Sean: I wonder, word of mouth marketing is arguably still the best form of marketing that any company would have.

That is kind of what you did right there for you. But when you look at a lot of companies, even the big ones, they don't have a word-of-mouth marketing strategy. They would have an advertising strategy. They would have a big idea strategy. They'd have an SEO strategy, which we both are very fond of, but not - no real word of mouth strategy.

Vince: Sometimes the word of mouth strategy is hidden in other layers.

So there's a couple of core strategies we use in - like when I'm dealing with agencies in large corporates, particularly initially some small companies as well. There's a couple of methodologies we use. One of them is any advertising that we're doing, particularly TV commercials and things like that.

There is this, this holy grail that we want to achieve and that holy grail is getting people to change their language. And I'll give a good example of this. I don't know if you, like, we had this in New Zealand. I don't know if it's in any other country, but we had a Continental Cup of soups, right? So it was a cup of soup brand and Continental had these ads that used to run.

"Got three-thirtyitis? It must be time for continental." And three-thirtyitis wasn't a real thing. It was just their way of describing the afternoon slump that everybody in the corporate world would feel. So you're in your job when it comes to about 3:30 and you're like, "oh, I don't want to do my job. I just want to go home. I'm tired now."

 And it's because you've got that slump that happens after lunch. You've had a big feed, all these kinds of things. So they owned this message. They owned this concept called three-thirty itis. So that became something that became a word of mouth because everyone started using that language. But to achieve that, by the way, is incredibly rare and incredibly hard.

This was the holy grail. It's actually very difficult. The other way that I do encourage everyone to do it and corporates do it. And they kind of hide the word of mouth within this, as the whole concept of a friend gets a free campaign. And you'll see this with some of those deals that corporate strand, where they're like you know like power company is a good example this.

Some power companies over here go, "Hey, invite your friends. And for everyone that signs up, you get $50. Oh, you both get $50 off your power bill" or something. So they're using you as their marketing engine. You're out there telling people, "Hey, come and sign up with me. You'll get 50 bucks. I'll get 50 bucks and we'll both have our power in the new company."

So that's an aspect of word of mouth that can be cultivated by brands rather than relying on people out there.

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How do you manage your time?

I've touched base on this before. You don't really manage time. Time goes on, you can't stop it. You can't manage it. We have 24 hours a day. I don't have one second more than you do. So you can’t really manage time, what you can manage is your energy. You manage your energy. Make sure that you give a hundred percent of your energy to things that matter, things that are important to you, or things that are an emergency or a crisis. You give your energy to that.

Otherwise, don't spend your energy on things that are not important and not urgent. So wasting time, that's what we call wasting time or killing time. That’s actually energy you spend on things that are not important. Because again, you can’t manage time, you can just manage your energy. Make sure that you have priorities, just three. One, two, three priorities for the day. Where if you finish all three priorities you're done for the day, you're happy, whatever else you could finish is a bonus.

That's how I do it so that I feel productive every day and I actually finished a lot of important stuff. I have priorities. I have my task list, my to-do list. I finished like 15 tasks a day. There are a lot of days I finish, most of my days, I finish 12 to 15 tasks. But if I finish just three tasks, I'll be happy already. I make sure that I still give my best, you know, and that's a big deal for me. That's what makes me successful in other people's eyes. That's why people think that I do a lot of things, but really it's just three major things that I need to finish every day and everything else is a bonus and I give it my all.

So make sure you have priorities and stick with those priorities. Don't use your time and energy on things that are not important. That's going to be my advice for that.

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Sean: Here's my next question for you. Marketing is something that we do and something that all business owners should do, but there is confusion happening, whereas people are thinking, okay, how am I gonna follow Vince's advice and tell who I am to other people without running ads. Do I need to spend on ads? And how can I spend on advertising when the pandemic is there, the lockdowns are there, what do you think about that? Was it smart for them to cut their marketing slash advertising budget during the lockdowns?

Vince: A hundred percent, I mean, there are multiple reasons that it was a smart thing to do. First of all, because in some cases it's inappropriate, depending on what it is you're offering, depending on what your services and your product sound and things like that.

