An Entrepreneur By Design

An Entrepreneur By Design

This is Stephan’s podcast appearance about An Entrepreneur By Design on David Mansilla.

Welcome to the Break-Free podcast. I am your host, David Mansilla. As everybody knows, this podcast is dedicated to interviewing people who are changing the world for the better by running their own businesses. And what a beautiful example it is today, having my brother and my friend, Stephan Spencer, with us. Brother, welcome to the show.

Thank you, David. It’s always a joy to connect with you.  

Fantastic. For the audience, brother, can you tell me your full name? Where do you live, and what do you do for a living?  

Yeah. So, David, my name is Stephan Spencer, and I live in Miami. I have been an entrepreneur since the mid-nineties, and my business is an SEO agency. This is actually my second time around. So, I sold my first business in 2010 and started another SEO agency. So, yeah, it’s just search engine optimization, which is helping my clients get higher rankings in Google.

That’s fantastic. You know, when you say the mid-90s and you’re still in business, that alone is a beautiful example of your determination to become a better person and add value to the world. As you know, most businesses are gone by the second year, and the businesses that make it to 10 years are, what, 2%? So, let’s explore that first. If you’re saying mid-90s and you look like you’re 35, that means that you started when you were 10 or 15 years old.

I may look 35, but I’m 52.

Wow. That’s incredible. So, let’s go back to your life. Let’s picture your line of thinking when you were in your last year of high school. That’s a beautiful fork in everybody’s life. What were you thinking, and what were you trying to do with your life back then? 

You know, I thought I was going to go to college to learn biology and maybe study cancer, maybe help cure cancer. And it was, yeah, quite a different path that I took, but at the time, I knew that I wanted a family and the stability of a marriage. I grew up in a lot of instability and had actually been in a foster home for a few years, the last few years of high school.

When you’re saying go back to, like, you know, travel back in time to my last year of high school, I was a foster child at that time. And I, yeah, I just wanted to have my own family as quickly as possible. And I got married at 19, so.

Wow.

Now I’m on my second marriage, second and last. I’m with my soulmate now, but at the time that I met her, my first wife. I was very keen to get married, and so, I don’t know, less than six months after we met, we were married and had our first child together, not even a year after that.

So yeah, that was quite a different path than most of my colleagues in high school and college, but that served me well. Of course, I have no regrets. I have three beautiful grown children, daughters, from that marriage. And now I have a three-year-old son, and I’m with my soulmate.  

That’s incredible. Did you start working right after high school to support your marriage, or were you still going to school?

So, I was going to school for a bachelor’s in molecular biology, cellular and molecular biology, which I got from the University of Michigan. Then I went to grad school in Madison, Wisconsin, to UW Madison for biochemistry for a PhD. And then, I dropped out of the PhD program about a year and a half into it to start an internet company.

What was the line of thinking you wanted? The paths are completely different, right? You went from micro microbiology to zeros and ones. What was in your mind back then?  

Well, you know, when I was early on in high school and Even, like, 7th, 8th grade, I was teaching myself coding. I taught myself BASIC, assembly language, yeah, a number of different programming languages. I was even coding in hexadecimal, which is just super geeky. Wrote my own bulletin board system from scratch, so it actually is kind of more of a, going back to my roots, to, you know, abandon the biochemistry stuff and start an internet company and an agency, which SEO wasn’t really what I started with because it didn’t work.

Actually exist. Back in 94-95, it was an internet agency and marketing agency, and we were building websites, but then we were also making sure those websites had some landing pages that were designed for the search engines of the time, which were AltaVista, Lycos, InfoSeek, and all that. I never liked that work. I thought it was trying to cheat the system, creating separate landing pages for each search engine. Then, when Google came around and was so much better than all the other search engines, I figured I had to reverse engineer the search engine. 

And we did. We really focused on that and the websites that we built were search engine optimized for Google. And then we started offering that as a consulting service. So you didn’t need to have us build your website. We can just do the consulting.

That’s amazing that you were a true pioneer of the internet, especially on the marketing side.  

I don’t know. I don’t know about that. I met some of the true pioneers. I met Tim Berners Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, at a conference in 1994 when I was still going to graduate school. He made an impression on me. I also met a guy named Rob McCool, who I may not have heard of, probably not heard of, and I hadn’t at the time. He was the guy who coded the Netscape server.

So not, he wasn’t Marc Andreessen. He was one of Marc Andreessen’s team, and before that, he coded the NCSA HTTP D server, which was, you know, the server component of NCSA Mosaic. So he worked with Mark Henderson at the University of Illinois before they got recruited; what’s his name? The guy who co-founded Netscape.

When I met this guy and had a conversation with him at this conference, the second international World Wide Web conference, I was enamored. I was just like, wow, this is so big. I need to jump on this bandwagon. And, at the same time, you know, there are no coincidences. I had a run-in with my advisor, who insisted that I spend way more time in the lab and not any time at home with my young children.

And I’m like, no, this is not going to work for me. I’m not staying until 9 p.m. every night. I’ll be leaving at six like I have been, and he’s like, well, you’re going to be leaving my lab then. That meant starting all over again in a different lab and losing a year’s worth of work, and I’m like, okay, I’m dropping out. So, I did, you know, it’s a perfect storm. It was beautifully orchestrated from above. I wasn’t meant to go through the PhD program, and all that wasn’t my calling. Yeah, I needed that little kick out the door.

