be curious about. So when you went out on your own, you said that you weren't necessarily happy at Google. So the change makes sense. But did you have like a perceived goal? You know, what did you What was it strictly the freedom? Was it that you wanted to what I call a kind of chase the money you wanted to, you know, make X amount of dollars? Or what was it that was really exciting and ultimately made youTom Critchlow  23:24take the leap? Yeah. Again, there's a kind of a complicated, multi layered answer to that question. When I quit Google, I was actually the kind of the, the narrative of the story that I was telling people. And I told myself, even when I quit Google was that I was launching an art startup. So me and my partner had launched this online art collective, called fiercely curious. And that had done some interesting things. We were making art sales, we had a collector of artists here in Brooklyn, we were running pop up shows around Brooklyn, and obsessively. That was a little bit of the cover story, if you like, that wasn't the cover story at the time, was I was going to focus on that we were going to build this business. It was like a little ecommerce thing. We had these live events, and it was growing, and it was driving revenue. And we thought Great, I'm gonna go full time on this. I'm going to do a little bit of consulting and freelance work on the side to, you know, keep some money coming in. But that was the thing. So you think about goals or aims? You know, I think my goal and aim was great. I'm going to quit Google so I can work on this thing that I have, right? The shirts off business. You know, and that was kind of attractive in a certain sense of, I'm building something I'm being like a startup person, you know that some of these things were more attractive to me when I was younger. But it was it took about, I'd say about six to nine months of two things happening. One realizing that making money in the art world is really hard. And to that I actually really enjoyed consulting work. And so it kind of were about six, nine months into it when we decided that you know what, actually I'm going to you know, my partner stayed full time on the art business, but I was gonna go full time I'm on the consulting side. And that would, as a family that would give us more stable income, so that we could actually increase our runway for our business and keep doing that. But it took some of the financial pressures off. Because consulting is just honestly more lucrative than ours. And, you know, sometimes I wish that wasn't so but I actually really enjoy consulting. So maybe that's not a bad thing. But yeah, that was kind of the story. When you think about stepping out of Google. Yes, it was like getting out of that situation, doing something new. But it wasn't I didn't really have clarity that I didn't know I was going to spend, whatever eight years that I spent now, as a consultant, right, I didn't know that being being a consultant was going to become this kind of big part of my identity, I didn't know that I would enjoy it so much. You know, I've done a lot of client work previously to still write. So I was no stranger to client work. And I didn't necessarily imagine the client work would be as fulfilling or as creative or as interesting, as I'd managed to make it. I think that was a kind of as much of a surprise to me as anyone else.Nick LeRoy  25:55I love that you kind of made a double hop, it's like you left Google with one dream. And then you know, something that you were interested in, let's just even call it a hobby, that aspect of the consulting side. And then I don't know, are you still doing the art? Like, is that still running too?Tom Critchlow  26:11You know, I think it's been a little bit on the backburner with, you know, we had two kids over the last six years, and there's just been a pandemic in the way and that's throwing a wrench in some of our plans for a, you know, kind of doubled down on consulting as a way to kind of get through all of that. So but so that, yeah, we just, funnily enough, we just had a big commission from, from a hotel chain that wants to, you know, find some some custom work in every one of their hotel rooms, and stuff. So definitely, really interesting stuff happening on that side, it's been a very creatively fulfilling project and an interesting project to run. It's opened a lot of doors and built build a really interesting network of people, especially in New York, that I never would have built a network with otherwise, right? You're very much outside of the tech industry, you know, in creative industries, you know, both artists themselves and everyone who has kind of adjacent, it's been a great way to open doors and build networks and make friends, which, you know, it's not, it's not necessarily the reason you set out through these things. But certainly, in hindsight, that's been one of the biggest kind of a biggest areas of value.Nick LeRoy  27:17One thing that I imagine you would agree with here is I wrote a post recently talking about how freelancers should be aware of diversifying their revenue. You know, similar to what you had said before, you had the quote, unquote, bad years where clients leave. And that is the biggest risk to being a consultant or freelancers your clients come in, they go, and the goal is to never have them all leave, we're all on board at one point in time, right. But when you can have things like this aren't venture that you have, or smaller things that I'm trying to get into, like Seo jobs.com, it's like an opportunity. Because if you can diversify your revenue, then if one were to ever dry up, hopefully, it's never both of them at the same time. So there's diversity in the actual clients you take, there's diversity in the types of revenue that you have stopped. I love hearing that you are not just consulting all day, every day, you have the SEO MBA, which I want to talk to you a little bit more about, you know, you have this artventure, you might have others, but it certainly gives you more safety than what I would say a regular nine to five job can provide, you know, or just doubling down in only the art world or the consulting world.Tom Critchlow  28:25Yeah, I actually disagree with that a little bit, I have some complex thoughts. I actually wrote a blog post called called the jigsaw of independence, about trying to assemble an independent life and put all the pieces together. So I don't disagree with you that having a kind of blended income source is useful. But I think that one of the things that I've seen for independent consultants and freelancers that causes a lot of anguish, and anxiety, and burnout, honestly, is trying to chase too many different types of thing at once, like trying to build a startup while you're doing consulting, or trying to build a product and a recurring revenue stream while you're doing consulting. And actually, you know, the, for me, I actually kind of handed off a lot of that business to my partner quite early on, right? And for the longest time, right, so let's say 2015 to 2020. Right? At least five years, consulting was the only revenue stream. And that gave me an incredible amount of focus and peace, did it dare I say it was like, I know what I'm doing. I know, I know how to make money. And I'm not trying to chase these other modes work, right. Consulting is my job consulting is how I pay the bills. And consulting is almost always the most important thing, right? It's kind of like, you know, if a consulting client on boards, and that's where I spend my time, if I have somebody paying me money, then that's where I spending my time. And I'm not trying to balance that or compete that with some other priority that has this nebulous kind of time commitment, emotional commitment, and so on. I say all that because when I launched the SEO MBA in 20, last year 2020 to 2021. Time pandemic screwed up everything. Absolutely. When I launched the SEO MBA, suddenly, I had these two competing priorities right, I was doing consulting work, and I was trying to launch the SEO MBA. And that brought back to boards relief, this feeling of very much competing priorities, right, it's very, very difficult to prioritize your time, compartmentalize your time, assign focus, when you have these things that have very different modes of working very different timescales of value. And, you know, you want is self directed one is client directed one is paying immediately one has this kind of nebulous payoff. And so balancing the the consulting work versus the SEO MBA has actually been very challenging for me, over the last year, year and a half. So I say that as a kind of word of caution of a lot of people, I think, try and chase this kind of diversified