Who’s ready to rock today, Fire Nation? JLD here, and welcome to episode 1683 of EO Fire. Right, Chad, with today’s most inspiring entrepreneur, seven days a week, create your dream life one step at a time, Fire Nation. My book, How to Finally Win, will be your guide. Visit howtofinallywin.com to learn more. And now, let’s chat with today’s featured guest. Stephan, are you prepared to ignite?

Anytime, anywhere.

Yes! Stephan is an internationally recognized SEO expert and bestselling author. His books are The Art of SEO, Google Power Search, and Social E-commerce. He founded the multinational SEO agency Net Concepts in 1995 and sold it in 2010. Clients included Zappos, Sony, and Chanel. He hosts the podcasts Get Yourself Optimized and Marketing Speak. Stephan, take a minute to fill in the gaps from that intro and give us a little glimpse of your personal life.

I’m big into self-development. I attended a Tony Robbins event in 2009, which changed my life. So if you saw my before photo, you would not recognize me. In fact, that was the inspiration for me to start my podcast, Get Yourself Optimized, because I optimized myself. So if you go to GetYourselfOptimized.com/about, you’ll see the before and after. And I was literally unrecognizable after I showed up at conferences. People wouldn’t know who I was. It was fun. So it all started with doing the fire walk at Unleash the Power Within, which is a Tony Robbins event. And I thought, wow, if I can do this, I can do anything. And walking on 2,000-degree hot coals.

It was just the catalyst that I needed to push myself into new areas and make all these changes externally and internally. And I haven’t stopped there, so I do many self-development seminars and masterminds and so forth. And I want to give back in that way, too, to others. So that’s where the podcast comes in. I’m working on a self-help book, a complete departure from the SEO world and online marketing, but I wanna make a difference in people’s lives, not just their Google rankings.

Wow, well, I love all of that, and I actually Emmet that about page that you talked about. And it looks like number one: you now have more hair, which is pretty impressive. Your teeth look a lot better, and you just look overall happier. So it was quite a transformation, so congratulations on that.

Thank you, yeah. Yeah, I did get a hair transplant and braces and Lasix, so I don’t have to wear glasses anymore.

Wow.

However, the internal changes in how I felt on the inside were greater than the external changes. So I feel 20 years younger. I don’t just look 20 years younger, I feel 20 years younger.

Amazing, I love it. So, let’s talk about what you consider your area of expertise today. I mean, obviously, you have a few different areas, but what’s one that you wanna break down for us now and within that, giving us a tip, tool, or tactic that you don’t think that we probably know that as entrepreneurs we should?

My area of specialty is search engine optimization, SEO, how Google works, and leveraging Google as a lead source because what’s the fastest path from A to B? It’s usually Google and a Google search. So, if you can understand the fundamentals of SEO, you can make a lot of, and you can make a bank, right? So you can get free leads, free leads coming into your site that go into your funnel or that purchase of your selling like e-commerce. It’s just an incredible opportunity and an asset. Whereas if you’re doing paid media, you’re advertising with Google AdWords or Facebook ads or wherever else, the moment you stop spending money is the moment you stop receiving traffic and that reaps rewards for you to pay dividends for months and years to come, and that’s amazing. So, you create something that has a lot of authority in the eyes of Google in terms of a website that’s trusted, authoritative, and important, and it’s not going to go away. It’s going to continue to that traffic source is going to continue to be on and working for you twenty-four seven for a long time.

Yeah, and a perfect example of that is when I decided to write an authority piece on podcast sponsorships, and I did that. I spent a ton of time on it, wrote a very long article, and fully optimized it using different plugins with different tips, tools, and tactics that I’ve gotten from people like Stephan and other SEO experts. And now, when you type the word in Google, podcast sponsorships, that’s the number one result. So that’s getting hundreds of hits every single day. That article leads people to a free podcast course where they’re signing up for my course now that’s leading them to Podcasters Paradise, which is a premium podcasting community.

So that free article that I wrote is leading to real revenue generation, real lead generation every single day without me putting a dollar or cent in it and doing nothing, frankly, except every couple of months, I just make sure it’s fully updated with the latest tips, tools and tactics in that area great things to think about Fire Nation when you’re looking to build a sustainable business. But Stephan, it wasn’t always just like, you know what, I’m gonna launch a business, I’m gonna become an SEO expert, I’m gonna crush it. You had your struggles as well, so take us to what you consider your biggest struggle, that being your worst entrepreneurial moment to date. Tell us that story.

