Welcome back to the Strategies Sprints podcast, everybody. I’m your host, Simon Severino. My guest today is Stephan Spencer, an internationally recognized SEO expert, bestselling author, and sought-after keynote speaker. He is the co-author of The Art of SEO, widely called the Bible of SEO. He also hosts two podcasts, Marketing Speak and Get Yourself Optimized. Welcome, everybody. Stephan Spencer

Hello, it’s great to be here. Thanks for having me, Simon.

It’s so cool to have you here, Stephan. The fact that you’re here is the first validation of your main SEO tip, which is that networking via masterminds is a real thing and that it works because we met in a mastermind.

Yes, we did.

And you have so cool stuff to share with our community because you will share it with us how you network via masterminds and how, for example, just one specific mastermind, the Genius Network, Tony Robbins Platinum Partnership Program, has significantly affected your business bottom line. So, super excited. I’m gonna take notes.

Okay, that sounds good.

How are you, Stephan?

I’m doing fabulous. Yeah, I’m so blessed.

And what are you currently working on?

Well, I’m working on getting my small consultancy into more of a self-managing organization, turning it more into an agency, which ironically is what I went away from back in 2010. I sold my agency at the time to another company, and then that company got acquired by a multi-billion dollar ad agency, conglomerate Dentsu Aegis.

When I exited in 2010, I decided that I wanted a lifestyle business, but in actuality, that was holding me back because I thought, okay, I can travel the world. I can follow Tony Robbins around and have all these amazing exclusive experiences and learn all sorts of cool things. But the thing is, I couldn’t relegate myself. I couldn’t remove myself from it.

The critical path of my business. I still had to stay involved; otherwise, things would fall apart. So, I want an agency that’s self-managing so that I can hang out as the visionary and not have to manage all the implementation and client work.

This is so beautiful. It’s amazing to see when people with passion start something and then become their own bottleneck and get to exactly this stage where they say, “Okay, let me create the conditions for me to let go.” So this thing can flourish even more because from now on, I am the only thing holding this back, just my time limit. Beautiful. So cool. And yeah, tell us about networking. What’s your approach? What’s your experience?

So, I don’t actually call it networking. I just think of it as I’m investing in myself. When I invest in high-level masterminds, these are oftentimes ones that cost thousands of dollars. I realized that not only is this an investment in money, but it’s also an investment of my time, my energy and my focus.

So, I am very deliberate and disciplined about where I allocate these precious resources. So, currently, I’m on the Genius Network. I’m also in Strategic Coach, Abundance 360, and JVMM, which is where we met, Joint Venture Mastermind. And then there’s a free Mastermind that I managed to get hooked up with where we’re going through the book You Were Born for This.

And so that’s not costing me any money, but it is already revealing a lot of light in my life. So that’s what I’m up to currently. But I’ve been in Tony Robbins Platinum Partnership and did that for three years. I’ve done Taki Moore‘s Black Belt and just so many. Neil Strauss has a mastermind called The Society. I did that for, I don’t know, six, seven years.

And there’s a bunch of others that I’m sure I’m forgetting. And the thing is, I get something out of each one of them, but they’re, uh, they have a certain shelf life or a certain appropriateness for my life at the time. And then I need to kind of follow the signs that say, okay, it’s time to move on. But I have gotten so much value from these different masterminds. Tony Robbins, for example, has a platinum partnership, which is a six-figure-a-year investment.

It is serious. I met my wife through it. I had a spiritual epiphany and an awakening through it in India on a platinum trip. I had a physical and kind of emotional transformation. Like I was literally unrecognizable 10, 12 months later after my first Tony Robbins. At that time, I went to Unleash The Power Within. I had this powerful epiphany. I walked on the 2,000-degree hot coals in my bare feet.

