Season 3: Episode 4 - “Quitting Janitorial Duties & 'White Hat' SEO” with Sean Si, Founder of SEO Hacker
01/10/22 • 46 min
In this last episode of Season 2 BOSS-it podcast, Mark Edwards has a warm and engaging conversation with Sean Si, CEO & Founder of SEO Hacker.
Early Beginnings
Sean Si introduces himself as a born-again Christian from the Philippines. He runs a 50 people digital marketing agency, one of the most-trusted and leading SEO companies in the Philippines.
He founded SEO Hacker at just 21 years old with only about (1300 pesos) $65 capital and it's now grown, through grit, prayer, mentorship, book reading and podcast listening (including BOSS-it), to a $1 million company.
From Failure to Success
Sean's route to setting up a business was anything but traditional. Having, in his words, "failed" at college, Sean was nonetheless able to land a job with HP.
He stayed at HP only 5 short months because his 'side hustle' - SEO Hacker - was already earning him 8-10 times what his day job paid and, as Sean puts it, he "had to resign and jump on this opportunity before the train left."
Evolution of Growing a Business
‘Mom and pop’ startups often remain as ‘mom and pop startups’ for years, because change is difficult; it takes you out of your comfort zone and it also requires money.
Many changes are required along the way, to ensure your company makes it through the first 5 years and beyond.
SEO Hacker had no backers and has grown organically, meaning that, as founder, Sean has had to wear many hats along the way - even assuming all janitorial duties in his first office because he couldn’t afford to hire people to do it.
Humility - You have to have a lot of humility as a CEO. In his book, "How the Mighty Fall”, Jim Collins (link below) explains how hubris & ego are the main reasons companies fail. You have to make sacrifices in order to succeed and be humble enough to do whatever it takes.
Sean believes everything has “Divine Appointment” - You have a purpose, desire and reason for living. You have a burning “Why” in your heart. To find out what it is, you have to have faith.
A jovial, friendly character, Sean's closing observation gives great insight into his positive attitude to life's ups and downs and where they may lead - "Almost getting kicked out of college, quitting my job - How lucky can a guy be..?!"
Great to meet you, Sean Si!
Links:
https://sean.si/
https://podcasts.apple.com/ph/podcast/the-leadership-stack-podcast/id1470219705 https://www.linkedin.com/in/seansi/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/seansi/?originalSubdomain=ph
https://www.instagram.com/sean.si/?hl=en
https://www.facebook.com/seansi.speaks
https://seo-hacker.com/
In this last episode of Season 2 BOSS-it podcast, Mark Edwards has a warm and engaging conversation with Sean Si, CEO & Founder of SEO Hacker.
Early Beginnings
Sean Si introduces himself as a born-again Christian from the Philippines. He runs a 50 people digital marketing agency, one of the most-trusted and leading SEO companies in the Philippines.
He founded SEO Hacker at just 21 years old with only about (1300 pesos) $65 capital and it's now grown, through grit, prayer, mentorship, book reading and podcast listening (including BOSS-it), to a $1 million company.
From Failure to Success
Sean's route to setting up a business was anything but traditional. Having, in his words, "failed" at college, Sean was nonetheless able to land a job with HP.
He stayed at HP only 5 short months because his 'side hustle' - SEO Hacker - was already earning him 8-10 times what his day job paid and, as Sean puts it, he "had to resign and jump on this opportunity before the train left."
Evolution of Growing a Business
‘Mom and pop’ startups often remain as ‘mom and pop startups’ for years, because change is difficult; it takes you out of your comfort zone and it also requires money.
Many changes are required along the way, to ensure your company makes it through the first 5 years and beyond.
SEO Hacker had no backers and has grown organically, meaning that, as founder, Sean has had to wear many hats along the way - even assuming all janitorial duties in his first office because he couldn’t afford to hire people to do it.