To market it to people in a time where everybody's in chaos. To market to people in a time where everybody is fearful, they're losing their jobs. They don't know what's around the corner. They're in a sense of heightened anxiety and there's an ethical aspect to not marketing to those people. And I'll give you a good, like over here in New Zealand, we live in a really peaceful country.

We live in an amazing country, but from time to time, we have these disasters that happen. We had the Christchurch earthquake, which was absolutely devastating. A lot of people lost their lives. A lot of people lost their homes. A lot of businesses went under and everything.

The moment that that happens, just about every single business in New Zealand, certainly all the corporates I was working with, we all killed our budgets and we said, we're not marketing to anybody right now. Right now, our only focus is to make sure that people aren't vulnerable and we don't want to be marketing to a vulnerable individual. We also had a while I was at Cigna, we had a shooting at one of the mosques in Christchurch, but burrow crushed it.

So they had the shootings in the mosque there, and it was an absolutely devastating, terrible time. A lot of people lost their life due to just ignorance and stupidity from, from an individual. And as a result, we immediately killed all of our budgets. We took our ads off the air. We took our digital budgets offline, all these kinds of things as well. Because, and there's a state where people are emotional, where people are anxious and there is a moral obligation to you as a marketer to go, you know what? Let's let them get through this, before I start trying to ram things down their throats.

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When starting a business, how much time would you spare for you to know that this business is scalable, or will it just be a waste of time, effort, and resources?

For me, scalability is something that you don't really think about at the starting line. You don't think about that because you don't even know if you're going to succeed. You don't even know if you can stabilize it. So scaling it up is an afterthought. So yeah, I didn't think about how I could scale SEO Hacker up when I was starting out.

In fact, I thought about just having like 10 or 13 people and that’s it. But now we're 50 people. I really didn't think about scaling up. I thought about how I can stabilize it once it's so stable, well, not so stable now because there's a pandemic. But once it is a lot more stable, you think about scaling up. That's the time you think about scaling up. You don't usually think about it when you're starting a business.

When you're starting a business, all you think about is how you can make it stable, secure, how you can pay my people, how you can make sure cash flow is good, revenue is greater than expenses. So when you're five years in the industry, I'd say. So you're no longer a startup because you're five years in, you're in that awkward stage of the business where you think, should you make it grow? Should you stay as is? Is it stable? Is it secure? So I think that's a scale-up stage. That's the stage where you think about scaling up.

And SEO Hacker, I wouldn’t say it's a very scalable business because one manpower is like one client. One is to one, so we need to keep on hiring and we need to keep on getting new clients and it's almost on a one-to-one ratio. A scalable business is a software business where you only have one server, for example, it’s a cloud server and you're serving a hundred thousand people at the same time. That is a very scalable business.

All businesses are scalable. That's a fact. All businesses are scalable. The question is, how fast can you scale it? How fast can you scale it? And how efficiently, in terms of money, in terms of capital and operating expense, how efficiently can you scale it? For a software business or a software as a service business, one server, a hundred thousand people, you can very, very efficiently scale it up.

I mean, your costs could be Php 1.00 and your profit could be Php 100.00. So you could give a 30% discount, it doesn't matter, because you're still making a lot more money. But in a services business like SEO, the ratio is not the same. It's a one is to one ratio if you're a white hat SEO company like we are. So it's not that scalable compared to a software company. But if you're going to compare it to a real estate company for example, then SEO is a lot more scalable than if you're renting out hotel rooms, or if you're renting out condo units, because you can't just keep on buying hotels, keep on buying land and building hotels at a fast rate, I mean, if you're starting out or if you're just five years in the industry. So it's not as scalable.

So it depends on what industry you're in. It depends on what business you have, but all businesses are scalable. It's just a matter of how fast you can scale it and how efficiently you can scale it in terms of OPEX and CAPEX.

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Sean: And one of the age-old questions that are often seen and often asked in Facebook groups now, especially for startup Facebook groups is, what's the difference between branding and marketing?