revenue stream building products, building recurring revenue, and in doing so, they make consulting really stressful for themselves, right. And so I don't kind of strictly disagree with what you're saying, I diversify revenue is useful, but I just think it's really important to be clear about, you know, consulting alone is hard enough, right, managing three or four clients at once is hard, right? And so when you layer on any kind of other project, any other kind of thing, then you're really running the risk of burnout of stress of, you know, and sorrow. So, just a word of caution or something to think about it.Nick LeRoy  31:39No, I think that's, that's great. You know, there's nothing more better than when you can have healthy conversations, especially when you're coming from two different sides of it. You know, I think I certainly have three or four, you know, rebuttals, and like I said, less of say, you're right or wrong. You know, I think it's just very interesting. I think everything that you said makes a lot of sense. And I do think there's a lot to be said to mental health and burnout especially. Yeah, I think everything in life is about balance. Yeah. And I think it really depends. You know, what, what is most important for your goals today? What are some of your goals for the future? And like you said, maybe it's not one or the other, but it's leaning towards, you know, what helps you meet some of those goals. So, really, actually appreciate that take on, it just shows that to people having a little bit different approach to it can actually be 90% overlap. Yeah. You know, again, yeah, just how do you how do you get to those goals? Yeah,Tom Critchlow  32:32yeah, no, I agree. And I think, you know, I've been a big champion in my writing of, there's no one way to be an independent consultant that no one way to be a freelancer. Right, everyone carves their own mix in their own perspective and their own approach. And I think that's healthy. That's the way it should be. You know, I think that one one last point on that kind of mix of projects is, and I wrote about this, in that post I wrote, The jigsaw of independence is people, people focus a lot on time capacity, right? They focus a lot on kind of kind of the time, kind of bandwidth or the calendar bandwidth. And so they try and slot in, like, can I take on another project right now kind of take another client, etc. And I'd argue that the type of work that you do, the number of types of work is far more impactful than the raw time commitment, right? You know, I've had, I've had moments when I'm working 60 7080 hour weeks. But there's a huge alignment of it being like a certain type of consulting or a two clients in the same kind of niche, same type. And there's a lot of kind of momentum that I can get all kinds of clarity that I can get focused by, by keeping everything in a tight frame, versus having a few different clients in radically different industries or clients in radically different types, right. One is a big retainer. One is a lightweight consulting thing, you layer on top trying to like build it, build your own course on side like that, where the number of even though the actual time commitment, commitment on paper is not extreme, the different types of work that you're trying to do create this, this mental health headspace, right? They fill up your kind of band, your mental bandwidth, in a way that I think is quite insidious, right? It's quite, it's quite easy to track yourself accidentally, emotionally signing up to these different types of things. And there anyway, that's, you know, and again, everyone's perspective is different. Everyone has a different approach and a different kind of perspective. But I think it's something again, that it's something I tried to do in my own writing of when you read a lot of the kind of commonly accepted literature about how to be a freelancer, how to be an independent consultant, you read a lot about, you know, carefully managing a time tracking and your capacity planning and all of this kind of stuff. And I like to bring a slightly alternative approach, which is I think that you're kind of mental headspace is is the dominant thing. Or rather, I should say, my mental headspace is the dominant thing for me more than my actual hours as the thing that guides my stress levels, and so that I pay more attention to my mind. mental capacity that I due to the actual number of hours worked.Nick LeRoy  35:04And you and I are very much on the same page. And I wonder if it's a lot of our previous agency experience, like, you know, where you tend to work a lot more than maybe you need to or should write because I do also prioritize a lot of the mental side. And, you know, this is a conversation I had with Eli Schwartz a lot, you know, it's very much the SEO value based pricing versus trading your time for money. Yeah. And I think from my perspective, it's like, in a perfect world, we're always trying to automate making some money, we're trying to chase that elusive passive income. So it's just making sure it's like, how are we able to hit some, you know, like you said, it's paying the bills today versus paying the bills tomorrow. And it's really interesting, I do agree with you, there's a lot of effort that I think a lot of people don't necessarily realize, in taking your brain from consulting with clients, and switching over to a course a newsletter, a podcast. And those are things that you're risking to guaranteed payday of working with people that are paying you, whether it be for the hour or for retainer versus something that may or may not work. So I do agree with you. I think that it's I don't know, again, I'll kind of go back to what I said. I think it's just really balancing it all. For me, it's more of a balancing game. Like you said, maybe it's it's not doing the balance, but I think that's just really kind of learning what is best for you what's healthy, you know, and ultimately gonna go back to like, we said, what are your goals? Totally?Tom Critchlow  36:28Yeah, yeah, I think everyone has to find the right balance.Nick LeRoy  36:31And so I want to be respectful of your time here. But let's wrap up by talking a bit about the SEO MBA, you know, you talked a little bit about, you know, existing and spending your time and you know, it's kind of a venture into the unknown. But can you walk us through a little bit more? You know, what the purpose of the SEO MBA is, we talked quite a bit at the very beginning about, you know, the soft skills and how it's a gap in the industry. But can you elaborate a little bit more? Yeah, well, soTom Critchlow  36:57the origin story, I think, is kind of interesting. So I was, I was working on a big consulting gig in 2019. And 2020. It's kind of just right when the pandemic was starting, and I was helping a big fortune 500 company, basically build an SEO team from scratch. They went from a team of SEO of three SEOs to a team of like 50 people, nominally in the SEO team, of which, you know, we're like eight, I think, full time SEO is there's a big product squad, there's a big editorial squad. And so as all of that, you know, I put the strategy together, got buy in from the CEO, and from the board, and they said, great, go spend, you know, a few million dollars on building out this team. And then the CEO turns around to me, and he says, Well, okay, so you gotta go, you gotta go hire this VP of SEO, it's gonna oversee this big team, right? That's your, that's the first thing you got to do. And I was like, oh, right, I gotta go execute this plan, not just put it in PowerPoint. And so anyways, I spent a long time, a lot of the other 19, lot of 2020, interviewing exclusively senior level SEO professionals for that VP of SEO role. And I spoke to a lot of people with a lot of different backgrounds. I spoke to many people that knew a lot more about the technical workings of SEO than I do. I'm not, you know, I'm not the best at that. And what was clear, though, was that I couldn't find anyone that I was comfortable putting in front of the CEO, I couldn't find somebody who could manage a p&l, build a, you know, run a team that size, and operate a kind of program inside a company of that size. And it all came to a head when I found this one person in particular that we were very, very close to hiring. And I went to CEO and I said, got this one person, I really liked them. They're almost there. They're just, they're just lacking a little bit of that kind of executive presence, the need, and the CEO said, Well, maybe we should hire them. And you should train that in. And I was like, I could do that. And then I was like, I kind of paused a bit. And I was like, oh, yeah, I could do that. Yeah. That was like, Oh, right. This