In the AI revolution, success comes from leveraging AI tools to push boundaries and adapt continuously rather than fearing replacement; effective SEO strategies now focus on off-page optimization, brand signals, and multi-channel marketing integration, while entrepreneurs should adopt a mindset of constant self-improvement, value alignment in relationships, and strategic diversification of skills and investments.
The Future of SEO: AI, Diversification, and Entrepreneurial Mindset
Added:Core Search Engine Optimization (SEO) fundamentals, including how search engine crawlers, indexing, and ranking algorithms function.
Basic understanding of Generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) and how they generate text and answer user queries.
The anatomy of Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), specifically how traditional organic search listings differ from AI-generated overviews.
Fundamental business strategy principles, particularly the concept of revenue diversification and portfolio risk management.
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) techniques to optimize brand visibility within AI search engines like Perplexity, Gemini, and OpenAI's SearchGPT.
Multi-channel digital marketing strategies to build brand equity and direct-to-consumer relationships outside of traditional search engines.
Practical integration of AI agents and programmatic workflows to scale content creation, data analysis, and technical site audits responsibly.
Strategic business pivoting models for digital entrepreneurs to identify and exploit emerging traffic sources amidst algorithmic volatility.
1.1K views46likes1:28:59Original Release: 2025-02-20
everyone's like oh my God the AI is going to replace me a is going to replace me no it's not going to replace you like if you just use your brain and figure out how you can use AI in a better way than the other person like you will win you need to push the boundaries and fail sometimes to to go past and then you can pull it back someone always has to rank first on Google some there's always like a first page is generally they're doing something right and you're not anymore so it's like they're still winning I'll share something that they haven't really shared with anyone outside of the team welcome to another episode of SE wisdom podcast how you doing guys so we have James Oliver thanks for having me back great to be here yeah and we have Benjamin golden hello hello thank you can't pronounce your last name so that's why I like to say goldennik snik Benjamin snik so yeah it was funny like I was just contemplating about life and I knew you guys were here and I was going through some of my podcast numbers and two of the biggest podcasts like on the second and third was Benjamin you got like 4,000 views and you had 3,000 views so a combined total of 7,000 views and every conference I was going to meet up they were like I watch the James Oliver one and I watch the Benjamin one so I was like why not bring the boys together and do like a SE Round Table yeah I I didn't even realize that that's a good idea it's GNA be a exciting podcast yeah so guys like it's been two years or one year since we chat chatted last time a lot has changed the AI Revolution have you seen this uh new uh AI agents everybody's talking about an X yeah I've been doing that loads it's it's basically just using Ai and just getting the processes down rather than manually doing it saves so much time I built one for mainly for writing content so pulls in the serps using X AI it's really cheap to use and it pulls all the content from like the top five pages or 10 results or whatever you want uh and then I can pull all the products from those pages all the semantic keywords lsis all the unique phrases and then plug that into Claude to write really optimized content that's amazing and what about you when just a good question there when you say an AI agent just because this term is being thrown around all the time an AI agent is essentially when you connect multiple like prompts or automations in AI together using something like a no code tool something like this uh to be honest with you I have no idea what the actual phrase or the actual meaning is that's what I think it is as well that's I think they call it like SEO AI agent well that's just for using it for SEO but yeah yeah I think it is just multiple prompts and sequences of like different platforms working together so you can just press run or it runs automatically when you do yeah CU there are always all these new thms coming out I'm like what the hell is this like what does it even mean like AI agents these that I'm like just trying to stay on top of it at this at this point because it's like evolving so so crazy fast like have things coming up left and right deep seek this that so yeah it's crazy uh deep deep seat Works quite well with perplexity AI it's pretty good but yeah there's new things all the time but AI agency basically just saves time for for doing it so you don't have to do a manual process yeah I mean like one thing about SE is always catching the trend and for us seos whenever we see like a new thing in the market it's like inbuilt in us we're like okay we need to check this out and how we can you know ease out our content processes or link building processes like my question for you both would be like how effectively like you using AI in your businesses now I'll I'll share something that I haven't really shared with anyone outside of the team so this will be like really really good but essentially our main challenge for the past few years has always been links we spend around 900 800 900,000 a year on on links and what I'm seeing these days is like okay gas po the price is shooting up it's more and more difficult sites are charging more and more and the quality is just lower overall and the main thing that I really want to the main thing that I still see working are just good old pbns like for my own SES everything that I test like how much you how much you need to spend on a pbn how much you need to spend on a guest post like pbn's always win and then you have the whole thing of like building an maintaining a pbn what I find the the biggest relevancy the the biggest power that the link gives is relevancy how relevant is it to your site it's not even how how much Authority it has or how much traffic so what we're going to start doing now is using AI to essentially Mass launch websites so for example let's say you have a weight loss supplement you can you can essentially go into a tool I think it's called 10 web that's what we're going to be using you write a prompt I want a web it about weight loss supplements and it will literally build out an entire Business website that looks completely legit custom design custom logo custom theme and like using that with you know perplexity or cloud or something to create all the content you can have a perfect pbn that looks like a legit site up in like five to 10 minutes that's like one of the thing that one of the things that we're launching now that's amazing yeah I mean yeah we do something similar as well with must launch sites and then we go get on the testing protocol for a month to see like which s's toxic and which working well so I think with the PB side of things like there's so much you can automate and as well there's so much you need like an in-house team to just run manual tests and I think this is where I'm a bit lucky because AI is not going to [ __ ] replace me anytime soon because pbns they need to be [ __ ] manual by humans and and yeah like that's the biggest thing like everyone's like oh my God the a is gonna replace me AI is going to replace me no it's not going to replace you like if you just use your brain and figure out how you can use AI in a better way than the other person like you will win like that's that's it's just another Revolution it's like there was the internet Revolution there was all these Revolutions in the past whoever figured out the best way to leverage that came out on top so it's literally instead of looking at it like oh it's another threat to me and having this scarcity victim victim mindset just look at it how you can use to to gain the edge because this is the biggest opportunity I would say and not like something that can hurt and I and I agree and I think in seos like we can be better seos while if you are a consultant in a way or a architect like Okay can [ __ ] replace you you know because I've seen AI doing some amazing things with you know like now you can put a picture and be like design the interior for me like 10 different formats wow like so I feel like SE are still like up with AI and it goes like hey how can I make it work to me you know what are your thoughts jimes well with that like you were saying it can tizing with the AI agents there still needs to be manual processes but with AI agents you can do it custom to you so you can launch the site it would run that step and then it would run checking like in a month's time if it's ranking or not and then you can approve or de approve and so it's just basically it helps you out with the process but when there's so many different steps it's hard for AI to do it and it takes too much work that's why you can't really be replaced with it especially with pbns because youve got the host in and there's so many different uh connections but you can help like some of the processes to speed it up and basically reduce the the workload of the staff for yourself and yeah I think we still into the early stages of this AI Revolution we don't know what's coming but I'm I'm really positive I don't know about you guys like I'm you know just how it can make our businesses easy uh accounting easy our lifestyle easy so um I'm I think it's exciting times again what you said either you're victim to AI or either you're like how can I make it work my way which is beautiful and most people will understand it like they'll be like oh no yeah it's coming and it's going to replace me like you have you don't have that mindset you don't have that entrepreneur mindset and there's so much I can talk just covering the entrepreneur mindset and I see you both and I feel like you guys have great entrepreneurship mindset so I would just like if you want to share bits and Bobs of how you keep this mindset that's a very good question I don't think about that often but I think it's just something that you're like that you grow into that you that you're raised into maybe something that you become because you want to for me at least like I always think of like not just with business like but for with every every area of my life like health wealth relationships everything is like what can I do to be the best version the most optimized version of myself and I think it's just this like I I often think and look at entrepreneurship as like this NeverEnding progression or like self-development because you always need to push limits like you need to push your limits in in with your health with training with uh with business like in all these areas and it's ultimately just wanting to be the best and then why do you want to be the best well ultimately so you can create the best life not only for yourself in my like in my opinion for my future family for the people around me for my friends like I think it comes from from there for me personally yeah with what you said as well Ben with me I