Okay, so when I started out, I didn’t have any funding, and I didn’t really know what I was doing. I was a real newbie. I was studying for a PhD in biochemistry, and I had no business or marketing classes. I was just winging it. So, I dropped out of my PhD. I stuck around long enough to get a master’s, but yeah, I was just kind of flying blind here. So I talked my way into a conference—this was in 1995. It was about how to Market on the Internet.

That was the name of the conference. It was run by IQPC. I talked my way in because it was a $2,000 and some dollar conference. I didn’t have the money for it. I came in as a volunteer. They gave me the job of being the mic runner. So, I was walking around with the mic for Q and A portions of these different panel sessions and so forth. And I was really a cheeky 24-year-old.

I didn’t really understand the propriety of chiming in, which is what I started doing because I realized that I could answer the questions better than the panel. Some of the panelists included GM O’Donnell, founder of Modem Media and so forth. I started chiming in because I had the mic. I got some business cards from a lot of attendees who were like,” Wow, you know more than the people on stage. It’s amazing. We got to talk.” And I ended up getting two really big clients from that, my first two big clients, which ended up with about a half million dollars in revenue at peace over the course of time.

So, instead of getting venture funding or angel investment, I funded my company by being really cheeky, but there was a downside to that. I would. It was really embarrassing for me, and it was a big ego hit when the conference organizer came up to me at the end of the day and said, “You don’t bother coming back for day two.” I was like, “What do you mean?” What do you mean? Well, you’re not invited to day two. So that was a big ego hit, but I’m so glad I did it, even though, yeah, that was uncomfortable for me.

She didn’t do it publicly in front of a bunch of people, but yeah, I kind of overstepped my bounds. Yet, by being aggressive and cheeky and out there, I was able to get two huge accounts. And so yeah, it was kind of a mix of good and bad. So, I mean, it was certainly one of my most embarrassing entrepreneurial moments, but it kind of launched my business.

Stephan, what is the biggest takeaway from that? Like, what do you wanna make sure our listeners get from your embarrassing slash worst moment?

Yeah, so take chances and don’t be a wallflower. Really stand in your power and add lots of value. And even if it is gonna make you uncomfortable and you’re gonna have to step outside your comfort zone, just do it. The moral of the story here also is karma will come back to you. If you’re giving good karma, I was adding value. So six months later, the irony of all, the irony is the same conference organization, IQPC, that contacted me to chair a conference like six months later. How to market educational programs on the Internet, which I chaired, I did a general session, and I did a post-conference workshop. I’m like, how did this happen? Clearly, those conference producers didn’t speak to each other because this other one hated me, and then one invited me to be the lead at this conference.

Now, would you consider yourself an introvert?

Yes, for sure.

Okay, so I didn’t want to put those words in your mouth, but you know, I did get to hang out with Stephan in the Fire Nation a few weeks back in San Diego at this post-social media marketing world event called Social Smash. And you know, frankly, you are an introvert, but the thing is, you stepped out of your comfort zone to do the walk of fire with Tony Robbins and company, and you stepped out of your comfort zone during that conference. You know, you were at this networking event. You were bopping around and having conversations with people. You know, even again, though you’re introverted, so Fire Nation, guess what? When you’re at a conference, and someone in the speaker makes a comment, hey, who in the room is an introvert? I’m telling you right now, nine people out of 10 raised their hands.

Part of it, by the way, is because everybody thinks it’s pretty trendy to be an introvert, so they love to do that. Just because you have to “Go back to your room to recharge” doesn’t make you an introvert, by the way. I have to do that, and I’m the biggest extrovert in the world. There are a lot of real introverts out there, but guess what? The successful ones step out of their comfort zone and make things happen. So, let’s talk about an aha moment, Stephan. What’s one of the greatest ideas you’ve had to date? Take us to that idea, that aha moment. Tell us that story.

So I had this realization that I could do this internet thing from anywhere. And I wanted to live somewhere exotic, somewhere amazing. I know you live in Puerto Rico.

Did you consider Puerto Rico?

I did not. I just had this intuition that New Zealand would be the place to be.

