Blind Five Year Old

(This is a personal post so if that isn’t your thing then you should move on.)

This is the tenth year that I’ve done a year in review piece. You might benefit from and find yourself in prior year versions. Here are easy links to 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020.

The timing of this post, half way through the next year, should be a clue that 2021 was a difficult one.

Lack of Control

I didn’t escape the pandemic unscathed.

I, personally, didn’t find the isolation or different patterns of life to be that difficult. I’m an introvert. I had books and streaming services. I genuinely like hanging out with my family. And I Zoomed with a couple of amigos on the regular.

Sure, as things wore on it got a bit old. I missed restaurants and the easy patterns of life where you didn’t have to think about face masks. But, in general, I adapted.

But there were those that I loved who did find it hard. It wasn’t as easy for them to adapt. I won’t go into details here because it’s not my story to tell.

But for someone who always looks for ways to solve or fix things, the inability to do so for loved ones was frighteningly difficult. I worried. A lot.

I realized that I was less worried when I had cancer and was undergoing chemo than I was about my loved ones. I guess I was anxious?

Whatever it was, it made it extremely tough to concentrate for long periods of time or to just get up off my ass and get work done. There were a handful of jobs that I couldn’t even get started on. It was like an obstacle course wall that seemed too high.

I just stared at that wall, unable to even attempt or try to scale it. And I felt incredibly guilty about that.

Instead of giving those clients a heads up about what was going on I simply ghosted them. Not a great coping mechanism.

Worse, their email messages and Slack notifications haunted me every day. I left them there, a shining beacon, a challenge to myself to finally do something.

I fell down a familiar cycle of communication guilt, which translated into a need to make my next interaction epic. But without the ability to do so it was just a low-key form of torment.

After several months I finally emailed those clients. I explained as best I could and the response was largely positive. Don’t get me wrong. I lost those gigs and clients. But I preserved the relationships. That, I find, is far more meaningful.

Relief

Things are okay now. Maybe not perfect but the storm has passed.

I almost feel like I’m jinxing myself because there were fits and starts, where it felt like things were on the upswing only to come crashing down again.

I try to ward off that brand of magical thinking. Things are better. I’m able to concentrate again without my mind wandering into feverish and dark what-if scenarios.

Even better, the small things that life throws at you no longer seem as draining. I’d always been good at taking those things and just tackling them. Car tire has a leak? Take it to the place down the street to get patched. Done. Easy-peasy.

During the tail-end of the pandemic those things felt more onerous. It wasn’t that I didn’t get them done. I did. But it took more effort. It sapped my reserves.

One of the things I’ve taken to heart is that something like will power or, in this case resilience, is a finite resource. You might be able to resist something for a short time. But if you are continually exposed to something you’ll likely cave at some point.

It’s okay to fail.

Habits Are Hard

I am a big proponent of habits. You don’t get to where you want to go by trying to get there all at once or waiting to be inspired.

Want to write that next great American novel? You don’t just wake up with a great story and bang it out. No. You write every day, even when you feel like you don’t have it in you. Even when what you write that day isn’t very good.

Persistence is important. Even when you miss a day, get back to it. Don’t beat yourself up. Just get back to that habit.

Because it’s a bit like the story about the wolf you feed. If you’re not familiar, it’s a story attributed to the Cherokee that states that there are two wolves inside of you – one good and one evil. The one you feed is the one that wins.

Habits are like that – they’re binary. You do some form of exercise or you wind up laying on the couch watching old episodes of Castle. You log your food or you don’t. You respond to emails quickly or you let them pile up.

During this time of anxiety I fell back into many bad habits. The only two habits that survived were doing the crossword, mini and bee every morning and reading.

I’m slowly getting back on track with good habits. I’m far better with email and communicating in general. And the diet and exercise are starting to return, which is good since it’s shorts weather and the ones I wore last year aren’t fitting so well.

It’s painful to think about how I let all that progress get away, to think about all of those poor decisions. You want to have it back because it feels awful to retrace your steps. But you don’t get back there through wishes, guilt or regret.

Wake up and start again. Every day.

Success

You would think that the business would have suffered through these tough times. But you’d be wrong.

The business continued to grow despite my missteps. Some of this was due to the type of engagements I have with clients. A number of years ago I moved to what I call expertise retainers, which have no hourly component.

Instead I provide insight and advice through periodic meetings and, at times, will document specific recommendations or produce product requirements documents.

So I was able to handle most of the work for clients because it didn’t require hours of concentration. I could talk and navigate them through the new search landscape and steer them to projects that delivered results.

And the other part of my business, a small and growing set of sites, continued to perform and grow. Together, it turns out that I paid more in taxes last year than I made 7 years ago.

I no longer feel embarrassed by or guilty of my success. I’m grateful and acknowledge both the hard work and luck that got me to where I am today.

Pattern Recognition

One of the reasons for my success is pattern recognition. I took this for granted and long thought others had this ability. But I’ve come to learn that it’s not all that common.

Calling it a superpower might be a bit much, but sometimes it feels that way. When you see something so clearly and know it will work, it feels a bit like magic.

How can it not when you identify a new query class for a client; detail the page for them; launch it and see it become 60% of their total traffic?

How can it not when you scale a specific page type and see it deliver 80% year over year gains?

In prior years you may have read about my battle with confidence. I’ve won that battle. I’m not saying I’m always right. However, I’m confident that I’m going to be right way more than wrong and that what I recommend will lead to success.

Recognizing patterns for a specific query class helps but what keeps my clients ahead is seeing overall search patterns. In this regard, I see a number of interesting trends.

Precision

I don’t see many people talking about long-tail search. That might be because I don’t read a lot of industry sites and blogs. (If you have one you think I should be reading, please let me know.)

Because I really don’t care to read anything about E-A-T ever again. Instead, I want to see chatter about how much traffic is hiding behind queries that are 5, 6 and 7 words long.

Few seem interested in figuring out how much traffic you can get from terms that Google says get just 10 queries a month.

For instance, Google says a large set of terms gets about 20,000 queries per month. In reality, I’m getting about 35,000 in traffic per month targeting those terms.

Think about that, I’m seeing more traffic than Google is showing query volume!

Google doesn’t aggregate long-tail queries well so many times what looks like a small amount of traffic is actually quite large when you take into account all of the various syntaxes.

Simply put, queries are getting longer. One of my favorite ways to show the shift to longer queries is the trend around Halloween costumes.

Are people just not into Halloween any more? Or are they searching for more specific types of Halloween costumes. Spoiler alert: it’s the latter.

I know many have Post Traumatic Panda Syndrome and continue to invest in long form content but I’m seeing huge gains as clients churn out short form, precise content that satisfies intent.

SERP Turbulence

Over the last year or so I’ve noticed that search results are changing at a faster rate. Not only that, there is more variation by vertical and even by query class.

There’s more algorithmic testing going on each week in the past year or so than ever before. The patterns are crystal clear to me.

I have rank indices for a number of clients, and what used to be a relatively smooth line up or down has turned into jagged crocodile teeth. Up one week, down the next, up the week after, down the next.

Believe me, I’ve learned not to trumpet a victory or ring the alarm bell based on a week’s worth of ranking data. Because it’s increasingly not about a specific week but the trend over the last few months.

Are your rank indices slowly getting better or slowly getting worse? Is it two steps forward and one step back or one step forward and two steps back?

I can even see when an algorithmic test has come to a conclusion because it creates what I call a dichotomous week. This happens when one set of metrics improves while another declines. For example, you may gain a number of top rankings but have fewer terms ranking on the first page.

Sometimes there are massive changes to a specific vertical or query class that go unnoticed by the industry at large because it is only a handful of sites in that niche that are impacted. And we’re not out there blabbing about it.

In addition, sometimes the changes are about SERP features like the Local Pack or People Also Ask units. Together, these weekly changes have been far more impactful than core updates. Perhaps the increase in weekly updates is the reason we’ve had so few core updates lately.

Throughput

By far the biggest threat to SEO is lack of throughput. A fair bit of my time lately is convincing organizations to go faster and do more.

The continuous questions about how much traffic this or that change will drive are unproductive. SEO is not like hunting werewolves. There are no silver bullets.

Instead it’s a lot like a jigsaw puzzle.

Only doing a few ‘important’ SEO projects is a lot like putting three more pieces into a half-done 2000 piece puzzle.

One of the more interesting examples was work I did for a client back in 2018. They didn’t get around to executing on it until late 2020.

Now, imagine if they’d been able to do that work when I first made the recommendations. Heck, they waited so long that they’ve since pivoted and aren’t very interested in this traffic anymore.

Those who do more work and understand that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts will find SEO success. If you’re interested in learning more you can take a gander at my Compound SEO presentation.

Expectations

Am I motivated enough? Am I making enough progress? Shouldn’t I be writing more? Shouldn’t I be maintaining my personal brand?

I often use these yearly updates as a way to take inventory; to stop doing some things and start doing others. These course corrections also create a subtle expectation for measurement the following year.

While I believe this practice helped in the past I’m no longer sure it’s serving a good purpose. I’m a pretty introspective person by nature and while I’m sure I still have some personal growth ahead of me I think I’ve largely figured out what makes me tick.

It’s like I’m picking at a scab. Just stop. Do something else. Particularly since things are changing so fast. I often say that many people are unhappy because the picture in their head of how they thought things would be doesn’t match the reality.

I have a great life but it is nothing like I pictured 20 years ago. I remember thinking California would look like it did on TV; sun-drenched palm lined streets and big wide sandy beaches everywhere. The reality is different but still pretty awesome.

It’s the reason I always hated the ‘where do you see yourself in five years’ interview question. Any prediction I make would be wrong. So my only expectation this year is to keep going.

The Soundtrack

If you go back through the years and check out specific blog posts you’ll find that I make a lot of music references.

Some of that is purposeful as I’ve explained. (You’ll remember my content better if it attaches itself to a song.) But I also take quite a bit of inspiration from musicians or any artist really.

I’m in awe of their ability to change the way you feel, to alter the chemistry you have with your surroundings. That is a superpower.

While I generally keep a pretty positive spin on things, the music I’ve been listening to has been a bit like an exorcism. It’s driving, angry and malevolent.

Because my deep reservoir of anger needs a voice and outlet. There’s a lot to be angry about.

The pandemic, misinformation, bigotry, stupidity, willful ignorance, racism, misogyny, gun violence, climate change all the way down to people who don’t use their turn signals.

So I listen, headphones on, volume turned up high, arms often flailing to punctuate the beats.

The Prodigy, Curve, Moby, Peter Gabriel, Jane’s Addiction, New Order, The Chemical Brothers, Live, Public Image Ltd, Midnight Oil and Depeche Mode.

What many of these songs have in common, at least to my ears, is this sense of being on the brink. Like the way you look up sometimes and see your neighborhood differently than before. Your surroundings didn’t change but something in you did.

In writing, there’s a general philosophy that you are compelled to invest and read when the character is deciding between two actions. A recent example would be the character Sato on Tokyo Vice.

Yes, it’s been a shitty time in a lot of ways. But past performance is not indicative of future results. It feels like I’m on the cusp of something.

I’m waiting.

(This is a personal post so if that isn’t your thing then you should move on.)

This is the ninth year that I’ve done a year in review piece. I’m at a different stage of my journey so you might benefit from and find yourself in prior year versions. Here are easy links to 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019

In 2020, the world shifted beneath our feet but my business kept growing. The anxiety I had about certain facets of my business disappeared, replaced by anxiety about COVID-19 and our political landscape.

I found sanctuary in simple habits that I’ll take forward into 2021.

COVID-19

It was 2020, so you can’t avoid talking about COVID-19. The strange thing is, social distancing didn’t change the way I do business. For the most part, I do all my work remotely. From time to time I might go into the city (we really don’t call it San Fran) and meet with a client.

I couldn’t do that in 2015 because I was going through chemotherapy. I found that not meeting in person worked just fine. Clients agreed.

So that’s how it’s been for the last five years. Once in a blue moon I might go in for a meeting but I largely stay at home. Heck, I have two clients in Australia, four in New York and two in Seattle so it’s not like I’m going to meet with them in person much anyway.

So the quarantine and lock down orders were not a big change for me. But it was different.

The day was no longer split up by trips to drop my daughter at school, going out to get groceries or stepping out with my wife for mojitos at a favorite restaurant. My daughter was doing distance learning, we quickly moved to delivery services for our groceries and I upped my bartending skills.

The days were definitely monolithic and homogenous, leading to a general groundhog day malaise.

Motivation

Available at Woot

The biggest problem I had in 2020 was motivation. Early in the year I bought out a partner, found a developer and began working on side projects. It was the outcome of my 2019 epiphany. Let’s do this!

But even before COVID-19 hit in earnest, I was slowing down. And once COVID-19 was upon us my motivation evaporated. The reasons for this were two-fold and interrelated.

Money is not a problem. The business grew, yet again, another 13% in 2020. Some people get a buzz from making more and more money but I’m not one of them.

I’m not saying I don’t still strive for that to some degree. There are some goals I have in mind. Things I’d do with that money. But it’s no longer a primal motivation to do this or that thing so I can make money to get out of debt or to pay the mortgage or go on that vacation. Moreover, debt is one of the serious issues and it should be treated at the earliest stage or else it will lead to bankruptcy. In case of bankruptcy you can also look for lawyers help with filing for bankruptcy as they can help you legally. But if your debts have become unmanageable,  taking the help of attorneys for bankruptcy will be the best solution.

Things were going amazingly well in my life. So my passions turned outwards, toward dealing with COVID-19 and the 2020 election cycle. Why should I spend time in pursuit of even more money when so many things were going wrong?

Digressions

Some of my efforts were productive. I was engaged with my local school district, helping to oust an ineffective Superintendent and then pushing for the right course of action with the new one. I gave to specific political candidates and made sure every DonorsChoose project at my daughter’s school was fully funded.

Some of my efforts were less productive, doom-scrolling and ranting about the lack of logic and empathy I saw in our country.

To me, the division seems less about Republicans vs Democrats and more about a difference between a philosophy of ‘me’ vs ‘we’. (My politics are far-left and while I rarely engage in public I make no apologies for that perspective either.)

I also agonized over the George Floyd murder and the systemic racism it exposed. How could I be an ally? While I have a very good imagination, I can’t understand how it must feel to be black in America.

I caught glimpses in Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff. But ultimately, I felt powerless. Perhaps that’s apt.

Habits

There was a silver lining to lock down orders and the deluge of bad news. I took up some good habits. I’m a big believer that you reach certain goals by instilling good habits. Yet, I often found I failed at making those habits are reality.

In 2020, I made good habits stick. I’m not sure exactly why and, to be honest, I’m not particularly interested in finding out. I’m just happy I got there.