think I kind of grew up with it my parents was like antique dealers those was always self-employed so I used to do that when I was like younger like when I was a kid for the whole like teenage years and stuff as well uh and then just kind of progressed and just kept doing that but like you say it's like the what is it Sam I can't remember his name now Sam whatever it is it's the finite game and infinite game where it's never ending you always it's life is a like the infinite game rather than finite so you always got to keep improving and uh I think seos have massive adaptability because you always have to update content check what's ranking and keeps changing all the time so you're always on The Bard and it kind of progresses that business to other aspects in life it's kind of just the mindset which is just ingrained in a lot of seos and I personally think like either this mindset is in you since you were little or it's not in you because I've met so many people now being in the conferences being you know like having a personal brand a lot of people come to you and I realize like not everybody's got that you know like entrepreneurship sauce like they haven't got those like Basics and I wonder like if everybody can make it you know I I I do get these thoughts I'm not going to lie like because sometimes I'm like this person's not going to [ __ ] make it's just about beliefs man like it's do you do you believe that you can make it or you don't and then you have like it's all about beliefs in your head like from your childhood like what did your parents tell you so for me my mom was always like you can do you can do anything you want you can you can be anything you want like you can just whatever you want like if you just work towards it you can get it and I think obviously like your parents and your close friends like that's huge influence on your on your beliefs and that's ultimately going to dictate your life and um okay we're in Bal but not and I don't want to be super spiritual but like one of the best things that I did like when I was like 17 18 was just go through all my beliefs and I just really kind of analyz them and I found everything that was holding me back I had this belief about um like how money is difficult to make and it doesn't grow on trees and all all of these that I was listening to to all my like in childhood and so on and just rewriting this stuff like that has such a Hu that has had such a huge effect on me like and I would say it just comes back to all of that like what do what what's the story you tell yourself what's possible what's impossible and what do you what do you believe about yourself do you think moving as well helps like getting out of your old Hometown and like childhood area 100% 100% like for for me I like it's super funny and I don't think I ever mentioned this online but when I was like 16 or 17 I dropped out of high school to trade Forex because I I found some Mentor online and he was flashing his Lambo and everything I was like oh wow I can make money like this I I'll drop out of high school so I paid this guy to Mentor me he was of course a scam I lost all my money but ultimately I got away from a lot of the people in my high school that were holding me back that had these negative beliefs that they weren't they weren't like in the same mindset like they were holding me back and by essentially removing myself from that environment like I was I didn't have anyone around for like two years I was just kind of this Lone Wolf I was like I can do it by myself it's not really true that you can do it by yourself you can but it's just a lot more difficult but then slowly I started meeting all these all these people that really actually helped me that were aligned with my values with my vision with my goals and I think if just if you cut out the people that are not good for for you and for your goals you essentially are making space in your life for the people that are it's it's why it's why I know you it's why I know met you so it's how it goes yeah yeah it's beautiful what you said and and yeah like money does not go grow on trees but maybe it does and you just don't know how to find that tree you know so I play with that analogy a lot and I get criticized by my familytime you're spending too much money money does not grow on trees and I'm like yes it does so it's funny how like when you go back to your family you're like an alien who was doing things so differently but at the same time coming back to your inner values your authenticity and how you want to show up in this world because I think this is also like what keeps us motivated being an entrepreneur being an entrepreneur being a you know doing what we do like that's why we do it like what are your thoughts James like Business Online well yeah you transitions to everything like I'm still doing SEO but now I'm doing more uh software products as well so it's it's just the same micea and the same transition basically just making money online because you reach a a wider group of people it's easy to Market to to thousands of people when you're ranking on Google first place it's like perfect yeah and uh so what what industries you in now still SEO software SEO software yeah SAS SEO software so it's still sticking to to what I know and what I'm like kind of good at and having the knowledge base for um maybe branching out into other avenues because there's a lot more money in say social media SAS uh rather than SEO but yeah just transitioning into software so same sort of ball ball game it's the same skills like transfer along it's high in which is a big one because developers are the the main source of of it which is uh a nightmare to kind of get right but when you get that right it kind of flows a lot easier and what about you Benjamin what Avenues you into the what kind of Industries well Shopify we're we're all in on Shopify I think you you the number one Shopify Su agency in the market I always I always want to actually figure out like if I can say that because I don't want to make that claim without having like some sort of supportive evidence but like I don't think there's anyone that spends so much on Shopify SEO ads as we do or has so many clients or has you have the data you know and you can compare the data to other agencies to some War you need an Insider like what I do is I in my pbn business I know I'm the number one guy cuz I talk to all the pbn people so I don't what kind of numbers they're doing how many links they're making so it just brings me out okay I'm I'm the number one in the market so I think data talks yeah honestly like I haven't even had one conversation with another like agency owner that just does like Shopify SEO it's always e-commerce SEO and then it's like you have Magento you have WordPress like we literally just do Shopify um so yeah anyway yeah we we do well let's let's leave with with that we mainly focus on Shopify have some of my own brands on the side um but other than that just really perfected the system of optimizing for organic traffic generation and now recently just because I had to develop this for my own brands also converting more of the traffic converting more traffic into sales maximizing how much they buy so increasing average order values just really as capitalistic as it sounds squeezing as much as I can from every single person that lands on the site awesome and and I think I want to touch into this question like you know a lot of people like us like you make you made good money for E SEO and parasite SEO me personally from the pbn side of things him from the Shopify agency I think our skill also comes from how we use that money and I've seen like in all of us like we took a million for say and we invested in real estate or we bought a business or we started our own brand I think this is where you become a better entrepreneur and a better like your skill gets tested you know because to a level that you were operating and you had the SEO skill and you made money and now to reach the next level of being a full-time entrepreneur yeah my question for you guys like how do you do it how do you turn a million from the SEO side of things from the parasite from the affiliate side of things and do a 5x or 10x you know like how do you do it like what's what's the strategy you guys are using diversification really just put putting the money into other businesses like you mentioned so real estate as well so as we spoke about before building in Bley uh so putting into real estate uh it's probably not good idea to talk abouty real estate too much immigration reasons but we got to be this out yeah yeah but yeah barley real estate and then just uh investing into other businesses so before the hcu I invested into a lot of content businesses now I'm not doing that so much because it's a bit more risky it's more the software side of things and uh uh brand as well so an e-commerce brand which I've not really spoken about yet uh it's not fully launched so we'll leave that as a hidden thing for the next podcast in a year but yeah diversification is the big one for me what about you Benjamin yeah um pretty similar story actually like for me I started really doing well when was with 2019 2020 um and there's this post I made about what two years ago just a story this is when you were doing Daily Posts I remember yeah I was was banging I was posting a lot I used to learn a lot I was like oh I need to take notes Benjamin's online again yeah I was um the the post that I made was how it was when I moved from Slovenia to to Georgia the country and in the same month I bought I bought half of a finance Legion company in Australia and I also bought an apartment and I literally maxed out everything I had I had like $3,000 in my bank account and I just went all into that and I was doing that for a while because I had the agency so it made sense like I acquire allegion sites content sites affiliate sites and just plug them back into the agency uh was much more safe when before hcu because now it's like you need more more brand signals you know if you just have SEO and nothing else like you're not really going to do well um and then after that I really started a bling down on the agency that has always been the best investment like just literally pouring as much money as I can back into the agency hiring coaching everything like that new developing new strategies and so on um and recently I would say like for the past what three four years I've always done like 30% stocks I've had crypto for for a long time um so that was like what 40% 40 50% and the rest in real estate and what I noticed like in the last year just analyzing the performance like stocks I I honestly do not know why I have been investing in stocks um because the returns of like 5 to 10% which is pretty much just matching inflation it's like doesn't really make sense so what I have decided to do a few a few months ago I literally started slowly selling all the stocks just set my targets started just left completely the stock market and I'm going purely 50% crypto 50% real estate on the real estate side I'm trying to maximize with loans so I'm trying to get as many loans as I can uh fixed 20 30 years um low interest rate if I can lock it in of course and I'm mainly doing that in Cypress because it's a very very good Market to do it tons of demand um on the crypto side literally just Bitcoin so dollar cost