So he talks a little bit about this cool concept around hiring. Now we all talk about the KPIs and what success is going to be, but he has this little mental, you know, this question every time he has a role is “what winning is going to look like?” Okay, that’s pretty simple but I do think it helps remove sometimes that both oversimplification and over complexity of hiring when we get all these like oh, they need to be able to do X, Y, Z, Z, Z, Z, blah, blah, blah, blah, when in reality is we’re just bringing in someone who’s going to help us move what we’re trying to do a little bit further down the road.

And I like how he looks at that question and then combines it with the more technical aspects of developing his hiring process. So just a cool question, what does winning look like when we’re hiring someone? I think it’s also kind of neat because he talks later in the episode also about the value of developing his own leadership team and sort of the coaching and the programs that he offers them and sort of does it because between looking at when he’s bringing someone in, what he hopes they develop into and then providing them resources to become those types of people. He’s really trying to create what he calls servants–people who are going to help the rest of the team on the mission. Because he believes, and I love this quote here I’m just going to scroll down and look at that, that when you have people who are really wanting to serve, you’re going to be a juggernaut, a powerhouse, and be unstoppable.

Now, he talks about that near the end of the episode. But it is really cool to just think of servant focus, servant based leadership. I’ve heard this reverse pyramid leadership where the leaders serve the team. There’s different phrasing and working on that but I like how Sean talks about both ahead of time. Looking into the opportunity of doing this and building and hoping and realizing what it will take to bring someone there and then spend the time as people are building or their capabilities within an organization, spending the time and the resources to help them become those servant leaders.

Also, because Sean is talking with so many great leaders with his Leadership Stack podcast, really great listen, I’ve listened to it more than a few times. I really love the questions he’s asking. So one, go listen to his podcast. But then two is he talks about the need to be more deliberate in your entrepreneurial journey. Hmm. Something I seem to really enjoy also so this is kind of fun. And he talks about in trying to be more deliberate, it’s about staying on track with the goals and building consistency in your life. But not letting the effort to try and have the perfect schedule, the perfect process, the perfect effort, ruin just getting to be better.

And that’s kind of something that I think a lot of us do. You know, it’s very simple. Don’t let perfect get in the way of good. But it’s something that I think we just have to keep repeating and keep bringing into process. Cause it is so, so easy to say well, this isn’t going to work or this isn’t going to work enough. Well, Sean really kind of dives into that.

So look, I really enjoyed talking to Sean. I think you’re going to get some great advice from listening to him. He’s going to talk about how he really reaches out to make sure he’s involved with his family, his health, his spiritual life, the need to kind of keep these things active. Let’s go talk with Sean and learn a little bit more about how we can progress on our own journey.

Hey, Sean, thank you so much for staying up late and coming on the show today.

Sean Si:
Hey, A.J. Thanks for having me. Not so late for me. I’m a night owl, so it’s okay.

A.J. Lawrence:
I always love these where it’s like, we’re on opposite sides. We’re literally 12 hours apart. So it is this kind of fun where it’s like late, it’s not late. It’s 9pm your time, 9am my time. So it is fun. Let’s just chat, because I am old enough where I remember that was very, very, very difficult to do. I still find it difficult to do this.

Sean Si:
Yeah. It’s a blessing.

A.J. Lawrence:
So, I was just talking with the audience about your background and talking about how interesting the leadership stack, your SEO, everything you’re doing. You know what I would love to kind of chat a little bit is where do you see yourself as an entrepreneur these days?

Sean Si:
That’s a very timely question because there’s a lot of shift happening in my life right now. So one of the shifts is professionalization of SEO hacker. You see, when I started it 12 years ago, I had nothing but somewhere $70 in my pocket. Sorry, not even $70. It’s a lot less than that. I think it’s like 30. Yeah, somewhere $30, 300 pesos, somewhere $30 to start. And all I had was this blog. And I said, well, no one’s reading, no one’s subscribing, how do I increase my readers? Stumbled upon SEO, figured maybe some companies need this and dabbled into a little freelancing here and there. Company grew, we’re now 50 people. And now I’m at that point where I realize I want to spend more time with my wife, my kids. And professionalizing SEO hacker is a very attractive option for me. There’s a lot of traditional Chinese or Filipino Chinese business people here where they’re going to live and die with their business. I mean, they’re going to be like hands on CEO all the way till the end. My father-in-law is like that. An amazing man, excellent entrepreneur, built a huge business. That’s his vision. I mean, that’s what he loves doing. That’s what gets him up in the morning. Not me. There are entrepreneurs like me who want to build business, they’re not so attached to it. Don’t get me wrong, I am attached to my business. A lot of people say it’s like a baby. I do feel that way. But I also know that life shouldn’t revolve around work and business. I would rather revolve it around my wife, my family. So in the journey to professionalizing, I have to hire people who I just got to trust. Hiring COO, a CTO, an accountant, or a finance controller, it’s a little bit scary. Scary opening your books and everything to them. It’s a little bit scary to be honest. It’s the first time I’m doing this. This is the first year we’re doing this. But that is the vision. And if that’s the vision, that’s where we’re going. These are the things I have to do. So as an entrepreneur right now, I am on the road to letting go, bit by bit. That’s the honest place I am in right now.