It’s crazy, right? Because I always say that problems are the way to go to the next level if you don’t actually Embrace your problems and figure out what’s the lesson behind them and where you’re supposed to go next. You stay behind with regret for finding the problem, right?

In reality, the real reality is when the veil is lifted. There are no problems; There are only blessings, but we don’t see them until we zoom out far enough. And you know, so in The Alchemist, the book by Paulo Coelho—a beautiful, amazing book—there’s a story in there about how the shepherd boy was going to get robbed and murdered by these bandits, but it didn’t happen because, you know, there were plans for him from above.

He ended up getting very sick, and he couldn’t walk his sheep any further, so he had to lay down and take a nap. He was vomiting, and everything felt terrible, but then the robbers were waiting for him down the road. They never saw him come by, and they got tired of waiting. Eventually, they gave up and went home. I don’t know if you, did you ever read that book.

Yeah, many years ago. I don’t remember anything.  

Maybe it’s time to reread it or listen to the audiobook. It was read by Jeremy Irons, the actor. It’s beautifully narrated. I actually listened to the audiobook. I didn’t read it. I loved it. That was last year. I went through the book and powerful spiritual lessons in that book. That book was a download. You know how long it took for Paulo to write the book that sold 150 million copies? Twelve days.

That’s it?

That’s it. It was just waiting.

Sometimes, it takes a year or two years to write a book. I wrote a book, and it took me about two years to write.

This is an example of something that’s just waiting for you. The upper world is ready for you to download it.  

Incredible. God and destiny, right? This gives you so much peace. Lately, I’ve been enjoying having this incredible peace and joy that I never experienced before, you know, encountering the fact that everything has a purpose, as you said, and that the problems are opportunities in disguise.

And they’re almost like—I almost feel like we have, you know, these guiding rails. And when you bump against the rail, you feel the pain, but you were supposed to go back to the center and keep running, right?

Right. I have a similar analogy, funny enough. I think of life as a magnetized track.

You feel like you’re on a monorail. It’s very hard to get off the track. You really have to work hard to derail yourself, but when you just relax into it, you know you’re being carried by the river. You’re being guided through life every step of the way. It takes a lot of the load off, a lot of the stress and anxiety, fear—you know, fear is inverse faith.

I learned that from Florence Scovel Shinn from the book she wrote a hundred years ago now called The Game of Life and How to Play It. It was like the matrix back 100 years ago, written as a book. It’s incredible. It’s such a great book. And so if you’re facing problems, you’re not seeing the gift in it because everything has a purpose, you know, I just had a conversation with one of my spiritual coaches not even two hours ago. He was telling me about Hundreds of years ago, Rabbi Akiva, a very righteous, spiritual rabbi, who, one Friday, didn’t make it back home from another city in time for Shabbat, which is the Friday night.

By the rules of Judaism, he couldn’t continue walking. So he had his donkey, and he stopped, and he had a candle, and so he lit a candle. But it was windy, and it blew out after a little while. Okay, well, this was a pretty horrible weekend spent out in the cold with his donkey.

He couldn’t even have his candle that he lit at the beginning before Shabbat started at the candle-lighting time. According to Jewish Law, you’re not allowed to light candles during Shabbat. He followed Jewish Law, so he just toughed it out. He came to find out later on after he arrived after Shabbat finished that there were robbers in the town.

And he would have gotten robbed and killed. If he was there when they arrived and they went right past him and they didn’t see him because his candle blew out, everything has a reason and a purpose. It’s all for our highest and best good. And if we don’t believe that to be true, we’re not seeing the bigger picture because there is a very big picture, and we’re glimpsing only a fraction of a percent of that bigger picture. So, it requires a lot of faith, a lot of trust in God and a lot of certainty.

Yeah, actually, I’ve been studying the Bible very, truly lately, and there’s a passage that says that God’s thoughts are much higher than our thoughts because sometimes you question yourself, why me, God? Why me, right?

And it’s exactly what we’re talking about. And you know what God says is that my thoughts are way bigger. You don’t even. Comprehend what this is about. It’s almost like we see our life with this little tiny vision. Well, God has an eagle’s eye vision where he sees everything. And you know, that all things work together for good for us to that love him.

I don’t know. It’s hard, you know, for the audience. I know this is a business podcast, but it’s part of life. Business is part of life. Just look at how you started your business. By the way, who trained you to be in business? Because one thing is being a PhD student. Another thing is doing marketing sales and generating revenue to support your family out of that.

Yeah, well, it was trial and error, for sure. By the way, the quote you’re referring to from the Bible is from Isaiah 55:8: ” For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are my ways your, are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.”

Beautiful.

I just saw that quote the other day. Of course, there are no coincidences. As I said, you know, once you start seeing the matrix, everything changes. And yeah, I know this is a business podcast. We’ll stay back and get back on the business. But once I was shown the matrix of how this is an illusion, all of it, on January 22nd, everything changed for me.