averaging based on where we are if in the accummulation phase or you know sell off phase so I just based on off of that that's smart like I I I invested in crypto like years ago I even had like four miners in Vietnam mining Bitcoin and doing all that but I was stupid I kept investing in all the different coins and all the different stuff but if I just put it all in Bitcoin it would just less stress on the I just sound smart I did all of that also like I lost I lost so much money on like these different coins the different memes and so on luckily just because I bought when I was like 12 years old so like what 2012 um I still did well but I lost I would say like 70% of Bitcoin in the process yeah but anyway it's l part it's less learned and funny like yeah I think this is this is beautiful what you just said Benjamin because I was doing some estimates on my kind of where I made money and I think today like I'll make more in my investments than in SEO and I was like what the [ __ ] cuz I've I've been that pbn guy and I was just like just having a sight hobby like of real estate of buying gold of you know uh buying a bit of stocks crypto Mutual deposits and I was like [ __ ] like you can actually make a lot of money like inside hustles you know and that's why I think three of us in the panel in this table are talking because I think we all have got this skill and that's why I really respect about you and respect about you because we all reflect kind of like mentality and not walking into a room of you know bunch of seos and everybody's talking about like the next strategy like when I have conversations with you guys it's always about like catching this you know Trend in the crypto or catching this trend thinking in the bigger picture yeah thinking in the bigger picture because we do are identified as like the online seos and affiliate marketers but I think ultimately we are just purely business people you know like we capitalists and I think that's where our power comes from like I was I was in a retreat and I realized like the masculine in us gets our power from the capitalist aspect while in a female it's different you know it's not from the capitalist it's like her needs being met and stuff so it's kind of interesting how we W as men I'd say I mean it's just because making a lot of money gives you power and as men we always want Power m and it's been through like this pretty much since you know yeah yeah when you said with' uh riding the trends as well even with SEO and like affiliate sites or picking the niche if you're in a niche which is going up it's always getting more search volume it's just so much easier than just doing something about sewing or something something like that you know it just makes life a lot easier and you make more money even if you're doing the same process and even if you're really really good if you're in a better vertical it can 10x what you're doing yeah yeah and coming to the next topic I want to ask because you're really into like starting Brands investing in Brands and you're really into SAS you know and I've thought about personally getting into both and now I'm getting more into like the SAS perspective than a Ecom perspective of all the downsides and chargebacks and you know like government shutting down the shipping shipping goes up whatever you know the reasons might be so I want to see if he can have a meeting point why I should go SAS and why I should go Ecom brand like we both have pros and cons with everything um for me I've always been I wouldn't say lazy but generally that that style I I basically like laid back just lifestyle make the money and make good money but not having to be on the ball answering emails and loads of staff and with software businesses it's generally a lot similar to the affiliate side of things in my opinion you still have to hire like developers to run the SAS and then but then it's just down to marketing setting up your emails and doing your content and the similar sort of stuff what you do with SEO there's probably well there's a lot a ton of SEO agencies just dedicated to SAS um so it's very laidback but there's still a lot of money in it especially for the sale value so it's not necessarily your Mr or ar it's the valuation of when you sell the business it's a lot higher than a Content business or an agency per se so you get a lot more money on the exit when you want to leave an Ecom I think it just really depends on the type of person you are um I don't really have any objections to SAS in fact I would say it's a typic not an easier business to build but it's a business that makes more sense to be built because you're just going to get a much better exit like Ecom you're going to need to put in Crazy amounts of work it can be replicated like this uh you can make it work and you can crush it but I believe that you know if if you're if you have the skills to do a SAS business you should just do SAS business but you really need to be sure that you have the skills for it if you're if you don't have the skills with either businesses I think Ecom is going to be probably easier to start but it's not going to have the pay off that SAS will that's just comparing both sides and kind of comparing a sess business I have with a brands that I have I just know that on the sess side it's just a bit easier and a bit better to to exit out of if you have the skills and most importantly like we talked before if you have the talent because I think with SS it's the biggest challenge is going to be finding good talent to actually build this thing for you yeah a that is it is a nightmare like I've gone through so many developers and then like there's so many it's not good but with Ecom as well like you can scale that if you get the right product and the right ads can you can make so much money very very quickly uh with SAS as well it takes a little bit more time even if you are running ads in compar I would say I think what both businesses business types have in common is this thing where you need to put a ton of work up front and once something works you just you you've made it like that's literally how how it feels from the outside looking into a lot of these businesses because you're waiting for so many factors to kind of come together like the market feed the marketing strategy the ideal Avatar like all of that needs to come together for it to work and take off um in SAS and same with Ecom right you need the the right angle with the right target market and the right product and everything like that comparing that to other businesses like like agency or you know more service based businesses literally just need customer and you made money like it's much easier to run but that's why you don't have like you will never be able to sell for the same multiple as you know a s business for example M interesting so what what you talked about he's now more confused than I it's still not decided which one it's going to do both because if you think about it like just so many options right once you get that leverage you can try this part or you can try this part and it might boat work you know so I'm in that position where just like there's so many pots do you guys feel that sometime oh yeah so much stuff I even so many yeah infinite possibility yeah I saw an ad today uh and it was for barley raincoats you know cuz it's just been raining it's just for a raincoat on Instagram they're selling for like over a million IDE and I was like I looked at Alibaba and the like 20K like ID to buy and I was like I buy over well no I don't know what it's running on but it was just an Instagram ad selling to to buy I think it was through what I have no idea actually but it was it was through a website actually probably Shopify but it was just ridiculous like even in a country like barley that you can make a lot of money for Ecom it doesn't really matter what location there's always like a little Avenue you just got to find the yeah and also like makes sense if you think about like China is close by so Drop Shipping those products here like it might be more efficient so selling it like 10x you know with all the shipping input tax and that you still kind of make your percentages yeah who knows what they're doing maybe maybe they have like 30 minute guaranteed delivery or something rain no they do it says 30 minut gu I would pay 1 million if I need urgently and like I didn't have any other option like that makes sense yeah they probably just run ads when it's raining and just [ __ ] spend it for yeah 2025 paid ads versus SEO I don't think it's a comparison I think it's using both yeah like we we briefly mentioned before like I think like for the for the past year actually I think I mentioned to you like when I was last year a year ago like I just got all into paid not for not really mainly not really just for my own Brands but to essentially share all the organic content that I had from my from my agency and to to essentially improve client acquisition and I just got completely obsessed with funnels paid media like copyrighting all of that and I would say that Ma mastering paid media and paid ads like it's gonna it's one of the top skills like any any business owner can have because you're literally just when you need more leads when you need more clients just increase that spend like that's that's that's how it goes and and today I think SE works better than ever for businesses that have their other marketing channels dialed in like before hcu so like what three four years ago now at this point I think um you could literally just have a website no marketing channels you could just optimize the SEO build some links and you would drank now that doesn't really work anymore from my experience might work for a little bit of time but then it's just a matter of time before it crashes but if you have email marketing paid paid marketing SMS if you have all your other channels dialed in then you bring on SEO your return on ad spend and your cxs or customer acquisition cost can be reduced dramatically when you adding SEO and I think that's the biggest value of SEO nowadays that no one really talks about everyone's still like okay I'm making this and this much from SEO but how much what kind of impact is SEO having on other areas of your business how is it affecting your return on ad spend your cost of acquisition like all these factors and I think that's what really should be the focus of seos in 2025 yeah for business owners it just saves a ton of money for just reducing the ads Ben I can imagine never mind everything else which you get from ranking uh and like you say it is mainly like brand signals and user signals now and you can just get that a lot more with ads like I know a guy who runs uh I won't say the business but he's an Australian e-commerce company and he runs tv ads and that has a massive impact on his brand like SEO wise because everyone Googles his brand name and the the the the actual product so it helps just rank rank really easy I think you can now create AI agents just to create brand signals well you can you have to connect the API with the prompt and with the API what it'll do is it'll get you a new location and then you can get a click from Melbourne then you can get a click from Sydney and the prom's just running with the API and it's just yeah this the CTR manipulation with proxies it does work and it is really good but it's it's it's hard