Each year I say I want to read more. The habit I changed? As an early riser I would wake up and watch TV. I stopped doing that and read instead.

As a result, I read 16 books in approximately 9 months, including books by William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, N.K. Jemisin, Jonathan Franzen and Emily St. John Mandel.

I have a morning routine of sorts. I’m up early. Like 5am early. I do the New York Times Crossword. I make some coffee. I read.

But I also learned that you don’t have to be dogmatic about it. During the Tour de France, I woke up and eagerly watched each stage, enjoying both the race and scenery. And I’d watch biathlon too, becoming a huge fan despite my distaste for both skiing and guns.

Hiccups

One of the other things we did as a family was jigsaw puzzles. Not just a few but 28 and counting, with all but two of those being 2,000 piece puzzles.

Jigsaw puzzles and the crossword reinforced essential truths. Both can only be completed if you take it step-by-step. You don’t just fit all the pieces together in a half-hour. You don’t get every clue one after the other in the crossword. (You might get close on Monday!)

There are parts of each that are relatively easy. You sort and pick out the edges and get the outline of the puzzle done first. In the crossword you go through and pick off the ones that come to you right away. You also put in the obvious plural (s), past (ed) and comparative (est and ier) suffixes when spotted.

But then you find there are rough patches. It can be slow going as you work on the gradient of the sky. And sometimes you get stuck on the crossword. A fleeting thought that this is the one that you can’t crack.

The trick is to keep going.

The next time you sit down at the table, the light is a bit better and you see the subtle difference in the sky and the pieces are now going in one after the other. Or suddenly you get one of the long answers that reinforces the theme to that crossword. Things click and you’re getting the double meaning of the clues again.

Incrementalism

I did not get to where I am today by accident. Nor could I have gotten here 8 years earlier. You have to build, brick on brick like a massive lego project, to reach your goal.

It reminds me of the song Wake Up, Stop Dreaming by Wang Chung.

Wake up stop dreaming
There’s more than just two steps to heaven
I’m saying if you wanna get to heaven
You’d better wake up
Wake up, stop dreaming

I’m not religious yet the lyrics inspire me to not simply dream, but to do. Wake up! Take those next steps.

What 2020 did more than anything is confirm that every step is important even if they aren’t of equal value. I might put in a handful of pieces when I sit down at the table for 45 minutes. The next time I may put in a flurry of 150 pieces in the span of 10 minutes.

The puzzle doesn’t get completed without each of those steps.

This is where my personal and business lives intersect. Because one of my mantras about SEO is that the sum is greater than the parts. You can see some of this play out in my recent piece about SEO A/B testing. I’ll be writing a follow-up piece in the near future.

But as a preview, not every step is a step change. But you can’t get to the top of the mountain without taking all the steps.

Measurement

Measurement is clearly a large part of my business. I wouldn’t have it any other way. But the time scale of measurement matters. While it often sounds self-serving, SEO takes time. Patience may be the most underrated skill in our industry.

I’ve battled weight issues for a number of years. I know how to lose the weight and have a number of times, only to put it back on again. Part of the reason for this is that the habits I used to lose that weight were very rigid.

I’d go for the lowest calorie intake possible, denying myself, so I could see results quickly. It wasn’t just about speed but about keeping momentum. When you weigh yourself every day it got hard to keep going when the number went up and not down.

This time around I’m not going for the lowest calorie intake. I’m looking to lose the weight slowly. There will be days when I have a couple of mojitos and blow past my calorie limit.

The funny thing is that those ‘cheat’ days and the numbers on the scale don’t line up. A day after indulging my weight often goes down. (Yes, yes, it might be that I’m dehydrated.) Other times, after a particularly good day – or even a stretch of two – my weight stays the same or creeps up.

But over time it all translates into consistent weight loss. I’ve lost a little over 10 pounds this year, averaging about 1.5 pounds each week. It’s not about living and dying by what the scale says every day. It’s about knowing that I’ll get the results I want if I keep taking those steps.

It dawned on me that I provide this service to clients. I help them move beyond the panic of a week that was a little soft. I encourage them not to spend hours in analysis but instead to execute on their roadmap. Do that next thing.

Putting It All Together

I enter 2021 feeling like I can combine the things I’ve learned over the course of the last few years. I will continue to take risks and be unafraid to fail. I can shake off the guilt of not returning some emails promptly or missing a few deadlines. I’ll rely on the relentless power of habits.

Even if it doesn’t come together as planned, it’s the next step and I’m eager to take it.

 

(This is a personal post so if that isn’t your thing then you should move on.)

This is the eighth year that I’ve done a year in review piece. If this is your first time reading one you may need the context of prior years. I’ve dealt with a variety of issues leading up to this point. Here are easy links to 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017 and 2018.

2019 was a successful year in one way but not in many others. As I closed out the year I realized that I’d taken the wrong learnings from 2018. I’d let the business come to me, devalued my expertise and lost confidence.

Business Booms

The business grew another 38% in 2019. I remain a bit stunned at the numbers.

I moved all legacy clients to expertise retainers and these new arrangements allowed me to carry more clients than I had in the past.

I was concerned that the relatively new expertise retainers might not translate into the same sort of success for clients, which would likely mean more client churn. But that didn’t happen. Not at all.

The problem was not with the expertise retainers but my own fear that they weren’t delivering enough value.

Confidence

I have often been accused of being cocky. I get it. From the outside I argue pretty passionately and am very willing to take a stand for what I believe to be true. I hope I do so in as civil a way as possible but that might not always be the case.

When I think about myself I’d certainly say I’m confident. It’s not something I lack. But for some reason there were areas last year where confidence seemed lacking. It was, frankly, a bit of a shock to make this discovery.

I was not confident that my expertise was enough to support my retainers. Yet that went against all logic when I looked at the results I was driving for these clients.

I was not confident that I could add enough value to outside projects or build new projects on my own. Yet the one outside project I worked on is driving nearly 30,000 visits a day on my strategy and my content.

So where was this drain in confidence coming from?

I believe strongly in my expertise about certain topics but did not believe strongly enough in the value of all that expertise combined. It’s a subtle thing but incredibly important.

The analogy I’d make is a tennis player who is confident in their serve, in their footwork, in their forehand and backhand, in their net play but, oddly, not confident in their game.

Confidence is such an important part of any endeavor. Because at some point something is going to go sideways. In tennis your first serve might break down. Or you just have a few games where your backhand isn’t working.

If you only have confidence in the components you’re unlikely to find lasting success. Instead, you have to have confidence in yourself. You’ll find a way to fix that backhand. You’ll figure out a way to win.

I’m reminded of something Jon Henshaw said to me a number of years ago. “If the Internet went away tomorrow you’d find another way to be successful.” It was damn flattering and the words stick with me to this day.

Instigator

That lack of confidence led to being less aggressive about opportunities. I wasn’t taking as much initiative as I had been previously.

Part of this was taking the wrong learnings from 2018. I’d ended that year with a bit of schmaltz around needing other people to succeed. There’s a popular quote about this floating around.

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

I’m actually not arguing against this philosophy. I think it’s true. But here’s the thing. There are a whole bunch of people who don’t go anywhere. When I look back at where I’ve been most successful in life over the last few years it’s because I’ve been the instigator.

I may start out alone but I find people along the way.

The point is, I don’t think a lot of things would have come to fruition if I had not been the instigator. I lost that to a large degree in 2019. I was waiting for others to help get things started. Or I thought that partnership was critical to success.

In last year’s piece, I’d asked if anyone wanted to help launch a new politically slanted site. Nobody raised their hand to help and as a result nothing ever happened. That won’t happen this year.

I’ll fumble around and figure out how to get it done.

Failure

One of the reasons I didn’t do more was a fear of failure. When you’re comfortable and accustomed to success in one area I think it becomes more difficult to think of failing in another.

There’s a strange dark synergy with confidence here. If you don’t believe in you but just the things you do then having some of those things fail becomes pretty crippling.

Strangely, this isn’t about how others perceive me. I haven’t defined myself by how others view me since … high school. I’m the critic holding myself back, which is strange because I’m so good at framing suboptimal situations.

I won’t hold myself back in 2020.

This is a lot easier for me now. The reason why? Money. It sounds crass but it’s not a big deal if I lose $5,000 on a new project. Even turning away paying clients to focus on something I think will pay off down the line is okay.

That voice in my head can’t scare me with visions of missed mortgage payments and an inability to feed my family. So it’s a lot easier to take risks and drown out that inner voice by shouting ‘cowabunga!’ as I dive in head first.

Disconnected

I wrote four blog posts in 2019 and one of those was the year in review piece. That’s not a lot. Certainly less than I had planned.

Part of this was clearly about time management and simply not putting as much value on sharing my expertise. But the other part was because I felt disconnected from the industry.

I don’t see a lot of what I do or how I think about search showing up in industry pieces. That’s okay. There are a number of ways to achieve search success and plenty of demand for all of us.

Yet, the gulf has widened to such a degree that it becomes hard to understand how I’d fit into the landscape.

Many of my views are contrary to mainstream thought. I never talk about E-A-T. I advocate for less A/B testing. I find third-party tools often obscure real insight. I think many are far too obsessed with site speed.

I don’t mind publishing contrarian views if I believe enough people are listening. I’m just not sure that’s the case these days.

In the past I could spend a fair amount of time to defend and debate my views. I still could but I find it hard to come up with a good reason why I should.

Audience

The problem I have right now is audience. My primary target market are executives at large scale business-to-consumer start-ups. Thing is, they don’t trust the talking heads in search. Not in the slightest.

Instead, they ask other executives and friends. They reach out to see if their venture capital backers have leads on skilled search professionals that have helped other portfolio companies.

A few posts to maintain a certain degree of visibility are necessary but referrals based on working relationships are how I secure all new work. I think this is true for a handful of other folks in the industry as well.

I admit this is really only true if you’re a solo consultant or very small shop. Agency and tool representatives still need to be out there because the margins on those businesses are thinner.

So I’m not showing up at conferences or lobbing grenades into mainstream SEO thought because it doesn’t really help me anymore. I miss it. But I’m finding it hard in the cold light of logic to defend the time and energy it takes.

It makes me wonder if the direction of the industry has changed because of a mix shift issue with contributors.

Life

Remember last year when I said that I was going to accomplish some important personal goals by adhering to certain habits. Yeah … that didn’t happen.

I’ve never been heavier and I read a total of three books all year.

I simply lost focus. I was handicapping failure. I took on more than I should have because I lacked confidence in my new expertise retainer strategy. I spent way too much time on the business and less on myself. I decided other things were more important than my physical and mental health.

It wasn’t all about work. The one thing that hasn’t wavered throughout has been a dedication to family. I have only missed one of my daughter’s events … ever. And that was because I was in the hospital. I regularly cancel or move meetings to be there for her activities. Lacrosse season is just around the corner!

Last year I also became the Northgate Girls Tennis Team Booster Representative, which turns out to be a fairly large commitment. So I have to cut myself some slack there. I did stuff.

And after talking about it for a decade I made sure my wife was able to follow-through on a family reunion. While I’m not eager to go back to Florida (no offense folks) I’m very thankful we were able to pull it off and create a bunch of memories.

Points

Taking a note from prior year’s learnings I can acknowledge that I wasn’t a total slacker this year.

I continued to contribute to Bay Area Search and was able to coordinate and conduct and interview with Gary Illyes. Unfortunately, the video still isn’t available. I’m going to work on that but until then you can read this great write-up from Kevin Indig.

I was also a vocal advocate for Genius as they went public with their allegations of theft by Google and their proxies.

The details of the lyrics controversy haven’t been discussed enough in my view. There’s been a lot of press but little analysis and investigation. There’s nuance that needs to be teased out. I hope you find this thread informative.

— AJ Kohn (@ajkohn) June 23, 2019

While not my intention, that probably did more for my personal brand than any of my other activities in 2019, particularly when you think about my target market.

That’s not why I did it. I was, and still am, pissed. But that doesn’t make me a Google hater. Far from it. I simply call them as I see them.

Next

I don’t know what comes next. I don’t have a formula that will help me better balance work and life. But that’s okay. I don’t need to figure that out here in this post. Or even tomorrow. (And while well intentioned, please don’t send life hacks and productivity book suggestions.)

What I need to do is remain confident that I will.

Will I fail again? Maybe. Or maybe I’ll catch fire like Will Scott. (I mean, talk about a lasting transformation and true inspiration.)

Here’s what I am doing. I’m being an instigator again.

I reached out to a potential partner and in the span of a week was able to have a dialog that let me cross that idea off the list of side projects.

I parted ways with one client where I no longer felt like I was able to deliver value. To me, their roadmap was geared toward a version of Google that last existed two years ago.

I did a quick thread on the new Popular products unit Google launched. Danny wound up replying and was helpful later when I pinged him on another issue. I appreciate this because I was pretty hard on Danny last year.

I contacted comScore about getting historical qSearch data so I can fill in and update my US desktop search volume graph. They didn’t get back to me other than to add my email to their marketing list (not cool). That won’t stop me from getting some sort of data to inform a theory I have regarding search trends.

I hopped down the street to get the slow leak in my tire fixed and thoroughly cleaned the ice maker. Now I no longer worry about getting a flat and we again have crushed ice. These small things sound stupid but let me tell you dealing with them brings such relief and satisfaction.

In all, I’m taking what I learned in the last few years and am doing those things more often and faster. It’s up to me to get things started.

(This is a personal post so if that isn’t your thing then you should move on.)

2018 was a satisfying year because many of the issues that I surfaced last year and in prior years were resolved. I moved my business to expertise retainers, was more comfortable with success and stopped beating myself up (and others) for not being super human.

I had a lot less angst, guilt and was generally a lot happier.

Expertise Retainers

One of the biggest and most successful changes in the business was moving away from any hourly rates or guarantees. In 2017 I had grown weary of the conversations about how many hours I’d worked and whether that was enough to satisfy the retainer.

Now, to be honest, there weren’t a lot of those conversations but there were enough that it bugged me. So I upped my retainer rates and moved to a pure value-based arrangement.

It was no longer about how many hours I put in but how much value I could deliver. It didn’t matter if that value was delivered in 10 minutes if it meant a 30% increase in traffic. I get paid based on my expertise or … my very particular set of skills.

What this also seems to do is match me with similarly like-minded clients. Many instantly understood that time spent wasn’t the right metric to measure. So it came down to whether they trusted that I had the expertise.

The result is more productivity. Not so much because I’m more productive but that there’s less time spent convincing and more time spent implementing.

Thinking

I regularly chat with Zeph Snapp to discuss business and life. One of the things he said years ago was that my goal should be to get paid to think. I really liked the sound of that.