And, you know, God’s my business partner and synchronicities happen one after another, constantly. Miracles everywhere. It’s just a different experience of life. And I was agnostic up until age 42. I was not connected to the creator. I was not. I was lost. I was lost. Anyways, answer your question about how I started. How did I figure this out when I didn’t have any training in business or marketing, for that matter?

I didn’t know. Any of the stuff that I was going to start offering as far as services other than just figuring it out on my own, I ended up building a few websites on my own just for fun. I built a bed and breakfast directory website in 1994 while I was still doing graduate student work, and I built a website for published authors called WritersNet.

Writers.net. Yeah, both of those sites I ended up eventually selling for six figures each, and that was pretty cool. But it also served as a mini portfolio of my work when I started the business the next year. And it was all just kind of figuring it out on the fly. I just felt like I could. I had a knack for it.

I had a knack for reverse engineering stuff. Kind of scrounging stuff together. I had figured out how to scrounge a satellite system in 1992 or something like that. I didn’t have any money. I was like a starving student in school with young kids and a student with a lot of student loan debt. I got a satellite system for free, which back in those days would have cost thousands of dollars, but I downloaded this FAQ (Frequently Ask Question) off of Usenet called How to Scrounge a Satellite System.

I followed all the rules and ended up with a 10-foot solid dish in the backyard. It was a bomb—an eyesore. And yeah, I got it for free. I got the satellite receiver system for free and everything. And I could, you know, watch things like French news and stuff like that. That was pretty fun.

So this is how I would figure stuff out is just kind of get scrappy and, poking prod at the black box. And so that’s what really worked as far as Google. and figuring out how the algorithms worked and how not to just follow the pack. The reason why The Art of SEO, that book that I’m now almost in my fourth edition of, published by O’Reilly, really sets me apart from most SEOs, and having that book that’s used as a textbook in universities.

That I spoke at a conference, and I gave away some of my best secrets about SEO that I figured out on my own by poking and prodding at the black box. One of my co-authors, Rand Fishkin, was the founder of SEO Moz, which later became Moz. He came up to me, a few weeks later at the next conference, saying, “Wow, at that conference, we’re, you know, we have to give it up. You just really brought it. I’m really impressed,” and we had a great conversation. We decided in that same conversation to write a book together. And that was the beginning of The Art of SEO.

That’s amazing. I mean, if you have a book with that publisher backing, backing you up, I mean, like, what, you’re going to hire yourself or somebody else that has not, doesn’t have that reputation. What’s the name of the book, by the way?

The Art of SEO. Yeah. And it’s a thousand pages, literally a thousand pages, 994 pages. So if I give this to somebody at a conference, let’s say that I spoke at, and you know, they had a conversation with me. And I give them a copy of my book. A lot of the folks will just respond with, “Can I just hire you? I don’t really want to read this.”

Which ends up being very effective. It’s a very big business card. And, yeah, that book wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t been very generous with my information and hadn’t, in a scrappy kind of figuring out myself sort of way, come up with these really amazing tips and tricks.

That’s incredible. How long did it take you to write that book?  

Each edition takes several years. Right. Even though it’s the same book with new information and so forth, we have to put a couple of years into it each time. The first edition probably took, I don’t know, I think it only took two years.

That’s crazy. I guess you have to keep updating it as they change the algorithms. Google, especially, likes to do that once in a while, right?

Oh, constantly. Yeah, it’s the shifting sands. Because Google is innovating at such a fast pace. It’s the Law of Accelerating Returns that is just applied to the search algorithms.

The Law of Accelerating Returns is from Ray Kurzweil. It’s based on Moore’s Law and Metcalfe’s Law. Moore’s Law is the price of computing power or the speed. The price of computing power will either be half in 18 months or, the speed will increase by two in 18 months, or both.

That continues to be true year after year. Of course, it’s been decades of innovation and computing. So imagine what we’re going to be facing five years from now in terms of the technology advances of the last hundred years. At today’s rate of change, that would fit into the next 20 years, but because it’s faster and faster as time goes on, that would actually fit into the next 12. Think back to a hundred years ago, what life was like, and now fast forward 12 years into the future. It’s that kind of difference between society and technology. Is what we’re facing in 12 years time  

Incredible, and you know, this has been proven since the inventor of the transistor, right? Like since we started playing with digital information is being recognized that this is the pattern, and you can see it with your phones, right? Remember your first cell phone. It was a brick like this, and then it started getting smaller and smaller. Now we have more information on your cell phone than the president of the United States had in 1999.

Yeah, did you ever see Zoolander? The movie.

The tiny phone.

The tiny phone, yes.  

Now they are bigger because, you know, last time I was checking this new Samsung phone that flips, it becomes almost a tablet, right? It’s incredible because now they can flip LCD screens, right? Yeah, you can fold the LCD screens. It’s incredible. I’m fascinated by all that.

That’s what I do, right? I run a software consulting firm. I’ve been in computer science since I was 15 years old. Unlike you, I was always going to school to learn that. And I was always the worst student. I was the one that needed the help from all their friends because I didn’t get it. It just took me forever to get the concepts.

But I am so passionate and persistent that I ended up getting better marks than the friends who were helping me. And little did I know, I got diagnosed with ADHD last year. So, but I was always persistent because I have the ability to laser focus on things, right? Even though I didn’t understand them at the beginning,

Yeah. Yeah. So, on my podcast, I interviewed Dr. Ned Hallowell, one of the world’s leading experts on ADHD. And, you know, he, as well, from the genius network, which is how we met. I don’t know. We actually met before the Genius Network, didn’t we? Where did we meet? How did we meet? I remember.