I didn’t get burned. And I realized, wow, if I can do that, I can do anything. Why am I holding myself back? So, two weeks later, I got Lasix. I didn’t have to wear glasses anymore. Three months later, I got a hair transplant. So, I look completely different than I did prior. And I changed my diet. Started exercising. I became literally unrecognizable. I’d show up at conferences to speak, and I’d hang out in groups, and they wouldn’t know who I was until I told them, and they’re like, “Oh my God, it’s Stephen Spencer, what?” And then they’d like to show me around. “Look, it’s Stephen.” Can you believe this guy?Anyway, so that was fun, but yeah.

Of course, it paid for itself revenue-wise. That was really nice. I managed with the Platinum Partnership, which was the most expensive investment for me. I managed to get that in ROI, direct client ROI, pretty quickly because Tony had me speak at business mastery several times. I got a lot of business from that. Some Platinum Partners became clients as well, and I met them through networking and hanging out. So yeah, it’s been amazing.

Let’s dive deeper into this beautiful topic. The Buddhists say three things you need to learn. Dharma, Sangha, Buddha. Buddha, that’s yourself. You have everything. You just don’t connect to it right now. Dharma is the teachings. You need teachings. It can be a teacher or at least some form of teaching, which can be tools or templates.

The third one, Sanga, is that you need peers. You need your community that is on the same journey and has the same problems, and you discuss them. And hi, Connor from Barcelona, hi. So, let’s go deep into that. It was so powerful, what you experienced on many different occasions. What were the elements or maybe the main elements for you that made the difference?

Well, looking back, I would say now it was serendipity. It was the letting go and letting God, realizing that I’m not the only one driving this bus here and that I can just allow the universe to unfold and present the people who I need to meet at the right time, the right way and the right place. For example, after my India trip, I had that spiritual awakening,

Two months later, I was in Palm Springs, Palm Desert, for Date with Destiny, which is an amazing event that Tony does. I highly recommend it. And at the very end, everything had finished. I was in the lobby, actually. I was in the lobby. And a platinum partner friend introduced me and my wife.

And serendipity wasn’t just about being a Platinum Partner and making that conscious choice to step up and whatever. That’s like the ego speaking, like, yeah, you’re so smart and clever and whatever. No, it wasn’t that. It was just that I was humble because 12 hours earlier, I had prayed for her to show up. And I was writing my relationship vision as part of this exercise of creating a poster board.

And the relationship vision, your power virtues, your mission statement, and all that. I was working on that, and after I finished writing up my relationship vision, I realized who I was going to be—not just who my soulmate was going to be like and how she was going to show up, but how I was going to show up and how the relationship was going to blossom. And I prayed for her to show up.

So, I was very specific, too. I asked for her to show up right away. Twelve hours later, 18 hours after we first met, I said, “I love you,” and she said it back. Nine days later, I said, I gave her a ring and dropped to one knee in a hot air balloon above the Las Vegas desert, to her complete surprise. I knew within 10 minutes of meeting her that she was the one.

But the funny thing, a funny twist of fate here or kind of turn to the story, she said no. She said not yet because it would only have been nine days. I mean, really, that’s pretty out there to have a ring and everything nine days after you meet someone. So nine months after, I reproposed and she said yes, but we were inseparable the whole time in between. It was just, it was amazing.

And serendipity is just the magic of how life works on this plane of existence. It’s pretty amazing. Oh, and by the way, I was agnostic my whole life until that India trip. Yeah, till age 42, I didn’t really even believe in God.

Amazing. One of the positive aspects of you exposing yourselves to so many networks and situations is that you have met a ton of cool people. So, I am specifically curious who you nominate for the Strategy Award after one word from our sponsor. You can pick only one person who gets the strategy award.

Okay. Well, I met Gareth Simpson, the founder of Seeker Digital in the UK. Because of all the networking, connections and mastermind, but again, I’m certain it was serendipity. So this guy is amazing. He has a pay-for-performance pricing model, which is just really genius and really sets him apart from everybody else. His company does link-building and link outreach, and it’s essentially digital PR with that important distinction that if you don’t get the links, you don’t pay.

Wow.