to get the right proxy to to think Google like to automate to see it's a real person that's like the hard part but there's a few decent softwares out there we're actually trying now for uh Valentine's day it's going to be running this week basically I'm I'm working with a brand in the adult industry and because it's Valentine's Day we're doing a piece of content for parasite SEO uh which is on a Google News approved website and it's going to be about Valentine's Day and then promoting their product and what you can do now is do CTR manipulation on a Google approved website and it has to be done correctly uh but you do that as soon as it's published uh the minute it's published and within the first 24 hours you can guarantee getting at the top of Google news for the full 24 hours and then afterwards it varies uh but that's really easy to do and CTR manipulation is like huge for that uh business model which is quite interesting yeah what techniques are you using for brandings in that these days paid traffic paid traffic like it's most PR all brands that come to us they already have a ton of paid like they demographic like if there's a brand in Australia then only Australian traffic or you mix it up with other countries as well what do you mean exactly just like PID traffic Australian brand Australian subs or Australian you know audience I mean if if they're mainly serving Australia they're already going to be targeting Australia with with paid right so it's like we don't really need any brand signals from other countries because if they have the intention to ship and Market to a specific country they'll be targeting that country with ads so they already have all the brand signals coming in that's that's why I like with with kind of the the market we operate in right you don't need to artificially create like you would need maybe with affiliate sites or things like that to create brand signals and demand and prove to Google that you actually have other traffic sources because you already do because the brand is already established you know and and the reason I ask you that question is because I know some people who go to Vietnam who who'll pay like 12 12th of a click and they'll get the same brand signals but different geographic location but I think it works as well so it's interesting to just test very very the kind of approaches with paid um yeah but how do you how do you diversify paid with SEO like what's your what's your take like when you see a brand and you're like okay we going 70% SEO 30% paid or we going 90% paid 10% SEO we going all SEO or all paid how do you I don't think there's a rule like how much you need to spend on on paid and how much you need to spend as as long as you're getting great Roi on both right so just like you would with paid if you have a brw that you're happy with you will just scale that right and and with SE obviously you can get a direct you won't be able to see directly how much you're making back off that monthly investment but if you see it if you look at it over like six or 12 month period you can just go into an itics you can remove the Branded Revenue branded terms and you can see just how your non-branded organic traffic organic Revenue has increased so if you spent let's say 70k on SEO but you made I don't know 350k back that's a very good Roi so like that's 5x right so in case there's opportunity to to go bigger in case you have more terms to dominate in case you have um other competitors to out rank you can just scale the spend on on links or on content to launch more pages um but uh what you'll notice is typically with I you're going to be pretty Limited in terms of how much you can actually scale like the the Market's only so big because it's just it's you target the terms uh with paid you you don't really need that demand you can create that Demand right if you have a great top of funnel ad um someone maybe they don't even they didn't even want this product but you created the demand so that's why PID ads you can scale just so much more and it's so much bigger um but of course that doesn't mean that SEO should be ignored yeah for sure what you J uh the grass is always greener on the other side like I've been going to affiliate world uh for the past couple of years and everyone does ADS there no one really does in one of the conferences yeah the one in Bangkok just gone in December did you tell them do a lot of SEO PN it was about parasite SEO so it was that and pbn's was mentioned because they're the most powerful link so why wouldn't you use it on an asset what's not yours which you're not going to burn it's like you might as well but yeah I I always get jealous of AD guys because like you say you can track the revenue you can you put this much in you can to get this much out you can see it and you can scale it so much easier uh it's something I want to do like I do branded terms and then I do ads for like statistic posts because it's very cheap and you get the links from that way uh but I don't do it that much what kind of posts so statistics are like um ah okay the fact data driven facts about barley or whatever it is and then you run ads on that because like barley statistics are really cheap on Google ads because no one's bidding on that but journalists are Googling that for for links uh for like data sources so it's really good for basically getting link doing it that wayes how what's what's the average link cost and like average Dr if you happen to it's generally big I don't know I can't think of what the average is generally very cheap and generally big sites it's newspapers which are generally looking for this sometimes like bloggers and just normal sites but generally it's the the journalists looking for for whatever article in the news Okay so works out really well test it out and then we'll see how it works next year for you but that's that's good other than that I don't really run too much ads I want to get into it like I know so many people which is basically same as parasite SEO it's more the avoral trying to promote the products they're just doing that on their own websites and just running ads to it and making money that way so something I want to do but something I've not really developed too much it's always just being SEO laidback too much what do you guys think about like let's say editorial journalist goes to Ai and it's like okay I'm writing this thesis give me references and the referenced backlink think how it's going to operate on di level on traffic level how it's going to see the authority of which reference link should be put in this you know article as inciting sources yeah I think it's just going to use something I don't know how it works right now but probably something similar to like eat signals like who has the most credibility trust I don't know how they're going to measure that though because it's gonna change a lot of things like because journalists they won't have time to you know like do full post and they're going to be like okay I want all the references make it no follow yeah I I don't mind no follow link so I still think it it does pass value like it does but obviously you want do follow but yeah it's still good any link from uh big sites is it's good and back in the days I think that's one thing that's changed is in SE is like 10 years ago all you wanted was do follow yeah now you want some no follow just to make it look more legit legit yeah so I think that's one thing that's changed a lot like people stress on do follow links a lot but they don't stress enough on no follow links which can also like give them that traffic boner 100% um I think also one very interesting thing that not many really talk about right now uh is doing SEO for literally like AI chatbots like so chat GPT claw perplexity because like what I find myself doing now is like I would maybe a year ago I would open up Google I would be like what's the best restaurant what's what's this that like I would use Google to actually find places to go to for like basic questions I'm L just on chat GPT all the time so like how I think that's going to kind of open a new market for like SEO agencies or SEO services for chat GPT um especially as more people start using it and realize that okay wow I can get a lot more information a lot faster and all of that um haven't really I don't know if you guys saw but I haven't really seen many talk about this Market W well with that parasite SEO is is key for that well because you want basically as many sources saying the same thing and that's what AI just pulls it in so even social media generally the free ones uh sometimes better so YouTube videos like this would get pulled into perplexity and other llms uh like LinkedIn medium even like Instagram and stuff like that it all gets pulled in so there's many different sources saying the same thing uh basically gets into the AI easier with that as well we're actually building part of that into answer Socrates so we're going to build a llm Tracker so that you can put your brand in and then you can see if cha BT or pxi like mentioning it for certain terms so we're building that as a thing because no one's done it yet so we're quite excited for that nice that's pretty sick yeah so yeah it should be good with uh all the different models and tracking should be interesting to see because you kind of want to know if you're getting referenced by chat gbt or any any other terms for sure you're going to get traffic anyway plus I think chpt sends the UTM so CHP UTM back to analytics so you can actually see how much traffic you're getting MH yeah yeah it's going up a lot I've uh it's not so much on my sites to be honest with you but on a lot of other people's sites chat gbt is sending a lot of traffic to people now MH did you see this post today fresh up on X and apparently Elon Musk LED investors triy to buy chat dut open AI for $89 billion and Sam Alman goes on X and he's like I'll buy Twitter for 9 billion sorry thanks and and El musk is like swind I like the drama that goes on like x with all the tech tycoons like it gives you a lot of perspective like also like where things are shifting what's the market domination what big you know tycoons like Elon Musk and stuff what they're interested in and also like seeing how Google's more and more being dominant every year even with the chaj T Revolution I think this is the last year was the most money they ever made so it's interesting like people think like CH GPT is going to replace Google but Google's still in the market doing those numbers and maybe it made more money though but it did for the first time ever lose a percentage to to Bing I think it was uh they actually went down in the overall search term they probably made more money but the actual search percentage is less than the reason why they made money is just because they're like there's what three organic search results and 25 ads on the first page of Google so I think I look even as an Su it kind of hurts me to say this but I think Google's gonna really get need to get their [ __ ] together if they want to keep being the leader because I think right now they're just clearly obviously losing to to open AI CPT is just going to slowly start to eat in their market share and the only reason why they just made more money is because they're they're just shoving ads people down down people's throats like literally because that's the only you