How I Built a 7 Figure Business From Scratch

Yasi: Hello Sean. Welcome to Fast Track Podcast.

Sean Si: Hey Yasi. Pleasure to be here. It’s an honour for being featured in your podcast.

Yasi: Yeah, it’s my honour. Like last time we chatted on your podcast the Leadership Stack, and I discovered that you have a very interesting background and your experience is really worth sharing here for my audience.

So I want to ask you, how did you start your own company, right? How did you grow from one person here now have 50 plus employees and 1 million revenue.

Sean Si: Yeah, so actually it started from, so I’m an almost kick out student in college, right?

I failed 28 units a lot and I realized not a lot of companies would hire someone with 28 failing units in their transcript of records. So it’s a series of divine appointments. That’s the best way I could describe it. Cause I was writing in a blog called God You, and it’s a blog about my faith as a single Christian Guy.

And I, it’s just something that I’d like to do. And I realize when I look at the stats, not a lot of people were reading my stuff. And as a writer, you pour your heart and soul into your articles. That’s the goal. To have more readers and subscribers. And I searched around and this thing called SEO kept popping up.

So I looked around what’s this? What’s this SEO thing? And this is way back 2009 and the little. References and pieces of content out there that talk about seo. I had to put these hodgepodge articles together, do my own experiments, cuz some of them were unethical in Google’s eyes. Some of them were ethical.

I had to figure out which is which, and I wrote everything in another blog called SEO Hacker. And that blog costs like 60 bucks for me to put up cuz I did the designs so simple and the hosting and the domain name, I bought it somewhere 60, $60. That’s really how I started. And people started to read my stuff there, share as [00:02:00] well some of the content on social media.

And I started getting inquiries and people wanted me to do SEO for them. And some companies would start to hire, As a freelancer didn’t have a company name. I wasn’t registered. I remember your, your story. Pretty much the same thing where we’re just doing it, we’re doing the work, we’re not yet official.

Sure. And more and more clients are coming in to the point that I couldn’t do the work myself anymore. So I had to hire people. And when I started out, I hired freelancers. That’s the way to go. And then more clients came in. I had to incorporate, I had to get my first office, then hire more people as the client.

Client base grew and really the engine of growth for SEO hackers because we ranked number one for the money keywords like seo, Philippines, SEO services, SEO company here in this country. And actually, if you search from abroad, it’s also SEO hacker ranking number one. Just keep growing. Since SEO is a retainer, as long as we can retain the clients, we provide really good service to them.

They feel like we take care of their site and we actually produce output, meaning they’re ranking number one or first page for their keywords. Then they just. Retain with us every year, and we’ve grown it to, something that is so surreal for me that now we’re a million dollar company and we’re a 50 man team.

Yasi: Can you give us our audience a little bit context? When you started, writing your own blog and you explored the importance of seo at that time, were you trying to build a business or it’s just a hobby, or did you have a job or you do it on the side? Or is it planned or is it happened accidentally?

Sean Si: I would say that a lot of things just happened, like it was the next bend. So imagine you’re driving to a far off place and there’s a mountain range, right? And you’re heading towards the mountains. You can’t really see the trees, you can’t really see the springs of water. You can see the details.

You just see the shadow of the mountains blue and you can see the road and that. All you can see is the next bend. Whatever your headlights can show you, if you’re driving at night, that’s all you can see. So my experience in building the business, it’s much like that. I can only see up until the next bend, and that’s it.

And. My, I did have a job. I was, for some reason I got into hp. I don’t know why they hired me up to today. It’s one of the miracles of my life and I was doing SEO on the side already because I started the, got a new blog, 2009. I got into HP somewhere 20 10th of March. So I graduated Feb 2010. Got into HP March, 2010, but I worked there only five months.

Told my leaders there that I have this thing called SEO Hacker and it’s paying me five times more than what I’m getting in hp. And they were. Kind enough to understand my situation. And so we planned my transition out and it was, HP is a really good company. I can’t promote them enough. I can’t say enough good things about them.