Expertise retainers get close to realizing that goal. Because part of my expertise is the way I think about things. I have a natural ability to see patterns and to take disparate pieces of information and come to a conclusion.

I used to think this was no big deal. Doesn’t everyone see what I see? The answer to that is no. I’m not saying I’m some mentalist or massive smarty pants. I’m just adept at identifying patterns of all sorts, which happens to be meaningful in this line of work.

More importantly, I’m able to communicate my thinking in a way that people seem to understand. Most of the time this takes the form of analogies. But sometimes it’s just describing, step by step, how I figured something out.

The value isn’t just what I do, but how I do it.

Everything Takes Longer

Last year my goal was to launch two sites and a tool in collaboration with others. That didn’t happen. Instead, I was able to launch one site in the fourth quarter of 2018.

The truth of the matter is that everything takes longer than you think it will. That report you think is going to take you 15 minutes to crank out takes 30 minutes instead. Now, that might not seem like a lot individually. But it adds up quickly.

It extends even longer when you’re counting on others to realize your vision. As you’ll see later on, I’m not blaming anyone here. But you can’t move the ball forward when one of your collaborators goes dark.

No matter how many times I internalize the ‘everything takes longer than expected’ truth I am still surprised when it surfaces like a shark fin slicing through calm water. I don’t know if that’s a shortcoming or if I’m just perpetually optimistic.

Time is Bendy

This might sound like a Doctor Who quote but that’s not where this is going. While everything seems to take longer than you expect, in retrospect it also seems like you’ve done quite a lot in a short amount of time.

Time is a strange beast.

When those 1099-MISCs start rolling in I realize just how many clients I worked with in a given year. Then I might go through the litany of different projects that I took on that year. It turns out I was very busy and very productive.

So while it never feels like you’re making huge strides while you’re in the thick of things you can look back and see just how far you’ve come. This is the same feeling I get when hiking or cycling.

It doesn’t seem like you’re climbing that much but then you turn around and see how far you’ve gone and can admire the stunning view.

Response Times

One of the things I’ve battled for ages is the speed in which I reply to email. Worse is that the email I don’t respond to at all are for those that I’d like to help. It’s people who I don’t want to say no to but … should. I just don’t have the time.

So I’ll take that initial call and I’ll promise a proposal. I have the best intentions. But in the end I am deep into working and when I think about sending that proposal I can only think about how I’ll fit that work in if they say yes. So I put it off.

Those emails just sit there. Potential work and, more importantly, the promise of help are left dangling. I generally keep those threads as unread mail. Today I have four unread items in my inbox. They are all folks I just … ghosted.

I keep those threads as unread to remind me. Not so much to beat myself up but to ensure that I don’t get into those spots in the future. I can only do so much and while I’d like to do more I know I simply can’t.

If you are one of those four, I apologize. I still think about your projects. I’m happy when I see you mentioned in a mainstream article. I sincerely wish you the best.

Think It, Do It

The good news is that I’m vastly better at responding to most other email. I often got into the habit of thinking about what I have to do. Or thinking about how I’m going respond, essentially typing up the response in my head.

I’ve gotten much better at identifying when I’m doing this and instead actually do it. This has been really transformative. Because I find that it’s often the little things that build up and start weighing me down.

I know many would say that I should focus on the most impactful project first. But that hasn’t worked for me. It makes me less productive if I know there are six other things I need to get to. They all might be smaller tasks but my brain is crunching away on that stuff in the background.

It’s like firing up the Activity Monitor on your computer and seeing all those rogue processes spinning away drawing down the computing power. I need to close those out so I can get more computing power back.

I feel better when I get those small things done. It’s a mini victory of sorts. I can take that momentum and roll it into the larger projects I need to tackle.

Framing

I realized that I’m incredibly good at framing. Not the artistic kind but the psychological kind.

For instance, I often tell people that I won the cancer lottery. If you’re going to get cancer, follicular lymphoma is the three cherries variety. I’ll die of something else long before this type of cancer takes me down.

I do this all the time. It’s not that I don’t acknowledge that something is tough or troubling. But how you frame it makes a huge difference in how you handle that situation.

Framing is marketing to yourself.

Framing doesn’t change the facts but it does change … how you perceive reality. I acknowledge that it’s a hell of a lot easier to do this when you’re white and financially secure. But I’ve done it my entire life. (Granted, I’ve always been white but not always financially secure.)

I moved out to San Diego with my now wife and we spent a year without a couch. We didn’t have enough money to go to full price movies. But we were together in beautiful San Diego.

I framed the move from Washington D.C to San Diego as an adventure. I framed it as doing something the vast majority don’t. So even if things didn’t work out, the attempt was worth it. The way I framed it, even failure was a success! It seems laughable. I mean, seriously, I’m chuckling to myself right now.

But by framing it that way I was able to enjoy that time so much more. I was able to be less stressed about the eventual outcome and instead just be present in the moment.

Juggling

I finally overcame my guilt of dropping the communications ball. The fact of the matter is that most of us are juggling a lot. And there are plenty of times when I’m on the receiving end of not getting a response.

A friend will put me in touch with someone and I’ll respond with some meeting times. Then I don’t hear from them for a month or more. Eventually they surface and apologize for the delay.

I’ll waive off the apology. “No worries, I totally understand.” Then we pick-up where we left off and see where things go.

I guess I’ve realized that people are far more forgiving about these things. I don’t think anyone intentionally decides they’re going to drop that email thread. Things just … happen.

Because, everything takes more time than you think it will. (See what I did there.)

Success

The business, which was already crazy good, continued to grow.

For a long time part of me figured that people resented my success. Why him and not me? And you know what, those people might be out there. But I no longer think that’s the majority.

In part, this is a realization that my success does not mean that others won’t find their own. This isn’t a zero sum game of people at the top and others at the bottom. I found a niche and others will and have found their own.

There are multiple pathways to success, even within our own small industry. And I’m more than happy to chat with other consultants and give them advice and document templates. There’s more than enough business out there.

Does the income disparity between myself and the average American still make me uneasy? Hell yeah. But me feeling guilty about spending the money I earn doesn’t do much about that except make me less happy.

Guilt is not a good form of activism.

I’m not a big consumer anyway. I don’t rush out to get the new phone or the new TV or the coolest clothes. I eat out a bit more. I travel. I donate more too. That doesn’t earn me gold stars, it’s just what it is.

What I did instead was register marginaltaxratesexplained.com the other week. So please get in touch if you’re a developer or designer who has any interest in educating folks on this topic. Because most people don’t get it.

SEO Success

Last year I managed to launch one out of three ventures. It might sound like I was disappointed but in reality I think one out of three is pretty damn good. (Framing in action folks.)

The one I did manage to launch got traffic right off the bat. And each week it gets more. All this with less than 50 pages of content! It was really a proof of concept for a much larger idea. So 2019 will be about scaling.

I’m super excited about this site. But what it really did was confirm just how effective SEO can be when you approach it correctly. There’s so much opportunity!

There’s a whisper campaign out there about how difficult SEO is getting. The SERPs are getting crowded out by ads and Google is taking away more clicks. It’s even worse on mobile where there’s less screen real estate right?

Sorry, but the sky is not falling. I’m not saying there aren’t challenges. I’m not saying things haven’t changed. It just means we need to change and adapt. Too many are still conducting business using Panda and Penguin as their guardrails.

SEO is easy when you understand how and why people are searching and work to satisfy their intent. That’s a bit of a simplification but … not by much. Target the keyword, optimize the intent. It’s been my mantra for years.

It’s great when you use this approach with a client, make a big bet, and see it pay off.

The graph above is the result of launching a geographic directory on a client site. Not only has the average rank for this important query class moved from the low teens to approximately four but the conversion rate increased by 30% or more for these queries.

More traffic. Better traffic.

What shouldn’t be downplayed here is that the requirements for the new page type where built around what users searching would expect to see when they landed. SEO was the driving force for product requirements.

SEO isn’t just about keyword research but about knowing what users expect after typing in those words.

Habits

Going into 2019 I’m focusing more on habits. In the past I’ve had explicit goals with varying degrees of success in achieving them.

I have 2019 goals but I also list the habit or habits that will help me reach each goal. I wound up putting on a lot of the weight I lost in 2017. So this year I’m going to lose 32 pounds and hit my target weight of 160.

To do that I’m going to journal my food and weigh myself every day. When I do those things, I know I have a much better chance of reaching that goal and maintaining it. Frankly, getting there is usually easy. I’m already down 12 pounds. Maintenance is more difficult.

Another example is my desire to read more. This is something I want to do but haven fallen short of in recent years. But this time I decided the habit to change was to read before bed instead of falling asleep to the TV.

I already use this methodology with a number of clients, whether it be in maintaining corpus control or in developing asynchronous link-building campaigns. So what’s good for the goose should be good for the gander, right?

Adapting

If you read through my ‘What I Learned’ series I think you’ll see that I am good at adapting to situations. In 2018, that was once again put to the test.

I took a nearly month long vacation in Europe. We went to London, Paris, Venice and the South of France. (As an aside, this was a no-work vacation and as such I did not bill clients for that month off. So it’s amazing that the business grew by 20% while I only billed 11 months of work.)

As a family we had a vision of what our vacation would be like. My wife had various ‘walking guides’ to the cities we’d be visiting. We couldn’t wait to go and imagined ourselves trekking around and exploring the rich history of each city.

But a few weeks before we were set to leave my daughter dislocated her kneecap. We were at a court warming up between tournament matches when she suddenly crumpled to the ground, howling in pain.

She had this same injury twice before so we knew the time to recover would extend well into our trip. She wouldn’t be able to walk for any long period of time. But here’s the thing. Instead of thinking about how awful it was going to be, we simply figured out a way to make it work.

I bought foldable canes and we rented a wheelchair when we were in London. It wasn’t what we planned but it worked out amazingly well. I pushed her around London in the wheelchair and you’d be amazed at how many lines you can cut when your child is in that chair or has on a brace and limps around using a cane.

I kid you not, when we went to Versailles, the line to get in was horrendous. Hours for sure. I got in line while my wife and daughter (limping with her cane) went to the front to ask if there was a wheelchair available. The result? We jumped that line and got to see some of the back rooms of Versailles as we secured her wheelchair.

Here’s the back room entrance to the Palace of Versailles.

And here’s the crazy ass key that still opens that door.

The point here is that you have to deal with the reality that is right in front of you and not what you hoped it might be. When you embrace the here and now it can turn out to be pretty awesome.

If you take anything away from this post I hope it is this. Because nothing good comes from trying to navigate life when you’re constantly thinking it should have been different.

But that wasn’t what really pushed our ability to adapt. Instead, it was what happened the first night we were in our villa in the South of France.

The Long Story

(Seriously, this is a long story so if you want to bail now that’s cool. I’m going to try to keep it short but it’s still going to be long. I think it ties things together but you might disagree. So … you’ve been warned.)

We rented a gorgeous villa in Saint-Raphaël with a pool and a gorgeous view. It was going to be the relaxing part of a very busy vacation.

I was asleep on the couch downstairs (because I snore) when my wife woke me up by yelling, “AJ, there’s someone in the house!” Heart pounding, I bounded upstairs and saw the briefest of motion to my right and ran to where the sliding glass door was open. I guess I was chasing the burglar out?

I didn’t see much so I ran back inside and checked on my wife (who was fine and, incidentally, a badass) and then immediately went back downstairs to check on my daughter who was in an entirely different room. She was fine and still asleep.

We composed ourselves and took inventory. The burglar had stolen some jewelry, our phones, my wallet and my backpack, which had … our passports. Ugh! They’d pulled my wife’s suitcase out of her room and had rummaged through it and were going back to do the same with mine when my wife woke up and scared him off.

In short, someone had broken into our villa while we slept and robbed us. It was scary as fuck. But it all could have been a whole lot worse. No one was hurt. You can always get ‘things’ back.

And we did almost instantly. The guy must have been so freaked at being chased that he’d dropped my wife’s purse as he fled. I found it just outside on the balcony. Inside? Her wallet and brand new camera! Losing the wallet would have been one thing but the thought of losing a whole trip worth of photos would have been a real blow.

We started making calls, struggling through the international dialing codes while adrenaline continued to course through our veins. We called the property manager, our travel insurance provider and my credit card companies.

It was 3 in the morning so the first few hours weren’t that productive but it allowed us to calm down and come up with a plan of action. By 7 am we starting to hear from everyone and the wheels were put into motion.

Our contact for the rental was Brent Tyler, a Brit who was quite the character. He was always ‘on’ and had a witty response for damn near everything. He’d even written a book about moving from Cookham to Cannes. But what mattered that day was that he spoke fluent French, which was going to be instrumental in helping deal with the local police.

Because that’s what we had to do. The local police came by and then they sent the CSI team later on to take prints and DNA evidence.

Then we had to go to Fréjus to file a police report.

It was a small station fortified by two massive lucite looking doors where you had to be buzzed in. The police officer was a French female version of a stereotypical lazy sheriff. She wasn’t keen to do much for tourists.

But that all changed when she met Brent.

Oh, she had a thing for him! So here I am watching these two flirt as they go through the list of items that were stolen. His French is good but not perfect and she finds that endearing. She’s asking what something means and he’s trying to find the right words to describe it.

I know the French word for yes is ‘oui’ but quickly learn that ‘yeah’ is ‘ouais’ which sounds like ‘whey’. Because this is how Brent responds when he and this police officer settle on something. “Whey, whey, whey, whey” Brent nods as the police officer grins.

It is an odd thing to be in such an awful situation but see these ebullient interactions. I didn’t know whether to be annoyed or happy for the distraction.

Either way we were able to get the report filed, which was particularly good for insurance purposes. Check that off our list and move on. We were feeling good about things.

That’s saying a lot too because Brent never told us to keep all the steel shutters down at night. Hell we didn’t even know the place came with steel shutters! If we’d been told, no one could have broken in. So we had to rely on someone who we were a bit angry with at the time. I think we all figured out a way to make it work and that’s sort of the point.

On the way back to the villa we stopped to get passport photos. Because the next day we had to drive to the U.S. Consulate in Marseille to get new passports. Here’s what I looked like in those photos.

They tell you not to smile so I look both tired and pissed off. It’s a nice Andy Warhol type effect though and looking at it now actually makes me smile.

Later that day, someone buzzed at the front gate of the villa and asked if I was there. Who the hell was asking for me here? But it soon became clear that this gentleman had found my driver’s license.

I let him in and learned that he too had been burgled last night along with two others in the neighborhood. They’d taken his glasses and some expensive photography equipment. He was from the Netherlands and said his son found my license out by their trash cans in the morning.

I thanked him profusely and once he left went out to see if I could locate any other items. I trekked up and down those windy roads. I didn’t find anything, though I did meet some very friendly goats.