A.J. Lawrence:
No, I mean, that is such a crazy transition. Having gone through it myself where it’s like all of a sudden you’re like, oh, just more of my own time isn’t going to fix things. And then obviously realizing, oh, I don’t have other time than the company and doing it. You kind of talk maybe let’s step back and talk about how you were defining. How did you go about and define who are these people to build the system, to systematize the business? Did you have goals ahead of time? Did you use a system? Let’s maybe play around in there cause that’s a lot of difficulty having gone through it myself. A lot of I don’t know. Let’s kind of, what did you define would be really good and then how did you figure out who, what and when for that?

Sean Si:
Yep, very good question. So I guess it always would start as a founder and CEO. So not all CEOs are founders, but I’m a founder CEO. I start quitting jobs. So I started quitting being the janitor. I started quitting being the accountant. I started quitting being the lawyer. I started quitting being the developer, the programmer. I started quitting being the designer. I quit a lot of jobs slowly as soon as I find the right people. And during the early days, I had no KPIs, dude. I had no job descriptions. It was just a ragtag, crazy, chaotic place to work in. That’s the honest truth. That’s where I was. I didn’t graduate business, I graduated IT and I failed 28 units. My school wanted to take me out, so I wasn’t a very good student either. So I was just making this hodgepodge thing of stuff work together. That’s where I was. I’m not going to tell you I had it all together. I didn’t. And then I realized as I had a little bit more time to work on the business instead of in the business, I needed to start writing job descriptions.

You realize that I’m seven, eight years in the business when I started doing that. It’s crazy, but that’s the honest truth. And so I write job descriptions of people who I’m already hiring and jobs I already quit. Like the HR position, the web developer position, the writing position, the editor position. Easy for me to write those job descriptions. But the job descriptions that I haven’t quit yet, that’s a little bit challenging. Right? So I wanted a COO, what’s it going to look like? He will have to start or she will have to start from the project management position and then the operations manager and then the VP for operations and then the COO. So like having that kind of transition, putting it on pen and paper, that helps me out a lot. But writing KPIs and key expectations and what winning looks like for these jobs that I have that I’m still doing, that’s actually for me it was very difficult during that time. Makes it a lot easier if you go online and try to search for what the job descriptions of CEO or operations managers of similar industries as yours. But only you as the CEO founder can really say what do I really want these people to hit? Like if they hit this, they hit their KPI, I’m going to give them a bonus of you know like $20,000, something like that at the end of the year.

A.J. Lawrence:
Yeah.

Sean Si:
So being able to write that is key. You cannot hire for C-level executives if you don’t have a clear cut job description with clear key performance indicators that if they hit, you get a bonus. If they don’t hit, you gotta shake hands and part ways. And this is the last point. Aside from the KPIs, you gotta clearly state there what winning looks like. So there’s a difference. With KPIs, you say you gotta make sure that we’re +/- 1 manpower for every department. If we’re -2, seats or headcount for the project managers were in trouble. You’re not hitting your KPI. That’s KPI with what winning looks like. It would usually say, at least in my job descriptions, what winning looks like is everyone doesn’t feel burdened and burnt out and everyone’s happy with what they’re doing. You’re winning when that’s the morale of the team. So there’s a little bit difference there. I hope that helps out.

A.J. Lawrence:
That is a really great thing and that is a process that I think really would gain great results. And really, really do love the idea where you said they have to kind of come in. Not earlier, that wasn’t the phrasing used. And not junior. But they have to take on sort of the lower roles to then build up the higher. That is a cool thing because I do deal a lot with helping other entrepreneurs find like building marketing teams or bringing on other senior people. And so often they just want to hand it over. I’m like, no, it doesn’t work that way. One out of 10 most of the time you kind of have to let them spend time not being critical to understand what’s going on. So I love that approach. But you know what I’m curious is defining those roles. What I found, and I find for many, is very difficult to get started. You see you can go, oh yeah, what’s a CEO role? And you can Google it, da da da da, tying it up. Because I know from my experience it was when was something HR, when was something sort of operations, it was like I was just doing what needed to be done. So I’d be curious especially around the senior roles. How did you start moving and defining what would come under that person? Where did you start figuring out? And as you built it, did you start just scratch? Did you research it? Did you find it? How did you come about what those roles were going to be? Because sounds really easy in hindsight, but sometimes it’s not quite easy to get started.