And I finally went full time building SEO hacker, and I had no management background. I don’t know how to hire, I don’t know how to interview, I don’t know how to manage an office. I didn’t know. Anything about accounting, anything about legal. So I had to learn these things as I went and as the need arises as well, now I have a lot more time studying ahead of time cuz a lot of the things I just outsourced a third party, like legal accounting.

I just outsourced these things. But during that time, it’s really trying to figure things out by myself just when they come on the next bend.

Yasi: I’m curious, like when you were working at hp, most of the biggest challenge for many young startups would be, acquiring new customers and brought to a stage that is cash positive or have sustainable cash flow.

And how long did it take you to arrive at that point? And what did you do to, to arrive that point within this time timeframe?

Sean Si: So the secret of SEO Hacker’s growth is really ranking number one for our keywords because it just makes so much sense what that you’re gonna hire an SEO company who’s actually ranking for their own keywords, right?

That’s the best proof of concept and proof for that you could ever show to any potential client that would knock on your door. And with Hacker, we’ve maintained that lead for years and years. We’re always, we’ve always been number one. So I have that healthy pipeline. And I also happen to be a Filipino Chinese, and here in the Philippines, the Filipino Chinese community is not that big.

But once you have a good reputation there, it’s a very good supplier to take care of your clients and stuff. It just spreads out. So I got leads from there as well. I got a good pipeline from there. All a matter of making sure that you do your work excellently and you take care of your reputation.

Compile that with we are ranking number one and we’re getting perpetual leads from there. Perpetually good and qualified leads from there. That is really how EO Hacker has reached stability at a very fast pace. In the second or third year, we were already a very stable company and our fifth year was all about planning to scale up, having couple of floors of a commercial building already.

I started out at the attic of my parents’ house. It was hot, it was dusty, and it was nothing glor. But from there to five years, fast forward five years and I did rent like a residential house here in Paraya where we hold office. And for a long time we were in a residential house and that’s. Our headquarters.

And then I think it was like six or seven years, then we got to upgrade to three floors of a commercial building. And that’s a huge step up. And we had to prepare for scaling up all the capital expenses, all of the processes and systems that we had to put in place, all of the documentation that we have to write and put in place.

But yeah that’s the stability came in early because of that.

Yasi: Yeah. And now we’re touching on the scale up phase, right? You mentioned you, you also moved to a bigger office CapEx investment. How did you decide at which point you need to scale up and to how fast and to what extent? How do you make the transition from where you were to a bigger size company?

Sean Si: So that was not really a very tough decision when we were there because. Hiring really good quality. Performers. Performers, eight players, I would say a lot of them would come into the residential headquarters that we had and see and say. That this might not be the kind of company they wanna grow their careers in cuz it’s a residential house.

So there was that hiring choke point where if we had a, an office very presentable where it’s, it was well designed in the interiors and it is the, we had our official papers everywhere there operating papers. That would make hiring a lot easier and better for us and build the team from there.

And since we are a digital marketing services company, hiring A players is a very big deal. So that’s one of the key drivers why we had to. Do that investment and spend that capital in upgrading our office. Another reason is we were growing too big, so that residential house was actually becoming smaller and smaller by the months that passed.

And we knew there would definitely be a point in time where, We wouldn’t fit. And there was a transition point when we were, half of us were working in the residential house, and half would be working in the commercial building because it was just one street away. And so people would just walk to and fro and we, at the end of it, we made it a staff house where people who lived quite some distance away could sleep there afterward and they just go home in the weekend and come back when it’s Monday again.

It did play out pretty well and the decision came in quite swimmingly.

Yasi: And then, When you talk about like hiring a players, I know it’s not diff, it’s not easy, rather very difficult to find the A players. From your own experience, what do you think are the qualities of a players that you are looking for your companies?

And what are the commonalities among the people that you decide not to hire all the people who left?

Sean Si: Here. Okay. Very good question. And for those of you who are listening in and you’re just starting out, I want you all to know that I hired a lot of wrong people, right?