The next day we drove to Marseille, which was over two hours away. It was a stressful trip.

Things are just different enough to make things difficult. What button do I press and how much do I have to pay at this toll? Why isn’t it working!? What am I doing wrong?! There are cars behind us!

Maybe it was our mood or perhaps it was the area of town but … Marseille was not my jam. It all felt a bit sketch. But again, perhaps my paranoia was just at a high point that day.

We had an appointment at the U.S. Consulate but even then it was like entering some nuclear bunker. The guardhouse had a “sniper map” with a picture of their view of the street in grid format. So if there’s a threat approaching they could simply call in a grid code and, well, I’m not sure what happens but I figure it would be like something out of Sicario.

Past the guardhouse we were led into an interior room where you can’t take anything electronic inside. At this point it doesn’t feel like those movies where you run to the embassy for assistance and they say “you’re okay, now you’re on American soil.” No, it was the TSA on steroids instead.

Once inside it turned out to be a pretty mundane room that, apparently, hadn’t been updated since the late 80s. A state department worker tells us that we can start the process of getting new passports by filling out the forms online. Oh, and those passport photos we got aren’t going to work. It’s a total scam. They’ll take our photos here instead.

My wife and I start filling out the forms online and just as we’re about to move on to my daughter’s passport the state department woman barges out and tells us to stop. It’s … dramatic. She’s just received a call that someone, a neighbor, has found our passports!

Yes, while we are there applying for new passports, someone called to tell us they found our stolen passports. This neighbor called the police in Fréjus who said they had no information on lost passports. (Yeah, not true!) So he took the next step and called the U.S. Embassy in Paris, who then put him through to our contact in Marseilles.

I am in awe that this stranger went to these lengths and at the incredible timing of his call. The state department contact tells us that this is only the second time in ten years that this has happened.

She goes on to tell us that these break-ins are a huge problem in the area and have been getting worse over the past few years. They come in through the forest to avoid the gates that bar entrance to the community on the road. She describes a pile of found credit cards and passports at the end of every season.

She checks to make sure that our new passport requests haven’t gone through and we arrange to meet with our neighbor later that day when we return. Things are looking up so we take the scenic way home and spend a few hours at the beach in La Ciotat.

Once home we meet up with our neighbors who tell us my passport case was hidden in his wheel well. Not only are the passports there but they missed the cash I’d stuffed into one of the interior pockets. Bonus!

Our neighbors are very funny and kind. They also tell us that they too were burgled many years ago and that’s why they had steel shutters installed. Ah, if only we’d known.

Sleeping in the villa is still difficult but … we make it work and try to have as much fun as we can. Not having our phones is a pain but my daughter’s phone and the iPad were left untouched so we’re still digitally functional.

But it’s not quite over.

On Monday we get an email confirming that our passports have been cancelled. What the hell! It turns out the online forms we’d filled out were, in fact, submitted. So the next few days are spent talking and emailing with our state department contact.

She is clearly embarrassed that she sent us home only to get this notice a few days later. She reaches out to DHS and asks them to undo the cancellation. Our contact even sends me a snippet of her Skype conversation where the DHS says that they’re not supposed to do that anymore but … they’ll make an exception.

So it seems like we’re in the clear. The problem is she isn’t quite sure if the new status will propagate through the entire border control database before we depart. There’s a chance we go to leave via Charles de Gaulle and are suddenly being swarmed by folks with guns wearing body armor.

The odds are that won’t happen but it’s still hard not to think about that potential outcome. At some point I just figured that if the worst did happen it would mean another week at a hotel and a few more days in Paris. It might be inconvenient and expensive but things would work out.

Of course, nothing of the sort happened. We handed a stone faced man our passports and he stamped them and with a sigh of relief we went to get something to eat before we boarded the plane.

The Take Aways

See, I told you it was a long story. But here’s the thing. I still think of that vacation as being … great. I could certainly frame it differently. I could frame it as how our grand vacation was ruined by this awful event. But I don’t. What does that accomplish?

I am not saying everything happens for a reason. I hate that saying. Instead, I’d simply say that chaos is the general thread of all life. How you handle it is what matters.

I also think of all the people that helped us. Sure there was the dirtbag who broke in and stole our stuff but there were more people who chipped in to get us back on our feet. Even the dirtbag didn’t hurt anyone and actually left our passports in a place where they were likely to be found. I’d like to believe that was on purpose.

I was also able to see that my anger at Brent wasn’t useful. I could tell he felt like shit and was willing to do what he could to assist us as a result. Even the French police officer who didn’t seem to care … came through in her own way.

Now, I don’t think these things happen just by accident. I don’t think we would have received as much help as we did if we weren’t working on side hustles to help ourselves, to be our own advocate and to ask for what we needed. Like I said, the thread of every life is chaos. It’s not if something is going to happen it’s when.

So it’s up to you to do as much as you can. When others see that you’re willing to try, they try too. Can it be that simple? I don’t know.

Conversely, it also struck me that this incident was both a big deal and meaningless at the same time. At the end of the day, it does turn into a story. It’s fodder for a blog post. Lives go on. Business continues. No one truly cares. I mean, people care but … it’s not a huge deal.

There were three other families who had the same experience. What I went through was not unique. That is oddly comforting. Just as it is when I think about my business issues. They are not unique. They’re still important but I try not to take them too seriously.

I took two other things away from this experience that might not be apparent from my narrative. The first is that exceptions can be made so everyone doesn’t get the same treatment.

While there’s no guarantee that you’ll be the exception to that rule, you never know unless you ask. Ask nicely but never settle. Never stop pushing because you’re not bumping up against something like gravity or the first law of motion. These are not immutable laws. They are rules made by imperfect humans. Sometimes they can change or be bent.

The second take away was that you need the help of others to reach your goals. I am perpetually grateful to the many folks who helped me get to where I am and continue to help me to this day. But it goes beyond that. Historically, I am very bad at letting go of things. I like doing things myself. I get fed up easily and feel like many are simply allergic to work.

But I was put in a situation where I needed the guy who spoke French and the woman fighting to un-cancel our passports. I couldn’t do those things. So it’s one thing to know that others help you achieve your goals but it’s quite another to experience it first hand.

As a result I’ve been able to take my hands off the reigns a lot more and let others do what they’re good at, leaving me more time to … think.

(This is a personal post so if that isn’t your thing then you should move on.)

2017 was a lot like 2016, but on steroids. That meant a 40% increase in the business, which unfortunately came with a lot more stress and angst. I did figure some things out and managed to make some decisions that I plan to put into practice in 2018.

Nothing Succeeds Like Success 

Last year I was finally comfortable calling Blind Five Year Old a success. I’d made it. But that came with a lot of strange baggage that I wasn’t entirely sure how to handle.

It was uncomfortable to write about how success can be difficult when you know that others are struggling. But I can only write about my own experience and acknowledge that some would take my words the wrong way.

Trust me, I understand that these are good problems. But they are problems nonetheless. In 2017 those problems grew. The very healthy income I had maintained for the past four years rose by 40%.

I stared at the run rate throughout the year kind of dumbfounded. For real? That much! It’s not that I lacked confidence and didn’t think I’d make it. The number was just beyond what I expected.

Money and Happiness

Money is a strange beast. One of my favorite pieces last year was When life changing money, isn’t by Wil Reynolds. He captured a great deal of what I’ve struggled with over the past few years.

I’m at a place where bills aren’t a problem and I can essentially do what I want to do. My daughter needs a new tennis racquet, I buy one. Should we go out for dinner tonight? Why not. Want to vacation on the beach in Maui? Book it!

The ability to do these things makes me very different from a majority of people and that scares me.

The thing is, I don’t need a whole lot more. I’m not looking to get a better house or a better car. I don’t have a need to buy crazy expensive clothing. Hell, I spend most of my days in sweats behind this computer.

More money isn’t inherently bad. I mean, I do live in one of the most expensive areas in the country and I am all about putting more towards retirement and college. But both of those are now on track so the extra money doesn’t actually do that much more.

More money hasn’t made me happier.

Time and Stress

The additional work created a lot more pressure. There’s less time and more expectations. That combination doesn’t translate into more happiness. Not at all.

It might if I just wanted to coast on reputation and churn out whatever the minimum amount that was required to keep the money rolling in. But I’m not wired like that.

I’m not looking to mollify and appease, I’m looking to transform and build. Each client is different and requires research and due diligence to determine how to best tackle their search and business issues.

I feel the obligation of being a good partner and in delivering results. I don’t like cashing checks when a client’s business isn’t moving in the right direction.

Communication

I find it hard to respond quickly to something I believe requires greater thought. That means I’m slow and frequently don’t communicate well. I’ve come to the conclusion that this is a feature and not a bug.

Can I get better at telling people when I’m taking more time than they want? Yes. But I know it won’t go away completely. I’ll often slip into a cycle of not responding and then putting off responding until I have something more material and when I don’t the guilt increases and the response then must be that much better so I delay … again.

I do this less now than I used to. But I know it’ll still happen from time to time and I’m tired of feeling bad about that. Some clients just aren’t a match for my work style. And that’s okay.

Referrals and Relief

Much of what I describe above is why I continue to receive referrals. Good work gets noticed and in an industry rife with pretenders people happily promote those who truly get the work done.

I love referrals. But they also come loaded with additional stress. Because you don’t want to let the person referring you down. It’s not lost on me that they have enough confidence in me to trust them with one of their own connections.

What I’ve found in the last year is that more of these people understand the bind I’m in. I have only so much time and I’m not always the right person for a business. I specialize in large scale B2C sites like Pinterest and Genius. It’s not that I can’t do B2B. I just don’t enjoy it as much.

So they tell me up front that it might not be a match or they might even ask if further referrals are helping me or not. I tell you, it’s an incredible relief when referrals are put in this context.

I usually still take those calls though. I learned that just having a conversation with a referred lead is valuable. I don’t have to be the solution. I can help determine what they really need and can sometimes connect them with colleagues who I trust will do a good job on their behalf.

I become a link on a chain of expertise and trust. This is a highly valuable and scarce commodity.

Expert or Prima Donna

The crux for me was in understanding my value. Not only understanding it but believing in it. Do I deserve that lawyer-like hourly rate? I don’t do a lot of hourly work now but I find it a good way to help more folks without the overhead of stress.

Lawyers have a defined set of expertise that many others don’t. Hopefully they also have a track record of success. So how does that compare to my business? The law is relatively stable and transparent. But search is the opposite. It changes and it is not transparent in the slightest.

Of course two lawyers can interpret the law differently, just as two SEOs can interpret search differently. But more so today than ever, the lack of information in our industry – or pure disinformation – puts a premium on connecting with true experts.

It’s not just finding someone who can help you figure out your search issues. It’s preventing them from following bad advice and throwing good money after bad.

My default is to say that I’m lucky to be in a position where I have more business than I can handle. But it’s not really luck. I put in the time and I get the results. I work hard and am constantly looking to keep my edge. What is it that I’m not seeing?

I use this as context to explain why I’m not willing to relinquish my work style. And I’m trying to recognize that it doesn’t make me a prima donna. It simply acknowledges that I’m an expert in my field and that I want to be happy.

It’s uncomfortable to charge a high rate and dictate specific terms of engagement. It’s like the Van Halen rider where they demanded M&Ms but no brown ones. I guess you can do worse than being the search equivalent of David Lee Roth. Particularly if you know the history around that famous rider.

Letting Angst Go

2017 was about embracing my value and believing in my expertise. It was about letting my own misgivings and angst go so that I can do the work I enjoy and be happy doing it.

Perhaps this sounds easy to some. But it hasn’t come easily for me. While I don’t gain validation from others, I don’t want to be one of those people who are out of touch and difficult to work with.

I absolutely dropped the ball on some leads and some clients in 2017. Never to the point where it hurt their business. But people were annoyed. I am truly sorry for that but … I no longer feel (overly) guilty about it.

I wanted to do the best work. I took on too much. I tried my best. I’ll wake up and try my best tomorrow.

I’ve learned to say no more often and not feel guilty about it or feel like it’s a missed opportunity. I’m not looking to build an agency and scale up. I’m a high-touch consultant with limited time constraints.

Raising Rates and Changing Retainers

Based on this I raised my rates. It’s the second time I’ve done that in the last three years. And I did it because one of my clients told me I should. It’s nice when clients are looking out for you as much as you are for them.

I also decided to remove the hourly maximum in my retainer agreements. In the past, I had a clause that essentially ensured that a client wouldn’t monopolize my time under a retainer agreement. I built in a hourly maximum just in case.

The problem was that by having that hourly maximum they were always thinking of the retainer in terms of the number of hours worked. That wasn’t what I was about. It isn’t about time. It’s about expertise and results.

This video on How To Price Design Services spoke to me so clearly.

I didn’t watch the entire video. I mean, who has 36 minutes! But that one segment was enough for me to know that it wasn’t the hours people should be paying for but the expertise.

This made a huge difference because I no longer have dreary conversations about whether I dedicated enough hours to support the retainer. I hate those conversations. They make me angry. So now I don’t have them.

Advisor Gigs

I also sought out more advisor positions in 2017. I didn’t quite nail down how to best structure these engagements. And I did a lousy job of juggling those relationships versus my traditional relationships.

But that’s how you figure this stuff out. You stub your toe and move on trying not to make those same mistakes again. 2018 already looks good on this front with a number of interesting relationships where I can leverage my expertise in search and marketing.

I built most of my long term client relationships on trust and adding business value beyond traditional search. And while I may take advising positions based on my primary expertise I’m looking for those that value my larger knowledge set and insight from scores of clients over the past ten years.

I’ve learned quite a bit about what makes one start-up succeed where others fail.

Continuous Education

Change is always a constant in search. And I’d say that the rate of change is increasing. I’m lucky to work with some incredible technical teams. So when they say something I don’t quite understand I don’t just nod along.

I ask them to explain it. I tell people when I don’t know something. I’ll tell people I know enough to know something is off but not enough to tell them exactly what’s wrong. This is how you build expertise and gain trust.

And in 2018 I’ve asked a few developers I trust to take an afternoon to talk to me like a five year old about JavaScript frameworks and how they deliver content to the page. Now, I understand the topic. But I want to learn more.

One of my assets has been to have enough technical knowledge to know when someone is blowing smoke up my nether regions. A lot of what I ask people to do (instrumentation) is boring. As such, many developers inflate the complexity of those tasks. Asking a few pointed questions quickly reduces that inflation and gets the work done.

I don’t feel like I have that level of confidence on JavaScript frameworks. I can tell half of the developers I work with have a similar level of knowledge to my own. And when a developer admits as much we can easily collaborate, debate difficult questions and figure things out. But many developers aren’t going to admit to ‘good enough’ knowledge.