is a thing that is like, a huge skills, skills gap in the industry, right? I've just spent all this time interviewing candidates and seeing firsthand, like, as the hiring manager, I'm not hiring these people, because the lack of the skills and like a concrete skills gap in the industry. It's a thing that is super needed, and is the thing that kind of takes somebody from being a technical professional to a to a, you know, a senior, kind of executive professional. And it's also a thing that kind of uniquely fits my skill set. Right? I have the SEO background, I spent a long time caring about consulting skills, working with senior decision makers, senior executives, and so on. And so that was really the genesis I was like, Alright, I should go do this. So the SEO MBA that the name stuck, and I was like, that's the name that's the brand. I'm going to launch it as a newsletter. I always knew courses were going to come on the horizon. And that was the first quarter it was the fourth first course in November last year, that was the SEO MBA course on executive presence. And then the second course was launched about a month ago the audit client management. first course is very much for kind of anyone who's seen here, whether agency or in house, the course it just went live the audit client management is all about agency side SEO? So it's all about if you work at an agency, how do you manage clients, effectively client communication, client, retention, upsells, all of that kind of stuff. And both the newsletter and the courses again, focus exclusively on the things we talked about the soft skills, right, the communication, the leadership strategy, working with senior stakeholders working cross functionally, I try, I try not to teach anything about how to do SEO, the kind of technical skills, I think there's plenty of other good resources for that. And that tends to be a more commonly accepted skill set. So yeah, that was, that was the background of how we launched it, where I'm at looks at the second course was went live, in terms of where it goes next. That is very much TBD, trying to figure that out. Right now, if you have ideas, send me a postcard.Nick LeRoy  40:42Yeah, and as we had talked about before, I can't remember if it was offline or online earlier, I truly believe that the soft skills are the difference between what makes a really good SEO, and a really great SEO. And honestly, you can take, you know, he's writing this course and you know, the newsletter for SEO specifically, but a lot of what he's writing about regularly within the newsletters, you know, the posts, the actual courses can be helpful for any specific area of skill set. You know, this, this ability to be able to communicate the value to taking in the weeds information, and taking what's most important, create headlines, easy to consume. PowerPoints is just so critical. And it's something that, you know, I continue to prioritize and work on extensively, because I know it's what really can make a freelancer even stand out versus an agency or potentially even an in house team. So, again, go to Seo nba.com. At minimum, sign up for the newsletter, check out the content. If you haven't already, I think you'll quickly realize how great you know Tom's work is, again, Todd just can't publicly thank you for doing that. I think this is a huge gap in our industry. And, you know, looking forward to a lot more of your future work?Tom Critchlow  41:57Well, I really appreciate those kind words, it makes getting feedback that people enjoy and find value in the writing and the courses is makes it all worthwhile. So I really appreciate that.Nick LeRoy  42:08Real quick, before we let you go here, can you give us any recommendations just from being a consultant? Are there individuals that you think people should follow courses outside of the SEO MBA, you know, our newsletters that you recommend people, you know, follow or sign up for?Tom Critchlow  42:27Yeah, I mean, Paul Millerd, a friend of mine has a great podcast called Think boundless. And he also has an online course about thinking like a strategy consultant. I think that's a great, a great course, for anyone who's kind of independent and thinking about how to navigate that stuff. Does there's a book the business of expertise by David Baker, that I found really useful. There's another book by Alan Buys million dollar consulting, which is a little bit more rah rah, like, I don't always love to tone. I kind of very aggressive. Yeah, like, I'm not sure I would like Alan, if I met him in real life. And that's no, no, don't get me to speak badly of him. But I just, you know, we don't think we see things the same way. And yet, there was a lot of good advice in the book, if you can kind of repass for the rah rah stuff. So yeah, those are some of the sources that have been useful for me. And then yeah, I outside of the SEO MBA on Tom Cruise, show.com. I do a lot of writing about independent consulting generally, and the ups and downs and inner workings of that that life. So if you're into that, yeah, check out check out some of thatNick LeRoy  43:32Fantastic. And last, but not least, people listening today, how can they get in touch with you?Tom Critchlow  43:38Twitter is probably where I'm kind of most active and probably a waste most of my time at Tom crystal on Twitter, my personal website, Tom picture.com. And yeah, the SEO MBA, which is Seo mba.com. Fantastic. Well, thank you again, so much, Tom, for joining us today. I'll make sure to link everything that we've talked about with full transcript down in the description below. You can find that at the SEO freelancer.com Thanks, Tom. Thanks. I'm on the show. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seofreelancer.substack.com

Introducing Bethan VincentBethan Vincent is a freelance fractional CMO and owner of marketing strategy consultancy Open Velocity.In today’s podcast, we talk with Bethan who left her full-time job and over doubled her earnings as a freelancer. One element that she attributes her success to is her personal brand which we discuss in detail.Bethan’s people/resources to follow* Jason Bradwell* marketoonist.comHow to connect with Bethan VincentCheck out Bethan’s websiteCheck out Bethan’s podcastConnect with Bethan on LinkedInConnect with Bethan on TwitterThis Months Sponsor: SEORadar.comWe all know how many clients end up making changes that are bad for SEO without them talking to SEO pros first.  SEORadar puts you back in control of your client’s issues.Whether it’s weird rendering issues that crop up or a content editor that changes titles that have been optimized for Google, SEORadar’s alerts will help you stay on top of what’s changing.Get alerts via Slack, Email, or text message. And when that bad alert hits, you’ll have full HTML archives and screenshots to easily revert quickly.Get Started Today with SEORadar at seoradar.com.  If you are a freelancer interested in joining me on a future episode of The SEO Freelancer podcast Please email me directly at [email protected] TranscriptionNick LeRoy  00:14Hey, Ben, thank you again so much for joining me today.Bethan Vincent  01:42My pleasure, Nick, great to be here. Really excited to get kind of stuck in two of my favorite topics, money and personal branding.Nick LeRoy  01:50It doesn't get much better than that. So just to kick things off, I would love for you just to take a moment to tell us who is Bethan, you know? What is your experience? What are you doing your house freelance life? Give us a little bit of the one on one.Bethan Vincent  02:04Yeah, sure. So I mean, I've been in marketing, I'm giving my away my age a little bit here, but for about 12 years now. So too long, shall we say, grew my career from you know, go for a marketing assistant marketing manager, marketing director at a software consultancy. And that was my last kind of employee job. And really, during the pandemic, I was kind of thinking like, everyone really, I was reviewing the work, I was doing the impact I was making the work I wanted to be doing. And I also had a bunch of people come to me and say, Hey, we've seen how good you are at your in house job would you come and like help us out? We've got similar challenges. And those two things combined made me think maybe I could go and kind of freelance and be a freelance consultant. And that could be a thing for me. So I left my kind of last full time job in June 2021. So a year ago, actually, now, which is awesome. And yeah, thank you. Yeah, really, really. It's been a great year. It's been it's been challenging, but it's been really, really good. And yeah, kind of grown my consultancy ever since.Nick LeRoy  03:08That's fantastic. Oh, there's nothing more exciting. And you know, I give