Vince: Oh, okay. So not much. It's kind of like the age-old question. What's the difference between marketing and sales, in reality, they're all blurred.

They are all kind of the same things. Essentially, if you think about branding in a traditional sense, branding is as two things. It is how your customers perceive it. So that is how they see you, what they think of you, their sentiment towards you, all those different things. And this is the weird thing that people have to get their heads around.

As often, we do our best to control our brand. We do our best to design our brand, but the reality is it really is down to how people perceive you. You could, you could say I'm the most trustworthy brand in the world. I want to build. I want to be the new Volvo, you know, where everything's about customer safety and it's all about, you know, looking after their customers and they trust us intensely.

But the reality is if you're Volkswagen and you're, you know, out there kind of skewing the tests and doing some Chiddy-dodgy kind of stuff out there, the customers are going to see you in a very different way from how you perceive yourself or want to be perceived.

So branding really is about their visibility. The other side of branding is who you are, and this is where your kind of branding comes from. As one of the first exercises we ever do with entrepreneurs, when we're working on branding workers to go, what's important to you. And by that, I mean, like, what are the things that you are not negotiating on?

What are your values? What do you stand for? What is your story? How did you get to where you are now? Where did you get to all of those aspects together from who you are as an entrepreneur or from who you are as a startup? And that is your core brand.

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How does it feel like doing SEO for years knowing every Google algorithm updates and intricacies of SEO? For those who are just starting SEO, digital marketing may seem overwhelming. What's your advice for those who are just starting to learn today?

How does it feel like? It feels like you're a pro basketball player. I mean, when you play basketball, you just know when people are in certain places in the court and you can make passes that seem miraculous and you can make shots that seem miraculous, but it's just that you play the game for so many times that your brain is hardwired to do things automatically. You're hard wired to just play the game really well.

It's a lot like that, you know? They call it court sense in basketball. You have the sense of the court who's where, and at what time, who's running, and at what time. It's like court sense because you played so well so many times in such a long span of time, you get better at it because your brain is just subliminally doing a lot of stuff.

That's how it feels like with SEO. I've been doing it for over a decade. I feel like I understand Google on a very deep level that I can't extrapolate in words. I just know what's happening when I check a site. I just know what's wrong with it and how I can improve it. That's how it works with me now that I feel like a lot of SEO people who are like me practicing it for a very long time and doing it ethically would say the same.

What's my advice to those who were just starting?

Keep going. I mean, SEO is a discipline. It's all about consistency and discipline. There is no magic to it. There's no tactic that could take you from nowhere in the top 100 to the first page of Google. It’s nothing like that. There is no tactic. It's all discipline and hard work.

If there was a magic pill, it's probably poisonous because it's an unethical practice and you can get penalized for that. So just keep reading, keep experimenting, be consistent with your write-ups, be consistent with the fundamentals, always keep learning, be on the cutting edge, because Google keeps changing and you have to learn with it. You have to change with it and adapt. So yeah, that's going to be my advice for you.

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Sean: But before I let you go, I want to ask you one last question. And that is for those entrepreneurs or employees who have a side business or are thinking of jumping ship and starting their own thing. What would be your one big advice?

Josef: One advice is extremely difficult for this question, but let's give it a shot. But I think if there's anything to prioritize and purely speaking from experience because I don't believe that I am anyone to preach to anyone. Right. I'm just like everybody else. Who's just trying stuff and making mistakes and just doing our best, moving one step at a time.

So, but what I personally went through is what I'm going to recommend, which is a personal amount of attention, which is really looking after yourself and starting right there.

It doesn't matter how brilliant the idea is or how magnificent the team is. If you are not in the right state of mind and in the right point of your life, to be able to actually really give it what it takes to make something like this work. I'll give you, I mean, my own personal journey was, you know, you were saying earlier about this guy with no vices and a hundred percent vegan.

Like it didn't start that way for sure, and there's a reason behind that. And I think there's a reason why most people who you meet with those kinds of extreme things because they really probably went through something. And I was one of those guys and I definitely did not have everything in line and I did not like myself whatsoever before those changes, I really didn't.