know that's how they make majority of the money and okay like Google and YouTube still have pretty much 50% of all the the traffic um but I yeah I do think that's going to start to to go down if they don't figure something out with their Ai and I mean right now it's just a competition between not only different companies but it's literally a competition between us and China like who's going to have the best AI model because that's pretty much going to dictate like I think in the past it was mainly like the attention like so social media platforms like you know Facebook Instagram Tik Tok now China obviously leading with Tik Tok yeah now it's going to be like I don't know which one's going to be the main one in China because you have deeps you have this um the Alibaba one and then you have open AI in the US but I think it's going to be I mean they're just fighting for China versus America yeah and also like Chinese people they're beating America in a lot of things like this new military drones that you see that come out they just like yeah they're going to be the new age you know like military like uh operational and it's going to change things it's going to change things a lot and that makes me also think about probably getting into the Chinese stock market you know yeah learning Chinese now would be very beneficial I think well it's like they to be honest with you like ecom's dominated everything comes from China all the products and now if all the software and like AI comes from China as well it's complete Revolution it's nuts but yeah it's it's funny like when you were saying who's going to take over and it's quite it's hard to predict because like open AI attat gbt was amazing then Claude came out and it kept balancing between different models when they kept coming out and now claude's probably slightly better for content and uh AI like coding uh but it changes all the time but then soon as like the Deep seat came out like open AI I forgot how much money they lost off the stock but I think it was over 30% just straight away soon as it started going up so it changes dramatically so it's it's going to be interesting to see who who wins the race basically I think n Nvidia went down like I I may be completely wrong here but I think like 17 billion or something really yeah in a day or something like in a day why do you think that was because deep seek came out so it's like the whole the whole concept was like deep seek was developed on like a very small budget apparently um10 million or something something like ridiculous and then they compared it to CH to open Ai and how much money they need but it could be that they're just faking it because they do fake a lot of things and I hope I don't disappear after saying this on the podcast but um who knows who knows yeah and it's it's kind of like nuts like what's happening in the world today like so much changing I was just talking to my parents the other day and they would have never imagine like we would end up in 2025 with all the [ __ ] that's happening and Trump taking over us and all that you know and I it makes me think like people and the human species they're really into drama and people want drama subconsciously you know and it's in our nature and we always want something new and something different and something slightly better and when I see like you boys you know and stuff like we're not really that surprised because we've been through the trenches like from the Google's perspective like we've been through every update that was possible in the SE space from atcu to you know like the Ponda you remember the Ponda update back in the days the Ponda update and the core update so I feel like it's kind of like for me in my experience I feel like it's normal in a way like the world is changing and SEO is always changing and the Google updates coming and I don't know like is it easy for you guys to adapt to the new reality yeah yeah for me it's like oh whatever you know like yeah it's just the normal thing it's obviously like if stuff goes down you take a hit and you net worth and maybe monthly income goes down from the affiliate sites but you know it's going to bounce back in a few years and you're still doing okay for like what it is and you just transition it's just kind of normal then you just adapt to the new change and progress with what's working or uh turn your affiliate site into a Ecom site because it's doing ecom's a lot better than affiliate at the moment yeah I would say just kind of like what I said before every every change is going to be a new opportunity to do something better so like I mean you should always be making changes anyway like even if you're not forced to make a change you should always be testing figuring out like if there's a better way to do things than what you've currently been doing because if you're not not constantly changing or adjusting or optimizing I mean you're just experiencing this slow death in a way so you don't necessarily like I don't think it makes sense to just wait and then adapt and only pivot then but you should just constantly be asking whether that's with your like with your team employees or actually with any anything in in life I just feel like is this is this the best way to do it is there a better way to do it is um is how I'm doing things right now the the best way um of of going about doing that like if you're just constantly analyzing and having this mindset then you're just constantly evolving because change is just evolving essentially right you need to be open to it and can progress and I think being Dynamic is just also our nature subconsciously like change makes a lot of people uncomfortable people are scared to change and if I think about why is change so uncomfortable I think yeah you tell me why is it so uncomfortable I don't want to get too philos philosophical but I think just like your personality of like your idea of who you are is always going to be attached to a certain routine to a certain way of living to to your friends to your circle whatever it might be it can be anything really um and I think for entrepreneurs usually the biggest kind of Crisis identi identity crisis that they experience is when they sell a company especially if they've been building a company for a long time um because you exit and you leave your baby behind that you've been taking care of for I don't know how many years and that's a it's a big change right because you're you attach so much of your identity of your selfworth it's an ego death so your ego needs to you need to go through a complete change um requires a lot of pain and being uncomfortable exactly exactly but again it's during these times that you learn the most about yourself because you realize you're not this thing you just you just are you know I don't need external stuff to to validate your worth of who you are or anything like that and that's what I see in the SEO space as well like well everyone's gone through that well most affiliates with the hcu yeah yeah and and all the seos like since you know the corona times 2020 you see this phrase a lot Su is Dad you know and I think about it why this person is saying like Su is Dad like while we still here you know five years later you know this was my original thought I just came to a realize like realization that we want push a lot of us not changing or adapting to giving excuses to like is dead or Google's not working anymore or chadut is going to take out and I'm out you know so I think it's the easiest way out for some people and it's kind of like sad because you make connections and then you lose connections and you're like I connected with this person so good but then he did said this thing like as Dad I'm I'm going into like a fishing business or something you know you're like what the [ __ ] bro like 100% And I this reminds me of like some coners I don't know who I had this conversation with but it went uh it was just about how like all the biggest gains I think it's Naval that says this all the biggest gains in life just come from compound interest and if you're just not even that you have to be in the same industry but if you're just in the same type of business for a long period of time and you you build obviously connections and skills and you know you you essentially go through this like compounding growth because the longer that you are in this business or in using these skills the better you'll become and I think whenever like whenever see someone like Su is that or this is that it's like no you just got bored of it or you you don't want to adjust or change or improve you don't you don't see the skills that you need to improve to become better at it because to to really like can you honestly say that you're the best at it in the world probably not so okay it's not the problem of this industry is dead probably just the problem of you either being bored or maybe you just don't think you're like good enough to to develop to the level that you need to develop coming back to the subconscious beliefs right yeah it all comes at someone always has to rank first on Google some there's always like a first page is generally they're doing something right and you're not anymore so it's like they're still winning yeah exactly yeah it's interesting and and I think the chains that's coming in SEO it'll be more focused because the on page is going to be so easier with all the content tools out there and it's all going to be automated with the AI agents and I think more people are going to start thinking about off page and backlinks and parasite set of things and you know the brand signals and I think this is where a lot of the industry's focus is going to go and it's it's going to be interesting times and nobody's going to be talking about but optimizing for on page anymore because they're going to be like oh I have a AI agent I have a on page AI Optimizer I use but now for the offsite side of things I want to do this and I want to test this I want to test this so I think I personally think this is where we heading like what are you guys thoughts well we talked about the Omni Channel presence you was chat before B I think that's the key thing but I think the on page will probably change as well off page is more important than ever because of this CU it's def it's basically the differentiating factor now because everyone's going to have optimized good content it's all going to be optimized the right entities and stuff but I think the on page will probably change to information getting as we already know you have to have something new but I think it'll be more social media of having like the social media Post in there and so many likes and uh interactions and user signals from that tied in with the content as well uh just basically anything to for Google to get away from telling it's not AI because well Google already pulls in like the amount of followers you've got on like Instagram and YouTube in the Surs and stuff so I think stuff like that could possibly be the new direction for Google in the future with content I think I just saw on on a a few days ago I don't know who is building it but someone's building a tool that will essentially scrape Reddit twit Reddit x Facebook like all these big social media platforms when it's creating like a post and so instead of essentially just recycling all these information that like AI already has is going to pull new information