SPEAKER_00 0:19

So you can have your whole life work now. Here's our host, Amber Howard.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

Good morning, everyone. Welcome back to What Would Amber Do. I am excited this morning to be speaking with Eric Taropien. Eric is a digital marketer, blogger, influencer, and marketing strategist. Eric is from the South Bay area of Los Angeles and a fellow podcaster. And Eric is the president of This Is My South Bay. Eric, thank you so much for being on the show this morning.

SPEAKER_02 0:52

Thank you, Amber. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

Yes, and thank you for getting up. I've got to keep remembering as I branch out into the world that not everyone is in my time zone. So just thank you for being on the show. And I know it's early in Los Angeles.

SPEAKER_02 1:07

You know, it's it's 6 a.m. I've been up for a couple hours. So I'm an early bird as I tell people, so it's all good.

SPEAKER_01 1:14

Well, they do say the early bird gets the worm. So good to have you here. Ian, I'm excited to learn more about the like where you're from and and what you what you're creating in the world. So talk to us a little bit, because you know, when I was getting to know you, at least from your digital footprint, it seems that you had quite the career in in the jewelry industry and in design for 26 years, and and now you're an entrepreneur and you're running your own marketing company and supporting people with like SEO and all of these different things. So, how did that happen? How does one go from being a vice president of a design company to creating their own business?

SPEAKER_02 1:57

Yeah, it's it seems like an unnatural transition. Uh, I used to design jewelry, and uh we used to sell to jewelry stores across the country and some in Canada. And so um when the Great Recession hit, a lot of the jewelry stores that we're selling to, starting in 2006 to 2009, 10, there where the economy really got rocked, a lot of the retail stores that we're selling to started to close up. And so we had to figure out a different way to sell. Um, and we decided to, you know, keep selling to jewelry stores, uh, but also to start to sell uh business to consumer, to sell directly to the public. And so uh that involved understanding this thing called marketing, and more specifically, this thing called digital marketing that was kind of new in 2006 to sell jewelry online was not uh as normal as it is today. And so um I started to study and learn about digital marketing, and I really took to search engine optimization. And so as I as I took to it, our business uh started to take off. And at some point, I uh started to do some consulting. My first client, I always call her, uh, was my mother, and she was a real estate agent uh in the South Bay area, and so we started to do some uh SEO work for her, and then I started to take on friends and family and things like that. And at some point, I actually took on people that wanted to pay me to do the work, and and I realized I can monetize this, I can monetize my knowledge and my efforts, and I decided to switch over and open up an agency, digital marketing agency, called This Is My South Bay. And uh I live in the South Bay part of Los Angeles, and uh I've grown up there, I do business there. I have clients outside of LA, California, uh, even uh I have a couple of clients outside of the United States. Uh, but I use This Is My South Bay as almost like a case study for a local business. And so that's what the company name is about, and that's my kind of my story behind how I went from jewelry to digital marketing.

SPEAKER_01 4:31

It's so great, you know, what I hear in what you're saying, Eric, is like that ability, and I think it's very much like part of the entrepreneurial mindset to, you know, life happens, you know, recessions happen, COVID happens, you know, there are things that happen in the world that are seemingly beyond our control, and our ability as entrepreneurs, as leaders, to be able to say, okay, well, you know, how do I pivot? How do I take these circumstances and then create something new from them? And it sounds to me like, you know, it started for you at first inside of a commitment to serve the business that you were, you know, that you were working in and that you'd been working in for a long time. And then out of that grew a bit of a passion.

SPEAKER_02 5:19

Yeah, it's important to be passionate about your work. Um, I work long hours, but it doesn't feel like work. You know, I love what I do. There are, you know, stresses here and there, but for the most part, um, you know, I I really enjoy it. And so, you know, sometimes people work six hours at their at their work that day, and it just feels like forever. And that you meet people that work 12 hours that day and they the day just flew by and they really enjoyed it. So you want to really uh and I think that you're successful at things that you like doing. And so people kind of sometimes force themselves into uh uh positions or businesses where they don't really like it, but the pay is good and they take it, but then they end up not being that that good at it. And so in the long run, uh monetarily it's not good, and I don't think it's good for your soul to be working at something that you're not passionate about.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