I think. No. Yeah. Somebody suggested. We need to talk to you from the dance network from the strategic coach.

The first strategic coach. Yeah. Anyways, of course, there are no coincidences again that, you know, we were meant to meet. But anyway, the concept of a DD or a DHD being a disorder is. It’s such a disservice and it’s such a disempowering recept.

It’s not even true. According to Ned Hallowell, you have a Ferrari engine, but you only have bicycle brakes. You can really get deep into something that is fascinating to you. But you’re trying to sit in a school environment to learn the rote memorization kind of nonsense that is being fed to students.

Yeah, school systems are just so broken. You don’t thrive in that kind of environment because it’s not stimulating. You know, it’s like you have the Ferrari engine, and you’re being told to walk very slowly between two lines all the time, and you’re like, this is nuts.

I’m not interested in this. So, you have a superpower. One that was evolutionarily selected for, you know, there were hunters and gatherers, but there were also spotters, and the spotters were the ones who kept the tribe alive. And those are now labeled as having a disorder called ADHD.

Those spotters were the first to notice that the herd and the food supply were on the move. “Hey, we got to pick up camp, and we got to get out of here. Our food is leaving town.” They were the first to notice when a neighboring tribe was starting to sneak up on them so that they were not going to get murdered in the middle of the night.

Okay, something’s off here. We have to prepare. I think we’re going to get raided. You know, so the spotters were evolutionary, evolutionarily selected for, and were essential. And still are. And still are, like, these are the leaders who end up being the entrepreneurs and the world changers.

It’s incredible—so much knowledge. I didn’t know you knew so much about this. But it’s, of course, the company you keep, right? You know, I attribute the. I’ve been in business for 17 years, so a lot less than you, but still a long time. And when I look back, I haven’t failed in my business because I sold a lot or because I have a great culture. Although lately, that’s why I’m growing exponentially because of my culture. But I basically haven’t failed and will never fail because I can spot trouble before it shows up. That has been my gift.  

Yeah, you can see around corners.

Exactly, and nobody can see it, right?

Well, there’s something to that beyond just ADD or, you know, diffuse awareness.

I’d even call it psychic. You know, everyone’s psychic, but we all believe in it or tap into it to varying degrees. And, you know, when you have that intuitive feeling that you should slow down suddenly, even though there’s no reason for it, and then boom, there’s a crash that you just narrowly missed because you followed that intuition. That’s psychic.

Yeah. I call it faith, right? It’s just getting connected while going back, right? It’s see how hard it is to not talk about spirituality. I have always, you know, since I met my wife, you know, accepted God in my life. As you know, as my savior, right? Jesus Christ and the Trinity.

And I, even though I’ve been lost for a while, my whole time, I’m just grabbing that hand and surrendering my life, you know, to my creator, and when you do that, you get these powers that we’re talking about, you know, when to slow down or when something bad happens in your life, you have this trust in feeling that it’s going to be.

It’s like this thing that happens in business, right? We need to hire 20 more people. I’m like, I’m going to hire 4 people. And before we know it, all the opportunities go away. And why did I know that? It’s impossible. It’s a connection to God, to the Holy Trinity. And that’s what I do every day of my life.

And like I said, even when I got lost—you know, I got lost. I shared that with you last year. I was completely lost, but I was always there. Trying to all I did was trying to look for God in the wrong places. That’s all I did. But, you know, I’m still paying for the consequences. But you know what I mean.

But you know, the irony is that God is also in all the wrong places. He’s everywhere. I know. You know, you can learn the lessons the easy way or the hard way. And yeah, for a while, we chose the hard way.

I know, it’s beautiful. It’s a comfort feeling, isn’t it? Yeah, it is. And when you know that you’re never alone, and by the way, for the listeners, I know maybe there are some people that are agnostic here or people that, you know, they think they are atheists.

I was talking with one of the pastors, who is my coach and spiritual leader. And he told me, David, people, there is nobody who is an atheist.

People who don’t believe in God are just people who are mad at God for something that went on in their lives. And they’re just trying to blame. And they would rather not choose to believe in God. It’s just anger. And then they told, he told me, and this is true. You can prove this in it takes more faith to be an atheist than to believe in God. Have you ever thought about that?  

I haven’t heard that before, and I don’t have any arguments against it. Yeah, I don’t know. Just tell me more about that. How does that work?

Well, it’s simple. I was watching a documentary last time. This guy was an atheist scientist. The more he explored the science part of life, the more he realized that there was intelligent design everywhere. If you look at the old rules that men make when you say this is intelligent design, right?

When you see what animals do versus human beings, or even, you know, even, you know, in the microscopic level, you can, there are rules where you can measure whether it’s intelligent design that created something, instead of just serendipity or, you know, coincidence or luck, right? And if you really, if you are a true scientist and you really know those rules and you start figuring it out how you breathe or how the galaxies are formed, or how the cycles in around the solar system are created, you start seeing intelligent design, which means somebody must, with intelligence, must have made.