you a huge kudos because making the choice to leave the stability during the COVID pandemic, to go freelance is just fantastic, as people have heard before, and I'm probably just echoing now, you know, I was kind of forced into freelancing, I lost my job in COVID. So I have a lot of respect for individuals who made the choice because contrary to what some people might think, I made the choice when that without being pushed a little bit.Bethan Vincent  03:45But I think the thing is, you know, everyone thinks that pandemics or I mean, I hope we never have another one. But you know, recessions or these kind of market downturns or periods of kind of uncertainty, a bad time to launch a business. But actually, you know what, other people won't be thinking about doing it because there'll be scared off so there'll be less competition. And actually, as a freelancer, you know, a recession is a good opportunity for you because companies are looking to reduce headcount and you're flexible resource so that I, I'm a little bit kind of skeptical of the people who are like, this is a bad time to be freelancing. Don't do it. Don't use keep your in house job.Nick LeRoy  04:21I agree with you. 100%. And I would say if anything, I was very surprised, because I thought it would be difficult and that I'd be scraping up little odds and end projects. But you're right, if I think the thought of a freelancer has really changed during this pandemic, you know, going from Oh, it's a freelancer we don't kind of quote unquote, own them and their time to wow, now we're gonna skip. You don't having the full overhead of an in house or pay for the big fancy agencies that are going to take me out to steak dinner. It's like we're gonna go straight to you know, I hate this word more than anything, but we use the word experts. And we're just going to hire them, we're going to focus on doing the work doing it well. And that's really all that matters. And I think there's been a huge shift in marketing as a whole that way.Bethan Vincent  05:14Absolutely. And my model specifically is I do a lot of fractional cmo work, just because I've got that experience, as you know, marketing leader director on a on a board of directors. And that's a very kind of all it's not a new concept, but it's definitely one that's taking off more and more in this idea that you can have a fractional CMO or a fractional CFO, or even a fractional marketing manager. And I think that just ties into the points you're talking about, people are looking at how they resource teams, or how they resource their business a lot differently. And figuring out like, actually, someone sat in an office, you know, eight hours a day, five days a week, they're not working that full time, let's be I don't know what your office jobs were like, but like, you're chatting, you're having coffee, you know, you're faffing about, let's be honest, and you can be very effective. You know, I work with a lot of clients one day, a week or a couple of days a month, and you can actually get a lot of done in that time period. A lot of stuff to come. Sorry.Nick LeRoy  06:08Yeah, no, you're so right. And I'm really, really glad you brought up the idea of fractional positions. And the whole tone we haven't really talked about in the podcast yet. But it's actually how I position a lot of my roles as an SEO because I am not the cheapest SEO, a lot of agencies can be cheaper, but you're paying for my expertise. And I really do position it as kind of a fractional in House Director of SEO, I'm not going to necessarily be the one you want to pull or pay to pull all the spreadsheets, but you need someone to be building the strategy giving direction to weighing and measuring, you know, and there are other individuals, whether it be in house, or I even have one instance where they have a completely different SEO agency, that I am the fractional, you know, not a CMO, but a digital marketing leader that oversees that. So I think there's just a huge opportunity there. And it's amazing to see these companies really embracing that practical position.Bethan Vincent  07:10Yeah, absolutely. And part of it is also because, you know, we know there is a huge talent shortage in marketing in SEO, SEO actually, in particularly, I'd say SEO and PPC, I'm trying to hire for a lot of clients at the moment. And those are like the things I am struggling with massively, I don't know what it's like in the US. But in the UK, the labor markets are extremely tight. So you know, companies are being forced to look at other options, the only thing I'd say about that kind of fractional, if you're going in at that strategy, or that senior level role, the expectation from clients is very high, I'm sure you find this as well, like, they want you to come in and be a leader. So if you are positioning yourself as that and you are commanding those types of rates, clients, you need to deliver for your clients, essentially. And I think, you know, part of this podcast is talking about like growing your freelance revenue. And I very deliberately wanted to position myself like you at that kind of high end of the market. And that's, frankly, how I've managed to double my previous salary. And actually this year, I'm more tripling it. We're on track to triple it, I should say, yeah, and, you know, probably going to turn over in British pounds about 160 170k. If I play my cards, right, and, you know, keep myNick LeRoy  08:25arms up right now.Bethan Vincent  08:28Yeah, and, you know, I like not cheap, but I deliver for clients, and that's what they're putting. That's okay.Nick LeRoy  08:35You know, and I think, you know, I am derailing quite a bit from some of the questions and we'll get these, but I think these are really important topics to talk about. And I would say, I always kind of joke about my freelance career year one was survive. Year two was thrive. And now that I'm in year three, I'm kind of calling it optimize. And one of the biggest decisions that I personally had to make, and it sounds like you're doing this as well, but then is you have to figure out how you're going to scale. And a lot of people assume, rightfully or wrongfully, that scaling means you have to take on more work. Whereas the reality is, is we have two options we can do about them. What I understand is the direction you're going and I'll talk to you more is partnering with more people and potentially even growing like your own agency. And then there's the opposite of where I'm going out where I'm very intentionally saying a solo consultant. And this kind of sounds arrogant, but it's like you raise your rates to the point where some people start saying no, but you have enough people saying yes, where I'm able to still maintain a small portfolio of work. That to your point I have to be very involved with, but I'm getting paid handsomely because of the level of work that I'm providing to them and the results that they're getting. So it's just very interesting that there's two approaches to it. One is not right or wrong. But now that I've already brought this question up, I'd love to just hear a little bit more about then what, what your thought is on that topic. And then maybe I'll try to go back to some of these other questions that I have for you.Bethan Vincent  10:18Of course, yeah. So I'm going the opposite route, as you allude to looking to bring on more consultants who, like me, at my level, building a kind of partnership based company, so people join us, you know, how you join a law firm as partner and you get profit share and all of that, that's what we're trying to build. Because in my head, you know, if you're a solo consultant doing pretty well, almost like, why would you go and join a consultancy? And I think, you know, it's to get the benefits of scale. That's what the bar, what people are kind of buying into, and then clients are buying into the fact you know, you've got a team of expertise around you, covering multiple different industries, I'm very much focused on kind of tech, b2b Tech is really my background. I do a bit of E commerce as well, just because that's a little bit of a passion project of mine. But yeah, so it is like kind of growing through building other people, or like you say, you can raise it. And you can do both. To be frank, you could pursue both, you know, and again, like, yeah, this sort of open velocity is what we're called, we're trying to sit in that high end of the market do very strategic work that delivers real real value for clients. So again, we're not the cheapest, but yeah, it's about finding what's right for you. And I really have to toy in my head. And I was like, I'm making decent money as a solar consultant. And like this client headaches are always quite headaches, let's