Sean Si:
Yeah, well, for sure. And A.J. love your questions by the way. With SEO hacker, and it’s unfortunate because I couldn’t direct you to a link where I could just say hey, check out this link to see my C-level executive job descriptions, because I don’t post that online. I do post all of my other job descriptions like writers, editors you can find in our website. But for C-level executives, I don’t post it online. I just send it to people who I think are qualified. So how I started, and you have to also understand those listening here. I do believe one of my blessings as a gift. You know, giftings or talents that I got from God.

I’m a born again Christian. I believe in God. I believe one of the gifts I got from God is the skill of writing. Hey, I started out as a writer and that’s how I found out about SEO. So it’s not very difficult for me to put words and turn them into something finished, such as a good complete job description. One of the ways where I would gather information about what a certain position should be doing is to ask. Ask around. Believe it or not, that works. So I call up another entrepreneur friend who is ahead of me and I ask them, hey, what does your CIO do? What’s the main KPIs of your COO? Can you give me a short sneak peek at that, if you don’t mind? If you do mind, then just tell me some stuff that you’re not under NDA with and you could divulge to me and I want to learn from you.

You know, be humble enough to want to learn from these people. And often enough, if you’re a good person in their book and they know you’re going to return the favor maybe someday they would tell you everything. So far, my experience, every person I asked, told me a lot of things about these positions in their company that gave me a lot of ideas. Again, I’m using the word ideas because I have to now apply that in my company. Like some of these people are CEO of construction companies, has nothing to do with SEO services like what we do. So I just get ideas from them. So for example, with COO, it’s all about the operations. You gotta operate smoothly, you gotta have enough manpower there that is going to serve X amount of clients. And that’s going to be the dance that the operations manager has to learn. We cannot be overmanned and we cannot be undermanned either. They have to take care of the operations utilization. These things you already know innately as an entrepreneur. Oftentimes it’s just hard for you to put pen and paper because sometimes you don’t want to quit these jobs because you’re good at them and you love them. That’s the real reason why. But asking other entrepreneur friends can help give that clarity to you. Especially if like me, you want to quit running the show someday, maybe five, ten years down the road.

A.J. Lawrence:
Yeah, well, I don’t want to keep pushing. I feel like I’m kind of doing seven questions with you, but okay. So these other entrepreneurs, are these masterminds? Are these business community, networking, friends and family?

Sean Si:
A lot of them, you’d be surprised. They’re just friends. Like I just call them up and like I have that.

A.J. Lawrence:
How did you become friends? People you knew?

Sean Si:
Yeah, good question. So there’s this one guy, his name’s Isaac and he’s now the godfather of my youngest kid. We met way back. He was still trying to start up his software as a service company and it’s a site. It’s a website security software service and he knew nothing about digital marketing. He knew a little bit about payment gateways but I opened up a world to him on digital marketing, told him this is how you have to do it otherwise you’re not going to have that engine of growth, you’re not going to have those subscriber hits, you’re not going to have that MRR or monthly recurring revenue that you need. So I taught him a lot, didn’t charge him anything. And I said, if you need more help, just hit me up.

Years passed, he sold that company for good money. He started up in construction because his father-in-law, he got married, is a big construction mogul and they had a joint venture and he hired accountants, he hired operations managers, and he was learning all these things. And we had cigar and whiskey one time talking with me about him.

A.J. Lawrence: I love those conversations.

Sean Si: Yeah, there you go, right? Cigar and whiskey. Love it. And I told him I need to learn that. After tonight, can you give me an hour of your time? Just tell me, run by me how you do this. Like how do you hire an accountant and trust your entire finances to your accountant? Are you comfortable with that accountant knowing how much you get out of the business for yourself, for your own spending? So all of these questions I threw at him in that one hour that he agreed to teach me and he answered everything. And I was so enlightened. I went home, talked with my exitcom and we implemented the things we could, and I became more transparent and my heart felt lighter. In implementing these things, I became more confident, definitely, because now I have someone who is willing to teach me even beyond that one hour actually. So it’s funny, it’s just a friend. I did invest value before. It doesn’t have to be that way. I’ve had mentors where I didn’t invest any value and they still helped me out.

A.J. Lawrence:
Yeah, I think sometimes you think it’s going to be the immediate people but a lot of the best advice I’ve gotten have been the people who my immediate network know. So I’ll go to someone like, I’m in the middle of trying to acquire a company right now. And like a friend of mine put me in touch with someone and it was like that person they put me in touch with is sort of my like go to person now. I don’t know if I could survive, do this type of deal or hopefully continue doing this deal. We’re still in the middle of it. So it is so funny how building that network, you don’t know who or why or what’s going to give you the value but it’s there for you. So important.