You uh you reminded me of a conversation I had with a a dear friend of mine who said, and uh I've shared this on the show before, but I don't think it can be said enough that human beings are the only species who can be successful. Like you can't see my air quotes for those of you listening to this episode, but like, you know, by society's definition, successful living alongside their authentic selves, like a horse, or couldn't try and be a dog and and and and survive. But for human beings, like there's like there's what our heart calls for, there's what we're passionate about, what lights us up, what has us jump out of bed in the morning, and then there's like but we can like actually live alongside that and not be living that and have money and have status and all of these things, but it but there is a cost. There's a cost to our the level of satisfaction and personal fulfillment, and that shows up in lots of different ways in you know our physical well-being, mental, spiritual well-being. So I acknowledge you for it takes courage, you know, especially when you've had a long-standing career and you've known success. The the entrepreneurial journey can be a little bit dicey at first.

SPEAKER_02 7:31

Oh, yeah. It's it's tough to give up a situation where you know the subject backwards and forwards. You have your connections in the industry. Uh, you know, there's a certain safety to it. And to jump from that to the unknown, it has its uh uh challenges. And you kind of question yourself in the beginning when things aren't quite going the way that you would hope it to go. Uh, but you know, like I said, I enjoy this so much that I, you know, as I stuck with it and worked with it and and did my thing, um, I have nothing but I have I have no regrets, and I and I'm very happy that I took that leap of faith.

SPEAKER_01 8:14

So great. So I definitely want to know more about this thing that you call the South Bay and South Bay lifestyle, but why don't we jump into you talk a lot about search engine optimization, and you know, the SEO is like language that a lot of people hear about. And and what is search engine optimization and why is it so important to entrepreneurs to understand this and and to be you leveraging SEO in their businesses?

SPEAKER_02 8:42

Sure. So let's say uh you got it, you just got into an accident and you go to Google in the search box, you type in uh accident injury lawyer. And usually what you have is you have the search engine results page that comes up, you have the top two or three that are sponsored links, they're advertisers at the top, and usually at the bottom of that page, you have two or three uh that are sponsored. And now that that middle there, that's uh there's 10 on a page that are um links to websites that Google thinks it's a good match between the user and that website. And so Google is kind of playing matchmaker and it's listing one to ten, and you could go to the second page, see 11 to 20, etc. And so uh that real estate you cannot buy. It's organically that Google uh places you there. That traffic that comes in uh from Google uh is a game changer for a small to mid-sized business. If you're a lawyer or if you're a chiropractor and somebody types in chiropractor near me or back pain or whatever, and you're ranked there, people are searching, actively searching for the service that you have to offer in your neighborhood, if it's a local business. And so you get the traffic coming to your website, and they're usually towards the end of the funnel as far as uh ready to make a purchase or to set up an appointment. So that changes a lot for small businesses and mid-sized businesses. And so there's a practice called search engine optimization where you optimize to be on that uh list. So if somebody types in, let's say, uh mechanic and you're in a particular city, Google figures out where you are and by by your IP address and by different ways and triangulates where you are and tries to give you search results for a mechanic in your neighborhood. And so that traffic coming into that mechanic shop from Google that is free is a big deal and should not be overlooked by small businesses.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

So you say it's organic and you can't buy it, but if I can optimize search engine results, then clearly there are ways in which entrepreneurs can perhaps put their, you know, have their themselves show up in Google search engine more favorably.