be honest, we love our clients that some can be challenging. And some can be wonderful. And you get mixtures in between, but, you know, great, I could set the scale, and I have a great life. But I, I just wanted more, I guess. And I wanted that kind of thrill of building a company, but building a company. Oh, my gosh, it's hard. So you know, don't go into it with the wool over your eyes. It's really, really difficult. It's another step. You know, you get comfortable in consulting, you think that's difficult building businesses like that times 10.Nick LeRoy  12:01And I can only imagine that it's certainly I'm about as far away from an expert on that aspect. But essentially, a lot of people I do talk to find themselves at the passion that they used to have for the subject matter is what they end up turning into the building the the business and allowing a group of people to find that success and that level of passion before so I have a lot of respect to you know, where I'm going kind of in year three. But you know what, but I think the next time we talk, who knows, maybe things will be completely different. And you can tell us how to, you know, build a math of agency. Yeah,Bethan Vincent  12:37I mean, like I say, This is ridiculous. Like, I want to be the like McKinsey of marketing, strategy consulting. And that's a huge, huge, audacious goal. You do you do and like, if I get halfway there, 10% that I'll be super happy. But yeah, hopefully, if you're listening to this podcast, it's five years later, look me up. So youNick LeRoy  12:58told her to it. I like it. Alright, cool. Let's rewind a little bit. I love where we're going with this. But I want to go back a little bit to your nine to five journey. You've already alluded that. You've doubled your you've tripled, you know, the money that you've been able to make, which is absolutely fantastic. But one of the things that people love most about this podcast is I asked all my guests about their first full time job and the salary that they made. Are you willing to share with Oh, yeah,Bethan Vincent  13:27it's it's. So my first full time non marketing job because I can talk about both actually, it might be interesting for people. So my first job out of school before I went to university was I worked for English heritage, which is a government body here in the UK, that looks after castles, historic monuments, and I was what was called a historic property steward. Essentially, I was a bit of a caretaker and Job's body, you did like everything served in the tea room, you did tickets worked in shop, and I earn 12,000 pounds a year. For that, that was the full time equivalent wage, and then my first marketing job after university, I was a marketing assistant in the education sector. And I was earning 16 grand a year. So though, you know, you've got to remember, this was quite a while ago. So you know, salaries have increased since then. But they were like, minimum minimum wage jobs.Nick LeRoy  14:18Sure. No, that's like saying, but and I'm gonna push even more, but now that you're out on your own, and go on there. I mean, someone who has picked up full as you are, and with an in house job. Do you mind sharing what you were making roughly before you made the leap in the freelance world?Bethan Vincent  14:34Yeah, so it was kind of in the 50k mark. Yeah, I think in hindsight, definitely wasn't renumerated for the value I bought, let's be honest. And yeah, so now like I said, I'm on track to turnover 160 170 Depends if some deals land. But yeah, soNick LeRoy  14:55you're always having aspects. When you're involved. There's always a balance. Whoa, if this was gonna land, let me get your opinion real quick. So I just talked to Ryan duranie, an SEO in the UK and we sidebar on a conversation about us pay and UK pay, especially when it comes to SEO, there is a significant gap. And we kind of were talking about this a little bit, you know, why do we think that is, you know, for example, similar to where you were at, he had mentioned that he was making about 40,000 pounds as a leader in the SEO space, you know, in house. And he was fortunate enough, he's making 40,000 pounds per month now. So we kind of had a couple riffs talking about it, but without belaboring too much. What are your thoughts on us salaries and UK salaries? And what, you know, if does that go broader than just FBO? In your experience?Bethan Vincent  15:57Yeah, definitely. I mean, I can talk about kind of probably wider marketing salaries, especially marketing, generalist salaries, which range wildly here in the UK at the moment. And I think the landscape shifting the UK, obviously, historically used to be very underpaid compared with US counterparts. That's changing because of the labor market conditions I alluded to earlier. So I do think salaries are pushing up and up and up. But companies are also expecting a lot more from candidates as well. So you've kind of got that dual track side of things where yeah, they're willing to pay more, but you're gonna have to deliver. And I think, you know, obviously, I work in tech as well. So that inflates my view of salaries somewhat, but obviously, in the US, that tech sector has been that it's got a lot more longevity than it has within the UK. So I think that's part of the reason. And yeah, it's an interesting one, I think marketers Germany here are underpaid. But that's changing. I don't think the skill set necessarily has been valued as much as it should be. And now companies are like, Hmm, we need marketing, oh, we need people who are good at it. But also, I don't know what it's like in the UK in the US. But there's a lot of people who claim to be marketers here, who don't actually really know what they're doing. And that creates like a weird, like, commoditized kind of end of the market where people are already competing on price. But also not saying everyone whose price though is bad. I think lots of people under charge for what they do, but there's always someone who's gonna undercut you. But there's always a lot of people who are worse than you as well.Nick LeRoy  17:26Yeah, and I think that definitely plays a role here in the US as well, I think it's almost like you don't have to prove yourself as much. But I think the Asterix to that is really what you have said the market, at least in my role in the past, I've been an SEO for over 10 years. Now, as I've said many times on this podcast, I started 32,000 A lot of individuals in the US starting in SEO don't really know the first thing about or started like 50 grand. And I know people now that are five years into their SEO career that are making more money than when I was a director of an SEO team, you know, three years ago, even and it's insane. I think it truly comes down to the demand. And people that even know, I'll say some SEO, I won't even say they're great. I have been talking about I'm gonna say this on record is probably gonna be bad. But the plus people are making a plus dollars right now. And a plus, you know, people are still making c plus dollars, because they're not necessarily the one pushing for new jobs.Bethan Vincent  18:33Yeah, I know. I literally 100% agree with that. And also, like a plus people are probably not as motivated by money as well, because they're so like, into doing the job and they enjoy the job and love it. So yeah, and I think companies need to be really, really careful. Like, if you're listening and you've got SEOs, marketeers on your team that you're underpaying you're about to see a mass exodus because people are waking up and thinking I will just leave because I can get more money somewhere else. And wouldn't usually I do that? I mean, I did that. Let's be honest,Nick LeRoy  19:01though. Ya know, that's my biggest career mistake. You know, before I went freelances, I got comfortable of paying my bill. And a lot of times, I just kind of refuse to even challenge the status quo of what is somebody with my skill set making in this market because I didn't want to change. And you know, and I was getting cost of living raises. And but that's all I mean, I mean, I know some people that are, you know, really good at advocating for themselves and some aren't. But honestly, like, I think you are letting yourself down if you are not always at least looking and understanding what somebody with your skill sets are capable of making. And money doesn't need to be everything. But I'll speak for myself. That's right up there at about 97 and a half percent.Bethan Vincent  19:51Yeah, yeah. And like it's just about it's about being fairly rewarded for the value you bring. You know, ultimately, that's what it comes down to it and marketeers and revenue generators. And it always has bugged me that we don't get commission