All right, I just wanted to dive down because I do think in hindsight, building these profiles of people who can help you seem straightforward and I think so often when we look like, how do I do this? When is it? It’s done? Sort of like from the fait accompli, whatever from it being done all the way down. Versus when most entrepreneurs are like, I just know I need help so then talking to other entrepreneurs and realizing, okay, these are the situations, these are the opportunities. I like that approach of how you took to kind of then build up. Like let me get rid of this. Let’s get these people to start in the weeds before just telling me here we need to get in the weeds so they can see. That’s a wonderful approach and logical. That’s a great way to do that because just by describing that approach and talking about network and stuff, you’re indicating also a pretty sophisticated approach to being an entrepreneur. You’re not doing what I always call the two sticks and a prayer or throw the pasta against the wall. You’re way past that. You’re building it. You’re getting to this layer. Now what are you doing to help you personally be a better entrepreneur?

Sean Si:
Right. There are so many things that I would honestly tell you. I don’t do a lot of them consistently enough because there’s just so many things that you can do. I don’t do these things every day. I have to give you guys that disclaimer. I don’t live an extremely routine life. I’m not that kind of person. I’m not that kind of entrepreneur. I know there are others who are like that, and I’m happy for them.

A.J. Lawrence:
God bless you.

Sean Si:
I think that is an excellent way to live. I just cannot. I’m not that consistent, and I’m not that disciplined. But you would find me, at least every week doing these things two to three times a week. I’d listen to podcasts often when I’m taking a shower, when I’m driving, or when I’m exercising. What exercise do I do? I have a bike that’s connected to the internet and depends on what road I’m biking in online, it hardens and it inclines or declines.

A.J. Lawrence:
Is it zip?

Sean Si:
There you go. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

A.J. Lawrence:
My wife loves the Peloton and we have a Peloton app and we have a swim, but I mean, there’s other ones where you actually get to ride. Yeah, I love that. Sorry to interrupt that.

Sean Si:
No worries. So last night, I burned a thousand calories on Swift 2 hours and I was watching a movie with my wife. So sometimes I would walk outside. Sometimes I would go boxing. So when I’m boxing, I can’t listen to podcast. Otherwise, I’m listening to podcasts. What podcasts do I listen to? I listen to largely John Maxwell podcasts. I’m a John Maxwell certified speaker and coach and Pat Lencioni’s podcast because I run a team and his podcast is excellent with running teams. I also read books, so I’m almost done with John Maxwell’s 21- no, not 21 Irrefutable Laws. It’s the Developing The Leader Within You 2.0. I do have the book right here. Love it. I do recommend you guys read it if you can get a copy. And it’s so easy to get a copy of it. Almost done.

A.J. Lawrence:
I’ll put in the show notes. I almost tabbed out. I was like, oh. And I’m like, wait, we’re in the middle of.

Sean Si:
There you go. The one thing is also, it’s a yellow book. It’s in my office desk. I love that book. Not yet done at all. But so I read at least twice a week. So I exercise, I read, I listen to podcasts. I read the Bible every day. That one I do every day. So that’s something I do consistently every day, one chapter a day, because of Joshua 1:8. Joshua 1:8 says, don’t let the book of the law depart from your mouth. Meditate on it day, night. And then the end of the verse says, so that you will be prosperous and successful. And I’m like, I give an arm and leg to be prosperous and successful. So started reading every day since I was 13 years old and I finished the Bible 14 times now. And so I could tell you that holds true, you know, I’m not telling you that, you know, prosper and successful. Like you’re going to be that the next day or the next week. No. I was kicked out of my house. I knew what getting hungry is. I was super thin before. But now, looking back, I could say that first holds true. Right? So that’s something that I do every day. Another thing that I do consistently is I learn new things. So right now I’m enrolled in The University of the Philippines Dean’s Data Privacy Certification course. My exam is actually this Friday. So continue to learn new things. Continue to reinvent yourself. I journal. I journaled this afternoon. It’s a letter notebook. I keep a letter notebook. And then I write in my blog once a week. That one I try my best to write once a week. So I’m happy I was able to write this week, but last week I missed that. So I had a gap last week. What do I write about? Same stuff I talk in the podcast-leadership, entrepreneurship, management. So these things you would find me doing to keep myself on the edge.

A.J. Lawrence:
So it sounds like yes, there are things you do to one, release the stress in sort of your life, but then also to build a consistency. And that’s really interesting because I know, you know, I jokingly say, I got forced to sell my company last time because I burned out. I focused so much on our growth. I did this and I had no consistency except for the work. And you’re talking about physical, emotional, spiritual. And you had these consistencies of what you were doing on the different layers you needed to run a business. It’s not just like taking care of yourself. It’s not just like getting a good, you know. Doing your job.

Sean Si:
Right.

A.J. Lawrence:
I was about to say getting a good grade at work. Sorry. I have teenagers, so I’ve been dealing with high school stuff all week. But yeah, I mean, it sounds very much like this kind of consistency has helped. You can be more present in this work for you, being more deliberate.