SPEAKER_02 11:18

Well, uh there are things that you need to do in order for Google to give you that ranking. Now, when we if we work it backwards, the thing that Google is um it's kind of their uh the secret to their success is that there have been other search engines that have come and gone and failed before them. The secret to their success is that they are very user-centric. They want to make sure that the user is having a good experience on Google. They're not as worried about the advertisers because they figured that if they have all these searches and all these users on their website, then the advertisers will follow, which is exactly what's happened. Because before the other search engines before them, they focused on the advertiser first because they needed to generate revenues and things like that. So they came and went because we were not happy with the search results that they were giving us. So yeah, that's uh as far as the SEO goes, what you what we have to keep in mind is we're trying to feed Google what it wants. And uh one of the things that it wants, the very first step in order to get optimized by Google is you want to make sure that the website is quote unquote optimizable. Meaning if it takes 10 seconds to load a page, that's not gonna be a good user experience. So the user is gonna be upset. Like if I uh Googled, let's say, accountant and I uh uh on Google, and from Google I went, I clicked on Google and went to the accountant website, and it took 10 seconds to load, or the pages were uh had broken links on the website, or there were pop-ups or all kinds of things, and it uh uh disrupted my computer. I would not even remember the website that I went to. I would blame Google. And so that that's why Google is making sure that the when when it's sending someone uh to a website, when it's saying, hey, you two should meet, and it's giving that ranking, it's making sure that there's a list of things that uh are are done so that it's what is considered a good search result that doesn't make Google look bad. So one of one the first thing is making sure that the website is optimizable, that the load time is good, you don't have any broken links, you don't have uh pop-ups that come up and and things like that. Just that's the first bare bone because a lot of companies they dive right into marketing and SEO and Google ads and everything, and then they don't realize that their website, um, especially on mobile, is is not something that Google values. And it's not like Google calls you and says, hey, if you you know, your mobile's not doing well, uh, so we're not gonna rank you. It doesn't work that way. Google just, you know, they they're spidering all the websites out there and they're crawling it, and then they're indexing it, and they're not gonna be in the business of calling people to tell them what to do for their website.

SPEAKER_01 14:28

So that those are some really like helpful information for people. You know, this is not an area that I'm an expert in by any stretch of the imagination. And what I kind of loved about what you said, that one of the values of my company is people first. And so what I hear in what you're saying, Eric, from like the the approach that Google took and why they were so successful is that they put people first, right? Like instead of putting money first, which is the and and it's so true. We don't even talk about like you know, searching for something. We say we're gonna Google it, right? It's just become part of the vernacular that we relate with the internet, with using it, you know, um, that we Google things, just like you know, Kleenex has become synonymous with tissue and all of that, right? So it just goes, I think to me, I'm present to the power, and and and I think this is a good lesson for entrepreneurs in general, like what becomes possible when we put people over profit. And it's not like, and and I really do believe that when you're serving, when when what comes first is your commitment to serve your niche or people, um, you what whoever you're committed to making a difference with, the money will come. So I I think that's a very powerful use case, you know, illustrating Google's success in operating that way.

SPEAKER_02 15:56

Agreed. And you know, it's not like uh they're not making money, they're doing very well, but they've taken that approach of let's just make sure no matter what, the first thing at the top of every list is that the user experience is A. And so that's why if you don't have your website in tip top shape, it they're not going to give you the ranking. So just kind of keep that in mind. Everything that you're doing, try to understand that uh Google is trying to deliver the best possible match with the user and the website. Because before, like 20 years ago, even 15 years ago, you would go to a search engine and you would type in a particular keyword, and the top advertiser would go and buy all the top uh clicks, the the like the ad part of it. On Google, uh sometimes you have a keyword that Google thinks, hey, this keyword and this website are not a good fit. So I'm not even gonna sell them the traffic for this keyword. So they're very protective of even the Google Ads part of it, where if it's not a good match, uh you know, you won't even you won't even have your ads show up. So you have to be on your game when you're dealing with Google. Uh they give it sometimes they give your keywords the ad score. So if it's uh let's say uh ad score two out of ten, ten being the highest, if it gives an ad score two, uh, and I have an ad score nine, maybe I'm gonna pay one dollar per click to be number one. And my the the competitor that has an ad score two might need to pay four times that to be number one. So even then, if with me paying less, if my ad score is higher, I'm still gonna be number one because I I'm the best possible result for that keyword in the eyes of Google. And that's for paid. Even even paid, there's strict on it. So it's not like you can spin up a site and uh, you know, what it was maybe 15 years ago, where you can just spin up a site and then hit the ground running inside of a couple weeks, start to get traffic and uh you know, get get uh optimized and Google ads and get it rolling. Google is looking for consistency and they're looking to make sure that the content and everything that you're offering on your website is an exact fit to what the person is searching for.