Learning more is always a priority.

Outsourcing

On the other hand, I can’t do everything. I sometimes want to but there’s simply not enough time in the day. This blog needs a makeover and I’ll have to get someone else to do it. I have to let my tinkering ways go so I can grow and focus on other projects.

And there are other projects in the works. In the past I’ve had ideas, purchased domains and thought about building one thing or another. Great ideas! But they never went anywhere. A constant flow of renewing domain email notices remind me of the missed opportunities.

The biggest obstacle in those projects was … me. I wanted to do it all. I wanted to build the actual site, which might require learning a new programming and database language. And then I’d need to actually write all the content and then do all the marketing and promotion.

Ain’t nobody got time for that.

Well, maybe some people do but I’m not one of them. Even though I could, and part of me thinks it would be fun if I did, I shouldn’t spend my time that way. So I’m working with folks to spin up two sites and one potential tool.

Risk and Danger

I expect that it will be difficult for me to let go of some details. I’m guessing the projects will be messy, confusing, aggravating and hopefully rewarding in one way or the other. But honestly, there are specific lyrics from Contrails by Astronautalis that remain my guiding star.

The real risk is not a slipped grip at the edge of the peak
The real danger is just to linger at the base of the thing

Every time I take a risk I am happy I did so. I can’t tell you that it always worked out. But in some ways … it did, with enough time and perspective.

In each failure, I can pick out how that helped get me to where I am today. I’m not saying things couldn’t have been easier. They could have. I just decide to find the positive out of those situations.

That’s not some saccharine ‘everything happens for a reason’ tripe. Screw that. I can just tell a story where the ending is … happy. I have cancer but it’s one that’s easily treatable. That’s a win in my book.

Telling myself those stories and deciding that I’d rather dwell on what turned out right instead of wrong helps me take the next risk. It’s my job to listen to that restless itch and move my story forward knowing I may need to do some editing in post production.

Observations

There were a lot of industry changes last year that had a meaningful impact on my business. I made a resolution to criticize less so I wavered in adding these observations because they’re not particularly rosy.

But the following things shaped my year from how I approach search analysis, to how I gain additional knowledge to how I educate clients.

The Google we knew is not the Google we’re dealing with today

I’ve been lucky to meet and talk with a number of Googlers throughout the years. They are overwhelmingly good people trying to do the right thing by users. The energy and passion they have around search is … inspiring.

But Matt Cutts left and Amit Singhal was replaced by John Giannandrea as the head of search. That doesn’t seem like a lot. But if you put your ear to the tracks and read the tea leaves you recognize that this was a massive change in direction for Google.

Machine learning is front and center and it’s an essential part of Google’s algorithm.

It’s not that good, passionate people aren’t still at Google. They are. But the environment is certainly different. We’re talking about people, experts in their field, given new direction from a new boss. How do you think you’d feel?

I believe understanding the people who work on search is an asset to understanding search. That’s more true today than ever.

Industry Content Is Lacking

I struggle to find good content to read these days. We lost our best investigative journalist last year along with another passionate and smart editor. Danny Sullivan and Matt McGee are sorely missed.

I used to take great pride in curating the industry and Tweeting out the best I could find each day. It was a steady stream of 2 or 3 Tweets a day. Now … it’s maybe twice a week. Maybe I’m just over-the-hill and not finding the new voices? Maybe I’m not dedicating enough time to combing Feedly?

But I’m discouraged when I open up a top trends of 2018 post (which I know is a mistake) and see ‘water is wet’ statements like ‘featured snippets will be important’ and ‘voice search is on the rise’.

Instead of bemoaning the bad, I would like to point out folks like Paul Shapiro for great technical content and Cyrus Shepard who seems to have taken up the mantle of curating our industry. There are other great specialists like Bill Slawski and Bartosz Goralweicz out there contributing but … there are too few of them for my taste.

And there are others who clearly have knowledge but aren’t sharing right now. I’m not going to call them out. Hell, I’d be calling myself out too. I think they’re all busy with work and life. Being industry famous doesn’t make their lives better. In fact, it causes more problems. I get it, but I wish we all had more time to move the conversation forward.

More data isn’t the problem, it’s the lack of interpretation and analysis. 

The conversations I see happening in the industry are often masturbatory and ego driven. Someone has to be right and someone has to be wrong. Real debate and true exploration seem like an endangered species.

For instance, knowing that Google is relying heavily on machine learning, shouldn’t the industry be looking at analyzing algorithmic changes in a different way.

Today, changes in rank are often tied to an update in the mapping of vectors to intent that renders a different mix of content on results. One can watch over many months as they test, learn and adapt on query classes in pursuit of optimal time to long click metrics.

I find the calcification of search truth to be dangerous given the velocity of changes inherent in our vertical. At the same time, the newest things don’t replace the tried and true. It’s these contradictions that make our industry interesting!

Beyond that, many are working off of a very limited data set. The fact that something worked for you on the one site that you tried it on might not mean much. Of course, we’ve also seen people with much larger data sets make mistakes in interpretation.

And that’s where things seem to have gone off the tracks. I don’t mind correlation studies. They provide another point of data for me to consider among a large number of other data points. I assign the findings from each correlation study a weight based on all of my other knowledge.

That means that some will receive very little weight and others more based on my understanding of how they were conducted and what I see in practice across my client base. We don’t need less data, less content or fewer tactics. We need to better understand the value of each and how they combine to help achieve search success.

As a result I see far more appetite for hiring growth engineers over SEOs largely because they’re willing to test and adapt instead of proselytize.

The Things That Matter

I’m cancer free! It’s been nearly three years now. And in 2017 I couldn’t use recovery as an excuse for my eating habits. So I lost 25 pounds.

For those interested, there’s no real magic to losing weight. Journal your food and take in fewer calories than you burn. It’s not always fun or easy but it works.

I gained 10 of that back in the last few months of the year. This was partly because I lost my tennis partners, which meant no calorie burning exercise cushion that allowed me a few days of indulgence each week.

Thankfully, my daughter is now finally getting back to tennis after physical therapy for a patellar subluxation, which is a dislocation of the kneecap. Her second in two years.

It turns out her thigh bone doesn’t have as deep a divot for her kneecap. It’s nearly flat, which means she’s prone to dislocations. The orthopedist mentioned that this also meant that when it did slip out it wouldn’t hurt nearly as much. Seems I’m not the only one who can tell a story that relies on the positive versus the negative. #callback

My wife, on the other hand, has tennis elbow, which is far more painful than she or I realized. She’ll be undergoing a procedure soon in hopes that it helps her tendon to bounce back and heal fully.

Things are actually quite good despite all this and the fact that my daughter is a teenager (yikes) and my wife just had sinus surgery. I’m around and I’m happier, which I hope is as infectious as this year’s flu.

(This is a personal post so if that isn’t your thing then you should move on.) 

2016 was the year where things went back to normal. My cancer was in remission, family life was great and business was booming. But that ‘normal’ created issues that are rarely discussed. Managing success is harder than I expected.

Success

I made it. Blind Five Year Old is a success. Even through my chemotherapy, I kept the business going without any dip in revenue. Looking at the numbers, I’ve had the same revenue four years in a row. That’s a good thing. It’s a revenue figure that makes life pretty darn comfortable.

It wasn’t always like this. Back in 2010 I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Even as I put together back-to-back years of great business revenue I still had that paranoia. What if things dried up? But in 2016, cancer in the rear view, I felt bulletproof. The result? I was restless and, at times, unmotivated.

Guilt

You don’t hear a lot about this topic because you feel guilty talking about it. You’ve got to figure you’re going to come off like a douchebag complaining about success when so many others are struggling.

I’ve been dealing with that not just in writing about it but in living it too. While I’ve never been poor, I’ve often lived paycheck to paycheck. At one point I was out of work and $25,000 in debt.

My wife and I lived in an apartment for 10 years, saving like crazy so we could buy a house in the Bay Area. And once bought, we were anxious about making it all work. I had nightmares about being foreclosed on.

But we made it. I worked hard to build my business and we made smart moves financially, refinancing our mortgage twice until we had an amazing rate and very manageable mortgage payment. My wife was the backbone of the household, keeping everything going and making it easy for me to concentrate on the business.

For a long time it was all about getting there – about the struggle. Even as the business soared we then had to tackle cancer. Now, well now things are … easy.

Easy Street

It’s strange to think how easy it is to just … buy what you want. Now, I’m not saying I can run out and buy my own private island. I’m not super-rich. But I’m not concerned about paying the bills. I’m not thinking whether I can afford to give my daughter tennis lessons or get my wife a leather jacket or buy a new phone. I just do those things.

And that feels strange … and wrong in some ways. Because I know that life isn’t like this for the vast majority.

Of course, I can rationalize some of this by pointing to my work ethic, attention to detail and willingness to take risks. No doubt I benefited from some friendships. I didn’t get here alone. But that too was something I cultivated. I try not to be a dick and generally try to be helpful.

But it’s still unsettling to be so comfortable. Not just because I keenly feel my privilege but also because it saps ambition.

Is That All?

When you’re comfortable, and feeling guilty about that, you often start to look for the next mountain to climb. I think that’s human nature. If you’ve made it then you look around and ask, is that all? Am I just going to keep doing this for the next twenty years?

For me, this presents a bit of a problem. I’m not keen on building an agency. I know a bunch of folks who are doing this but I don’t think it’s for me. I don’t enjoy managing people and I’m too much of a perfectionist to be as hands off as I’d need to be.

I took a few advisor positions (one of which had a positive exit last year) and will continue to seek those out. Perhaps that’s the ‘next thing’ for me, but I’m not so sure. Even if it is, it seems like an extension of what I’m doing now anyway.

Enjoy The Groove

In the last few months I’ve come to terms with where I am. There doesn’t necessarily need to be a ‘second act’. I like what I do and I like the life I’ve carved out for myself and my family. If this is it … that’s amazing.

I remember keenly the ‘where do you see yourself in five years’ question I’d get when interviewing. Working in the start-up community, I never understood why people asked that question. Things change so fast. Two years at a job here is a long time. Opportunities abound. Calamity can upset the applecart. Any answer you give is wrong.

I’m not saying I’m letting the random nature of life direct me. What I’m saying is more like an analogy from basketball. I’m no longer going to force my shot. I’m going to let the game come to me. But when it does I’ll be ready to sink that three.

Staying Motivated

So how do you stay ready? That to me is the real issue when you reach a certain level of success. How do you keep going? How do you stay motivated so you’re ready when the next opportunity comes up?

There’s a real practical reason to keep things going right? The money is good. I’m putting money away towards my daughter’s college education and retirement. Every year when I can put chunks of money away like that I’m winning.

But when you’re comfortable and you feel like you’re on top of the world it’s hard to get motivated by money. At least that’s how it is for me. To be honest, I haven’t figured this one out completely. But here’s what I know has been helping.

Believe In Your Value

Over the last few years there’s been a surge in folks talking about imposter syndrome. While I certainly don’t think I’m a fraud, there’s an important aspect in imposter syndrome revolving around value.

I’m not a huge self-promoter. Don’t get my wrong, I’ll often humble brag in person or via IM and am enormously proud of my clients and the success I’ve had over the last decade. But I don’t Tweet the nice things others say about me or post something on Facebook about the interactions I have with ‘fans’. I even have issues promoting speaking gigs at conferences and interviews. I’m sure it drives people crazy.

What I realized is that I was internalizing this distaste for self-promotion and that was toxic.

That doesn’t mean you’ll see me patting myself on the back via social media in 2017. What it means is that I’m no longer doubting the value of my time and expertise. Sounds egotistical. Maybe it is. But maybe that’s what it takes.

Give Me A Break

Going hand in hand with believing in your own value is giving yourself a break. I often beat myself up when I don’t return email quickly. Even as the volume of email increased, and it still does, I felt like a failure when I let emails go unanswered. The longer they went unanswered, the more epic the reply I thought I’d need to send, which meant I didn’t respond … again. #viciouscycle

A year or so ago I mentioned in an email to Jen Lopez how in awe I was at the timely responses I’d get from Rand. She sort of chided me and stated that this was Rand’s primary job but not mine. It was like comparing apples and oranges. The exchange stuck with me. I’m not Superman. Hell, I’m not even Batman.

I do the very best I can but that doesn’t mean that I don’t make mistakes or drop the ball. And that’s okay. Wake up the next day and do the very best you can again. Seems like that’s worked out well so far.

Rev The Engine

All of my work is online. That’s just the nature of my business. But I find that taking care of some offline tasks can help to rev the engine and get me going online. Folding my laundry is like Liquid Draino to work procrastination.

I don’t know if it’s just getting away from the computer or the ability to finish a task and feel good about it that makes it so effective. I just know it works.

In 2017 I’ve also committed to getting back into shape. I’ve been inspired by my friend Chris Eppstein who transformed his body and outlook in 2016. It’s important to keep moving so I’ll be on my elliptical and out on the tennis court a lot more often this year.

Gratitude

I’m grateful for where I am in my life. I know I didn’t get here alone. My wife is simply … amazing. And I’m consistently stunned at what my daughter says and does as she grows up. And it’s great to have my parents nearby.

There have also been numerous people throughout my life who have helped me in so many ways. There was Terry ‘Moonman’ Moon who I played video games with at the local pizza place growing up. “You’re not going down the same road,” he told me referring to drugs. There was Jordan Prusack, who shielded me from a bunch of high school clique crap by simply saying I was cool. (He probably doesn’t even remember it.)

In business, I’ve had so many people who have gone out of their way to help me. Someone always seemed there with a lifeline. Just the other day I connected with someone and we had a mutual friend in common – Tristan Money – the guy who gave me my second chance in the dot com industry. I remember him opening a beer bottle with a very large knife too.

Kindness comes in many sizes. Sometimes it’s something big and sometimes it’s just an offhand comment that makes the difference. My life is littered with the kindness of others. I like to remember that so that I make it habit to do the same. And that’s as good a place to stop as any.

(This post is a personal post about running Blind Five Year Old, building on similar posts for 2011 and 2012.)

It’s nearly the end of February and I haven’t completed my now annual ‘What I Learned’ post. That should tell you that one of the things I learned is how quickly time gets away from you.

If you’re looking for a post where every problem has an answer with a pretty bright red bow on top then you should click the back button immediately. Because while 2013 was a crazy successful year, it was also messy and confusing.

Success Devours Time

I won’t humble brag. It was a great year for the business. I moved many clients to retainers and wound up working with three top 50 web properties according to comScore. The work was interesting and challenging, revenue was up and I was more than comfortable financially.