Humility - You have to have a lot of humility as a CEO. In his book, "How the Mighty Fall”, Jim Collins (link below) explains how hubris & ego are the main reasons companies fail. You have to make sacrifices in order to succeed and be humble enough to do whatever it takes.
Sean believes everything has “Divine Appointment” - You have a purpose, desire and reason for living. You have a burning “Why” in your heart. To find out what it is, you have to have faith.
A jovial, friendly character, Sean's closing observation gives great insight into his positive attitude to life's ups and downs and where they may lead - "Almost getting kicked out of college, quitting my job - How lucky can a guy be..?!"
Great to meet you, Sean Si!
Links:
https://sean.si/
https://podcasts.apple.com/ph/podcast/the-leadership-stack-podcast/id1470219705 https://www.linkedin.com/in/seansi/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/seansi/?originalSubdomain=ph
https://www.instagram.com/sean.si/?hl=en
https://www.facebook.com/seansi.speaks
https://seo-hacker.com/
Previous Episode
Season 2 - Episode 39: "Becoming Top of Mind and Tip of Tongue" with Joseph Wilkins
Mark Edwards talks to Salt Lake City-based Joseph Wilkins of FunnySalesVideos.com, about how his company uses humorous videos to connect with audiences and drive massive sales.
Background..
In 2000, Joseph Wilkins founded ProCreative Studios, which produced infomercials for television & marketing videos for clients, including Google, Linkedin, McDonalds, Goldman Sachs, Chevrolet & Home Depot.
As viewing habits shifted away from television, Joseph launched FunnySalesVideos.com where, after several evolutions, he now creates attention-grabbing "viral style" sales videos that get millions of views, converting cold traffic into sales.
With 20 years' experience, hundreds of millions of views and over $250 MILLION in career sales, Joseph enjoys sharing 8 steps anyone can follow to drive sales on his podcast "How To Make A Video Go Viral."
Switch to Humorous Video Proved a Huge Success
Making the switch to video was hugely successful - Joseph explains that the biggest video success they’d ever had online, using straightforward sales pitch videos was 100,000 views. Yet, when they launched their new brand - funnysalesvideos.com - their very first video campaign hit 7 million views. Fast forward to today and their campaigns are now hitting 100 million viewers and millions of dollars in directly tracked sales.
So, the business has come full circle, surpassing its former huge levels of success, but this time using social media and harnessing the power of humour.
When is a Sales Video Not Appropriate...?
Joseph says he's never yet seen a situation where video is inappropriate - Even videos created for funeral service companies.
The questions to ask are: Did it do justice to the story and to the audience? It’s got to be funny without being offensive to the audience.
Comedy makes the risky safe - Because you’re using humour you can discuss things that you’d not normally talk about.
And Finally...Reinvention is Key
You always have to be evolving - You can never stay still. This is true across all industries and in particular in the software sector. You need to learn to look at the trends and see where things are going. Ten years ago, people were fast-forwarding through commercials on tv. If Joseph hadn't reinvented the company the ongoing changes would have killed it.
Links:
Joseph Wilkins:
Harmon Bros University: https://harmonbrothersuniversity.com/start-home
https://www.linkedin.com/in/wilkinsjoseph/
https://funnysalesvideos.com/
joseph@funnysalesvideos.com
Free ebook: How to make a funny sales video without hiring us
https://funnysalesvideos.com/ebook/
How to make a video go viral
Mark Edwards:
https://www.bossequity.com/resources/podcasts https://www.linkedin.com/in/markledwards/
https://www.bossequity.com/
Next Episode
Season 3 - Episode 6: World-Class AI & Machine Learning Insights with Dr. Luca Marchesotti
Hear about the one thing about AI that our industry needs to urgently address, future areas he believes are worth investing resources into, and about the big machine learning study he did while working as a senior scientist at Xerox. Listen to this BOSS-it episode now hosted by top M&A deal maker Mark Edwards.
Contact Luca here: www.sparkd.ai
If you like this episode you’ll love
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