You pay a retainer. But then, if you don’t get the value out of it in terms of the links, then you would get a refund, but they always deliver. They always deliver. It might take a couple extra months to fill a month’s budget, but they deliver. And what an amazing way to do a risk reversal.

Absolutely. I love guarantees because it creates this situation where both have skin in the game. Now, you’re not a brand, and it’s just a transaction. Now you’re a team. Now, you are in this together. Both parts want it to work. It changes communication, the atmosphere, and energy, right?

In the relationship. I love it. We also have introduced last year a guarantee on our main coaching program. And that has changed everything. We take it even more seriously. The client takes it even more seriously. It’s beautiful. The energy that it creates. Nobody wants to not win. So we are all in this. We are a team.

Yeah, and you know what? The thing about money that I learned since that whole spiritual epiphany is that money’s energy. You can give money in a way that generates a lot of value, and you can give something away for free that generates a lot of value and get money in return later, but it’s like you’re paying it forward in a way. An example of this is that we did a free SEO audit for Target.com many, many years ago when we were first really making a name for ourselves as an SEO consultancy and agency. This was in early 2000.

One or something like that, two, three, or early 2000s. The agreement was that we would do this amazing free audit that we normally would charge a lot for in exchange for a testimonial and the use of their logo on our website. And that really catapulted us to another level because people started seeing, wow, you’ve done work and created a lot of value for Target. We want to hire you, too. So we would get all these big blue chip clients because of that free audit we did.

So, you could find, for example, a nonprofit and, you know, something that you’re passionate about and donate your amazing services or products to them. And maybe they’ll give you a testimonial or some sort of introduction or referrals or what have you that could catapult you to another level.

Let’s talk about your SEO book. You have written many books, but specifically one has become the Bible in SEO. What was the reason why this one became the Bible? Or what were the different layers?

Well, again, there was a lot of serendipity there. So, I didn’t really know Rand Fishkin at the time. This was back in 2008 or 2007. And I knew of him. But I gave a presentation at a conference that he was just really impressed with. We were both on a panel, the Give It Up panel. I share your best secret tips on SEO. And I really over-delivered. I shared stuff that nobody else in the audience knew. Maybe a few hands went up when I asked If anyone knew about this one. Does anyone know about this one?

So, at the next conference a few weeks later, Rand Fishkin came up to me and hugged me in the speaker lounge and said, “Dude, you really brought it,” and we just started talking. We decided we were going to do a book together. And pretty much by the end of the conversation, we had a book deal because, at that very moment, Danny Sullivan was at the O’Reilly Unconference. We contacted him and asked him if we could get an intro to O’Reilly. He also talked to some people there because he was right there on campus with everybody at Foo Camp. And yeah, pretty much by the end of the day, they said, “Yep, we’re gonna say yes to this with you.”

Yeah, the rest is history. So, a couple of things about putting a book together, I think it needs to be a labor of love and don’t worry about the fact that you’re probably getting paid less than minimum wage for the time you put into it. It’s really about giving back and creating value. Yeah. Karma. It’s just, well, you know, you’ll, you’ll get it back in spades, and that’s been the case. Put countless hours into the three editions that we’ve done already, and now we’re already on a fourth edition.

Rand has dropped off the book, but he’s too busy these days, and it’s not really his area of interest right now in comparison to what he’s doing with SparkToro. But yeah, it’s been amazing. Just don’t worry about the how; figure out who’s right to help you. My co-authors and ghostwriters help as well. It’s a labor of love.

We have so many countries right now saying hello. Let’s say hello to some. Hello from Somaliland. And I’m so curious about the three books that shaped you most.

Yes, so Ho’oponopono: Your Path to True Forgiveness is amazing. It’s by Dr. Matt James.

The Ho’oponopono prayer is from Hawaii, and it’s about not just asking for forgiveness but coming to a sense of completeness and peace about things that have passed, people who have passed and situations that haven’t gone your way. So that’s been super powerful for me. You Were Born For This. I mentioned-

I’m in that mastermind, and we’re going through the book. So I haven’t finished it yet, but it’s already created some really powerful miracles in my life, as has the book Ask White Dove. So that’s written by a medium. Pretty amazing and, yeah, life-changing.