like sales. So you can be driving sales as pipeline, you're not gonna see any of that commission, you're just gonna get your salary, you might get bonus in some places if you're lucky.Nick LeRoy  20:12And you'll really appreciate the three before jumping on here I am in a private group of marketers that are talking then there's an agency side and one person was asking, if they've come up with a model to reward in house people or so I guess they'd be agency people for bringing in more work. Because I've been on agency side my entire career. And that was kind of the expectation of the job was like you upsell, you go to conferences, network, and you bring work in, and that's part of your job. But these individuals were actually supporting, providing a 10% of the retainer to the individuals that could bring a net new cold lead in that gets landed. And I was thinking to myself, like, what an amazing opportunity, especially right now, where the market is so hot, to be able to maintain your talent by sharing in the incremental revenue that they bring.Bethan Vincent  21:05Yeah, and that's what we're doing an open velocity. So you get your general bonus that comes out of kind of retained profit that's distributed evenly, and then we're doing a profit, but like a bonus pool that then gets allocated to those people who bring in work to incentivize and reward that behavior.Nick LeRoy  21:22And honestly, I think that is the direction you're like, here on the SEO freelancer, I'm obviously trying to push a lot of people to be open to freelancing, it doesn't necessarily mean they need to go full time. But for me, it was always an opportunity to like even if I made 100 bucks a month that I otherwise wouldn't make them a salary. Like, that's ice cream for my kids like four times. Yeah. And that was kind of why I wanted to do it. But I think this is the new quote unquote, solution for individuals that don't want to necessarily go 100% freelances. If these agencies, maybe in house, there's kind of an tin really push those individuals that don't want to be locked into just like a salary and maybe like a bonus. It's like, if you help the company make money, you share in that reward, because then you're not locked into the salary. It's kind of the ceiling of what you can make. And you get to continue to push yourself, but there's really no penalty if you don't, because your salary is reflective on like your day to day work. But I truly think that if more companies, you know, offer an equivalent to this, that that really could save them the headache of turnover, and people leaving to go build their own business.Bethan Vincent  22:39Absolutely agree. Yeah.Nick LeRoy  22:43So let's pivot. And one of the main reasons, Stefan that I wanted to have you on the the agency, or inside the the SEO Freelancer podcast is the idea of building a personal brand. I get a lot of messages from individuals that are excited about the idea of freelancing. They may or may not be skilled in SEO. But the first question I get over and over and over again, is how do I get clients? And it's natural. And it's hard because my responses. I personally, Nick Leroy have been building my brand. And I hate saying that way, I know you have a podcast episode that you guys are doing the same thing that I did. It's like you hate talking about the business. It is a brand, you know, Nick Leroy is a brand. But the reality is, is it sounds like from our conversations offline, that truly plays a significant role in how you're getting this work. And it may it takes the hardest part of freelancing, you know, the hardest part of it when you have that, so can you maybe walk us through a little bit of what you think the value of a personal brand is? And then a we can kind of riff on a couple of questions here about Yeah,Bethan Vincent  24:01of course. Yeah. I mean, you've you've kind of encapsulated a lot of it is it's that brand awareness, you know, what we build for clients is brand awareness, we could be aware, we've got to be building that brand awareness for ourselves. So I really started kind of building a personal brand of doing kind of flimsy air quotes here, for listeners. But I did that when I was in my in house role, actually, when I was a marketing manager kind of level. And I started speaking at local meetups. And I've always was like an OG blogger back in the way in the day as well. So I've always kind of had an internet presence and been quite comfortable with that. I started you know, speaking at things contributing guest posts to sites, and it really kind of snowballed from there. But I put that investment in for a couple of years. And it meant when I exited my full time job to freelance, if people knew about me, I had clients reach out to me and say, like, hey, like we've been waiting, literally someone's like, I've been waiting for this to happen. When can I get a discussion and so, you know, it's about kind of building the awareness in your market and There is no like, don't think, oh, just because I'm a junior, or, you know, earlier in my career, I can't be doing this, do it as soon as possible, because you're kind of building out investors, like any brand building, the sooner you do it, the sooner you're gonna see your return from it. So, yeah, it's been a big part of my my kind of business moving forward and gaining clients, what I will say, as I've worked hard to make sure I've got multiple kind of streams of clients. So actually, you know, for certain times, I rank very well in the UK. And that actually brings me like a lot of organic traffic and a lot of organic conversions. But my personal brand definitely helps in converting that traffic into clients, because they see I've got blog posts, I see I've got videos from conferences I've spoken at, I see I've won awards, and then you know, done my own PR, so it all kind of builds on each other, which is lovely.Nick LeRoy  25:46Again, I absolutely love that. Because that really is how I personally go about building my freelancing career. And you know, my business. And what I love most that you said, though, was not waiting, and I'm using heavy air quotes of when you become an expert. When you're Junior, you know, I remember writing blog posts, about SEO, you know, when I was 123 years into it. And I was never telling people how to do it at that point, because I wasn't confident, but it was more. This was my experience. I tried this, I'm sharing that. And better, you'll you'll probably appreciate this, I'll be curious to your thought I was so unhappy. Towards the end of my agency career, I ended up starting a lot of people listening to us know that I have an SEO newsletter called the SEO for lunch. And there was twofold One was very public that I used to say, you know, these are resources that I was sharing with my clients at agency sites all the time. So I wanted to be able to kind of streamline and forward an episode and say, Here you go, what the second one that I have not been vocal about until recently was it was kind of the back of my pocket. And I'm just gonna say the f**k new card. Because if you ever picked me up to the point where like, I don't want to work for you, I knew all I had to do was like, send an email out, you know, there's 5000 subscribers, you know, it's not a lot, but it's not a little. And when I did go freelance that was like, the first thing I did, all I did was send at the very top is like, Hey, guys, by the way, I'm freelance. So if you have projects, you know, let's talk. And that gets you in in the door. Yeah.Bethan Vincent  27:28I love the concept of an fu card. Like that's, that's literally like, I would advise anyone to do that. And that was always because I think I always wanted to have my own business as well. And that was something I've kind of realized. Throughout my career. I've tried different businesses as well, throughout my career, some, well, this one successful others, obviously not so successful. But I've always been like, you know, I need I need some kind of security and don't think I think this is like the fallacy of like, people sitting in jobs thinking they're super, super secure. You know, even in the UK, like your notice period can be a month, three months, that's not that long a time and a company can just drop you. So why not build that plan B like what can go wrong? Or this way, wouldn't you I know it's effort and time from your perspective. But you know, it's gonna kind of safeguard you. And it's that whole kind of like it is anti fragile barbell building blob of a you know, buzzword, buzzword. But it is about having a plan B and having a strategy for that.Nick LeRoy  28:22Yeah, and plan B is so important. And, you know, I wrote a post about I think I titled it the fallacy of the