SPEAKER_01 18:25

Like I'm like sitting here, I'm like, man, like as an entrepreneur, it can be so overwhelming, right? Like you're starting this business, you're literally wearing so many different hats, right? Like trying to, you know, at the beginning, you don't even necessarily like I'm just like I woke up this morning and I finally got clarity on what my niche was, and I've been in business for a while, and there's so many different people that I can serve. And I was like, like a lot of entrepreneurs kind of tripped up by that. And so I'm just sitting here listening to you, Eric, and I'm like, I get like how important it might be like it is, like if you could do that powerfully from the beginning, like from when you create your first site, because I've got a site up. I I you know, and I hired someone to do it, and I we never even had a conversation about search engine optimization, and and my vision has kind of shifted a bit since so I'll probably be doing a rebranding of my site and stuff at some point in time. And as an entrepreneur with all of these different things to consider, and probably not a lot of money at the beginning, right? I'm I'm sitting here going, like, are there things that entrepreneurs can do from the beginning so that they start to build a powerful foundation from their first site, you know, where and and like if they don't have a lot of investment, like is it expensive to get into SEO? Are there ways to get support with this that are, you know, um so that you start if start to build from the beginning in a way that's powerful?

SPEAKER_02 19:53

So SEO is is kind of like a long game. It's not like you can uh hit the ground running. So you have to kind of um think of it as in time, this will be an investment that's uh more than pays off. Now, in time could be three months, it could be nine months, it depends on your location, it depends on your competition level. But eventually, uh, you know, if you do things in a particular way that's textbook for Google, you will uh it it's it's the best ROI. Now, there are ways to do SEO to start with. And like we talked about, make sure the website is optimizable. And that includes uh, you know, uh the mobile part of it is what Google is actually uh indexing these days. It's looking at your mobile and it's uh optimizing based on your mobile, not your desktop. So um what a lot of people uh kind of don't don't consider is that one of the metrics that Google looks at is your social media campaign in order to rank you. One of the top, let's say, dozen uh things that it looks at. So sometimes entrepreneurs they think, okay, I'm doing social media, so I don't want I don't have time or budget to do SEO. So, but they're kind of intertwined. And so sometimes what happens is Google looks at your all your social media campaigns combined and realizes that last month you had, let's say, 90 followers on social media. This month you have 100, next month you have 110. You have comments, shares, likes. Uh things are happening on your social media. And uh it thinks, okay, this website is this company is, you know, has has a has a good track record going here. Let me take a look where they're located. So it looks at the keywords, the hashtags, the you know, locations, everything, and uses that as a metric. Now it could be 90, it could be 9,000, 90,000, whatever your the client's total social media following is between all the platforms. It's looking for trends. And so what you can do is you can take if if someone is doing social media, they can take that content and use it for search engine optimization also. So you're just recycling the content over to uh uh you know you're you're enticing Twitter, let's say Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, etc. Now you can take that content and entice Google, Bing, Yahoo, and get traffic from there also. It'll be the same traffic, it'll be the same content. You don't have to do everything all over again. So uh it's not like all or nothing. A lot of companies they're doing it anyway. So uh, you know, sometimes you're asking for Facebook reviews, and then if you're doing SEO or you're doing your website, you can sometimes get uh Google reviews or Yelp reviews. So Google is looking at your reputation. So it's one of those things where you want to make sure that you kind of divide up a little bit if you're getting 10 reviews a month or a year, whatever it is, if a couple of them can go to Google reviews, a couple of them can go to uh Facebook reviews, a couple of them to Yelp, etc., and just kind of face it out as opposed to sometimes people they fall in love with one platform, let's say Facebook, and they just do Facebook reviews. So it's it's kind of doing what you're doing, but also being cognizant of the fact that there's this beast over here that's Google, that you know, usually is at the end of the funnel when you're uh gonna make a decision and you want to keep feeding Google information also. Like, for example, the podcast that we're doing right now, you can take this uh video file, uh uh, upload it to YouTube, take the YouTube file, embed it onto your website landing page or blog page, transcribe the video. So you can, if someone wants to read it, they can read it. If they want to listen to it, they can listen to it. And that way you are doing an SEO campaign. You're creating content for your website. Now you're doing that anyway for the most part, right? You're uploading it to iTunes or whatever, but you can it it takes a very, very short amount of time to do what I'm saying to do as far as just uploading it to YouTube and then uh embedding it onto your website. So once you start getting into that practice where you're uh distributing your content, uh and people are sometimes creatures of habit where they just do uh social media, or sometimes they just do like just Pinterest, like I'm big on Pinterest, I always hear, or big, big on Facebook, or whatever. Because that's because we're used to it and we have an audience there, and but there's a whole audience in other places. And these some of these platforms like Twitter and Bing and Google, they're they're just beasts, and we need to be in front of as many different platforms and different people as possible.