Sean Si:
Well, I would say life is- so there’s this is from the book. The one thing which I just mentioned.

A.J. Lawrence:
Yeah.

Sean Si:
It says there nothing great in your life is achieved by staying in the middle. And what the book means by staying in the middle is work-life balance. Right? Work-life, work-life, work-life, work-life. That’s how it looks like. And it’s balance all throughout. There’s nothing great that’s going to come out of that. Great things would come out of, the book argues, work life counterbalance. So you go to extremes. That extreme work. Then you counterbalance with vacation or you counterbalance with something that helps you wind down an extreme work. So that’s how my life looks like. And the counterbalances, I would say would be those things that I mentioned, like exercise, reading God’s word, meditating. I do meditate, so that’s something I missed sharing earlier. 40 gigahertz brain waves. I use brainwaves.

A.J. Lawrence:
Okay. Brainwaves FM or something.

Sean Si:
Just Spotify. That’s it.

A.J. Lawrence:
Okay. Spotify brainwaves. Okay. Yeah, because there’s a campaign called Brainwaves FM that I used to advise.

Sean Si:
So it’s like, wait, no, no, sorry. I’m sure they’re fantastic, but for me, as long as you’re getting the brainwaves in your ears, that’s it.

A.J. Lawrence:
Yeah.

Sean Si:
So when I write, I use theta waves. When I meditate, I use gamma waves. And when I wind down and wanna sleep, I use theta or alpha. I’m not saying this is magic, but it does help me out. I mean, I find that I have more clarity when I write great studies on that. So that’s something that I also do. And these things help me to counterbalance because life cannot be all work. Like what happened with you, A.J. You burned out. Burning out is something that we all do not like. No one will come here to your show and say, I like being burned out. No, because it sucks when you’re burned out. Everything in life sucks when you’re burned out. So you need those counterbalances. It’s usually keeping yourself, your being not just your physical self, but your being, your spiritual, your emotional self, family, keeping these things in check. Work is a rubber ball when you’re juggling work, usually when you drop, it just bounces back up. But family, health, your spiritual life. These are glass balls. When you drop one of them, they’re broken. It’s hard to put them back together.

A.J. Lawrence:
No, I mean, I fully agree because it’s sort of like in my experience, I didn’t realize, it was not even after the fact. It was a significant amount of time of withdrawing from that balance or attempt or sort of merging spheres of my life and doing things that then all of a sudden the impact, you know. I knew I wasn’t sleeping well, I knew I was drinking too much, not getting exercise. But I was like, I can do this. I had done it before and then all of a sudden it hit and it hit at, you know. As everything in life usually happens, it’s like oh, this probe goes wrong. Oh, this also goes wrong. Because you run around, you lose the ability to keep all the plates up in the air. So, yeah, I like that consistency and that you dedicate to it.

Sean Si:
Yeah.

A.J. Lawrence:
I mean, I’ve had guests and I know people who, like I had one guest who talks about his two and a half hours every day evaluating what he did at the end of the day and how it lines with his 10 year journey. And I’m like, well, I mean, he’s killing it. Dru Riley of Trends.vc. And it’s a great community and their research reports are amazing, but it’s just like, all right, dude, do you have kids? Are you in a relationship? I just want to know.

Sean Si:
Yeah, yeah, if he has kids, it’s gone 2.5 hours. That’s gonna be 2.5 hours, 2.5 seconds.

A.J. Lawrence:
But yeah, it is trying to find the consistency and it is. We can’t have work life balance is a joke. I had a great coach years ago just said he would just be like, f^ck work life balance. Just do the things you want to do and then make sure you’re doing things that allow you to continue doing it. Which it took me to actually after the fact, that was like, oh, I thought he was talking about the business and all this. It’s like, if you want to do something, you have to make sure you have the profits. If you want to grow, you have to have the income to do it. You have to have the physical sound money, you have to have the mental focus. There are all these resources you need as an entrepreneur to achieve things. And then you get to live a life that you dictate. You get to create it. If you balance your resources, as you talk about, that’s really great that you’ve been able to do that. What is success going to look like for you as the entrepreneur? You start off by talking about this transition phase now that you’re looking to build the system and kind of step out of the day to day and work more on the business versus being in it. So where is that your definition of success? Or is it something like the beginning of your success?

Sean Si:
Right. So success is defined differently by different people. It’s relative. For some it’s billion dollars. For some like me, it’s freedom of time and being able to prioritize what I want. Not what I should as dictated by the world or my clients, but prioritize what I want, what I think is important. And right now, the vision, at least a five year vision A.J., is to be able to go on a vacation trip with my wife. Like one week or two weeks maybe in Israel. We always wanted to go to the Holy Land. We’ve never been able to do that. So being able to do that without feeling guilty that we’ve left our people, that is the goal. So for me, success is more of being able to do the things that I want, when I want. So I don’t own any sports cars. I’m not someone who has excessive buying habits, purchasing habits. I actually feel guilty when you spend too much on something. So I like buying assets like real estate, stocks.