It is not just a coincidence that we have a beautiful sun that is just at the right distance from the world to have life in the world. Take photosynthesis, for example. Explain photosynthesis to me. It’s intelligent design. So, if you acknowledge that there is an intelligent design that created photosynthesis, you cannot deny the existence of God.

I think so. So, here’s the challenge for somebody who is not on that boat with us. They don’t have an experience of God to point to it’s that changes everything. They have information, and information is not what this is about. Faith and trust in God are about that connection with God, that experience of God, not about receiving information or consuming information.

So, I learned this when I was in India on a Tony Robbins platinum partner trip: God is an experience, not a belief. That’s from the Oneness platinum trip I went on in 2012. That’s where I had my first awakening. I went from agnostic to spiritual in an instant. And it was when one of the monks touched me on the head and gave me a Deeksha, a oneness blessing, that I had a psychedelic experience.

Everything was in technicolor, like a cartoon. I felt this deep sense of peace and connection to the creator and to myself. The fabric of creation, everything. And I knew I was not alone, that we lived in a friendly universe, and that everything was being looked after. And I just changed everything. Then the miracles started pouring in.

And for somebody who doesn’t have that experience, trying to explain to them the concepts of spirituality and being connected to God is, you know, very hard for somebody to grasp. They really need the experience. And so the shortcut, the fast path to that experience is in the asking, you know, there’s a book by Esther Hicks called Ask and It Is Given.

She’s the main person behind The Law of Attraction. And that concept of asking for it as given is a foundational precept of how the universe works. So, if you want that experience, ask for it. Ask for it, and be more specific. Ask for it without a doubt. I learned that from Karen Noe, who I had on my podcast, and it was profound.

It was just amazing. So she teaches how to communicate with angels and the upper worlds and ask for, without a doubt, signs, which is one of the secrets to success. So, for example, being a biohacker, I love figuring out how to optimize my biology.

So I went to a week-long program called 40 Years of Zen, which is one of Dave Asprey‘s companies, the creator of Bulletproof Coffee and the guy who really started biohacking and hooked up to all these, neurofeedback machines and everything for a week getting all this, augmented reset processes is what they called them or ARPS that it helped release a lot of, theta and alpha, brainwaves or create a lot of, those brainwave states.

I ended up having memories from my childhood that I hadn’t had since. It was incredible. I didn’t have a lot of positive memories from my childhood, but I had some really beautiful ones that came out of that week-long program. But let’s say a couple of years later—maybe it was two or three—I don’t know.

I’m driving for a long time, four hours or so, three or four hours between Orlando and Miami. Everyone’s asleep in the car, so I can’t be playing music or podcasts or anything. So, I just have a conversation with God and with, you know, my Angels and so forth, and I decide I’m going to ask for more childhood memories, positive childhood memories because why not do I have to go through another week-long 40 years of Zen program.

I don’t think so. And you know what happened? Ten times, the number of beautiful childhood memories just flooded into my consciousness. I had not had them since I was in my childhood, and they all came flooding in, and I just had to ask.  

Well, you know, it’s in my faith in Christianity. We have one condition for that Law to happen. Actually, Matthew 7:7 says, “Ask, it will be given to you. Knock, and it will be open to you. Seek, and you will find.” However, it has to be in accordance to God’s will. And people tend to forget that, right? Because if it’s not. In God’s will for your life, but for whatever you are asking for, it will not happen no matter how much you ask and how much, how many times you say.

It’s all for your mission, and you’re being a servant to God, not for being more of a receiver of your own benefits. Like, I, you know, receiving for oneself alone is not good. That’s self-service mode, and that leads to pain. Being in service mode is what leads to synchronicities, miracles and extraordinary coincidences. Yeah.  

It’s true, right? It’s the service to God, right?

By the way, I’m noticing our, time is coming to an end.

I know. Sorry about that. We don’t discuss your business and how you solve them. And, And have the new business up. I would probably get you back into another.

I would love that  

In a couple of weeks, we’ll leave it here halfway through so that the audience has part two. This happens once in a while with exceptional guests anyway, so it’ll be my pleasure to have you here.

Awesome.

Let me ask you one last question before you go If you had access to a billboard in front of the busiest highway on earth, what would you write in it?  

Spirituality isn’t about being a better person, self-help, personal development, or any of that. It’s about cleaving to the creator. It’s about connecting to God, and if more people got that message, it would simplify so much in the world. And yeah, I think people are ready for that message.  

Amen, brother. It’s true. God is not a magic wand. That is a good disposal. We are supposed to be servants of God. And when, you know, we ask, we have to ask or to be of service and then everything opens up your amazing SEO services. Where can they find you?

Yeah, StephanSpencer.com is my main website, and my two podcasts are Marketing Speak and Get Yourself Optimized. So you can also go to marketingspeak.com and getyourselfoptimized.com.  

Beautiful. Awesome, brother. Thank you so much for your time, and I’ll see you in the next part of this episode.

All right. Sounds great. Looking forward to it. All right.

Blessings. Cheers.

That’s all for today’s episode of the Break Free Podcast. Head on over to iTunes and subscribe to the show. Starting your own business can be tough, but it doesn’t have to be. Visit davidmancilla.com to pick up a copy of the number one international bestselling book, Breaking Out of Corporate Jail.