So many wrong, bad people that I learned from. So my hiring process before was really bad. I would sit [00:11:00] with the applicant and ask them a couple of few questions and then hire them because we needed. We needed someone to do the work and when they’d screw up, guess what? They’d resign or I’d fire them and I’d need to do the work anyway.

so it was really bad. Don’t think that we were able to figure it out early on. Don’t get discouraged by that. I’m just like you guys. We. We started out really, not having a good hiring process. Then I listened to podcasts and read books. Patrick Lencioni is very helpful. He has books like the the Ideal Team Player that.

It’s a must read and I hire. Now, the things that we look for generally are, they have to be humble. Meaning when it comes to correction, when it comes to making mistakes, they admit mistakes and they can be corrected. They can, they’re willing to learn from you, and they’re, they own up. They own up to anything.

Exploded under their wing in a negative way. And the other trait we look for is hungry. They have to be driven, they have to be ambitious, they have to have that drive. Otherwise, if they’re coming from a very wealthy family and they’re just, they’re, for a couple of months with you and they just wanna learn and then leave and pack up.

That’s not something we, that’s not a person we’d want to hire because we wanna grow long term with everyone in the team, willing to serve the company and make it grow. So humble and hungry. Very important. And the last one is smart. And I don’t mean IQ smart. Emotionally, people smart. We wanna hire people who can easily communicate to other people.

And when you say communicate, it’s not just one way, it’s not a monologue, it’s a two way thing. So they have to be able to listen where the other person is coming from. And communicate in a way where they are understood as well in what they wanna bring in to the table. And we need these people because we wanna build a really good culture in the team.

And if you have someone who’s not people smart, the buck stops with them. They’re the weakest link. And your culture is not gonna grow if you have these kinds of people. So those are the three general things that we look for. Of course they have to be competent. That’s a given. All teams would hire for competence.

It’s not uncommon for companies to do that. So we give them tests and actual hands on practical exams for them to try out, and if they fail there, then it’s a no-go. We also have the culture exam. We’re very fanatical about our culture, our core. And we have six core values. That’s grit, respect for work, challenger, experimentation, unity, and clarity.

And we ask them questions, open-ended questions about these things where they do have the answers in multiple choice, that they strongly agree or strongly uh, disagree. So it’s a five five choice question in a scale. And the questions would be like if you hear. Or if you have something negative about the management or a peer, do you talk about it with other people in your team or do you bring it up to upper management?

And if their answer is, yeah, that’s like me. I bring it up to upper management. Then they get plus points for that. But if they’re like, Yeah, I talk about with other people and ask for their opinion, then it’s gonna be negative for us. So we tally their points, we check their answers, and we check for their culture fit.

Now we’re very. Strict and we’re very intentional about the people we hire, and it didn’t used to be that way, but you gotta learn. Especially with a services company like us, we are built and operated by people almost completely from end to end. We’re very careful about the people we hire.

Yasi: Yeah, that’s very well said.

And I think those three points might also be very useful for someone who is looking for a job, right? Or who wants to progress within [00:15:00] their own company. On the drive side I find it’s very interesting because I have noticed that from my personal experience while working with people from certain countries, like it’s not for example, the social welfare is not so good, or they have to make their own living.

They cannot rely on the system, and people tend to be more hungry. Looking for that next opportunity. And in some markets, like people can be complacent with a normal salary or with any job they can live a good life or okay life that they’re okay with. They don’t have to work harder. They have less drive and not so hungry.

That’s my personal observation.

Sean Si: And there’s the flip side to that. If they’re too, I would say too challenged financially, they. They’re a single mom or a single dad and they really need the money. Then we also try to tread carefully with these kinds of people, cuz it could be that they are too financially challenged that they’re gonna be a problem for us.

So it’s really trying to tread carefully about what kind of people you’re looking for and what level of drive you would want, what level of ambition and hunger you would want for your team to have.

Yasi: Exactly. And now like after 12 years, eight month of almost 13 years, having your company established, having a team, having so many clients on retainer on your personal side, because this talk this podcast, we often talk about personal financing, investment On your personal side how do you manage your own, let’s say, investment or your wealth now as a established business owner?