A.J. Lawrence:
Yeah, I’ve seen a lot of your conversations about that.

Sean Si:
Yeah, there you go. Businesses. I buy a portion of different businesses right now. I don’t like buying the business because I need to run and manage it, and I’m already hands full with SEO Hacker. And again, the vision is to detach myself from the work itself. But don’t get me wrong, I’m a millennial. I’m 34 years old. I’m not the type of millennial who will say, I want to retire by 40 so I can go on an unlimited amount of vacation. I don’t think I will ever retire. I would write until I die. I do believe that I will keep on serving God in ministry until I die. So I still speak in our church organizations, events. I help out. I help with the programs. I’ve been serving since I was a youth. And I do believe that God has seen these things and my rewards are in heaven. But I can honestly tell you guys now, I have experienced so many good things already here on earth because of these things that I’ve done. I believe that God has seen that. And I don’t think I’m gonna stop doing that. I’m not telling you that I want to be able to do things when I want what I want because I’m going to retire and go on an unlimited sailing trip somewhere. I’m not. I don’t think I’m going to do that. I think I’m still going to work. It’s just that it’s going to be more of giving work, like ministry and writing books.

A.J. Lawrence:
You know, as you talk about that what I’ve realized on my own journey and from talking to other entrepreneurs, we want that freedom. But I think, and sort of as the boss, you could go. But the way you were sort of referencing, it’s like, where it doesn’t impact. So it’s like, oh. I know like when I went, this is 10 plus years ago, I went for two weeks for an anniversary with my wife through Thailand because that’s her favorite place she backpacked when she had been a student. I was on the phone long distance, right before VoIP was any good, every day. And I was working an hour or two a day, which one lessened the impact of that vacation and then two, added stress to my team and the people I left behind. So I like that you’re not defining it like it must be this, but it’s so it doesn’t impact what people do. It has to be organized. They can’t be just waiting for you.

In a sense, you’ve defined something that has a whole lot of underlying requirements without discussing the requirements. I always find that’s like, yeah, I want to do this. And then you realize, okay, has to have this, it has to have this, it has to have this. It has to have this to get here.

Sean Si:
Yeah, that’s definitely the plan. So with the KPIs, one key thing that I wasn’t able to share earlier is the story of how my operations manager came to the team. So I hired someone who’s not with me anymore. Operations manager, paid salary. I poured my knowledge into this guy for seven months. Put a lot of effort into it, made a big boatload of salary to him. He was 14 years working in IBM, which I thought was great. That showed loyalty, that showed good tenure out. But seven months in A.J., there was nothing to show for it, right? Nothing to show for it. If there was, it’d be very little, negligible. I couldn’t feel it. My ex wasn’t happy. They kept on asking me, well, what is this guy doing? What’s this guy doing? Kept on asking because I hired the guy and I couldn’t defend that person properly. So I was also not feeling good about this. Things happened. He had to resign. I knelt down and prayed, Lord, what now? Like, I hired this guy hoping that he would join the show by five years from now. And that night, I dreamt of a classmate that I had last spoken to in high school. When we graduated, that’s it. He was our valedictorian. But after that, he was a ghost. We couldn’t find him. We couldn’t reach him. Turns out he worked for an international company. He was going around the world. No Facebook. I don’t know why, but he had no Facebook, so I couldn’t find him. And all I knew when I woke up from that dream was, I gotta get a hold of this guy. So I scoured my friends for his number. I found four. Only one work. I called him up. Hey David, how’s it going? We did small talk and he said, well, if you’re ever looking for another job, I’m hiring for operations manager. He said, okay. I’m still happy where I am, but thank you for hitting me up. I’ll keep in mind. Months passed. One day he calls me and says, is that job opening still there? And I said, yeah, for sure. And he says, can I drop by your office? And this is during the pandemic so I was so shocked and surprised that he wanted to come by and also quite impressed. I’m like, yeah, dude, come over. So he comes over, we talk, we close the deal. He started July 1. It has been amazing. Like, my exit comm has not stopped saying how great this guy has been performing. He also graduated University of the Philippines, magna cum laude in Chemical engineering.

A.J. Lawrence:
Nice.

Sean Si:
Yeah. Like magna cum laude, who does that? I’m mind blown with this guy. So he’s who I’m looking at right now to lead SEO Hacker five years down the road. I’m keeping him boasting him. I keep telling him, look at how I do things, look at how I decide, look at my authority and try to get what you can and do it your own way because you’re never going to be like me. So I’m setting expectations on you. You’re never going to be like me. I’m never gonna be like you. You got strengths I don’t have. I got strengths you don’t have. So you gotta do this your way. And so what’s my point in sharing that story with you? Sometimes, you do your best in hiring people. Cause I know you guys listening here, you’re like, well, where do I find the right person? I tried finding the right person. I hired who I thought was the right person. But turns out it was a really bad decision. I’m still haunted by that decision. And sometimes it takes faith, right? At the end of the day, sometimes it does take faith. I prayed for this guy. Honestly, it’s awkward when people ask me how I found him. I said I dreamt of him. Like, who does that?