SPEAKER_01 24:57

So I really hear like leveraging your content, right? You're like in and in as many ways as possible, uh, which is which is great. And I I definitely like I I love what you said. Like Google is kind of an afterthought because I literally just created my business on Google like this last week or two weeks ago, and I got the you know, I just got the letter from Google to confirm my address and stuff, but I hadn't created my business as a business on Google that was searchable. So if you go search Amber Howard, I actually like and like Amber Howard, like there's lots of like way, like I show up a lot, but my company doesn't show up at all or didn't anyway. And because with the same name, like my company's Amber Howard and Associates, hopefully like I'll be able to leverage all of that great, like you know, like that'll start showing up as I link them, you know, the more and more in what I'm creating. It's it's fascinating how many different tools there are out there for us to be able to leverage to really um and just like the pro like how much things have progressed. Because I think probably 15, 10, 15, 20 years ago for small and medium-sized businesses and for entrepreneurs, it was really difficult to get your message out. And and so I think what I'm hearing and what you're saying, Eric, is just with a little bit of thought and kind of a little bit of strategy, you can really leverage existing platforms that are out there to really grow, grow your following and and get, you know, get in front of more people and more of your target and ideal clients.

SPEAKER_02 26:41

Exactly. And in the case of what you just explained for your web, for your business on Google, I'm assuming that's a Google My Business listing. So what you can do is you can um like what if you're doing something on social media, let's say you you have content that you're creating and you're putting it on Twitter and Facebook and everything, be sure to put it on uh you know to to post it on your Google My Business account also. That feeds directly into Google. So these are things that you have the content already. So it's a way to kind of bring in this other uh you know, these other platforms that uh, you know, in time, once you optimize for the keywords and you do you know all the strategies, it it will pay off.

SPEAKER_01 27:28

That's really fascinating. So you said earlier that you named your business, this is my self bay, because it's kind of like a a use case or a case study for for what it is that your business does. Let's I I'd like to like what is the South Bay lifestyle? Why is why why what is it why do you love South Bay so much? Um, you know, I've never been to Los Angeles, but I know a lot of people that in my life have and they love it. But you know, I'm assuming, and from what I've seen in pictures, Los Angeles is a massive place. What is it? What's so magical for you about South Bay? And then like I'd love to get into why, you know, the case study of it in SEO.