And it was of course holding me back in business because I just didn't feel like I was the right kind of person to drive anything like this, less alone make an impact or inspire people. So I quit drinking completely. I quit smoking completely and yes I took on meditation, became vegan it sounds ludicrous.

Like I am one step shorter of spending time in a monastery, you know, but jokes aside. This acted as the catalyst to actually teach me the most important life lesson, which I think is the thing, which I live by the most, which is discipline. And let's be careful here to distinguish discipline from burnout or overworking, cause they're very different things.

So discipline is literally in my eyes, the most important word when it comes to building a startup, doing well in school, becoming a professor like literally anything that you want to achieve starts with that standard that you hold for yourself and how you apply that. And again, it does not mean overwork. It means the opposite. It means imparting correct discipline and balance on yourself.

It's just astronomically important because it acts as the catalyst for everything else. When you find that you can do those little things every day, with discipline, even starting with making your bed, you know, little things like that and spirit on for health, then starting a business just becomes one of those other routine things that discipline allows you to actually embark on.

Everything else, then we'll just grow and we'll just become the catalyst because if your personality already starts getting used to that, then having the discipline to really run it a business is just another thing. It's just another run that day. Right?

So rather than obsessing over the idea, or obsessing over whether the timing is right, or whether you have enough money to start a business, that's the most common one, I think. Forget all of that stuff, and first look at, am I right? Am I ready in my personal life to be able to actually go on something like this? Because if you are, everything else will follow.

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What are the best business books for you?

I usually recommend Good to Great by Jim Collins. Good to Great by Jim Collins is one of the books that have really opened up my mind on how to take a good business and make it a great one, because good businesses are everywhere. In fact, I would say almost every business you see is a good business. Bad businesses just go down and shut down in a couple of months and that's it. So you don't usually notice them. You don't see a lot of them. But good businesses are everywhere. How can you turn your good business into a great business? Now, that for me is a worthy read and so Good to Great by Jim Collins is one of the most recommended books that I will tell you.

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell is another good book. That talks about virality. That talks about word of mouth. That is a really good book if you want to make sure that your business has some word of mouth marketing going for you, how you can do it and to realize how much word of mouth really does for your business, and how powerful it is for your business. That's another good book.

If you want to improve yourself, How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. I could not recommend that enough, that's a really, really good book. For leadership, I’d recommend The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John Maxwell. I've read that three times. It’s a really good book, really good stuff. Especially if you're the founder and CEO of a business, you will need that. Because who you are inside is how you're going to lead outside.

So yeah, I hope that helps. Those are some books I've personally read. And if you are able to get one of them and start reading them, that will do you a lot of good.

Follow up question. What are the must read books for entrepreneurs?

Yeah, so I mentioned some of them actually already. Must read books for entrepreneurs, I would say those same books. Built to Last, there you go, by Jim Collins is another book. Built to Last. It's a white book. If you want to know how to do your mission, vision statement, purpose statement well, first time around, although when I read that book, I didn't do the mission, vision and core values that well. I made one, but I had to revise it soon after because it didn't work.

But that book helped me to realize how to do it better. So now our core values are something that we really practice. We hire by them. We fire by them. We promote by them. We penalize by them, by the core values and it works now. So that book has helped me a lot in how to create the best core values that we can so that we can have a culture that really works that's about growth, that's about family, that has the least amount of politics, and it makes for a really wonderful, wonderful place to work in. So yeah, that is Built to Last by Jim Collins.

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Sean: I'm wondering now, how young are you really?

Are you like - I don't know, I have no idea. You look so young, but you have such an amazing experience already at work.

Josef: So I'm 29. You know, so I got the job at Penn brothers when I was 20's, my board definitely didn't know that I was 26 that's for sure. But they didn't ask so I didn't lie, they just didn't ask, which is great.

Which is different because here in the Philippines, you're allowed to ask, in the UK, you're not actually allowed to ask. Right? So they always have that going for me, yeah, in interviews you’re not actually allowed to ask that question. And I've been through this epic 180 when it comes to age in business and I'll explain why.