So cool. Three books that were never mentioned here. Amazing. And Stefan, what have you recently changed your mind about?

Reincarnation. Yeah, I used to not believe in it. Oh, I mean, I didn’t believe in much really before I was kind of awakened by monks in India who gave me that Diksha blessing. But yeah, I didn’t really buy into reincarnation until fairly recently. And now, like it’s, it’s obvious.

It’s funny. I was on a five-day retreat two weeks ago with Rupert Spira, who is a wonderful spiritual teacher from the Advaita non-dual scholarship. We went through what it is right now, which is the main question that you ask in Advaita. What is observing right now? And so you strip off, it’s not my body, you strip off, it’s not my mind. And so you are in the eternal consciousness. And you say, OK, I am this infinite consciousness, this infinite awareness. And after five days of just being infinite awareness, we were all discussing, what about now reincarnation and stuff? So, it was quite clear that we did not have any evidence of it.

We do not have any evidence of the opposite. It seems to be the most sane assumption that life is like a river of water, and then you have these whirlwinds inside of it, and that human life is basically a whirlwind. It is the same structure. It is just an intensification for a specific period of time.

And we call it I, and when it dissolves, it dissolves into the river. And the parts of it will become the next whirlwind somewhere else, but the information is not lost; it’s just reconfigured. So it seems to me, without having any evidence, that it is the most sane assumption. I’m curious about your thought process behind it. Yeah, so consciousness absolutely survives the body.

And we are not our bodies. We have bodies. One of the most holy and elevated people that has ever lived was a rabbi who shared this concept that he would talk to his body as if it were a separate entity. Say, all right, body, I think you’re hungry, so let’s go get some food. It’s time to get a shower now; come on, body, we’re gonna clean up. And if you think of it in that terms, and you actually could try this, you could go through this exercise for a while and see how that shifts your consciousness because we’re so much more than the physical atoms that make up our body. It’s something that is hard to grasp until you really have some sort of epiphany or access to something.

More because I heard this going to some different masterminds. There was a great workshop I attended an intensive and the society mastermind the Neil Strauss one and we went all through this and I didn’t the light didn’t come on with that like if there was this one exercise worse we’re on stage each one of us had our time on stage and we had to explain who we were.

And then everybody was instructed to say, but who are you? But who are you really, you know, like over and over again? And it just didn’t resonate for me. It didn’t really help me achieve any breakthrough. Some people had breakthroughs, but everybody’s, you know, you know, accesses in their own time, in their own way. But yeah, it’s incredible to see the bigger picture, at least get a glimpse of it. And just pray for it; that is my advice. Pray for access to those epiphanies.

Absolutely. It goes back to why your book number one touched you so much: that we are our essence, and our true nature is peace. And it’s happiness, not an excited kind of happiness, but being the white space. That allows everything to come in and to get out. So this kind of calm, generous state and being the space in which things come and go, that this is basically our true nature and it’s always here and it’s just veiled most of the time. We don’t connect to it, we disconnect. But it’s here.

And this is one of the most important concepts I’ve ever gotten in my life so far, and it is that every thought, word, and deed is recorded. It goes into what’s called the Akasha, or the Akashic records, and you can get an Akashic record reading. Someone introduced me to an internet marketer, Steven Renton, who introduced me to Anne Marie Pizarro.

Who is amazing and I’ve been working with her for several years, my wife has as well. And what amazing insights we’ve gotten. You can ask the records keepers who Ann is channeling to give you answers to everything pretty much other than when are you gonna die and how. But yeah, to have that kind of access to what’s come before, what’s coming. What’s in your present moment based on everything you’ve ever done said thought is a real gift. It’s a real gift. So it’s a real thing. Akashic Records is not just some woo-woo fantasy. It’s legit.