Yet, success introduced new problems. If you’d like to play the smallest violin now, please go ahead. I get it. It feels strange to complain about success. Yet, here I am about to do that. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want the opposite. But here is my reality.

More clients meant more client work. A lot more. The result? I had a choice. Dial down the time I spent learning or building the brand. When I got serious about the business back in 2010 my ratio of client work to learning and brand building was 50/50. For me, the choice was obvious.

I spent far less time building the brand. One only need look at the number of blog posts to see how my output diminished. Mind you, I made the most out of the blog posts I did manage to publish. But it was an anemic year in terms of output and that bothers me not just from a business perspective but because I enjoy writing.

Perfectionism Works (For Me)

Part of the problem is that I’m a perfectionist. I’d probably tell you I simply had “very high standards for the quality of my work” and I could even talk myself into believing that. But it probably looks a hell of a lot like perfectionism.

So at the beginning of 2013 I was hell bent on embracing the ‘done is better than perfect’ mantra. Jonathon Colman would be proud. But you know what? Didn’t happen.

Not only that, but all the evidence seemed to indicate that spending that extra time to make my work that much better … paid off. Even if I was late delivering the work (which happened more often than I’d like), the quality of the work was such that it carried the day. The delay was suddenly explainable given the quality and success of the recommendations.

Yes, you still have to produce results. And I did.

Sales Avalanche

Having a sales funnel is important. You don’t want a client or two go dark and suddenly be struggling. I had this mentality as I spun up the business. Yet, in 2013 I was actively turning away business. This sounds and feels ugly since I know others aren’t in the same situation.

Most of the clients I wound up taking on were through referrals. Why did I get these referrals? Because of the quality of my work. Work that I’d taken a lot of time to get just right. That’s what I’ve learned. Great work creates … more work.

There are other factors involved in this sales windfall. One is the fact that I’ve created an sort of A-Team perception.

If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them….maybe you can hire The A-Team.

I don’t blog on traditional platforms to gain exposure, though you might find me referenced there (and I’m very grateful to those authors for doing so.) Hopefully I continue to create content that merits these links from talented professionals.

But the clients I want are looking for the person behind the scenes. The guy who isn’t on all those crazy industry blogs you can’t trust. Now, that’s not how I think of them but that’s how a lot of the people I want to work for think about them. So instead they ask their colleagues if they know someone they can trust.

Scarcity is a powerful marketing tactic.

In addition, there’s a supply and demand issue in the digital marketing industry, with way more demand than (good) supply. This was driven home to me in a conversation with Mike Ramsey at SMX Advanced last year.

He asked me whether I had ever done any traditional advertising for the business. Never, I responded. He then asked me if I could name another industry where you could build a successful business without advertising. I couldn’t.

Juggling Fail

So what this all adds up to is that things fall off the plate. You can only juggle so many things. You’re response time to email goes up. You deliver work late. The smaller requests for your time may go ignored.

It makes me feel fucking awful.

I still try very hard to get back to as many people as possible. To answer questions. To respond to every blog comment. Yet, there are only so many hours in the day and I’m not a workaholic. My wife might disagree with that statement since I work 7 days a week. But it’s not 10 hours a day. And it’s on my own schedule. If I want to binge watch House of Cards I can do that.

Right now I simply have to acknowledge that I’m going to drop the ball here and there. I’m not Superman.

Don’t Think About Doing It

One of the ways I was able to become more productive was to catch myself when I began to think about doing something. I’d think about returning that email. Or I would begin to compose a blog post in my head. Or I’d ruminate about the steps I needed to take for an upcoming audit.

Thinking about these things took up a lot of time. Time I could spend actually getting work done. And in the case of blogging, once I’d written it in my head I was far less passionate about putting it down on ‘paper’.

So I made a real effort to start doing what I was thinking about doing. I haven’t mastered this and sometimes realize I’ve been thinking about doing instead of actually doing for a the last 15 minutes. But I’ve gotten a lot better.

I find that doing something in the physical world helps a lot. Taking something from my honey-do list, something as simple as folding and putting away my clothes, can help to put me back on the right track.

Are We There Complacent Yet?

I’m probably not as paranoid as Bill Gates or Steve Jobs were when they were at the top of their game. But I try very hard not to get complacent. I shouldn’t feel like I can get away with delivering an audit late. But the thought creeps into my mind as I juggle commitments and that’s a bad place to be. Because at some point that’s going to bite me in the ass. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But it will.

It already did to some degree.

At the beginning of 2012 I began writing Marketing Biz for Marketing Land. In 2013 I started to get paid for that work. By March I was spending more time than I’d like on it (getting paid for it made me want to do it better), my interest waned and there were some creative differences about the column. Nothing serious but it was mutually decided it would be best to shutter Marketing Biz.

I stayed on and helped out with the Period Table of SEO Success Factors. I was proud of and enjoyed that work. But I dropped the ball on the next project and was quickly asked if I had enough time to continue and I gratefully took the opportunity to say no.

I tried to do too much and wanted to keep that working relationship with Danny Sullivan and Matt McGee. Not because of the connections they have (screw that) but because they’re just smart, good people. So leaving on those terms sucked.

Exposure vs Scarcity

The selling point for doing all of the above was, to some degree, exposure. In our industry you don’t get much bigger than Search Engine Land and Marketing Land. (Though I was proud as a peacock to get one of my posts on Techmeme last year.)

I thought of Marketing Biz as a natural out-growth of my normal curation activities. Not only that but it wasn’t content I would have put on my own blog. So Marketing Biz was my own little place where I might build a reputation and exposure beyond traditional SEO.

That was different than writing a guest post or even being a contributing writer doing one of the usual editing jobs. It didn’t violate my thoughts on guest blogging. It helped that I wasn’t after more exposure at that point, but I’d like to think if I had to do it all over again that I’d do it the same way.

The real question was did I need more exposure? I was turning away business as it stood. I wasn’t eager to drive more people to my door just so I could say no or, even worse, take on additional business and juggle even more work.

Obviously I need to continue to build my reputation, but I’m not sure that’s accomplished by heaping on more and more exposure.  I don’t want to fade away completely and I grok the mere exposure effect. You need to have some degree of mindshare. But I don’t feel the need to be trending all the time.

I haven’t figured out the balance yet. But I do know this. I  want to continue to earn my reputation not coast on it.

Scaling Experiments

Three years ago I had the opportunity to chat with Wil Reynolds. He admitted that he never really thought he’d scale SEER to its current size. But people came to him asking for his help and he wanted to say yes. The only way he could was to bring more people on board. I understand where he’s coming from. Totally.

Yet, I also know I’m not cut out to run a big operation (alone). I don’t enjoy managing people. Well, some people I do. (Hello Keith, Kirby and Jeremy!) But I have a really short fuse when it comes to effort and the ability to pick up new material.

Keep up with and (better yet) challenge me and I’m a great boss. Fall behind and make me explain something twice and I’ll make your life a living hell.

But 2013 was the year that I was going to experiment. I didn’t hire anyone. That’s a huge step! But I did bring a few people on Voltron style on specific jobs. They’d do a fair chunk of the audit punch list and I’d review, edit and add to it as well as do most of the client interaction and presentation.

It worked okay but it didn’t save me as much time as I had hoped. Maybe that would get better as I worked with them more and I’m still open to it to a certain degree. Admittedly, it did feel good to write and send those checks at the end of the project.

I’m just not sure scaling satisfies me. I might be able to make more money but the incremental amount doesn’t seem like enough unless I loosened my grip on the work product and took on a lot more clients. I’m not really prepared to do that. I want to be involved in the client work. I want to unlock the riddles and chase down the red herrings.

This year I’ll be experimenting with other ways of scaling.

Friends

Despite a lot of the negativity in the industry, and there’s a lot to be negative about, I found a number of colleagues who supported, encouraged and inspired me.

Whether it was someone like Dennis Goedegebuure giving me a good reference to a massive client (which I secured), watching Joel Klettke evolve and hit his stride, chatting with Dan Shure, IMing with Zeph Snapp or plusing with Mark Traphagen, I was reminded of how lucky I am. (I’m leaving a ton of great people out here but I only have so much space. But the entire community of those who link, Tweet, comment, plus and generally support me continues to overwhelm me.)

I want to be the same person I was when I met these people. Or as close to the same person as I can be, since you’re constantly evolving as a person. I recognize that getting out there, following the golden rule and staying grounded is essential.

I don’t ever want to feel like I’m too cool for school.

And for someone who works at home, having these relationships is huge. Don’t get me wrong, I love working at home. The days I have to drive to a client on the Peninsula or when we’re driving back from my daughter’s tennis class during rush hour remind me just how much I abhor commuting.

But normal interactions, both work related and off-topic, help to break things up and keep you connected. Isolation can be a real issue if you’re working at home so making time for real conversation is important.

Organize!

Enough of the trials and tribulations. I had to have done some things right to have gotten here, right? I sure did.

I’m super organized. I have a digital filing system so I never have to wonder where to find something. I have another filing system (very limited) for my payables and receivables. Nearly everyday I clean up my desktop and make sure nothing builds up.

I live by my Google calendar and I often block off time for client work, making it easy for me to get focused and not schedule too many meetings that require context switching and reduce productivity.

I also refined a whole bunch of business templates so that I have off-the-shelf ready templates for proposals, agreements, kick-off notes, audits, guides and invoices. For some I even have a few different flavors based on the type of engagement. Doing all of this work up front makes a big difference.

Sometimes it feels like I’m tidying up as a form of procrastination but being organized makes me feel calm and that’s important.

Sweat

I kept the weight off this year for the most part, got a Fitbit and stayed active. It’s great going into the garage, getting onto our elliptical machine and sweating for 45 minutes as you stream an episode of Arrow on Netflix. Seriously, how cool is technology?!

I also took up tennis. I’d played here and there and my wife played in high school and a wee bit in college. But it was watching my daughter take classes from Coach Joe that really got both my wife and I back into it. Let me tell you, you can learn and pick up a lot just by watching a very talented, passionate and personable tennis pro teach others. (There’s a lesson here about learning overall if you’re paying attention.)

Exercise helps clear my head and helps me solve problems. It’s a lubricant of sorts, allowing me to unclog a whole bunch of mental blocks.

Best Job Ever

Despite my bitching and moaning, this is the best job I’ve ever had and I sometimes take a step back and am amazed, a goofy smile rising to my face. I make good money working with great clients doing something I genuinely like doing from the comfort of my own home. Jackpot!

But the real treasure has been spending time with my wife and really being here for my daughter as she grows up. Yesterday when she got home she told me about a new game she and her friends made up at school called Monkey In The Middle Two Square. (The rules are quite complicated.) Late last this year I attended her geography bee and even had to cancel a phone call because who knew a geography bee would take nearly two hours!

Do I have all the answers on how my business will evolve? Nope. And that’s okay. Anyone who tells you they have it all figured out is either stupid or lying (or both.)

2014

This year I look forward to blogging more. I’m going to talk about attention hacking and argue against the filter bubble among other things. I want to attend and potentially speak at Pubcon Las Vegas.

I’ll look to pivot some of the business into being a start-up marketing advisor. Because it turns out I have a pretty good track record helping start-ups secure another round of funding or positive exit.

Of course I also want to continue to help my clients to crush their business goals. But most importantly, I plan to stay healthy, happy, optimistic and connected. Something I wish for all of you reading as well.

2012 was a fantastic year for Blind Five Year Old. I met most of my goals, came to a few epiphanies but often found it difficult to juggle everything at once. In all, this is what I learned.

Stop Comparing

There are a number of ‘names’ in the SEO community and there’s a growing trend to share your journey – to open the kimono so to speak. (Sort of like what I’m doing here which is going to be strange given my next statement.) The odd thing about this transparency is that it puts a bit of pressure on others. Or maybe that’s just me.

I had a chance to sit and chat with Wil Reynolds. I talked with Rhea Drysdale. They were generous with their time and gave a lot of excellent advice. Yet for a brief while those conversations also made me feel pretty lousy.

I started wondering. Was I doing enough to build my company? Was I falling behind? After establishing myself and building my brand was I frittering it away? Would I just be a ‘lifestyle business’? Shouldn’t I get bigger and build an agency? Are they so much better at this stuff than me?

I came to realize that I wasn’t enjoying my success. And that sucked, particularly because I was doing really well. So I decided to stop comparing my journey to those of others.

I am not Wil or Rhea or Rand. They all provide amazing advice based on their journey and personal situations. Mine will be different because I’m different. Hopefully I’ll learn from their insight and experiences but I’m sure I’ll make some of the same mistakes they made as well as others as I find my way. And that’s okay.

Take Risks

One of my goals was to speak at two conferences in 2012. Mind you, I’d never spoken at a conference before and while I’ve done plenty of trainings in front of large groups this would definitely be out of my comfort zone. I’m still an introvert at heart.

I snagged a spot at SMX West 2012 to speak about Authorship. I worked on that deck for ages. I obsessed over it. Then I found out that the presenter notes wouldn’t be available. Yikes! I was incredibly nervous but there were people like Aaron Friedman and Nick Roshon who were eager to see me present and gave me encouragement.

I was up there on stage with Dennis Goedegebuure. He’s done a lot of speaking and seemed … unflappable. “Do you still get nervous?” I asked him. “Oh yeah, every time” he replied. That made me feel better and helped me more than he probably realized. The presentation was … okay. I think I read a bit too much, had slide problems and went long, which meant Vanessa was about ready to shove me off the stage.

It was done. It had gone well enough. People didn’t heckle me and there weren’t any Tweets about how much I sucked. The world kept spinning. I needed that experience because the next time I presented was at MozCon 2012 in front of about 800 or so people. Crazy! I’m not sure Rand knew this would only be my second presentation or not but I’m very thankful for the opportunity he provided.

With the help of some amazing advice I was able to build a much better deck this time. I was a total and complete wreck before I presented. So if you met me there before my slot I might have seemed a bit preoccupied. (A thank you to Mackenzie Fogelson, Pete Meyers and Cyrus Shepard for distracting me with interesting conversations.)

I think I did well. It felt … good, which was an odd sensation for me. And the feedback and score I received validated my effort.

I’ve always taken risks throughout my career and that has to continue if I’m going to grow.

Retain Confidence

I’ve had a crisis of confidence a few times in the past, mostly brought on by my own harsh criticism. That didn’t happen this year but between comparing myself to others and working myself up into a lather about presenting, I may have had a few doubts here and there.

But you have to kick those gremlins out of your head. Confidence is so important. Don’t confuse that with being a cocky douchebag. Confidence simply means that you know you’ve done everything you can do and that you’re comfortable with what you’re putting out there. It’s also acknowledging that you’re not always going to be right. That’s life so get used to it and move on.