SPEAKER_02 28:15

So um that there's a part that's uh like a bay in the LA area. For those of you that have flown into LA, LAX is like in the middle of the bay. You when you fly over uh the Pacific Ocean, that's like the middle of the bay of uh of Los Angeles. So there's the southern part of the bay, which a lot of locals live there. And then the opposite side of the bay is where a lot of the tourists go, like Malibu and Santa Monica and Venice Beach and and uh things like that. So there's about 25 million people that live in the Southern California area. The South Bay area has about a million of those people that reside there. So it's a lot of it is like a beach area, beach town, uh, beach towns. Um, and it's a place that I've uh lived there for most of my life. Uh, I've grown up there, I live there, I'm passionate about it, it's home for me. And I wanted to show that almost like a case study for uh uh small businesses. So, for example, let's say you uh you own a restaurant in a particular part of a city. You don't really need millions of followers on your social media. You need to be able to curate people that come into your uh sphere. Let's say somebody comes to your restaurant, you want to make sure, hey, follow us on Instagram, follow us on Twitter or whatever. Make sure that you give them something of value to you know keep in touch. It's a way for us to help our clients keep in touch with people that have been to their location or are interested in in a product or service for our clients. And so it's it's it's just a social media is a soft sell. It's not something that you, you know, people are actively searching for uh a service on the spot. That's the difference between uh social media, I think, and uh search engines is if your car breaks down, you're not gonna go to Instagram and search there or on Twitter. You're gonna go more to uh maybe your social circle, or you're gonna go to a search engine and search there. So we use we try to show that hey, you don't need to have millions of followers on social media. I think we have on this is my south bay between the different social media, we I think I don't know, we're at 35,000, 40,000 followers and it's all geo-targeted. So we have some people that uh, you know, I do a podcast on their show, we follow each other and things like that, and they may be out of town. But for the most part, a lot of the users, the our followers are within the South Bay area. And so pre-COVID, what we would do is if there's a fundraising event at a church or there's uh some kind of activity going on, a festival, a small business that needs to be heard, I would, you know, we would do a shout-out on Instagram or do something on social media to help people out. And that kind of synergy works in, you know, uh works for you know, you pay it forward, and then in the future, maybe they do something for you and you can exchange shout-outs and you can exchange audiences. So once you start to build something that is within a community, then it becomes an asset. So if I own a store and you own a store and we're across the street from each other and we're in the same neighborhood, and we're not competitors. If I said, hey, you give me a shout-out and I'll give you a shout-out on your social media, and let's say you have 5,000 followers, I have 4,000, 5,000, whatever. Uh there's a transaction being happening there, but currency is not being exchanged. You're doing something to uh let people know about my business. Hey, you my friend across the street, Eric, that's an accountant, you know, you might want to check him out. Here's his website, and I do something. Amber is owns a restaurant, everybody, you know, go check him out. So we exchange uh audiences, and so you need to build something of value within your website. So the point of SEO and social media and everything that we do is not to constantly be hunting for new business, it's to be able to have clients that have we've serviced, our clients have serviced, and those clients are happy. We need to stay in front of them. And it could be through social media, it could be that we ask for their email address and do a monthly, quarterly, whatever email uh blast to just stay front of mind because if we don't do it, others will. So that's the point of uh doing a local SEO campaign is to be able to show some of these things. And we're getting a little bit into with our clients on a local basis where we're doing uh we're setting up podcast shows for them. So along with doing all the things that we talked about, they can exchange audiences with podcasts, get in front of their audiences, interviewing their neighbors that uh you know might be a business or just residents in the area or whatever the case may be.

SPEAKER_01 33:28

I love how you're talking about synergistic relationships, and I think it's important I when we start out in business so much, we're kind of going it alone, right? And the more I'm really like I'm really growing in this area and learning um how to ask for help, how to, how to, you know, it's like giving it away, but also like being open and willing to receive and like really discovering what happens when you can leverage other people's credibility, right? Like leverage other people's, like if if it's true, and I believe it is that we're all networks of conversations, then it's like really looking to understand, well, you know, how can I create mutually beneficial relationships? And and I say this, I'm you know, Eric, you and I don't know each other that well, but I'm an instructor and I teach business courses for a number of the universities in Canada, and I say to my my students when it comes time to talk about careers, and I'm like, it it really is about building relationships. Every opportunity that I've ever had in my life has come from my network. I don't think I've ever applied for a job on some job board. I mean, I've applied for them, but I've never gotten jobs that way. It's always just come organically through the and and I I don't build and maintain relationships with people, like in order to, I build and maintain relationships with people because I love people. And so like I just for me, it's like a natural self-expression. I want to meet people, get to know them, build relationships, like check in. And when when when we do that in our business, it's like you know, everyone wins, right? Because it's like you're providing a service or being a contribution, people are able to leverage your network. You know, I had a great example of this. I, you know, for my students, I always have a recruiter come on at the end of the semester to talk with them about you know just about recruiting, about their career development. And he uh this guy's like you know, 25, 30 years in the business, worked for some of the biggest recruiting companies in the world in North America, and he offers my students to check their resumes and look at their LinkedIn profiles for them. And I said to them, like, I made a real clear point of saying, like, you want a guy, this is leveraging, he's not doing this because he knows you. He's offering this to you because he knows me and because of the relationship that he and I've built, and and that you know, that trust there, and and and because of the relationship that I've built, he wants to contribute to all of you because you're important to me. And I think that's so powerful, and like that we and and not like not leverage in a way that's taking advantage of, but just really getting that that is the power of connection, that that is the power of community, and that is the power of building, like what you were saying, like these synergistic uh relationships with with each other where everyone's winning in the interactions.