nine to five. And I really learned that, you know, I've been very public about losing my job during the pandemic. And I've always I've also been very open about not being an easy employee. But I've always thought that because I do great work that kind of makes up for being a difficult employee, which it did for a little while. I always thought SEO was such a progressive marketing space that nobody was ever going to just like, get rid of it, it'll change, budgets will change. But as soon as the pandemic launched, and we lost one client, that was a significant point of our, our revenue as a company, I was shocked, I absolutely was shocked that they were gonna let the lead of the team go, they just completely removed SEO from the service offering. And that was such a I'd see methods giving me the same look, I gave them I was like, Okay, you're not making a very good business right here. But so the reality is, I was now put in a situation where I had 30 days notice, the rest of my team didn't even get that notice. They were done that day. I had to, you know, do this, but it's just it shows that doing good work is not enough anymore. And that as long as you are working for somebody else, like they always have that control, which I realize is probably what I crave the most going out on my own. But the personal brand really helps. And you'll find that you might run into situations where you have a more success. For personal brands and your boss or other agencies, but I'd love to hear I believe you've kind of touched on this in your podcasts as well.Bethan Vincent  30:08Yeah, I mean, I kind of got to the point in a role where I did, I did have a bigger brand in some ways than the company and people knew me. And that was kind of a difficult position. And I got a lot of questions about that. And I think some businesses really see the value of that. So the podcast episode you're talking about, I talked to Steven camera, right from rise at seven amazing UK, PR SEO agency, and they empower their employees just build personal brands, because they only see it as a benefit to them. And then great, that person has an asset that when they leave, they can use, but some businesses really see it as a threat, which I've always felt is kind of so so stupid. So if you do have to be a bit careful, I guess, tread that line with your employer, but also like, it's your brand, like you own, you know, you're not a you're not an indentured servant, when you're an employee, you're not a slave, like you can always leave your rented brain at the end of the day. And I think the I love it now that employers are getting really kind of annoyed because they're like, employees treat workers really transactional. And you know, they're just here to collect the paycheck. And it's like, well, yeah, sure, because you created the environment where it is very transactional, because you've held all the cards for so long. And now you kind of don't,Nick LeRoy  31:27right? I think once you jump into like the freelance world, you tend to be a little bit more aggressive with people to remove that allegiance. And, you know, I'm all for being, you know, how do I even say, it's like, I want you to love your job, I want you to love who you work for. But as Bethany just said, like, you don't really owe them anything. And as I found out, and for whatever reason, my brain refused to accept it until it happened. Like, when it comes down to the end, they're going to look out for themselves before they look out for you. So you should not feel guilty looking out for yourself. Absolutely, totally fair.Bethan Vincent  32:11Yeah. The only other point I'd make on that is that are amazing employers out there. Who end if you find one of those diamonds, like I worked for a company that unfortunately got acquired, so that changed the dynamic, but they were like they would it was the most supportive place over work had an amazing boss, I probably would have stayed there for longer, you know, do kind of cherish and value those companies. Because, you know, I don't want to kind of talk everyone with the same brush, because there are some great employers, but I think if someone is treating you in a crappy way, you know, like I said, it's transactional, at the end of the day.Nick LeRoy  32:46And without the laboring exactly what you just said, I mean, that shows to while the market is hot, and if you're not significantly underpaid, and you're considering leaving desperately, like a 5%, jump, and don't, don't leave that amazing spot that you have that is full of like a good culture. It's really right now, in my opinion, it's like the people that are being underpaid. If you're in the US, and you're making 50 grand, and you have five to 10 years of experience, like you literally can go make 100 grand pretty much anywhere else. Those are the people that need to consider leaving the good atmospheres of good people, because there is a significant benefit to it. But don't sleep on great companies. And, you know, honestly, as much as I am a proponent of freelancing, like shout out to all those individuals that are building companies that support their company, or support their employees, you know, support mental health. And, you know, don't just try to squeeze out every penny from each individual.Bethan Vincent  33:42Yeah, absolutely agree with that.Nick LeRoy  33:45So but then to make this more tangible, we've talked about, I think everybody here understands the value of personal brands, pretend that I'm fairly new to my job a year or two in here. What are three things that you would recommend that I do for anybody listening to start building upon their personal brand.Bethan Vincent  34:04So the first thing would be to connect with communities that are interested in similar things with your work in similar disciplines as you so you don't joining newsletters, for example, is a great way of doing that. And you'll kind of find opportunities, and you'll see what other people are doing to build their personal brand. And also, that's kind of a safe space, especially if it's like a private slack or something to start throwing out your ideas and your thoughts. It's not on the public Internet, but you're kind of building brand awareness within a small community. The second thing is, is kind of work out what format works for you. So I as you probably can tell listeners, I love talking, I could talk all day, every day to anyone. And that's why a podcast was quite a good way of me getting my kind of boys out there and my thoughts out there. I also love writing as well. So that's another thing. Social media I find. I kind of find being quippy and witty quite difficult because I'm not Naturally, I'm a very precocious and as you probably can tell. So I really focused on what I think content I enjoyed creating, because that is what you know, that's what brands personal brands are, you're creating content useful content, normally informative content to be consumed by people within your kind of target audience target market. So yeah, work out what kind of content you enjoy creating, and almost kind of what what channel would be best for you. And you can kind of also be consistent in I think that's something people don't think about, like they'll start a newsletter or start a blog or start whatever, and then it will trail off after three episodes you do you have to be consistent. And maybe that's my third and final point is be consistent. You know, don't expect you're not going to go viral overnight. I'm sorry, it's not going to happen. I've been trying for like, you know, 10 years now, still waiting. I think the best I got was like 250 retweets, but that actually didn't, you know, it didn't really add much to like my bottom line from a business perspective. But you know, just take small steps, be consistent, do one thing every day. And I know, it's really scary, kind of put your thoughts out there that I really struggle with this still, you know, relatively senior in my career. And I still think, Oh, if I write about my approach to kind of, I've got an article in my head or and I really want to write about about kind of splitting your budget between demand capture and demand generation and how to kind of manage that. And I'm like, well, people care about what silly old me thinks. And, you know, do I have something new to say on this topic, because you I'm very influenced by like Mark Ritson and other kind of writers in this space. But you've got to do, you've got to put your thoughts out there, there's always an extra thing you can add in your individual perspective, because it's the accumulation of your own individual experiences that no one else has ever had. Because not as you is valuable to the world. So don't, don't think that