I have a similar approach. I practice behaving with every object and with every person as if it were myself or my kids, which I love above everything else. And so when I touch my kids, I do it with the most kindness that I am capable of. And so I try to think of everybody as being the same and that we are not disconnected. We are the same soul. We are the same being in the very end. So even when I wash the dishes, I try to be kind and gentle to the dishes. Or if I leave a room, did I leave like I would leave the room for my kids? And yeah, love it. And now, if we go back to your business endeavors, looking forward, what excites you? What are you trying to solve or to build?

Yeah, well, I’m working on a self-help book, which is a big departure from the technical marketing books that I’ve put out so far. And I’m very excited about that. Excited and scared a bit as well, but I want to touch a lot of people and help them see that we live in a friendly universe. And so that’s the whole point.

And the book is just going to be part of the whole picture. I’m going to do events and whatever else I’m led to do, but this is something that I’m very passionate about. I’m actually working that into the business. So it’s not just an SEO agency consultancy working with folks who resonate with me and who resonate with me and with whom I can help amplify their message. It’s also about amplifying my message and getting a lot of lives changed epiphanies, and so forth out there.

Oh, two powerful topics that turn me on. One is the friendly universe. And the other is, how do we bring more in of what we are in our businesses, in our agencies? Let’s go to the universe first. Is it a friendly universe? I have the same assumption. I am absolutely certain that it is a friendly universe in which we live and that we are peaceful in our true nature. At the same time, if we watch just the current unfolding political and societal events, we see all kinds of stuff going on. What’s your take?

Yeah, so you gotta be open to receiving the messages that there’s more to this than just the physical, tangible stuff that you see, taste, touch, feel, et cetera. It’s really a magical place once you open yourself up to those serendipities and the magic and so forth. So, a quick example. So, my ex-wife’s mother passed away from COVID-19, and my stepdaughter watched the Netflix show Surviving Death.

There’s an episode about receiving messages from your loved ones who’ve passed. And she’s not into anything non-tangible at all, so she just decided, “I’m going to try this.” Within about a half hour, this brochure ends up in her driveway and says, “I love you, granddaughter, and it has the very music box.” On it, a picture of it that she had gotten from her grandmother 30 years prior.

And, like, there are no coincidences. And she was just so touched and sobbing and everything over this. I mean, clearly, it was a message. And it was, you know, for her reassurance that there’s more and that this is not all bleak dystopian future sort of stuff. This is a beautiful miracle that we’re experiencing in life. So that’s just an example of it, and once you open yourself up to it, you kind of tune into that frequency. All these clues are everywhere.

So, the universe checked off. Now, let’s go to the second topic, which I resonate a lot with it, and many people in our community listening right now have the same topic. I am evolving as a human being. I am evolving spiritually. How much of it can I bring into my business? My business might be a specialized technical thing like SEO, marketing or growth consulting. So, how can I bring in more of what nurtures me and what I know is good for them? But in an appropriate way, yeah.

So much, so much. Actually, you were part of the science, and I could really ramp that up because we had a conversation, and you shared an example of your equalizer webinar and template, and the title tag kept showing up on the tabs. I still had that open, and it was like having the freedom to choose the clients you want. And I knew that was a message for me. I don’t have to work with clients who don’t bring me joy, who aren’t adding massive value out in the world, and who aren’t a vibrational match to me. I don’t have to work with them, and they don’t have to work with me. And there is plenty.

There’s no scarcity. So, just in the last couple of months, I’ve gotten double or triple the lead flow that I normally get. And it’s not that I’m doing anything different with generating leads. It’s that I’m more intentional about how I focus and how I vibrate; I guess I don’t know how else to describe it. It’s just like amazing, amazing stuff.

Things that you think, okay, that’s pretty wild. For example, Prospect had a call with me to go over SEO and what an engagement would look like, and he said, “The weirdest thing happened. I got to tell you before we jump into all the details of SEO.” I was just listening to a conversation between Tucker Maxx, Dan Sullivan, and Stephan.