SPEAKER_02 36:38

Agreed. Yeah, that's uh for me. I I I agree it's it's a matter of relationships. You you work with people that you trust that you like, uh that uh there's some kind of uh comfort, and you you feel like the person is knowledgeable, they care, you're not just an account number to them. So, yeah, I I agree with everything that you just said.

SPEAKER_01 37:05

So what are some of the things like you know, it takes something sometimes as an entrepreneur, even when you are passionate. And I, you know, going back to what you said earlier about not making a distinction between work and play, you know, masters of life, like you never know whether they're working or playing, right? Because it just occurs like they're all doing the same at the same time. And and I feel like for the most part, my life is that way. I uh I I really love what it is that I do and and how you know, and we all have moments, right? Someone messaged me before the show this morning and asked them what they were up to today, and they were like, oh, I'm like gotta stay motivated. I don't really love working from home. And you know, what what do you what are some of the things that you do in those moments? I'm just curious, you know, what are some of your inspirations? What are some of the things that you do to to keep yourself motivated? Perhaps in a moment where you kind of hit a little bit of a dip.

SPEAKER_02 38:02

Sure. Um, for me, I'm lucky that I live uh walking distance from the beach. And I think that in my past life I was some kind of fish. I really take to the ocean. So it's nice to just kind of go uh and just uh, you know, you look at it, you smell it, you uh you run into the water, whatever it takes, just to kind of change and uh, you know, take your mind off of things and recharge. Um, I I've tried in the past to kind of power through things, and you know, you end up just getting stuck. You think, okay, let me just take a two-minute break, five-minute break, and let me jump back into it. And sometimes it's just not enough, you know, and you have to uh give your mind a a break sometimes, you know. It's not the most normal thing to be staring into a computer for 12 hours at a time and not moving from that position. It's just not realistic. So you have to, you know, kind of take some breaks and you know, do do something that you like. For me, it's the beach, or uh, you know, we have our puppy, so we, you know, take her for a walk or hang out with her a little bit, and just you know, no TV, no computer in in my case, since I'm on the computer all the time, and just uh do do things that is not something that I would be doing when I'm working.

SPEAKER_01 39:26

I love nature too, and I love water. I um I'm originally from New Zealand, and so I think there's something. There's something about oceans. I say it all the time. So maybe I was a fish in a past life too, Eric. Uh, but there is just something when you're when you grow up near an ocean or you spend it, just gets into your DNA. And up here in Canada, there's a lot of lakes, but if you kind of live in the middle part of Canada, and Canada is like massive, right? And so people don't like typically travel a lot within Canada. It's like tip used to be anyway, we'll see how things come out on the other side of COVID. It used to be cheaper to fly to like the Caribbean for vacation than it was to travel within Canada because of the size of the population. So my experience is a lot of Canadians they'll they'll do cottage vacations here, but they you know they don't travel a lot outside of their you know, their kind of like immediate area unless they're leaving the country. And lakes are incredible, they really are, and they're beautiful, but they're not an ocean.

SPEAKER_02 40:28

It's different, you know, whatever you're used to. I've I've been lucky enough to uh get used to the ocean. I think if I live by a lake or a river, you know, uh whatever, I I think that I'm I'm just attracted to a body of water.

SPEAKER_01 40:42

Yeah, it's really great. I I like what you said. I think it's important to take that time to reset to kind of clear your head. And I've been learning as I've gone on in my career, it's like you're actually doing less as you accomplish more, which has been, you know, a really big uh shift in mindset for me. Because I used to be someone who was like grinding it out all the time, working really hard, and and I'm learning that um when you allow your mind to like kind of slow down and just be still, though that's where some of your greatest ideas come from.

SPEAKER_02 41:19

I agree. I I I was guilty of that in the beginning, where you know, you use the word grind. I would grind it out where I'm you know, first of all, I'm trying to uh perfect my art. So one of the ways that you do that is you practice it. And so I wanted to do everything, I wanted to see the results, I wanted to make sure that I'm able to do it. And so what happens is that slows down everything as far as growth goes, uh, because you can't take on new clients, you're just doing the work for the clients that you have, and that's about it. And so when I got into delegating and managing, um, that's where the growth happens. And you know, it doesn't mean that you just hand over the keys to the car and say, go. You you still need to uh you know work on it and manage them, but it's not like you're you're you know, I I got I've really gotten away from micromanaging.