like, you don't have something to add, and you don't have something to say because you always do.Nick LeRoy  36:50I think that is invaluable. Advice. Two, maybe three things I'll just add in real quick one, I want to validate your tweet statement. I've gotten the other 234 100 retweets and likes off of simple things. Like, don't be silly type your title tags, you know, it's like things that aren't like things that you're very intentional about, you know, never gets the traction, but they do say stuff that that is very obvious, and maybe even snarky as someone that goes, quote, unquote, viral. The other thing that I will say that I really enjoyed you saying, as well as putting your thoughts out there, it I'll be honest, like, it really puts you in a vulnerable state, you're sharing your thoughts, the internet inherently mean, feel free to turn off your top and to a safeguard, but push through those boundaries and embrace that. I mean, I went out and still to this day, my post sharing about my freelance story, I mean, literally going out and telling people that I got fired, while I'm trying to tell people that I'm also an expert in this space, and you should hire and pay a premium. It's hard. But there's a but there's a bigger story to that. And it was about, you know, having a really unfortunate situation and having a family to support and, you know, refusing to, you know, allow somebody else to tell me that I wasn't good enough, you know, and be able to just move forward. And, you know, that ends up being my my number one performing poll, by far. And you don't have to necessarily talk about money or things that are considered like taboo, but, you know, it all starts somewhere, you know, what are you thinking? Because I can almost guarantee you, other people are thinking that or asking questions, but they're not writing it. And they're searching for your thoughts.Bethan Vincent  38:45Yeah. And I think you alluded to it as well. They're like that authenticity is really important. Like we all have seen the state of LinkedIn, the account on Twitter, if you don't follow that, follow, it's hilarious. But you know, those kind of thought leaders and gurus on LinkedIn sharing, basically like crap, to gain attention. Like that's not building a personal brand that really honestly isn't like those. They'll get views. They'll get likes and whatever. But they're not building a brand because they don't stand for it. I think there's no like substance to it. So you don't have to shout the loudest. And you can just be you. And that's absolutely fine.Nick LeRoy  39:22Absolutely. And I'll just double down on that. Especially with Twitter. There's a big fad right now where people are using like a meme of like Johnny Depp, and were like him in conversing, and then like, they're leading people on and at the end, it's like we have a job available. It's like, yeah, don't be that person. Like, just be like, I just can't even say oh, that's a whole notherBethan Vincent  39:47a whole podcast. I think we could do like how problematic that is.Nick LeRoy  39:51Absolutely. The one thing that I want us to care about this one point on personal branding specific to SEO, but I think you would admit this gonna be valuable as a whole. Please, please, please invest in building your own website doesn't have to necessarily be this full fledged blog. But use it as a resume. If you can get your exact match domain, you know, your Nickleroy.com, your Bethanvincent.com. Like, start there, specifically from an SEO, if you aren't Bob Anderson try to rank for your name, I still can't rank number one, because there's a doctor that is doing that. But you know, still, what you want is you want a spot where you can send people, you can highlight all the good stuff that you've been working on. Even more credit, if you're willing to do the blog or a newsletter, but have a single place where you can own your thoughts, and your brand. And a single spot. Yeah,Bethan Vincent  40:51I completely agree. And I was really like, Lucky. Or I want to say like, you know, I thought ahead and was super smart. But I got my domain, like my brand domain name, like 10 years ago. And it was just, yeah, and it was more because I was like blogging and stuff. But that was the best, like, you know, $10 a month I've ever spent in my life. To be frank. So yeah, like, do it and you know, don't be don't overthink, you know, how sophisticated the site's going to be maybe if you're a developer, and that's like your freelancing, like, that's fine. But we're, we're marketers where SEO is like, it doesn't have to be like, fully headless, like sitting on Jekyll, like all of that. Like, yeah.Nick LeRoy  41:31And I know, there's gonna be a lot of people that are creatives that think they want to be you know, you know, when I go monday.com, like, I'm serious, like, if this is the benefit, you want just your best have this.com, you want your Nick leroy.com? No, unfortunately, if your name is Bobby Anderson, like, you're probably not going to be able to get it. But you know what, just find something that's close to you can be Nick Leroy seo.com, it could be Bethan Vincent, you know, cmo.com, just honestly find one place that you can just continue. And that doesn't stop at just the website, too. And I'm not going to belabor the point here. But if you don't have your Twitter profile, you know, your Instagram, try to get those. And I have a story about my LinkedIn, but I have my Twitter, but I'm going to hold on that one that was about 10 years ago. That's a whole nother story. But we'll talk more about personal branding. I think this is truly the quote unquote, hack. If there's anything for hacking a freelance career, it's really building a brand that you can continue to leverage and just build upon every single day until we're retired. And then hopefully, we can disappear after the internet one day.Bethan Vincent  42:44Really, you want to go into on that forever, you know, it's always gonna be cached. You know, you never get to leave.Nick LeRoy  42:53It's very true. How about that? We don't have to update it.Bethan Vincent  42:56Wouldn't that beNick LeRoy  43:00about this is like super awesome. I really appreciate you know, two questions real quick one. For people that are listening right now, what are the best books courses, individuals that you would recommend them following? You know, what has been instrumental in your career? Yeah, soBethan Vincent  43:17I talked about Mark Ritson. I love his stuff. Some people kind of like Love him or hate him. I just think he's super on points and super kind of insightful and like he thinks about the craft and like, the art of marketing and that kind of like strategic stuff. So he's great. Also, I love Jason Bradwell on Twitter. He and I like we've done podcast episodes and stuff before he shares a lot of really interesting content around b2b marketing. And it's not just SEO, it's across the board. But he's well worth following has a great podcast. And I also love this is off the wall, maybe slightly, but the marketer units, who shares those kinds of great like almost marketing means. So if you ever feeling a bit down, and you know, the CEO has said, we're not going to invest in marketing, go and look at the marketing units, you'll feel better, you'll feel vindicated and better.Nick LeRoy  44:08about them. Thank you so much for your time today. This has been a fantastic conversation. There's nothing better than having two individuals that like to talk a lot. Let us know what is the best way for individuals to follow you just get in touch with you.Bethan Vincent  44:21Yeah, sure. So I'm Bethan and Vinson across all platforms. So search for that online, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, all of that fun stuff. And then I also have a podcast and news articles, brave, slightly different topics to what we talked about today. It's about the people, companies, systems that are building a better future. So a bit of a kind of tech focus, but we delve into stuff like the future of work and, you know, remote working is that the future and how companies are going to make that work and company culture. So yeah, just find me anywhere on LinkedIn as well. I'm always happy to chat to people. As you probably can tell, as I said, I'm a talker. So come and talk to me. I'd love it.Nick LeRoy  44:55Fantastic. Everyone makes sure that you follow her at all of her are social handles, I will make sure to link all of the above plus things that we've talked about in the show notes about them. Thank you so much, everybody make sure to check the thought as the SEO freelancer.com And we'll see you next time. Thank you This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seofreelancer.substack.com