A.J. Lawrence:
There’s a joke there. When you’re whiskeying with whiskey and cigars. It’s a joke.

Sean Si:
Yeah. Sometimes it takes faith. You gotta pray, you gotta kneel down, and you gotta ask God to send you the right people. That’s what happened in my case. And I think that it might be what would be the best case for you as well.

A.J. Lawrence:
All right, cool. Well, in all the different things in this ongoing journey to kind of create this, not just company but also the leadership stack and all of this, you talked about your success being the ability to not impact people that you have in this organization. Your success is going to be when this organization is running without you. You’re still adding into value and creating what’s like the- I don’t want to use the term rockstar, but like what’s the BHAG.

Sean Si:
Got it. So I assume that all of the people listening in knows what BHAG is, the big hairy audacious goal.

A.J. Lawrence:
Big hairy audacious goal.

Sean Si:
There you go. From Jim Collins’s book. And I love that by the way. So what’s the BHAG? The BHAG that we have right now as an organization is to partner with 500 companies, serving them using high touch ethical approach to SEO and growing the revenues in the digital market. Right now where is SEO Hacker? We’re partnered with around 60. So 500 is a north Star. Right? We are almost a one is to one in terms of manpower and client. And being here in the Philippines a lot of people do raise eyebrows like John, what are you doing? One is to one shouldn’t be that way. But if you’re doing SEO right, like you’re doing a white hat approach.

A.J. Lawrence:
Yeah.

Sean Si:
It’s kind of the only way. Right? So I have a lot of manpower to make sure that we rank our clients on the first page and that’s what we guarantee. That’s what we do. That’s what SEO Hacker is known for. If you search SEO Philippines right now in Google, we’re actually number one. We’ve been a very long time. So one is to one. Why am I sharing that with you? Because it means if we do partner with 500 different companies, I’m going to have like 500 people in my manpower. That’s a lot.

A.J. Lawrence:
Plus infrastructure.

Sean Si:
Plus infrastructure. We are planning for our first building that is owned by SEO Hacker hopefully in three years.

A.J. Lawrence:
Cool.

Sean Si:
It’s going to be done.

A.J. Lawrence:
Real estate.

Sean Si:
There you go. And more or less it could only house 150 people. Like where I’m going to get the next 350 I don’t know. That’s why it’s a big area they should go. But there you are. That’s what we got.

A.J. Lawrence:
That’s good. And here I do want to just jump in because I do think there is many entrepreneurs, they’re coming at running a business from their level of expertise. Usually marketing, I noticed that tends to not be where most entrepreneurs. But you and I both are marketing and having gone through some of your SEO, I haven’t touched it in gazillion years. But so often the approach and what people think is good SEO are these race to the bottom approaches as you said. Almost like how many clients can you stuff in? It’s like yeah, you can get X, Y and Z and maybe get decent technical analysis. Sorry, let me. Because you and I will geek out. You can get a good understanding of where you exist in the SEO for your opportunity but it takes work and it is a blending of science and art. Prayer and sweat is what I hear a lot of times, for good SEO. It’s like if you really want to, you need time, you need value, you need to create value in the process. And that’s not done by someone who’s working 20 clients. Yeah, yeah, Just no thought. You can’t bring that thought together. So that is a big distinction. Everyone out there, if you’re listening to how Sean’s team is approaching it, that really, you know. Yes, if you’re looking for the cheapest price or you’re seeing, well, it’s only 250 here. So I used to tell clients, it’s like, well, good for you. You like my pitch but you like their price. Go. If you’re looking, go talk with Sean or Sean’s team about that since he’s building his systems now.

Sean Si:
Thank you.

A.J. Lawrence:
Really, that is an approach that will bring you value. Sorry, I just wanted to add that little. That is not a paid endorsement. I am impressed. And I like that approach as an ex SEO who had an SEO shop. And that is the approach that you create value in the space by stuffing clients into one person. Hey, now that I just endorsed you, would you tell the audience how best to find you? What they should do? You have so many cool things going on so tell them, with SEO, Leadership stack, everything or the things you think they should come and talk to you about.