By the way, New Zealand is a trendy spot for survivalists, too. I just read a great article in the New Yorker about how people who think the world is coming to an end are moving to New Zealand.

Yeah, well, I have permanent residency there now, so I could go back anytime. So, at the time, I had never been to New Zealand. I didn’t know much about it; I just had this intuition, and everyone was telling me you needed to move from Madison, Wisconsin, which is where I was based at the time, to the Bay Area, that’s where everything is happening, that’s where you’re going to be able to get funding, that’s where you’re going to be able to massively grow your business.

There were other companies that were moving from Madison to the Bay Area, and they were grown like crazy, like adjacency, which ended up getting bought by Sapient, and they’re like, you need to ride that train as well. And I did the exact opposite. I went halfway around the world to New Zealand. Without ever visiting, I applied for permanent residency and got in without ever having made a trip there. Now, I just had this intuitive knowing that it would be an amazing place and it was. I lived there with my wife at the time and my kids for almost eight years. It was incredible. It just changed everything for all of us.

Now, to break in here for a second, what were some things you did love about New Zealand that’s, cause I’m actually going there this October for the first time, and I’m just kind of curious.

Yeah, so it’s like a microcontinent. You can go from glaciers to rainforests, which is an hour’s drive. It’s incredible. Whereas in Australia, you have to drive for a very long time to get different scenery. In many cases, you can go in the car for an hour or two, and you’re somewhere completely different. It’s just so exotic, and yet it’s not super hot. You can go to really temperate climates, and you can go into the mountains, which have snow and stuff. It’s just a very special part of the world.

Wonderful! What is the biggest takeaway from that aha moment that you want to share with our listeners? I mean, you went halfway across the world, you know, basically completely opposite time zone from when everybody else is awake, etc. What’s the biggest takeaway that you want to make sure we get?

I figured, you know, the worst-case scenario is that the business fails. I was going to continue running a US-based business in New Zealand, and it actually grew like crazy. I was able to hire incredibly talented folks in New Zealand to work on my US-based business. And I made trips back and forth, which all worked out in the end, but when I would tell people my story, they’d say, oh, I wish I could do that. And it’s like, well, you can. I mean, that’s the thing: you can. You decide to put yourself in this box to subscribe to the limiting beliefs that you have. So, if you decide to shed those, a whole world of possibilities opens up to you. So that’s the lesson.

And again, a fire nation. I’m not gonna put words in Stephan’s mouth, but the reality is, if he had gone to New Zealand and things just sucked, or they didn’t work out, or he hated it, guess what? He could have moved back to Madison, Wisconsin. He could have moved to the Bay Area then. It’s not this death sentence that you’re giving yourself. We didn’t live in the 16 or 1700s when we were making the Oregon Trail out from the East Coast to the West Coast, where coming back was pretty dangerous and tough. No, we’re jumping on like a 17-hour flight, and you know, in under 24 hours, we’re like, I’m back. So, what are you worried about? Now, Stephan, what are you most fired up about today?

Featured snippets, I think, are a huge huge opportunity in the SEO world for business owners. If you think about it, what is Google trying to do? They’re trying to answer people’s questions, their queries. So if you use tools like SEMrush to look at your competitors, what keyword lists they have and what they’re ranking for, and then you filter that down to just the keywords, they’re ranking in what’s called position zero, that’s the featured snippet, where it preempts the first organic or unpaid search result with an answer to the question.

Right? So, how to boil an egg, you Google that, and you’ll get the answer like one, two, three, four, four steps or five or whatever, and somebody provided those steps, and they’re probably somewhere in the first, let’s say, four or five positions in the organic results. They don’t have to be number one. They could be number three and take that featured snippet, and they get a massive increase in click-through traffic. So, there are some ways that you can; first of all, spy on your competitors and see where they’re getting featured snippets and you’re not.

You can look for weaknesses in their featured snippets. For example, if it’s not a great answer to the question or it’s not in the most ideal format, like, for example, it’s a paragraph snippet, and you have a numbered answer, like how to boil an egg would be perfectly answered with a numbered list versus a paragraph wouldn’t be nearly as effective. So, if it’s a paragraph snippet and a numbered list, an ordered list or a table would be better.