from like social media platforms and then based on that provide like the most updated the most relevant version may maybe it's for product reviews maybe it's for you know for informational articles um essentially they takes people's actual opinions because that's what going to make the biggest difference right because things constantly involve things constantly change um people always find new stuff that works for anything you know it can be any Niche um I think we're going to see a lot more of that also with that as well Google bought uh Reddit or bought into Reddit and that's what it trained all its AI data on the Reddit data so it's like it's they know it's the case and it makes more sense that what's the newspaper as well like buzz BuzzFeed BuzzFeed yeah that's all basically Reddit posts and a lot of news articles was Reddit comments and now as well the pr angle a lot of people are using is is something goes viral on Tik Tok or gets a lot of views you do expert commentary saying the dentist says this Tik Tok things wrong and that's working really well for PR so it's like newspapers are pulling that information anyway so kind of kind of works it is going that way and you can you can leverage it like with anything and just adapt to get the links or to get the get you your piece of content in the news to drive traffic to whatever offer or how you're going to make money basically and I think rosi talked about this as well how like the easiest way to really create content if you don't have a bunch of content ideas is to just go through like the top Tik toks redit posts whatever it is and just react to them so find like a headline that a lot of people like engage with or you know got triggered by it or whatever it might be and just provide your two cents so you know it can be whatever essentially but the headline already works so it got attention and then if you just react to it then you can essentially reach a new audience because it's it's for sure going to get attention yeah most of my feed on Instagram it's not actually the original video anyway someone reacting to it it never I never see the original it's always a reaction video of that video it's a p paddle tutorials yeah that's actually okay I follow quite a few my my Instagram feeds all paddle stuff it's so funny like it just Nots like what I like the algorithm uh there was an interesting tweet what was it Jack uh is it Jack dorsy who used to own Twitter I can't remember his last name though but he squ yeah yeah so he was saying there should be different algorithms and you actually pick which one you want because it's it's your like content if you want it like uh picked on like the most popular things you search like paddle would turn up or if you want it on I don't know men's fashion or whatever it would be for like what you want to see you should be able to pick the algorithm so that could be interesting what happens with that I don't think that would ever progress to Google but potentially with the AI systems coming out it might do yeah and talking about hosi and and all these people I think I think he he said it like a month ago and he was like the most important asset you're GNA have is a personal brand not your condo not your crypto portfolio not your stock market you know it's going to be your personal brand and I really like kind of think about it a lot these days and I and I think that's the case that's it's going to be like in the next 10 years and you guys have got good personal Brands I'd say so what what your guys strategy to get on the personal brand like game I'd say game but also like having those boundaries of maybe not getting too much Fame you know because it's going to affect your peace or your family life or stuff like that so what what you guys think about the personal brand the whole idea about having an influence itself I I think it comes down first to defining your goals like what you actually want to achieve um I think the whole like oh if I'm going to be famous I'm going to make money no you won't like it's completely irrelevant like the number of followers and likes there's no correlation between how many likes you have and how many followers to how much money you're going to make I think just getting away from that for the start is the best thing you can do and especially if you don't actually want to be famous like to just find the area or Niche where you want to be known as the expert um I think if you start with that and let you just start talking to the market so figure out what the most common questions are what the problem s are what the frustrations are uh figure figure out like what kind of the awareness is of that market and then just figure out like start posting content see how people react to it and then you just need to be almost like obsessed with analyzing the performance of that content you need to you need to pay attention to what people react to what works what doesn't work and then you just need to keep refining it it's kind of similar to like testing paid ads right you test Your Hooks you test your body you test the the angle you test top middle and bottom of funnel but the key should be just if you want to start Define the niche Define your goal post for 30 days post whatever you want to post about that certain topic and then just go back and analyze what worked and do more of that that would be like how I would start it in 30 days in an nutshell yeah they they're really good points with with me I'm kind of a bit of a Crossroads of what I want to do I'm not too worried about getting too famous because like you say it's in a like the vertical of SEO or vertical of business so it's not like well SEO marketing should I say it's not huge audience compared to General Tik Tok videos what blow up and you just get likes which don't equate to anything so it's not too bad but I've actually just been speaking to a strategist which helps personal Brands because even in the past like a lot of big companies was founder Le like Steve Jobs and stuff like that and I think now it's a lot easier to capitalize and do that and build the authenticity that you building this clothing brand or you part of this agency so people like know and trust you so you're going to uh help more people and people are going to use you instead of someone else um but with what they were saying and what they kind of go over is having your core um core pieces of content which are always going to be the same so people know and know what to expect and they want to tune in and watch it like a TV series like you with this podcast it's always like the long form hour people know you're going to be in the room like all the professionals set up and then know that and want to watch that each time uh so it's kind of finding where you feel comfortable and want to progress in and keep doing doing it because it's generally if you want to keep doing it you have to enjoy the process you're not going to keep doing content which you don't like so for me it's that and it's uh more the authenticity and just actually showing you on there because companies don't really sell as much uh well sell as build an audience or attract people rather than personal uh the personal side of things basically want connect with people and L companies 100% one thing I would like to add is like I think you having a personal brand is great but you shouldn't build like you shouldn't have a business that's just your personal brand because then you can never exit and you know as an entrepreneur obviously want to exit because that's where the real the real money is not even just the money but if you have a vision and you really want to take it to a super high level you're only going to really be able to take it to a certain level and then it's just going to make more sense to hand it off to someone that's maybe more capable more skilled whatever it might be um so I think that's that's a very important point to make and another thing that comes to mind in terms of personal Brands is and I try this with with my organic content it worked very well I think building in public is extremely underrated because it there's no fluff you're literally showing what kind of challenges you're dealing with how you're overcoming them you know typically with content you always want to have this hero story but when you're building in public that's literally the hero story because you're going to have challenges you're going to have problems you're going to find Solutions and that just excit stting to watch plus people get to learn from that and you know when you accomplish something you're you literally just show to everyone how you did that and then you're the expert and then people will see okay this is a lot more difficult than than than it looks so I might just pay you to actually do this for me because you've already done it before that's what um Fasco does for a lot of his content he'll do the whole process and do a full breakdown of like a certain service and then say you can do it yourself I've just shown you it but if you don't want to do that you can just pay me to skip all that and most people like we always want the easy path to things so it generally helps uh with well it generally people would rather pay than process yeah and I think anyone that like especially entrepreneurs if you value your time and you you need something done that you have literally zero clue with like you you'd honestly be stupid if you try and figure it on your own if you can just pay you know and have it done for you especially if that person has like a proven track record of doing it with SEO as well I think it's even more valuable because there's so many because it's hard to say like this equated to this like traffic and this actually works and you've got to wait six months and trust me that it's going to work so you need that the brand or the company trust at least uh to do it because there is a lot of people which take advantage of that as well 100,000% yeah it's funny you mentioned wco because I really like the way he's building his personal brand did you see his POV videos yes stretches but you know that POV video that was taken from uh Daniel D so he's the one I've started following him as well and doing lot as well yeah he's in Bal yeah very recently so I think um yeah my another question would be like how authentic you want your personal brand to be because some people you know they just go like very Niche and I I feel like there's a niche audience but also there's like a buildin public audience and there's a PO videos like of this was guy we know you know this guy who has journalist ai.com M so this this guy he came to this podcast Vasco Montero really smart guy I've seen it yeah yeah so he is rebranding his whole YouTube channel to I'm a 24y old living a apartment live in bang stuff and people watch that and then they get curious of what he does and he he was showing the numbers and he was like they do really well like it's the smart way to do it cuz SEO like we were saying it's the very small portion but that it gets a huge market and and if people want to invest or people want to use the tool or do whatever you're doing that will it'll attract the right people because you got the wide net bit like ads sort of thing yeah it just needs to make sense from the funnel perspective right I don't know exactly like how he does this content but like if you have like a a top a top