I used to have the biggest chip on my shoulder. And I used to kind of go around with this. I'll even call it kind of obnoxious, but immature sense that I used to say at work - age is just a number. It means nothing like you can be CS you know, an MD, CEO at any age, which I still believe by the way that is still true, you really can because, you know.

But I kind of always took it like a personal thing that I couldn't get CEO roles, because people were just like, who is this young kid basically? He needs to have more experience on the CV. And I always felt that that was unfair because it should be about, you know, ability and personality and attitude before actually doing that.

I think you wrote a book on this subject, right? So I think for sure, you probably know about this way more than I do. And I wanted to break through that and I wanted to prove to people that you know, young leaders should be promoted and should actually have the opportunities, not just because there's an age on the paper, but because they're the best person for the job. Like that's the key, are they the right person for the job at the right time?

But then actually funny enough, my last couple of years, and I'm sure this just comes when you mature and anyone who's younger and listening to this will probably hate me for saying this, but there is a lot in maturity right. There really is, and you always look back on yourself and say, what were you thinking?

And the same here in five years, I'll look back on this interview and say, Joseph, what were those answers? For goodness sake. Because that's just the beauty of life, right? You do constantly evolve. Maturity just means that you just - you do get better. So you can become a CEO at 22. That's unbelievable. It's another level.

You can become an MD at 26. It can be done. But at the same time, if there's someone who is older and trying to give you their wisdom and saying experience, I don't believe there's any need to look at that person and say, what are you talking about? I don't need experience. Because it has a huge amount of value. That's for sure.

That was a long way to digress to your answer or your question of how old are you?

Sean: And I completely agree with what you said, starting out young and having these major daunting responsibilities, such as being managing director and CEO at a young age, it doesn't help if your ego gets in the way.

That's what I can say, for those of you who are young, driven, and have found some level of success, that is one major thing. You always have to push out of your way - your own ego.

When people are giving you advice, listen, be hot iron and if the blacksmith strikes, you just make sure that you follow suit and learn from that. And yeah, I'm sure you have had a lot of mentoring moments. You're not going to get to where you are, if you're not open to other people's wisdom and learn from their mistakes, rather than just making your own.

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Sean: From Niño, I’m 19 years old. I currently have three businesses – affiliate marketing, e-commerce, and local business. Wow, congratulations.

Toni: Wow.

Sean: It somehow hit a plateau. I'm in analysis paralysis. What do you recommend?

I'm not sure why and how you hit a plateau, but I think it's about marketing. When your business hits a plateau, usually it's about marketing or product or service. Those three things are the major things that I look at. Is the product or the service being saturated already in the market that the demand is low and supply is high?

If that's the problem, you have to innovate a new product, a new service, or on top of your product, or on top of your service, some value adds. If it's a marketing problem, it could overlap. The product and service saturation could also be a marketing problem at the same time. So usually it is a marketing problem. You're not marketing well enough and smart enough.

I'm not sure what your business is, but the first thing I'd look at is search. My business is SEO. I manipulate search results for a living. So what I look at is what people search for in that industry. I use aquascape.ph. We had a lot of questions last time. Aquascape.ph is a website I set up just last year because of my aquascaping hobby. We’re selling almost every day, aquatic plants and livestock.

Now I'm going to look at what people are searching for, like what plants are being searched for the most. And you can look at it on Google trends or you can use SEMrush. We're affiliated, so you could use my link. Go to from.seo-hacker.com/semrush. They have a free tier, so you could use their software for free actually. And you can check what people are searching for. How much volume does that search term have a month? So people are looking for blue shrimp, a hundred a month. Did it grow to 200 this month? Did it grow to 300 this month?

So you can check that data and see, do I still have a really good market? How many competitors do I have sprouting up? What are they doing? You could also take a look at that if you're not so innovative, because there are people who lack imagination. They are not that innovative. So what you could do is you check out what competition is doing, either from here or competition that's not really your competition because they're from abroad. You could also look at the internet. Use the internet.

That's what I'm going to be doing. Check the market, check your marketing, check your product and check your service and see where you could create a new niche market that you can serve.