Create that page on your website, the page that is ranking but isn’t at position zero, and see if you can overtake your competitor. If you get a higher click-through rate in the search results, that increases the likelihood of taking that featured snippet. Also, if it’s in the proper format or the most ideal format, let’s say a table or a numbered list or an ordered list instead of a paragraph, you can use tools.

Some of them are free, like AnswerThePublic.com, to see what keywords people are typing into Google to answer questions like how to boil an egg, how to type, the how-to queries, the more question-based queries will tend to yield featured snippets and Answer the Public will give you a lot of those question-based queries. So you put in your keyword, and it will come up with all sorts of question-based searches. Based on that keyword. It’s really amazing, and it’s free. There are plenty of other tools out there, too. Many of them are paid, but this one’s a great free one that most people don’t know about.

Wow, well, I love it. Just to kind of test while you were talking, I went to Google and typed in podcast sponsorship. As I said, I am the first result, but then a couple of results below that; they had this box with these drop-down arrows that said people also ask, and the first one was, how much do sponsors pay for podcasts? So I clicked that down arrow.

It answers the question from my response, which is from eofire.com slash podcast sponsorships. You know, it gives that, but then below that is, you know, how much money do podcasters make? And that’s answers from Quora. So knowing that, like, I can maybe now go and answer that question directly on my post, which is the number one result, and maybe I take over from that Quora answer so I can start to kind of dominate those questions going down since I already have the authority post.

Exactly, exactly. Then you can start expanding on this and creating a whole slew of answers to these different questions once you’ve created a keyword strategy with lots of different question-based search queries and create a whole resources area to your site or add to it for the specific purpose of getting more featured snippets.

It’s a genius. Love it. So, Fire Nation, if you think that we’re dropping value bombs now, just wait for the lightning round. As soon as we thank our sponsors, we will be hitting that hard. My friend Billy Jean is hosting a free training where he’s going to build an entire Facebook advertising campaign from scratch. The ad copy, the landing pages, and everything in between. Why struggle trying to figure out Facebook ads on your own when you can just copy Billy Jean? Claim your spot today at Ineedthistraining.com. Stephan, we’re back. Are you ready to rock the lightning rounds?

Oh, heck yeah.

What was holding you back from becoming an entrepreneur?

It was fear. F everything and run is the acronym for fear. At the time, I wanted to, rather than leap in the net will, appear, which I believe now; at the time, I created for myself a halftime job while I was transitioning, and I realized after the fact that I didn’t need that. I didn’t need that safety net. That was an unnecessary hindrance, actually. So, I shared the story of being the mic runner and getting these amazing opportunities that catapulted my business forward. I could have done more of that sort of stuff of creating amazing opportunities if I didn’t have a halftime job for the first few months.

That was sucking the joy out of my life. What is the best advice you’ve ever received? I learned the scientific method, and so I guess that would be advice in a way that through all my schooling, all the experiments that I ran in these different labs and everything, you can apply the scientific method to marketing. And it’s great to know that my master’s degree in biochemistry was good for something, but if you apply the idea of experiments and coming up with hypotheses first and then testing those hypotheses and making sure it’s reproducible, you apply that to all your marketing. 

I mean, that’s what direct mail is all about. That’s what SEO and Conversion Optimization, Facebook advertising, and Google AdWords should all be about. Testing and seeing what works, iterating, and not being afraid to make changes. You think, oh, well, this is a great site, and it’s ranking high, and I don’t want to touch it now; I don’t want to mess everything up. Well, now you’re paralyzed in fear that you’re not gonna be able to innovate any further.

What’s a personal habit that contributes to your success?

It’s investing in my personal growth. The masterminds, the seminars, I’m a bit of a seminar junkie, big into self-development, and your mindset is your biggest asset more than anything else. And if you invest in that, the world’s your oyster.

Can you share an internet resource like Evernote‘s with Fire Nation?

Yeah, well, I’ve got a ton of them. I mentioned a couple already. When we were talking about featured snippets, answerthepublic.com and semrush.com, there are also tools like Pitchbox.com for building a prospect list of influencers to outreach to for link building and for social media marketing. There’s also FollowerWonk, where you can search through Twitter and bios; let’s say you’re looking for a journalist in a particular industry. Let’s say you are an online retail Journalist. You could put that in as a search query and a follower wonk and find everybody who has those keywords in their Twitter bio, and a lot of them will be journalists, so you can reach out to them, build relationships with them and maybe get them to cover your stuff if you’re doing anything innovative.