of funnel and then you have a very Niche specific type of product maybe an SEO product on the like bottom of funnel I think the conversion rate is going to be extremely low so but if you have like um do you guys know like Samuel Samuel anua like this yeah this guy he's blown up like completely and um he has again a super big top of funnel like parties events expensive cars all these typical like Guru stuff but essentially he sells like a course and he also does kind of like building building in public and stuff like that but the whole idea is like because he has so many people and he reaches so many people and he has a product which is like e-commerce coaching it applies to all of them because any one of them can start an e-commerce company right um I don't know about Vasco if like if has a tool or what he has on the bottom wrer yeah bit more Niche it's a bit more Niche yeah it can still work but you know the more you have the more relevance you have between bottom and top of funnel the better it's going to do that's that's a good point for sure big business model I think I think my in my YouTube channel the videos that made me a lot of [ __ ] money would be like the ones that got like th000 views and this is one agency that wants to spend 150 in a year and they came from that video and I was like I I made a video thousand views caught an eye on an agency and they want that's the point right you don't need millions of followers to get huge amounts of money like I mean if you just imagine like when you give a when you give a presentation when you give a speech right how many people are in that room like maybe if it's a huge event maybe like I don't know thousand let's say so when you make a video and you get a th000 views that's like a thousand people seeing like that's a lot of people and especially if it's niche like if if you're speaking to agency owners there's a thousand agency owners that's a huge market and just you just get one person to convert which is what 0.1% that's a super low conversion rate and that one lead just because you have a higher ticket offer that's a lot right so just again it's not it's not really having massive numbers it's just having the right offer for the Right audience and solving the right problem with that as well it's like the the key thing of like trying to uh sell SEO and why you should do SEO because you are targeting the exact search term and it's like their intent to come and check out whatever it is the product or the offer or the review or whatever it is and it's much more valuable than a general review not targeting well a general uh term not targeting this the search term kind of thing 100% 100% or like you can also go the other route where you do like so for for example like what we started doing now is I recorded like a 10minute video just explaining it's a very simple case study of how we decrease like cost of acquisition increase rows and so on it's like a 10- minute video when we're just going to optimize it for top of funnel so the objective there is not leads it's not sales it's nothing it's uh just awareness and optimization for video views so the goal with this video is to push it to hopefully millions of people and then just take the 25 the the people who watch 25% more of the video and then just retarget them because if someone watched two and a half minutes of a 10-minute video of me talking about SEO and super specific thing they for sure have interest in that then I push them to the middle of funnel which is my organic content which just builds more credibility and trust and I just retarget that small portion to the bottom of funnel to the actual offer right so the top of funnel is going to be super cheap because just awareness the middle of funnel is going to be more expensive but I'm only targeting a certain number of people bottom of fun is going to be the most expensive but again I'm targeting a super super small percentage of the people that are for sure going to be interested that's really interesting not many seos do that either seos are generally scared of ads and that's the perfect way to do it because I'm thinking now like all of us we've got our own technique that [ __ ] works and for you it's like what you Shar it's just you know to the point perfect recipe for me it's like tutorial videos you know old school tutorial videos still gets views gets people to buy links and for you it's like I see those breakdown of 10 things you need on X and it gets a lot of views for you you know I don't know how much you converting on that are you converting more on the YouTube tutorials so uh well it changes all the time to be honest with you like even when I came on this podcast like a year ago I got so many messages on like Instagram and stuff like just random things and Niche Pursuits podcast um but generally I don't know this is mainly for like top of funel personal brand and awareness not really trying to sell people on anything because I don't really have too much of a I have a service but it's only uh for the small scale people it's only like a small percentage and and adding to what you're saying I think people hardly look at what you have to offer but people want to invest in people you know so if they like the Benjamin golden the sakah the James Oliver they want to be like I don't care about all the case studies there I want to work with James ol because I like this person I think this is what's shifting in the personal Brad space 100% 100% Who Who Are You bro who are you like it's it kind of reminds me what I just told the a friend of mine he's uh he's putting a like an investor deck together he's raising money and he shared it with me for for some feedback and he has like he had all the companies in there what they achieved how fast they grow grw them and so on and I'm like I just it came to my mind I'm like bro you have the most incredible story and I won't go into the entire story but just like think of like such such an like a very epic story of like him building the first business going completely bankrupt and then doing it again and like such a good story um I'm like man I think like 70% of that presentation should be about you about your life what you've achieved what you've gone through and what your plan and vision is for the future and then a small percent of like percentage of like what you actually did so far with the companies what you got because also every single one of your current investors literally bought into you as the person and not necessarily the project they just believed in you and I think the more more important than the story of the person is how you making people feel cuz people are going to remember not the strategy not your complete story of how you got to where you are they're going to remember how they felt when they were in the room next to you when they were watching your video yeah but you do it with a story because with a story you you demonstrate like your values your decision making how you make decisions and that's what people connect to and that's what triggers the emotions inside of them and that's essentially how you yeah but if you think about it like nobody really remembers the story like you do but you don't you remember how you felt you know yeah I mean it's a ve it's a vehicle to to getting you to getting you there yeah catching to those emotions so I think like a bit of like hypnotherapy well with me I that could be a niche like hypnotherapy for personal brand coaches like how you can apply it to your audience and get more people to you know like support you and whatever ticket High ticket offer you have to it would probably work to be fair when you were saying like fail failures that's uh really big for me because I want to know that they've tried this before and failed and they know like the pitfalls to to avoid if someone's winning all the time they're always doing great it's like there's there's obviously they're either covering something up or the they never failed so they they could just crash off straight away like how many people we know in our Network that don't have failures like I don't personally if they're if they're real friends no none and and also that's how we connect with people we don't connect with people oh wow he did this most amazing thing no I can't really relate that because what are the chances of me doing something very very special in that specific Niche probably very low yeah but them failing a business or them you know um it can be whatever not just business like them going to a tough breakup them um going on a weightless Journey like we connect with a struggle like that's what really we can resonate with um and that's enough to motivate us to then you know to try it for our for ourselves yeah and even going back to the business SEO side of things you you need to fail you need to like find a website obviously not a client's website but have a website and then push it to maybe it's ranking third or something but push it to the breaking point then you know oh maybe sending 20,000 pbn links to this site didn't work but sending 200 was like the perfect amount sort of thing uh yeah you need to push the boundaries and fail sometimes to to go past and then you can pull it back 100% yeah and it's interesting like now we're getting into the Dynamics of what we talking and it just came into my mind there's a so-called Su expert and he has his full story like written down in his website and his YouTube video but when you see him in conferences like is still trying to be that SEO expert and you know confident one and nobody like kind of like basically people are not approaching as often like they'll approach James Oliver or other people you know and and I realized like it's just not going to [ __ ] work like who you are online and who we presenting to be like offline and if it's not relative and people notice that people notice that Gap and people realize it like something going on I don't want to talk I'll go here so I think it's just like being you are who you are online versus offline is well notice also like it gets a lot of attention you know it gets you a lot of good opportunities business partners uh friendships and you know like Network that you're going to like strive on and it comes to who you are online and who you're offline and people notice that people notice that oh yeah all my business partners came from conferences SEO conferences meeting people and doing that um yeah I think it's big it's just authenticity it's just being you in every setting sort of thing and uh as building like websites and seos and affiliate marketing we sometimes lie quite a bit for the room well picking the products which are going to earn you more money or not having your face on the the business just a random AI generated person now but I think the the signals of that or the signals on those websites anyway generally help you convert more in that space and then obviously in life as well for your personal brand yeah so coming to um coming to a fiveyear plan let's say this a fiveyear plan what are our goals could be personal could be SEO wise could be business- wise and how what's the required actions that it's going to take for us to achieve I'll start with you James well we've just done the New Year's just gone so generally every new year just before in between Christmas and New Year I always plan out the year and try and write everything down and see