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Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy was last modified on November 8, 2024.

We at Koshkonong, LLC are strongly committed to protecting your privacy and providing a safe online experience for all of our visitors while offering a high-quality user experience here at www.stephanspencer.com (the “Website”), or/and any other websites operated by the Company, including but not limited to:

We know that you care about how the information you provide to us is used and shared. We have developed this Privacy Policy to inform you of our policies regarding the collection, use, and disclosure of Information we receive from users of the Website. Koshkonong, LLC (the “Company”) operates the Website.

This Privacy Policy, along with our Term & Conditions, governs your use of this site.  By using www.stephanspencer.com (the “Website”), or by accepting the Terms of Use (via opt-in, checkbox, pop-up, or clicking an email link confirming the same), you agree to be bound by our terms and consent to this Privacy Policy.

Information We Collect

When you visit our Website, we will learn certain information about you.

In order to provide you with the most efficient and enhanced personalized service and attention, and to accommodate certain requests which you make, we request information about you in certain circumstances and collect certain information automatically.

Consistent with our previous practices, we will only collect and process your personal data when we have a lawful basis for doing so. These lawful bases include when you provide us consent, when we have a contractual obligation to collect or process the data, and when we have a legitimate interest in processing your personal data.

We may collect and/or receive the following types of information from you:

Information Provided Voluntarily

Personal Information. You may be asked to provide personal information including your name, address, email address and phone number when you sign up for any of our newsletters, respond to a survey, register for a class, or purchase a product or service. We will only request the personal information that is required in order to fulfill our obligations to you, i.e. in order to deliver what you have requested, as well as to comply with any legal obligations that may accompany such an exchange.

Order & Billing Information. If you place an order through our Website, we track certain information about the products and services you purchase. At checkout, you will also be required to provide additional information required for processing your payment. This generally includes a debit or credit card or other payment information, expiration dates, card security codes, your billing address or similar information.  This information is generally processed and captured by third-party vendors, such as payment processors and merchant account providers. To the fullest extent possible, we make an effort not to capture or retain this information ourselves (unless, for example, we are requested to process a refund, follow up on the delivery of goods or services, or work with customers or vendors on resolving any errors or other scenarios.) Third-party vendors who assist us in any of our business functions will also be doing so pursuant to their own terms and conditions, including privacy policies and terms of use.

Information Collected Automatically. In addition to the information described above, we may collect some or all of the following information:

Activity Info (Log Data). Information may be collected based on your use of the Website, which generally includes information about your computer hardware and software, such as:

Internet Protocol (“IP”) addresses, operating systems, browser types, device types, URLS, access dates and times; Website pages that you visit; referring website information; universally unique identifiers (“UUID”), advertising identifier (“IDFA”), carrier and country location, hardware and processor information, network type, and other related data.

Use of Cookies.  Our website may use cookies in order to deliver a better experience for you. Cookies are files with small amounts of data that a website stores on your computer’s or mobile device’s hard drive so that certain information about your visit and web-browsing preferences will be recognized upon a return visit. Cookies serve functions such as “remembering” log-in names and passwords, or enabling or saving shopping cart contents. Like many websites, we may use both session cookies (which expire once you close your web browser) and persistent cookies (which stay on your computer until you delete them) to help us improve the experience you have with our Website. Most web browsers have a function that allows you to delete existing cookies on your device or you can set your browser options so that your device does not receive or accept cookies. Doing this may interfere with your ability to use the Website. [ ]

Third-Party Analytics. We use third-party analytics services (such as Google Analytics) to evaluate and aggregate visitor data. These services help us evaluate Visitors’ use of the Website, including time spent on certain pages, which areas of the Website receive the most traffic, how often visitors visit pages within the Website, and also provide general geographic location about visitors, the source of referred traffic (from other websites, vs search engines, etc). These third party analytic services use cookies and other technologies to help analyze and provide us the data. By providing your consent to this Privacy Policy, you consent to the collection and review of data about you by these analytics providers in the manner and for the purposes set out herein.

For more information on Google Analytics, including how to opt out from certain data collection, please visit https://www.google.com/analytics. If you opt out of any service, you may not enjoy the full functionality of the Website.

Other Third Party Tracking Tools. We may also collect or receive information from third parties, such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and/or other third-party social media and similar sites.

How to Access Your Personal Information

If you have provided personal, billing or other voluntarily provided information, you may access, review and make changes to it via instructions found on the Website or by emailing us at me [at] stephanspencer [dot] com. To manage your receipt of marketing and non-transactional communications, you may unsubscribe by clicking the “unsubscribe” link located on the bottom of any related email from the Company. Emails related to the purchase or delivery of orders are provided automatically – Customers are not able to opt out of transactional emails. We will try to accommodate any requests related to the management of Personal Information in a timely manner. However, it is not always possible to completely remove or modify information in our databases (for example, if we have a legal obligation to keep it for certain timeframes).

How We Use and Share the Information

We use the collected Information to understand customer needs, including regarding our Website services to:

  • present you with information through our Website and email services;
  • provide our services, process orders, and administer our programs;
  • maintain and improve our Website;
  • respond to your requests, and provide customer service, including in response to any problems that may arise, such as difficulties in navigating our Website or accessing certain features;
  • solicit your feedback, and to inform you about our products and services and those of our third-party marketing partners that we feel may be of interest or value to you;
  • personalize or display advertisements to you on third-party platforms;
  • improve our services or offerings; and
  • fulfill our legal or contractual obligations to you.