Sean Si: So when you’re in the services industry like I am, you just can’t, buy more stock and sell it at a higher price. We’re not in trading, we’re not in merchandising. So when we generate revenue that. Is in excess. What I do [00:17:00] is I have to learn , where to invest them. And my portfolio is diverse now, but I started with learning about stocks before.

Now my stock portfolio is still there. I don’t touch it anymore. I don’t trade. I just invest. I do invest in real estate as well, and I invest in crypto. Crypto is my latest venture. So I have invested in crypto startups and I also have ventured into investing in startups as well. So I trade equity for cash, or I trade equity for cash plus industrial effort, meaning we do SEO services for them.

And since they can’t. They can’t really pay us because of their cash flow cause they’re a startup, then they trade equity for it for me. So that’s I would say I’m a serial investor right now and an angel investor as well. I’m not part of a VC fund, but I choose my investments, especially if it’s a startup.

Very carefully.

Yasi: And do you invest in real estate or ETFs or do you have a wealth manager that helps you to manage your investment or you do it

Sean Si: yourself? I do it myself. So with wealth managers, I know that it’s gonna be a huge load off your back. But if you know what you’re doing, meaning you studied it and I do studying things that I’m interested in, then it would be a lot better, more profitable and safer as well for you to manage your own finances.

So ETF’s not something that I’m really interested in cuz the yield is just that five, 6%, maybe less. And I’m interested in retirement plus inflation. So inflation’s five to 6% per. Retirement, you’d need two, 3%. So you add that up, you’d be at eight to 9% that you need to beat. And that’s just enough for inflation.

So it doesn’t make sense for me. So I look for eight to 12% per annum. Not guaranteed. Cuz there’s still guaranteed investments. That’s why you have to study and learn where you’re gonna be investing your money.

Yasi: Yeah. It’s funny because now you mentioned about ETF and the inflation. So here in Switzerland, inflation is almost flat zero or zero point something.

So for people who invest in etf, say if you average out to 7% per year annual like you invest 10, 20 years, it’s still. A very good return if your inflation is pretty flat. But in Philippines, I guess inflation rate is very high. So if you invest the same S&P 500 etf, it’s not going to help you with your wealth creation.

Yeah,

Sean Si: for sure. For sure. Yeah.

Yasi: So you mentioned that before you started investing you learn, you read books, but is there any mistake that you made in your investment journey?

Sean Si: For sure, and I consider those my tuition fee. So I’ve lost money. Significant amounts as well in investing that are, I would say I would say there have been wrong investments where there would be no hope of recovering them.

So I just parked it there and if I did wanna withdraw it, I could withdraw it, but at a loss. But there are investment. I’m really waiting for five years. I’m investing long term and in five years time, if they yield 10% per annum, if they do shoot up, then that’s a win for me. So I have learned from these wrong investments.

I do believe that a lot of good investors have made mistakes and have incurred losses, and that’s really the best place for you to learn. Cause you never forget when you lose money.

Yasi: Yeah. Either you wing or you learn.

Sean Si: Yeah, for sure.

Yasi: And would you mind sharing with us, what kind of mistakes did you make it, Is it trading or is it just didn’t do enough research and investing something?

Sean Si: Yep, for sure. I would say that it’s because of not doing enough research and also jumping in the hype train. So a lot of my investments that are I consider as losses, meaning there’s no hope of them shooting up again, or there’s very little chances of them shooting up again for me to be able to withdraw them at my investment price.

At the profit, I’d say most of them are in the crypto space. So my stocks portfolio have been performing quite well, my real estate portfolio as well. But in Crypto, in the crypto space, there’s a big chance that you would lose. There’s only a very small chance that you could win. But when you do win, there’s a very high amount of return.

The multiplier is like eight to 10 x at least, and it could go up to a hundred to 400 x if you win. So that would cover, that would definitely cover the losses if you’re a, if you’re someone who has a bigger risk appetite than the average human being. So yeah, I would say mostly in crypto, those, there are tokens that are not that popular.