SPEAKER_01 42:12

Yeah, building a team of people around you and like trusting and exactly. Um I think sometimes that can be, you know, this is definitely an area of growth for me as more. I'm like stretching myself and and causing an expansion. And um like we we have a lot of, I think limiting beliefs. We can have a lot of limiting beliefs around, you know, oh it's it's just quicker if I do it myself than teaching someone else to do it. And you know, like sometimes to the arrogant side, well, I know how to do it better, kind of like. And uh over the weekend I participated in a personal development course. I I you know, people have hobbies, some people like gardening, some people like painting. I personal development is a hobby for me. I would be I can happily spend 20, I I I said earlier this week to someone 20, 30 hours a month, and they said, You're hilarious. It's probably more like 20, 30 hours a week. Because I just get a lot of joy out of learning and growing and expanding. And this week, like I'm like, what if instead of doing the work, like what if I took on facilitating others in fulfilling on my vision in the world? Like, what would that look like? And and so I think it's kind of cool to keep being in the inquiry of things and and you know, what do what do we have to give up in order to have whatever our own, like whatever limiting beliefs do we, what limiting beliefs do we need to give up in order to have the level of success and happiness that we want for ourselves in our life?

SPEAKER_02 43:52

Yeah, I I found that for me, um, the difficult part was I felt like I worked hard to to create this customer base. And to kind of trust in these other people to uh do some of the work. Like I have the IT person, I have the link builder, the uh video editor, like I have different people doing different things, different tasks. Um, but I just felt like it has to be done to a certain level. And uh I I had to kind of relinquish quote unquote control and trust, trust in them because I've, you know, I I I trained them up, they came to me qualified in their field, in their skill set. I just had to um, you know, I I'm I'm in a position where, you know, I uh they do the work and I uh check it out. And then there are other things that I do the work myself still, but for the most part, um, you know, I I need that time to kind of do these things, to be on a podcast, to uh manage, to check on uh existing accounts, not not necessarily to do all the steps that go with SEO and digital marketing. As you can see, we just touched on it. There are a lot of steps to do to kind of clean clean up your digital marketing campaign. And we've touched on several points, and those points can take you know an individual or an agency a lot a lot of time to uh to do it proficiently. And so if we add even more tests to that, you know, there are things that we haven't talked about as far as link building goes and uh some other things, you know, there's a lot of work that goes into optimizing a website. Yes, it's free, Google doesn't charge for it, but you have to do the work in order to get optimized. And so uh those those are the things that I've been able to kind of let go, to let go of. And you know, I I've been um, you know, I I probably in the beginning, I if I had bad experiences, I was gonna pull back, but I didn't. I had good experiences with the people that I brought on. So I'm I'm I'm uh uh it's it's like a self-awareness thing a little bit, and it's a little bit of evolution on my part about you know that I don't have to do every little thing, uh every every aspect doesn't need to have my fingerprints on it when it comes to the digital marketing campaign.

SPEAKER_01 46:16

So powerful and and such wisdom there, Eric. I think, you know, like how do we develop other people's leadership, right? How do we cause other people's leadership and their growth? And inside of doing that, like really being you know serving the people around us who who want to work with us, and then you know, we can grow our our you know our impact and and reach more and more people from there. So great. Thank you so much for being on the show. I uh I've enjoyed getting to know you, I've enjoyed learning about SEO, I know my audience will as well. And and for those of you listening to the show, Eric has uh you know a really generous offer. So in the show notes, you'll be able to get find out how to get a hold of him and find him on the various social platforms. And on his website, you can, you know, at the bottom of the page or the homepage of the site, you can actually share the information about your website, and he will run a free report for you on your website so that you can as a gift to those who who my audience and who listen to the show. So, Eric, just a real pleasure. Thank you for for being someone who has the courage to pursue the things and and follow your heart and what you're passionate about. And it's just been a real privilege getting to speak with you this morning.

SPEAKER_02 47:30

Thank you, Amber. Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_01 47:32

For those of you listening, have a wonderful weekend and we will catch you next week.

SPEAKER_00 47:38

Thank you so much for joining us for this week's episode. For show info, visit what wouldamberdo.com. And for information about Amber Howard and associates' offerings and services, visit amberhowardinc.com.