Another one is Klout, which will give you a sense of who’s authoritative and who’s not there. Name Check, namechk.com, where you put in your username, your brand name, your company name, and see all the different social media platforms where you have not locked up your username, and then you go register under that username so that nobody else can go in and cyber squat you and extort money out of you. Like, well, I’ve got your brand name on this, you know, second-tier social platform, not Facebook and Twitter, the obvious ones, but whatever it is, and you’re like, oh shoot, I wish I would have thought of that. So go and use name check, namechk.com.

Namecheck.com. Fire Nation, cover your bases. One book, if it could join The Art of SEO, Google Power Search and social e-commerce, what would it be, Stephan,

Okay, this is a self-help book, actually, but give it a go because it will, I promise you, change your life. It is amazing. It’s called The Tools by Phil Stutz and Barry Michaels. Reading that book. There are five tools in that book. Tool number two allowed me to let someone back into my life, a close relative that I had cut out of my life for 20 years. I had good reason blah blah blah, but yet the forgiveness and the amazing beauty and love that opened up Between us after I let her back into my life was amazing, and it all was because of tool number two and the tools so. It can be used for business, personal life, and relationships. It’s an incredible book.

Fire Nation, you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with, and you’ve been hanging out with SS and JLD today, so keep up the heat. And SS, I wanna end it today on fire, so give us a parting piece of guidance. Give us the best way that we can connect with you, and then we’ll say goodbye.

You learn from the people you hang out with the most. Your peer group is incredibly important. So, one of the things I did was I invested in something called Platinum Partnership with Tony Robbins. I’m not saying that Tony is your answer, but find some high-level peer group that will make a huge difference for you so that you can aspire to be more like those people. You can still love the people that are in your life, your family and friends from way back.

But if you don’t aspire to become more like them, that is the wrong peer group for you. So you need to surround yourself with incredible people. And that’s what I did for three years with Platinum Partnership and now with other masterminds that I’m in. So, find that group. It doesn’t have to be a mastermind. It could be group coaching. Like I’m just launching a group coaching program myself here in the next few weeks.

Yeah, find that peer group and also don’t get snookered by the charlatans when you’re on this journey because there are a lot of them out there, whether it’s in the world of online marketing or self-development or whatever. So, let’s say that in the area of online marketing and SEO in particular, there’s a great tool I want to give your listeners to Fire Nation, which is an SEO BS Detector.

It’s a free download where that has trick questions that you would slip into, just innocuously, into the interview process when you’re looking to bring on board an SEO consultant, contractor, employee, or agency; it doesn’t matter. You’d have these questions in your hip pocket that you could ask, and you would know the right answer. There’s only one right answer, and they’re trick questions.

So if they don’t know the right answer, they’re gonna expose themselves as charlatans or snake oil salespeople, and that’s gonna save you so much pain. If you hire the wrong SEO, it’s worse than not doing anything to your SEO because they’ll get you penalized, they’ll create a rap sheet for you in the eyes of Google, and how do you recover from that once you sell your reputation and it’s all behind the scenes. Behind the curtain in Google, they’re not gonna ever let you know that you have.

Scary, scary, scary stuff. And Fire Nation, I just want to make sure you find out more about Stephan and where we can do that.

Yes. So, stephanspencer.com. And for the BS Detector, go to marketingspeak.com/fire. So stephanspencer.com for all sorts of other resources, webinar replays and videos, other white papers and so forth. But the SEO BS detector. Go to marketingspeak.com/fire, and I’ll include a couple of other really incredible free downloads. I’ll make a nice little package of stuff for you guys.

Fire Nation, you need that BS detector. Get over to a marketingspeak.com slash fire for that and the other goodies that Stephan’s going to be putting there for you. And Stephan, I want to say thank you for sharing your journey with Fire Nation today for that brother. We salute you, and we’ll catch you on the flip side.

All right. Thank you.

Hey, Fire Nation, I hope you enjoyed our chat with Stephan today. And you know this: goals equal success. So, with this, you will be accomplishing your number one goal in 100 days. I will catch you there, or I’ll catch you on the flip side.