This piece from Todd Mintz was brave and worth reading. Todd’s a smart and talented guy but he gets smarter and more skilled as time goes by. The post shows that we can only be confident about where we are at any given point in time. Will we make errors? Sure. But we learn from them and get better. Don’t look back and let mistakes sap your confidence, let it fuel it instead.

Keep Learning

 

In this industry you simply must keep learning. My definition of SEO is quite broad, which means that I need to know a little bit about everything.

Everything is a lot! Some of it you’re not going to understand at first but you have to keep pushing. Ask questions, even dumb ones. Just keep picking up new skills and experimenting. I can not stress enough how beneficial experiential learning is in this business. Don’t just take my word or some expert’s word on how something works, try it yourself.

Because we’re in a post modern SEO era.

Postmodern SEO develop strategies and tactics based on individual context, not on preconceived “Best Practices,” or some blogger’s interpretation of “standards.” Instead we consider things like business goals, risk, longevity, audience and others to build individual strategies.

Do. The. Work.

Watch The Clock

There are simply not enough hours in the day. Success has been great but it also means I’m juggling a lot more. I’ve got more clients. I’ve got a part-time writing gig at Marketing Land. I’m speaking at conferences. I’m keeping up on industry news. And the email just never stops.

I don’t expect anyone to feel sorry for me. That would be ludicrous! These are good problems. But I haven’t quite mastered how to balance everything yet. I’ve contemplated stopping my #ididnotwakeupin series. I’ve missed out on requests to contribute to articles. Sometimes things just fall through the cracks. And I hate that.

Through it all I have guarded my personal time. I’m still working more than I ever have, but I don’t pull that many crazy hours. I take the time to build Legos with my daughter, play family bingo games or games of Ticket To Ride, watch episodes of Nikita or just have an afternoon off with my wife.

Love Your Calendar

The primary way I began to take back control of my time was to rely on my calendar. I started to put everything in my Google Calendar, including all those ‘tentative’ meetings. Because the worst thing that can happen is you tell three people you’re available on a certain day and within the span of a few hours they all try to book the same time.

Not only were there fewer missed connections but I was able to see the time I had available for other work. It became more and more clear that I had to book hours to do the work too.

Keep Fit

I also made time to workout. I lost 30 pounds and kept it off by counting calories and working our regularly. I admit, part of this was driven by pure vanity. I didn’t want to stand up in front of a lot of people and look bad.

Besides the obvious health benefits, the other reason was also selfish. Staying fit made me a better thinker. Working out let me clear my head and afterwards I was definitely sharper. I think of working out a little like being organized. It takes a bit of time each week but it makes me a lot more productive.

Ditch False Modesty

I ran into Marty Weintraub at both SMX West and MozCon. It was at the latter that he basically called me out. He complimented me on my presentation and I did the ‘aw shucks, thank you, just trying my best’ routine and he told me to stop with the false modesty and instead simply say thank you and accept the praise.

That doesn’t come naturally to me but it was a turning point. I needed to embrace those who appreciated me. I mean, there are going to be plenty of folks who try to tear you down in life so when you’re recognized as being good at something just run with it.

Overcome Guilt

That image will give you a headache right? And that’s the point I’m making here. Guilt is awful but I’ve got a lot of it.

I don’t have much guilt about ‘making it’. I worked hard and put in a lot of time and effort. But I recognize that I didn’t do it alone. I was helped by many many people along the way. So I try to do the same. But that’s not always easy. I despair when I don’t get back to someone’s email or Google+ post.

I even have some guilt about mentioning some people in this post but not others. How can I leave out people like Matt McGee, Anthony Pensabene, Jon Henshaw, Bill Sebald, Zeph Snapp, Max Minzer and Tadeusz Szewczyk.

And I’m leaving a ton of other people out here! I don’t want to slight anyone. I want to acknowledge their contribution and worth. I value my Google+ community. I care. A lot. Yet it’s nearly impossible for me to communicate that. So I’m letting go of that guilt little by little.

Yet, I doubt I’ll get rid of all my guilt because I think it makes me a better person.

Battle Perfectionism

Am I a perfectionist? If you have to ask yourself that question I think you’re likely closer to one than you might think. I have very high standards and I like to present things when I have pulled on every little thread and packaged it up into something that is appealing as well as informative.

This wreaks havoc with my time management and I try to live by the ‘done is better than perfect’ mantra. I nod my head when Jonathon Colman talks about it and often give this exact advice to others. Yet, I find it tough to follow in practice.

The reason why is that my quest for superior quality at all costs has netted me a really nice referral business. I know I should give myself a break but I fear the slippery slope of sloppy work.

Yet I’m beginning to see a light at the end of the tunnel as I work on some other projects and collaborate in different ways. That said, don’t expect this to become a high volume blog … ever.

Embrace The Unknown

I remember when I would interview for a job and I’d get that ‘where do you see yourself in 5 years’ question. Based on my life experience I was usually honest in telling people I had no idea. Shit happened and you just never could know how things would turn out. You can only open the door right in front of you and see where it goes.

So I don’t know how Blind Five Year Old will grow, though I think it will. I don’t know what new things I’ll be doing this year. Maybe I’ll build a product. Maybe I’ll do more writing. Maybe I’ll write a book. I just don’t know yet and I’m okay with that.

It’s not that I’m not ambitious or that I don’t have goals. I am and I do. It’s just figuring out which direction to go and opening that door.

Way back in 2007 I decided to strike out on my own and begin consulting. I had a number of clients and things were going well. The snag? I wanted to buy a house and banks were simply not loaning money, especially personal loans for bad credit, to folks who didn’t have W-2 income. Well, they might but not to those who didn’t have 20% to put down and Bay Area housing prices made that difficult.

At the time one of my clients was anxious to get me more involved and by early 2008 we agreed on an arrangement where I’d work three days a week as an employee, giving me the ability to pursue consulting the other two days. It was a great arrangement that provided stability and flexibility for the next three years. I know this isn’t a typical arrangement and I was (and still am) sincerely grateful for the opportunity.

But in 2010 I was turning down more business than I was taking on and I lost a few prospective clients because they weren’t sure I had enough bandwidth. I also, finally, bought a house and no longer had a pressing need for W-2 income. So I decided it was time to return to my initial goal – to consult full-time and run my own business.

Strangely, it was a bit more nerve-wracking this time around. I’d grown comfortable and now had a mortgage looming over my head. But those just weren’t good reasons not to move forward. I’m a big believer in taking risks, particularly when I’m betting on myself.

So how’d it turn out?

Well, all in all, 2011 was a great year. I filled up my list of clients, was nearly always busy, made good money and got to spend amazing time with my wife and daughter. But it wasn’t all roses. I learned a lot this year – about myself and about running a business.

The Power of Gratitude

I never needed to drum up work. The work came to me. Referrals remain the lifeblood of my business. This might be atypical. Remember, I was able to take on clients part-time for a number of years. I was building a track record and securing endorsements that would pay off in the future. As soon as I began to wonder if things had finally dried up I received at least one but usually more inbound inquiries. I do not take this for granted.

But there are important lessons to be learned when I think about the amount of business I get through referrals. First, you must deliver great work. The referrals won’t come otherwise. When you’re working for a client, you’re not just working for them, you’re working for all the clients they might refer to you in the future. Let your client down and you cut off a valuable part of your sales funnel.

This also means keeping up with clients both past, present and future. This isn’t easy for me. I’m not a social animal and while I think about a lot of these people, I don’t often reach out to say hello and touch base. Nor do I like to pursue prospects to see if they’re ready to engage. But I made an effort this year to do so and it paid off. I slacked off on this in the last few months. I’ll change that going into 2012.

In the past I thought this type of outreach was intrusive but I find that most people enjoy a quick email. It usually leads to interesting discussions and, yes, the occasional referral. Sometimes just being top-of-mind is what gets you in the door.

Another thing. When someone helps you out with a referral, say thank you. Even if that referral doesn’t pan out, thank them for thinking of you. Never forget the power of gratitude.

Respond ASAP

As the year wore on I got more and more inbound emails and inquiries. They competed with emails from current clients and outstanding proposals. Not to mention the comments people were kind enough to leave on this blog or those who paid me a kind word on Twitter.

I’ve read, again and again, that responding quickly is critical. Yet, I didn’t do a great job of this. In part, I was hobbled by the desire to craft the perfect response. Was it important just to respond or to respond with something of substance? What I’ve learned is that it’s better to lean toward the former, in part because my idea of substance was often far more than was expected.

I’m not saying you should be glib but the adage that a little bit goes a long way fits in this scenario. I still fight this battle though and often let days and days go by before I respond. This is bad. Don’t do it. I’m hoping to turn this around in 2012 and respond quickly and see where those conversations go and not hold myself up to some ultimate standard of communication.

So if I ignored you this year, I apologize. It’s not that I didn’t care. In fact, I still remember nearly every email I didn’t return and every Tweet I didn’t acknowledge. Hopefully I won’t paint myself into this guilty corner in 2012.

Build The Brand

I decided to spend a decent amount of time building my personal brand. I took to heart some advice from Rand Fishkin about blogging. I did more of it and made it easier for people to share my content. I also spent more time promoting myself, through Twitter, via comments on other blogs, on Quora, LinkedIn and on Google+. I’m still better at promoting other people than myself but I came a long way this year.

I also became a Sphinn editor which then morphed into being a Marketing Land curator. It was one of the best things I did this year. I got to know and learned from folks like Matt McGee, Michelle Robbins, Danny Sullivan, Hugo Guzman, James Svoboda, Todd Mintz, Jill Whalen and many more. It also ensured that my information consumption was being put to good use.

You see, I consume a vast amount of information. On a typical day I’m dedicating approximately two hours to reading articles, analysis, responses and posts on a wide range of topics. To be honest, I think being able to make sense of all that information, connecting the dots and finding trends that I can pass on to my clients is valuable. Some of that also shows up on Twitter and Google+.

Building the brand also meant being more social. I did a fairly good job of this online. I thought my Valentine’s Day post was a good start and from there I upped my interactions on my blog and via Twitter. I also embraced Google+ and used it as I had FriendFeed, posting a diverse amount of content that let people get to know the ‘real’ me.

I also took advantage of an opportunity and went to see Amit Singhal, Ben Gomes and Matt Cutts at the Churchill Club. Not only did I get to see them, I had a chance to chat with each of them as well. It reminded me that I need to get out there more often, even if I’m a bit socially uncomfortable. Again, my thanks to Rick Bucich who was my wing man. We could be social awkward together and that makes a huge difference.

Earlier in the year I had botched SMX West. I’d received some shocking personal news that really rocked me. I won’t go into here but suffice to say I didn’t attend many sessions and even when I did I wasn’t really there. Yes, there are other conferences and perhaps I should have gone but … I didn’t.

This year I’m looking to attend at least two conferences and speak at one. While there I’ll remind myself to be more social and meet all of the people I’ve been talking to throughout the year. Putting myself out there and letting people put a person to the words is important.

One of the results of my brand building efforts was the opportunity to participate in the SEOmoz Search Engine Ranking Factors and Google News Ranking Factors panels. There’s a bit of virtuous cycle here. Your brand gets a boost by being on these panels which amplifies your brand moving forward and helps you secure more business which in turn increases your brand, if you’re continuing to do good work.

I remain dedicated to doing great work for my clients.

Better, Faster, Cheaper

The old better, faster, cheaper adage is that you can only do two of the three at any given time. I wasn’t going to be cheap. I’d already learned that being cheap diminished my contribution and often attracted the wrong type of client.

So I settled on better and faster. The problem? Everything took longer than I expected. Part of this is my stubbornness around being better. When I do something, I want to do it really well. It wasn’t about meeting the client’s expectations, it was about blowing those expectations away. It was about pulling on every little thread in a site audit to make sure I didn’t miss something.

All of this made being faster, while maintaining my level of quality, a challenge. At times I thought about doing things ‘good enough’ or finding ways to simply deliver what the client expected. Why was I knocking myself out? But being thorough and thoughtful was part of my DNA. Not only that it was a point of differentiation. It’s what I stood for. And as I’ve already discussed, delivering great work doubled as my sales funnel.

It’s also one of the reasons I turned down a number of guest blogging and speaking opportunities. My own blog posts take between two and five hours each. (This one is well above that.) I don’t think that’s going to change. I’m methodical and I’ll do an extraordinary amount of due diligence before I’m comfortable putting something out there.

Building vs Doing

Obviously, I’m a big believer in building your brand and business. That takes work. Blog posts. Quora. Google+. Twitter. Commenting. Seriously, there’s a lot of work involved in building and promoting your business. Balancing the time you spend building the brand versus doing the work can be difficult. Doubly so if you take into account my personal expectations of quality.

I fought this see-saw battle all year and expect to do so again in 2012. There’s just no way around it.

Fill Your Pipeline

 

Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched. There were times when I thought I had a slew of business lined up waiting to go. But I’d already learned to keep piling on prospective work. Because suddenly a few of those potential clients go silent, there’s a change in management or you simply don’t get that business.

And what’s the worst thing that happens if you book too much business? Seriously, that’s a good problem to have. That’s when you buy a bunch of Red Bull, work with clients on timelines and deliverables and bring on a few trusted colleagues to help out.

Send Me …

Cranking out proposals and contracts isn’t as easy as it sounds. You figure out quickly that different clients want different types of things and that, in turn, demands a different type of approach and response. I took time to build proposals for a variety of types of projects and even came up with a menu of services.

Having been the recipient of a lot of proposals and contracts over the years (even from others in my industry) so I had a general idea of what was expected and how they were presented. Honestly, the amount of diversity here is incredible. I’ve seen cookie-cutter PowerPoint decks, simple one page word documents or a novella worth of FAQs being used as proposals.

In my eyes, the level of professionalism just isn’t that high. So of course I wanted to do better. I spent time and energy getting a standard look and feel to my materials. The same fonts. The same formatting. The same iconography. I wanted to put my best foot forward every time.

That took time but by the end of the year I had a lot of collateral squared away and ready to go which made the proposal process a lot less time consuming.

Cross the Ts, Dot the Is

Then there are contracts. You need to have your own but you also need to be prepared to review and sign those provided by clients. Don’t just glance at this stuff. Read the contract and make sure that you are okay with the terms. If you’re not, make suggested revisions. Now, I didn’t get tangled up in a bad contract this year, but that’s partly because I changed terms prior to entering that agreement. Don’t be afraid to do this.

I might also add that twice I had clients correct errors (minor legalese errors) in my own contract template. While this is embarrassing I am thankful that they took the time to review the contract and provide that feedback. I’m better for it.

Going Steady?