Sean Si:
So here’s the thing. We are the number one SEO company here in the country. And that’s because we do rank, literally number one for SEO Philippines, SEO Services, Philippines SEO Agency, SEO company. Right? All these keywords, we dominate them. And when you look at our portfolio, we handle top 50 companies here in the country as well. But what people don’t realize is we’re not just good at SEO. The secret to my success is I invest so much in leadership development for my people. You might not be able to add that like one plus one, because leadership, SEO, like what does that have to do with each other? But leadership is so powerful that in any organization, if you have more leaders, I mean real leaders, leaders who want to serve, not leaders who want to hold titles or positions. If you have leaders really just want to serve, you’re going to be a juggernaut, a powerhouse, unstoppable. And if you’re really good at what you’re doing, or if you’re the best at what you’re doing, you’re just like it’s a no brainer. SEO hacker, when you look at our price, you look at our competitor’s price, we’re like two to three times more expensive. And yet companies would go with SEO hacker. Why is that? It’s not just because we rank number one. It’s also because of the culture we built. Transparency and accountability, respect for work, being a challenger, going the extra mile, having grit, all of these things. Unity. Saying no to gossip, saying no to sanctioned incompetence. Saying no to unresolved conflict. Saying no to different visions between team members.

A.J. Lawrence:
Radical transparency.

Sean Si:
Yeah, there you go. So protecting the integrity. In fact, earlier today we had our team representatives meeting. We played a game, the John Maxwell leadership game. And one of the questions that was asked there is, what are some things that we do really well as a team? You know the first to answer is my web success auditor and she said, it’s being so intentional about our culture. And it’s amazing how we are so intentional about our culture because other companies don’t care, right? They’re just like, let it run amok and that’s fine. But in SEO hacker, we are so intentional. We protect it, we guard it, and we’re so deliberate about making sure people follow or fit in or influence it and impact it in a positive way. A lot of companies don’t think about this. But if you want to know the secret sauce behind SEO hacker, it’s not because we’re really, really good with Google’s guidelines. Anyone can be really good at Google’s guidelines, right?

A.J. Lawrence:
Just read it and you don’t always have to follow them because they say one thing and then the results usually are the opposite of what they say.

Sean Si:
So yeah, OG SEOs would know.

A.J. Lawrence:
And hey, I remember when it was keyword stuffing. It’s come a long, long way since.

Sean Si:
It’s come a long way, super long way. So it’s not about how good we are in SEO, it’s about the leadership development we have in our team. I would say we are actually a leadership academy. We just happen to do SEO really well.

A.J. Lawrence:
Well, you know what, I would love to have you come back on the show. We’re developing sort of a new style. I’m going to have a group of entrepreneurs talking about different topics and I would love to geek out on some SEO and maybe we have sort of a marketing thing. But I think also just how you are developing your team and that leadership approach. Because I’ve seen in this opportunity to talk with other entrepreneurs, what I’m seeing and I don’t want to say secret sauce, it’s treating your employees well. Ooh, that secret. But companies that make that sort of part of the mission and priority and not just say it, but actually reinforce and put the time and the effort and the consistency into it. We’ve had quite a few, yourself included, who are seeing what I’m going to call above average returns from that effort. So I think that could be really good to maybe bring back and talk with a couple of entrepreneurs who are, there’s a great term I’ve heard from another. It’s employee first type of company. Not that you defined it that way, this was another definition. But it is that effort to put your employees capabilities, the people who are delivering the value for your customers, your clients, your audience put their development, their needs and then kind of go out. It’s like, wow, there maybe that’s an extra 5%. Maybe that’s even more. Can we get another 1%? Can we get another half percent? Okay, I love that. So yeah, it’s SEO-hacker.com, correct?

Sean Si:
That’s it.

A.J. Lawrence:
We’ll make sure it’s on the show notes, everything. And yeah, I mean, you guys. He’s talking about, once again to the audience, Sean’s talking about being ranked for the Philippines. And this is one thing also is because there is so much SEO talent in the Philippines. It does tend to be one of the more competitive markets to rank for. But your client base is global, correct?

Sean Si:
Yeah, global, that’s right. Right now we’re saying I work for Vietnam, US, Australia, a lot of places actually. Majority of my clients are from the Philippines though, because the market is catching up here.

A.J. Lawrence:
Yeah, I know a lot of people who are starting to put more. The typical thing was back offices but I think the talent, over the past five, ten years, and then definitely now with COVID and the realization that you can have your entire talent base be virtual, not just parts of it. I have seen some really big step ups and sort of the- I don’t want to call it management talent, but almost more the strategic capabilities of talent out of the Philippines. I know some great Philippine entrepreneurs, some great Philippine operators, et cetera. And it’s like we’re starting to see that in not just the Philippines, but Eastern Europe, South Africa, where it’s like, well, I can do the work. It’s pretty impressive. So cool. Sean, thanks. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. It was great. So much to take away from this, so thank you.

Sean Si:
Thank you for having me. A.J. It’s a pleasure and a privilege to serve you and your audience and to add value to you guys. I hope I did add value to you guys. Oh, I would love to come back if you would have me again.

A.J. Lawrence:
No, I would love to. All right.