As with transactions elsewhere, when you purchase products, services, or programs via our Website, your credit card company will also retain certain information regarding your purchase. We will not otherwise provide any personal data to your credit card company without your permission.

We may share the Information collected with joint venture partners, affiliates, agents, current or prospective business partners, businesses under common control, third-party businesses or partners participating in administering our programs or services, or to those providing business functions such as technical support, customer service, marketing assistance, etc. These businesses will only have access to information as necessary to perform their functions and to the extent permitted by law.

In the event of the sale or transfer of our business to a third party buyer, including in the event of bankruptcy or liquidation, we may, as necessary, share your data with the buyer or transferee.

In the event that we have to collect on a debt owed to us by you, we may, as necessary, share your information with an attorney or a court of law to enforce our rights and collect what is owed.

Under certain circumstances we may be obligated or compelled to disclose the Information: when required by law, court order or government agency, or when disclosing such Information is reasonably required to protect the Company, its property, the Website, the safety of visitors or others.

Retargeting / Personalized and Behavioral Ads

We may, using the techniques described above, and in conjunction with third party marketing partners, gather information from your visit to our Website for purposes of providing relevant advertising content to you in the future. This means that through third party marketing partners or third party sites such as Google, Facebook, or Instagram, we may display advertisements to you (remarketing or retargeting), based on usage data collected during your visit to our website.

Google Analytics: As described above, we use Google Analytics on our website. We may utilize any of the following advertising features that utilize the Google advertising cookies: Remarketing with Analytics, Demographics and Interest reporting, Segments, and Double Click integration.

To opt out of seeing personalized ads via the Google platform, please visit https://support.google.com/ads/answer/2662922?hl=en

For more information regarding how Google uses cookies in advertising and how you can control advertising cookies, visit http://www.google.com/policies/technologies/ads/

To personalize the ads you see via the Google platform, visit http://www.google.com/settings/ads

For more information on how Google uses data when you visit its partners’ sites or apps, visit http://www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners/

Or, via an opt-out browser add-on, you can opt out of having your site activity available to Google Analytics. For more information, or to install the opt-out browser ad-on, please visit https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/181881?hl=en  Please note that if you opt out of any service, you may not enjoy the full functionality of the Website.

Google Ad Words: We may utilize Google Ad Words, which provides certain of the information collected on our website to the Adwords advertising network. To opt out of Google Ad Words, visit https://support.google.com/ads/answer/2662922?hl=en

Facebook Custom Audience: We may utilize Facebook’s Custom Audience capability which allows us to display ads on Facebook to individuals on our email lists or in our database. We may provide personal information to Facebook, such as your name, email address and phone number to enable Facebook to identify whether you are a Facebook account holder. To opt-out of the Facebook Custom Audience, please email us at me [at] stephanspencer [dot] com with (1)“Facebook Custom Audience Opt-Out” in your Subject Line, and (2) your name and email address in the body of the email.

Other Personalized and Behavioral Advertising Services: We may participate in other retargeting services that are similar to those described above.

Managing Cookies Via Your Browser:

You may be able to change your cookie preferences via your browser settings. Please visit your browser’s help section for assistance with turning on notifications regarding cookies, or disabling cookies through your browser.

Managing Cookies on Your Mobile Device:

You may be able to change your cookie preferences on your mobile device either via your browser settings, or via the settings (preferences) on your device. For additional info, please visit http://www.allaboutcookies.org/mobile/

Use Caution When Sharing Information Online

When you voluntarily make your Personal Information available online in an environment shared by third parties – including in webinars, classes, online conferences, via email, on message boards, chat rooms or on blogs, or via telephone calls or conferences – that information can be viewed, saved, collected, heard, and/or used by others outside of the Company. We are not responsible for any unauthorized third-party use of information provided in these contexts. Please be mindful whenever you share any information online.

Security of Your Information

The security of your Personal Information is important to us, but remember that no method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure. While we incorporate standard industry practices internally and with our services providers, which we believe is sufficient for the information involved, we cannot guarantee its absolute security. Because we work with third-party businesses and vendors in various aspects of our business including operating this website, database management, website security, etc., we cannot guarantee the absolute security of our databases, nor can we guarantee that the Information you supply will not be intercepted while being transmitted to and from us over the Internet. Any information that you provide to us via email should be treated with extra caution, as we cannot control the level of security available through email providers.

Children

We are strongly committed to protecting the safety and privacy of children who visit our website. We do not knowingly collect Personal Information from children under the age of 13 through the Website. If you are under 13, please do not give us any Personal Information. We encourage all parents to talk to their children about online safety and to monitor their children’s use of the Internet. If you have reason to believe that a child under the age of 13 has provided Personal Information to us, please contact us, and we will make best efforts to immediately delete that information from our databases.