 

So you land a new client and you’re doing a site audit. Some of these are one-time engagements but most of the time you (and the client) are hoping that it turns into a long-term relationship. The question is how to structure those engagements. I’ve avoided retainer based engagements because there are times when I’ll feel like I’m not delivering enough value and other times when I feel like that client is soaking up way too much of my time. Honestly, I was more concerned about the former.

While I might be able to drive a few clients into a retainer based relationship and have a set amount of money coming in, I just didn’t want that added pressure and the question in the back of my mind – am I doing enough? That said, I had enough clients asking for this that I decided to give it a try. So far, so good.

I structured my retainers so I had some protection from being ridiculously overworked. That helped put my mind at ease on that side of the equation. But what about that feeling that I’m not contributing enough? What I’ve found is that it’s about trust and reliability. Clients need to trust that you’re looking out for their interests and that you are there with advice and recommendations that they can trust and believe in. Having that resource, on call, is valuable. This is even more important in a field where things change frequently and there is a slew of conflicting (and bad) advice.

I haven’t figured out the best way to seamlessly move from audit into a long-term engagement but the majority of my clients do take this path. It’s usually not the same and that makes it strange and bumpy at times. I’m not sure this is a problem I can or should solve.

For Love and Money

Invoicing and keeping track of accounts receivables wasn’t that big of a problem. I have a nice invoice template I’ve used for years and diligently track unpaid invoices. In 2011 I only had one client who I had to chase down for payment.

You do begin to learn who pays quickly and who is cutting your net 30 arrangement to the very last day. Sometimes cash flow became an issue, particularly when I had to pay subcontractors or vendors. That’s certainly something I’ll work on in 2012.

Outside of that I didn’t actually like doing the invoicing. Crazy isn’t it? The thing that gets me paid always felt like pulling teeth. Reviewing everything I’d done and tallying up the hours and deliverables was just not fun for me. Getting those checks in the mail certainly did!

I just really like what I do and am able to make a good living at it. For that I am very lucky.

The Right Clients

You need to get good, quickly, at figuring out which clients are right for you. For me, this means they’re already knowledgeable about SEO and Internet marketing. I want smart teams that I can partner with and engage in meaningful dialog that moves the site and my knowledge forward. Because make no mistake, you are constantly learning in this business. Every new engagement brings a new set of challenges and reveals a new wrinkle that you might not have seen previously.

I don’t want clients who are constantly questioning the validity of SEO. I avoid those who can’t bring resources to bear on recommendations because I want to see results. I’m not a big fan of politics so I avoid large organizations. Discount hunters are also usually bad news. I’ve also experimented with small business and local clients but my services just don’t scale for most of these folks.

There are plenty of posts out there about  bad clients but it’s really on you to find the good clients. Don’t be afraid to turn away clients who you know are going to be a time suck. Another way to handle this is to bake it into your proposal. Pricing yourself out of potentially bad relationships is a very valuable technique.

In the end, I want clients who understand that I’m going to tell them the truth, whether it’s popular or not.

How Much!?

Medical coverage costs a metric-fuck-ton. I’m using foul language here because it really is that bad. The amount I pay for medical coverage is obscene. I’m looking to lower this cost in 2012 but there’s also a huge amount of complexity and fear in switching plans. I’ve been through this rodeo just in switching plans when I went from job to job. But it’s even more difficult when you’re self-employed and worried about making sure your family has health coverage.

In addition, the quarterly tax payments can be a drag. I don’t mind paying taxes. I’m quite happy to pay my share. But the chunks you pay are sizable so you really have to plan ahead. Get yourself a CPA if you’re going to start a business or even just do a fair amount of consulting. The $500 I pay mine is well worth it and has saved me money and countless hours of my time.

Stay Active

I let my health slip a bit this year. I didn’t eat well and didn’t exercise as much either. This is odd since I’m spending so much time at home. I’ve already begun to change this and will be a healthier person in 2012. This is important because being active can help you work through problems and simply think better. Diet can also have a profound impact on your mood.

All of this is wrapped up in making sure you keep motivated. Like or not, sometimes that motivation leaves you. You get stressed and get jammed up. You feel like you’re juggling too much and that you’ll never catch up. You wake up and you just don’t want to tackle what’s in front of you. It feels enormous and endless. That’s where being active can change things. Get out on the bike and ride for a few hours and you clear your head and come back energized.

More or Less

I am a huge believer in life/work balance. That said, now that I’m running my own business I am working a lot more. Part of this is the fact that I work at home. I’m upstairs in my office, wearing an old Google fleece and some sweatpants. I’m up at 6am every day looking through my RSS feeds and soaking up as much information as I can instead of spending an unproductive hour or more commuting.

The days begin to blend together. Weekdays and weekends aren’t so different so you wind up putting in hours on the weekend too. But it’s all on your own terms! That’s the great thing.

So if I want to stop and go for a bike ride with my daughter. I can do that. If I want to watch Breaking Bad on Netflix in the middle of the day. I can do that. The flexibility is amazing. So even though I might be working more hours I’m also spending more quality time with my family and doing the things I really want to do.

Leverage

It got to the point where I was essentially booked solid. If you’re charging an hourly rate, you can only make so much. There are only so many hours in the day. Sure, you can use fixed pricing on audits but most of the time you’re not making much more there. You figure out the hours you need and price the audit accordingly. Honestly, I probably short-changed myself more often than not. As I mentioned, everything takes longer than you think.

So you begin to think about how you could get to the next level. Did I want to build an ‘agency’? Maybe but I’m a better leader than manager. So you begin to think about other ways to leverage the expertise you have. This is where I’m looking in 2012. Once again, I’ll be balancing initiatives to build and expand the business versus doing the work. So, while I may not be an agency per se, I think there’s a strong possibility that I’ll want to bring some other people in next year.

This might give me just enough time to explore new ways to serve clients. Maybe I should write an ebook or a real book? I did a number of SEO training sessions this year, maybe that’s something to pursue.

I have a great but complex idea for a WordPress Plugin. I actually did a substantial amount of research here, wrote a solid product document and contacted a developer but it just never got off the ground. I could restart that project.

And then there are other ideas outside of this industry, one of which would provide bloggers with a new revenue stream.

I don’t lack in ideas. I lack in time. And with that time constraint I vacillate. I want to pick the ‘right’ one. But I know that’s not the right way to approach things. Pick one. Try it. If it works, awesome. If it doesn’t. Learn from the failure and move on to the next idea. It’s easier said than done but I’m committed to this philosophy in 2012.

I often fail to thank folks properly. I mean to do it but … I wind up getting busy and then a week goes by and then a thank you seems false. Yet, I truly do appreciate it!

So it seems apt on Valentine’s Day to thank the many people who have influenced, supported and helped me over the past year.

Aaron Bradley (@aaranged) at SEO Skeptic has consistently provided engaging dialog on my blog. I hope to return the favor. Aaron is a thought leader, willing to rely on his own critical analysis in looking at a subject.

Michael Martinez (@seo_theory) at SEO Theory isn’t going to give you the same old SEO spiel found on hundreds of other blogs. Like Aaron Bradley, it’s great to find free thinkers in an industry with plenty of sheep.

Rob Diana (@robdiana) at Regular Geek is amazingly smart and engaging. Not only has he been a great supporter but he is vital to helping me find the best information on the Internet.

Matt McGee (@mattmcgee) and Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) are great people who have given me the opportunity to be an Editor at Sphinn. I sincerely appreciate their confidence.

Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) is a decent and generous guy. He may not always provide the answer I want to hear, but he’s nearly always there with an answer nonetheless.

Paul Buchheit (@paultoo) is, among other things, the founder of FriendFeed. That alone gets him on my list but his personal blog has also been inspirational.

Rick Bucich (@rbucich) has been a long time supporter of me and my blog. He’s wicked smart about SEO, so it’s a real compliment to have him in my corner.

Andrew Hanelly (@hanelly) has made some complimentary comments on the blog. That’s great, particularly since his own blog is great as well.

Jeremy Post (@jeremypost) is the best colleague I’ve had since I began SEO. Smart, hard-working and an all around good guy. He keeps me on my toes. Bonus – he brews his own beer.

Jonathan Mendez (@jonathanmendez) at Optimize and Prophesize provides amazing insight, bridging search and display. I’ve been lucky to interact with him a few times and always feel smarter afterward.

Lisa Barone (@LisaBarone) at Outspoken Media was kind enough to feature my Facebook SEO Guide in one of her posts. I’d be lying if it wasn’t nice to be acknowledged by one of the ‘cool crowd’ in the industry.

Rand Fishkin (@randfish) is CEO and Co-Founder of SEOmoz. You’d have to live under a rock not to know of Rand. I don’t know Rand personally, outside of a small email exchange, but his personal blog has been influential. I’m blogging more and better able to deal with haters because of his writings.

Aleyda Solis (@aleyda) at Aleyda Solis has been a tremendous supporter. My Spanish isn’t very good so I’ll simply say muchas gracias.

Kirby Freeman (@kirbyfreeman) is whip smart with a true gift for building product. She made me look good.

Michael Fruchter (@fruchter) has been a great supporter and another source for great content.

Micah France (@micah_france) has been generous with his comments and Tweets. They don’t go unnoticed.

Eric Logan (@ericloganvanman) is nearly always the first person to Like one of my posts on FriendFeed. It just seems like he’s got my back.

Roberto Bonini (@rbonini) is also quick to Like my content on FriendFeed. I appreciate it.

Louis Gray (@louisgray) introduces me to new and interesting services – constantly. He’s perhaps the nicest guy you’ll ever meet too.

Tad Chef (@onreact_com) at SEOptimise is always interesting and was kind to include me in his 30 Great SEO Blogs You Might Not Know Yet.

Elisa Gabbert (@egabbert) at WordStream is smart and funny. It’s awesome when someone like that references your work.

Alexia Tsotsis (@alexia) put my contact information smack dab on TechCrunch. That can’t be bad for business.

Tamar Weinberg (@tamar) at Techipedia does a fantastic job finding the best in Internet marketing. It was an honor to be on her list of Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2010.

Matt Gammie (@mattgammie) has been an interesting new and diverse voice. I appreciate the dialog.

Derek Perez (@perezd) at Perezium is wise beyond his years. He’s a hoot to be around but serious about the intersection of code, UX and start-ups.

Chris Eppstein (@chriseppstein) is an amazing Software Architect. Many of our conversations about search wind up as blog posts. I hope that continues.

Srikanth AD (@srikanth_AD) has been a great supporter, particularly on Quora.

Jill Whalen (@jillwhalen) at High Rankings is quick with an answer and always has an informed opinion. I may not always agree, but I like that she’s got an honest point of view.

Mark Essel (@VictusFate) at Victus Spirtus let me ride shotgun on his entrepreneurial ride. It’s been amazing to follow and his frequent blog posts often point me in interesting directions.

Mahendra Palsule (@ScepticGeek) at Skeptic Geek is a gold mine of information and insight. I’m thankful for his support and appreciate his editorial prowess.

Kristi Hines (@kikolani) at Kristi Hines is a dynamo. I certainly appreciate the mention.

Ruud Hein (@RuudHein) at Search Engine People is a great writer and search historian. Bonus – he’s friendly on Twitter.

Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) has included me in a number of his daily search recaps. Thank you.

Danny Brown (@dannybrown) is a paragon for all bloggers. He’s smart, down-to-earth and incredibly responsive.

Greg Sterling (@gsterling) at Screenwerk was kind to chat with me at SMX Advanced. He’s the guy to talk to about local and mobile.

Bill Slawski (@bill_slawski) at SEO by the Sea provides an incredible service to the SEO industry. We all appreciate it.

Donna Fontenot (@DonnaFontenot) at DazzlinDonna is as generous and nice as she claims to be.

Bill Rowland (@billrowland) at Nexus Interactive Marketing has commented on the blog a number of times. I’m thankful for his contributions.

Marty Weintraub (@aimclear) at aimClear for reminding me that search is fun. I hope to deliver as much value when I next present.

The music is playing so let me quickly squeeze in others who have written about me on blogs, mentioned me on Twitter or included me in their daily news.

• Offshore Ally (@offshoreally)
• Diana Zurdo (@dianazuru)
• Vincent Beneche (@crealoop)
• Fiona Friesen (@GlueEd)
• Kyle Pearce (@kaaist)
• Matt (@springboardseo)
• Antonella Piscitelli (@hawaikiki)
• Jonathan Leplang (@Web_Skills)
• Bogdan Oltean (@bogdanoltean)
• Jeroen Smeekens (@jsmeekens)
• Barry Adams (@badams)
• Woof Online (@woofonline)
• Eric Steiner (@commandervon)
• John S. Rizzo (@askrizzo)
• Martin Missfeldt (@mssfldt)
• Nick LeRoy (@SEONickLeRoy)
• Helen Stepchuk (@helenstepchuk)
• David Malmborg (@davidmalmborg)
• Marc Bitanga (@marcbitanga)
• Timothy Serrano (@TimothySerrano)
• Kissaki Cross Media (@Crossmedia_eu)
• Gil Reich (@GilR)
• Marcel Media (@marcelmedia)
• Anthony Young (@RexSFO)
• Julie Walraven (@JulieWalraven)
• Morten Brugard (@mbrugard)
• Peonia (@EnItaliano)
• Eric Bonnici (@AJ2000)
• Kathy Meyer (@2cre8)
• Julian Vega (@ingjulianvega)
• Darrin Keene (@urban_dk)
• Katie Fox (@BloomgFootprint)
• Matthew Simmons (@Mattinhenley)
• Ted Vinzani (@relevance)
• Craig Deakin (@craigdeakin)
• Joe Tertel (@jtertel)
• D. Godínez (@piernes)
• Brandon Chesnutt (@bchesnutt)
• Drew Harding (@drew_harding)
• Alex Bennert (@seosylph)
• Leah Baade (@leahbaade)
• Jonathan Schikowski (@schikowski)
• Top Notch SEO (@TopNotchSEO)
• Jey Pandian (@RainJaguarSEO)
• Khayyam Wakil (@iamkhayyam)
• The vBSEO Team (@vbseo)
• Juan Carlos Muriente (@muriente)
• Hannes Krueger (@seo_depp)
• John Welsh (@johnwelsh)
• Kelly Lenihan (@kellylenihan)
• Janet Fouts (@jfouts)
• Eric Itzkowitz (@ericitzkowitz)
• Filippo Scrocco (@Filippo_Scrocco)
• Jens Wedin (@jenswedin)
• Andrew Nattan (@Mr603)
• Tony Verre (@tonyverre)
• Chris Boggs (@boggles)

The number of folks who have been kind to me is overwhelming. I hope I continue to earn your comments and support. And I know I’ve left off a lot of people (particularly folks at FriendFeed). So thank you to those that I have unintentionally missed.

Happy Valentine’s Day.