But there’s a huge potential upside. But then when they are dumped and when they hit a very low price, there’s almost no chances of them climbing up again.

Yasi: But yeah, I agree with you.

It’s very risky and you have to know what you’re doing. For, just for me personally, after investing crypto all these years the lesson I learned is that once I started venturing into altcoins, once I started to buy and sell and trade I would have lost more money than what I would have gained just by holding the more established coins.

So that’s my strategy now.

Sean Si: I think for me the, again, yeah, just I need to make that disclaimer. This is not financial advice, but the best crypto investments that I’ve made are because I know someone from the founding team or from the core. So those investments that I make are usually at thee or seed round.

Yeah. And the moment that they launch and go public, they would hit eight to 10 x. And I only also invest in projects that have good [00:23:00] longevity, meaning they lock your investment for a year, two years, and then you could only get a. Amount, a small percentage of the tokens vesting every so often, every two months or every three months, so you can’t really dump them along with all of the other precede or seed investors because they are building something great.

So those are the kind of investments in crypto that I am doing right now. That

Yasi: makes sense. No, I understand. And many of them are at early stage in the tech development, so it might take a year or two once the application started to be used. And then probably you will see a much bigger upside.

Yeah. And so now we talk about, your business and then we talk about your investment. It, it seems like you really know what you’re doing, right? You do your research, you educate yourself, and then you take actions. That’s very. Great. And, but then next step, what are you looking for in the near future?

Do you plan to grow your company to next stage or do you plan to hire a CEO to run it or, Yeah. What’s your plan?

Sean Si: So one of the things that are in the pipeline right now that’s pretty big is for us to be able to finally start on the building.

So I purchased the 600 square lot and commercial lot very near my house cuz I don’t like commuting far, especially here in the Philippines. Traffic is deadly. And being able to build that building headquarters is the next big thing for us. Hopefully in the next two to three years, we’re able to finally break ground and in terms of hiring the next or raising the next people who would lead the company, that is still on the far horizon.

I would love to be able to do that, but there’s just not enough people. In the Philippines who have the maturity, the professionalism, and the work ethic that would be required for them to be able to replace me as ceo. [00:25:00] And I say that with all honesty. Because the Philippines, if you notice, we’re so good with entertainment when it comes to voting by a text.

When it comes to international contests, like the Miss Universe, if there are voting requirements, all Filipinos would be there. All Filipinos would vote. We love entertainment, and the downside of that is, Growth is not something that is upheld here in our country. Not a lot of people read, not a lot of people listen to podcasts or try to improve themselves or upscale themselves, especially in leadership.

So there are very few people who are going to be considered as leaders here in the country unless you have to raise them up yourselves, and that’s with the risk of them actually moving on and leaving you and or being approached by other companies. I’ll say that’s still on the far horizon, but definitely in the ice box.

That’s part of the roadmap, at least for me as CEO transitioning down to other, to another person leading the company because I’m more of the entrepreneur kind of guy where I like starting things up and I’ve been doing SEO hacker for 12 years. I love it. Don’t get me wrong. I do love it. I love what I’m doing, but I feel most alive when I’m actually starting something new and building it and making it grow.

Yeah.

Yasi: The entrepreneur spirit. Yeah. Thank you so much, Sean. Thank you so much for sharing your personal experiences and your journey with us and for the audience. You If you have a small business or if you have a established business, you are looking for SEO specialist service, feel free to contact Sean and if you have any questions or you would like to follow him on the internet, you can check out social media.

Would you mind sharing with us, where can people find you?

Sean Si: Yeah, sure. So I’m on LinkedIn. That might be the best place to find me and connect with me. Just search for my name, Sean, c s e a n s I. If you wanna see my website and portfolio, you can go to my website. It’s also my name, S E A N dot S I, Sean dot Si.

That’s my website. Or if you wanna shoot me an email, you could use my email address. iam@sean.si. Thanks for having me, Yasi. Take care everyone.