Tucker just brought you up 45 minutes ago. Like out of the blue, he dropped your name and the art of SEO into a completely unrelated conversation. And I thought, wow, that’s pretty amazing. So, yeah, I just know that you can bring all of your vision, your kind of soul purpose and what’s important to you. Into your business, and there’ll be room for it.

Your thing seems to be Synchronicity. You know how things come together. You know that Carl Gustav Jung wrote the whole book on synchronicity because he had this moment where this animal was on his. He had a patient, and she was talking about a butterfly. The butterfly was on the window at that moment, and that triggered him to explore that path. Do you know that book?

I don’t. What’s the name of it?

I have to send it to you. I think it’s synchronicity in German, but I have to check the English version. What is the exact title? I will send it to you because every time we talk, you have these moments of synchronicity where different things come together, and something happens. Yeah. So beautiful. Stephan, who should be my next guest?

Oh, wow, I could give you a huge list, but I’ll start with Scott Donnell. He’s been a guest on Get Yourself Optimized, my biohacking and spirituality podcast. He’s this, Elwin, he’s also a client. His company is called HAPPY. And what it does the product is a biohacking device that helps you to tune in to certain frequencies of experience of happiness, alertness, relaxation, and sleepiness.

There are these six different frequencies or channels you can tune into, and you don’t hear anything. It is just a low-level EMF that the device emits, and it emulates; for example, the alert signal emulates having a cup of coffee without any of the jittery side effects, which is pretty amazing.

And yeah, so Scott Donnell is a really cool, super smart entrepreneur, and he’s got another company that helps kids become more entrepreneurial, has a whole marketplace for kids, and has a training program for entrepreneurship for them. That’s called My First Sale. So he’s a really cool guy. I met him through Genius Network and Strategic Coach.

Powerful. And where can people stick around and read more about you?

Well, StephanSpencer.com is my main website. There are a lot of SEO resources there, and you can get lots and lots of free information there. But I also encourage you to Get Yourself Optimized if you’re into spirituality, biohacking or just personal development, kind of upscaling and leveling. It’s my passion project. It’s my podcast. Just go to getyourselfoptimized.com for that. I have another podcast. It’s all marketing and that’s fantastic as well. Mainly online marketing. That one’s called Marketing Speak. So that’s at marketingspeak.com.

Oh, and now that you mentioned biohacking yesterday, I had a talk with somebody from our mastermind and and we were talking CrossFit and and basically, yeah, having fun. And he said, “Oh, and you know, Stefan, he’s so much into biohacking. You have to talk biohacking.” And I was like, OK, so tell us a little bit. What do you do one biohacked day in the life of Stephan?

Well, I take a ton of different supplements, like Neo40. And gosh, what’s the? Hyperbiotics Immune with Epicor is another one. And True Niagen is another. These are really amazing supplements. Oh, Brain Octane Oil, which is a C8 chain of MCT oil, medium chain triglycerides. You can get that at bulletproof.com.

And yeah, the happy device I mentioned, but some big, transformational experiences that I’ve had from a biohacking perspective were 40 years of Zen, a company owned by Dave Asprey, the founder of Bulletproof. And it’s like you can experience 40 years of Zen meditation, condensed down into a week with neural feedback, with these intense many-hour sessions of neurofeedback.

It was incredible. I accessed memories I hadn’t had since I was a tiny kid. That was super cool. Another biohack that was profound for me was stem cell therapy. I’m actually 108. No, I’m just kidding. I definitely don’t, I think, look as old as I am. I’m 50, and people are usually surprised to hear that.

So, stem cell therapy is amazing. I went to Dr. Harry Adelson, Docere Clinics. And yeah, I could go into some detail on that, but that’s a whole thing. And then what’s another one that, oh, those are two really good ones.

He was right. Thank you, Brady.

Yeah. All right.

Thank you, Stephan, for being on the show and sharing so generously your experience, your wisdom. And yes, come back soon, my friend. Well, thank you so much for having me and you’re doing great work. This is, yeah, your show and what you do is helping a lot of people. So thank you for that. Thank you so much. Bye bye.