what I need to achieve and then have the big goal and then do the steps to work backwards because it makes it a lot easier to work it out that way um that's generally year goal all the projects are planned and everything's in progress uh five years I've don't really plan that far but I kind of know off the top of my head what I'm going to do uh generally exit everything what I'm in now um retire not retire I've always done like a year break every now and again and I I would probably do a year break just travel Maybe go to India in a r show yeah I've already done that now the thing is like you still can do like a side hustle I think I get bored without that but just take it easy and just do slow travel I I like to call it like spiritual quests so it's like you take many breaks from the business operational side of things and you go like a month in India and just you know Auto Ria you you don't [ __ ] care yeah what happens in seier what happens in The Tax Scene what happens in the main things you know and you just do you and I like that about you you know when I met you you're like I'm going on India to in a ria in you know what Ria is it's like a threea yeah that was good from south to North yeah uh Fork coochi to gang talk to sium the way yeah I forgot what it was kilometers but it was a lot so it's interesting what you shared so you want to exit everything exit everything but then I want to start something new and build that and then do the same process and it's just generally the same cycle of doing it but pretty much everything in now I want to be out of and in new businesses by then still same skill set I'll probably still be doing SE I still be doing affiliate marketing still be doing ads uh but generally all the portfolio and companies now to be sold and new projects so always just new things basically it's beautiful what you so I have few things in the works that I can't talk too much about unfortunately but um I definitely want to prioritize just living a bit more because I mean I literally started working online when I was 12 years old and I feel like I'm 25 now and it's goes like this man like it's insane um I I do I do travel and I do try to make trips know every two months every three months uh but I definitely like really respect what you did for example with you know just taking a year off and just like like to to leave like that like that's I really want to do that um I I had a I had a break for like what two just two weeks from like end of December to start of January just two weeks off and I find that you know just removing yourself from the day to day and just reflecting on what you actually want kind of working on the vision I think it's the best investment that one can make so I definitely want to be a bit more strategic about how I'm building things and not just always be in the trenches and like spending so much time solving all these problems and optimizing and so on take a bit more time to just figure out like what kind of experiences I want to have obviously like we all have a list of of places that we want to see that we want to go um things we want to experience but I think you know once you do once you complete this list then you get another list so I really just want to spend some time doing doing that um just just living life properly um and uh yeah after after let's say a year of that just find the next mountain to climb and keep going like I I think it's it's I mean it's not really about money anymore at this point it's just this process of personal development because you always need to build different skills you always need to level up as a person to achieve different goals and I think that's what um really makes the whole entrepreneurship Journey like really really interesting so can't really give you an exact answer but that's kind of the mindset behind it I know he we all are in a very serious committed relationships to be all one families are we on the same 100% yeah yeah I think that changes everything right cuz now the family oriented goals might overtake the selfish you know like personal personal quests so I definitely you'll yeah the the personal stuff like that would be a lot harder and I I feel like you take less risks as well unless you have a diversification and the assets already set up but I think the risk taking would reduce quite a lot and then the personal quests as well so it's it's one of those things where you have to take advantage of it while you can living the now yeah what's your thoughts when you have a family like so I want to and that's kind of the big thing that I was thinking about like just kind of a timeline for my life a bit like in the next what five 10 years um up until I'm I'm 30 I just want to really focus on just leaving my life like for next year I'm going to push business as much as I can like just decided that I want to push it as much as I can then let's see what exactly is going on um have a clear picture in that moment but then I just really want to focus on living life like just for myself you know then between like what 30 35 I think at that point I would I definitely want to start considering having a family um so and then after that I feel I feel once you have a family and once you have kids like you start to leave for someone else obviously you know it's like a selfless life in it like yeah which why come to realization is like there's a beauty in it because now you're not thinking about you now you're thinking about other there's a beauty in both you know just making sure that you maximize this time because it's only going to come once you're only going to be I'm only going to be 25 once I'm only going to be 26 once like you know um and then really make sure that I maximize the enjoyment of these and not just just chase money all the time and and all of these uh and then you know obviously the situation will change and it's going to be a different type of life but it's going to be probably from what I hear from everyone that has famili it's going to be even more fulfilling yeah right but I just never want to have the the thought of like oh I wish I had done these before I had kids I never want to have that thought like knock on wood of course but I think that's kind of the goal for next five years and the five years after that it's really going to become about my family and just and I think also it's kind of what drives me a lot now like I want to provide incredible life for my future wife for my kids for I don't don't want them to actually no I do want them to struggle in some way because it's going to build them into the the people apply more for the Sun not for the daughter though 100% 100% um maybe not struggle but I want them to I never want to have spoiled kids I want them to appreciate everything that they have I want them to Value it and because when I see like kids at their sport I just like I just can't I'm like like I I can't handle that um you want them free not spoiled free and I want them to to appreciate things and um for for the boys I want them to I I want them to go through the trenches like we have like I think that that really makes a man yeah that builds a lot of Personality for sure builds character yeah 100% And that progresses from business to everything in life doesn't it oh every struggle kind of just it it's all intertwined so yeah yeah also like one thing you guys have noticed like I think for me personally the most older mature I get and also like there's a correlation with how many people I have around me it's just like tiny and Tiny and Tiny every year and I don't know if you guys notice the same I know you're a social animal like sometimes there's like 35 people around you in a cocktail bar I'm like how the [ __ ] did you man get 35 people in six 6 hours notice I'm good I'm good at that when it happens but other than that I don't like doing it at all like I don't really go out too much or do any of that like I won't do it constantly but when it's there like at a conference or anything I think the objective is to meet people and I find it interesting to speak to different people and seeing what everyone else is doing it's it's cool uh but other than that I won't do anything unless it's planned what was the question the question was like uh your closer on to your circle did it get did it for you get smaller every year or did you expand or it's it's getting smaller and it's expanding at the same time um so kind of I mentioned at the start like there was a period between when I was like 17 to 19 when I really had no friends like there was no one that I would really be able to call like a true friend that I knew had my back in case of whatever and uh then I started to to meet people um that were just really aligned with my values um and then I started meeting more and more and then there something happened like like last last year where I had to essentially draw a line with a few people that I consider very close friends and that was really quite painful to be honest because um I consider these people like super close friends but I just ultimately saw that the values weren't aligned I we didn't feel the relationship was M Mutual uh and that was I think the biggest lesson of last year and funny enough like also as I mentioned previously like when I kind of distance myself a bit from these people new people came into my life that were even way more aligned with um the values that I have who I am what kind of friends I want to have around so I think it's just it's kind of like the what's it called the bonai tree it's kind of like you're you're always you're always um like trimming it trimming it and then it grows and it grows stronger you always need to be on the lookout and I think it's the same with romantic relationships and friendships and business partners need to be on the on the lookout for like are the values aligned do does this person have your back not only have your back do they respect you um and if that's not the case you need to be very clear and set the boundary yeah uh and when you do that that's obviously it's not comfortable but you open the doors for people that will respect that and will be a better fit for you uh ultimately in the future nice one and I think like yeah doing these kind of podcasts for me like is so much more enjoyable than just St like SEO rant for 30 minutes it's good we got 30 minutes we need to just all the new strategies that little details and and what I've realized is like also the feedback I get from people watching this stuff they they can relate you know they can relate who's behind the SE scenes who's in the SE scenes and they can see themselves and and that's why like I want to do this podcast with you to make it both of you like super authentic and I and I'm grateful for you to have come and for you to have come and just yeah we have made this happen so thank you guys thanks I think it's a wrap for today and hopefully there'll be round three and round four and round five every year and we see the progress and you're like oh [ __ ] remember we did that first podcast and we were talking about strategy and doesn't work no I'm just kidding but yeah it's beautiful yeah next year we'll all be AI generated yeah have ai robot that's going to be like what do you think bro like you've seen me doing this thing yeah nice one thanks for having me thank you brother thank you
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