External Websites

While we have carefully chosen those vendors with whom we work, especially those involved in the transmission of data on behalf of our business, we do not control and are not responsible for the privacy practices or content of third-party websites, including those of affiliates, business partners, sponsors, advertisers, or other websites to which we may link from time to time. When visiting any third-party websites, you are responsible for reviewing the privacy policy and terms of use applicable to each site. They may be different than those that you see here.

California Privacy Rights

Pursuant to Section 1798.83 of the California Civil Code, residents of California have the right to request from a business with whom the Californian has an established business relationship, certain information with respect to the types of personal information the business shares with third parties for direct marketing purposes by such third party and the identities of the third parties with whom the business has shared such information during the immediately preceding calendar year. To request a copy of the information disclosure provided by the Company pursuant to this provision, please contact us via email at me [at] stephanspencer [dot] com.

Our California Do Not Track Notice

Consistent with our policies described above, we collect information from our visitors on our website and across third party websites where applicable, to provide relevant content and advertising. We do not support Do Not Track (“DNT”) signals of web browsers.

DNT is a setting in your web browser that informs websites that you do not want to be tracked. You can enable or disable DNT through the Preferences or Settings options of your web browser.

Visitors Outside the U.S.

Our Website and the servers that make this Website available worldwide are located in the United States. The Internet laws in the United States govern all matters relating to this Website. Any information you provide in subscribing to or visiting our Website will be transferred to the United States. By visiting our Website and submitting information, you authorize this transfer, processing, and use.

EU Visitors and the GDPR

If you live in the EU, certain of your data may be subject to protection by the General Data Protection Regulation (the “GDPR”), a privacy regulation intended to help you have greater control over your personal data.

Under the GDPR, you have the following rights, which we extend to all of our website visitors:

  • to know what information is being collected, as disclosed in this Privacy Policy (“right to transparent information”);
  • to object on grounds relating to your particular situation to the collection or processing of certain kinds of information (“right to object”);
  • to withdraw consent even after it has been given, without affecting the lawfulness of the processing of your data prior to your withdrawal (“right to withdraw consent”);
  • to access, modify or update your information so that it is correct (“right to access” and “right to rectification”);
  • to have your information deleted or erased (“right to erasure” or “right to be forgotten”);
  • to have your data transferred or ported elsewhere (“right to data portability”);
  • and the right to restrict processing in certain situations (“right to restriction of processing”).

For purposes of the GDPR, to the fullest extent possible we do not directly collect or maintain personal data of our EU visitors or clients. This is done through partnerships with third-party vendors who have systems designed for the collection and storage of data on behalf of their clients (“data processors”). The data is only kept as long as is reasonably required to accomplish the purpose or purposes for which it was collected. Certain data may be expunged or utilized more quickly than others, and depending on your engagement and behaviors, including purchasing behaviors, we may be engaged in a business or contractual relationship with some longevity. (For example, if you purchase a course or program, or services that span over some time, you will continue to receive communications in regards to those offerings or services).

The categories of data processors with whom we work, and that help us in the collection of information that allows us to serve and interact with you include website analytics provider(s), website and web form plug-ins and related third-party services that allow us to maintain an up-to-date online platform and communicate with you electronically, an email service provider or providers to assist in managing email correspondence with our visitors, customers and list, as well as payment processor(s) and/or merchant account(s) to help us transact sales online and follow up with you regarding any purchases. For a list of specific data processors with whom we currently work, please visit our list here.

Those within the Company that may have access to the data include Officers, Directors, Managers, Supervisors, Salespersons, or those providing customer or technical support. Access to the data is provided for specific purposes, generally related to communicating with you, fulfilling our contractual obligations, providing customer service or technical support, collecting payment, or monitoring performance of marketing and sales efforts.

You may contact us at any time to have your information with us or any of these processors updated or corrected, deleted, or to obtain a copy for your records. Additionally, you may opt out of receiving any additional emails or marketing messages from us by clicking the “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of our email notifications.

Further, if you feel that we have not complied with the relevant data protection regulations, please contact us by sending us an email at me [at] stephanspencer [dot] com with your first and last name, your country of origin, and a summary of your concern or complaint. We will endeavor to respond at our earliest possible convenience to address your concern. If contacting us does not resolve your complaint, you may have additional options.

Residents in Designated Countries may also have the right to lodge a complaint with the relevant EU data protection authority. You may access a list of the Data Protection Authorities in the EU here.

Changes to This Privacy Policy

The Company may update this Privacy Policy from time to time as necessary to protect our users and to comply with a changing environment. Please review the Privacy Policy when you visit our Website to remain updated on our current policy. We have no intention of making any changes to our Privacy Policy and practices to make them less protective of personal information collected in the past. By accessing the Website and/or using our services after making any such changes to this Privacy Policy, you are deemed to have accepted such changes. Please be aware that, to the extent permitted by applicable law, our use of the Information is governed by the Privacy Policy in effect at the time we collect the information. You are advised to review this Privacy Policy periodically for any changes. Whenever we make changes to this Privacy Policy we will update the date at the top.

Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us via email at me [at] stephanspencer [dot] com with “Privacy Policy” in the subject line.

© 2015 – 2024 by The Legal Website Warrior® (www.LegalWebsiteWarrior.com). All Rights Reserved.  DO NOT DUPLICATE THIS PRIVACY POLICY (OR ANY PORTION THEREOF). THIS CONSTITUTES COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT.