Unveiling hidden secrets of SEO with Alec Beard | Ep 013

Ian (00:02.847)
All right, hello everyone. Welcome to the Optimize Your Marketing podcast. I am your host, Ian Binek founder of Optimize Your Marketing, and today I have a special guest with me. He's a content strategy guru. His name's Alec Beard. Alec, it's a pleasure to have you on the pod. How are you doing today, man?

Alec Beard (00:21.646)
I'm great. I've been looking forward to this. I know we have a lot of questions to dig into. So yeah, I'm excited.

Ian (00:28.991)
Awesome, man. Yeah, I mean, that's great. That's great, man. I'm excited you're on. We've been talking for months now and,  you know, I've been talking about getting this podcast started and actually having guests on. So it's awesome that it's finally happening. And yeah, I just hope that all the stuff we talk about, like the listeners find really useful.  Actually really quick, let's get into like what the listeners could expect and what we're going to cover. So we're going to talk about Alec's Agency. We're going to talk about what he's been up to, some case studies, especially like some cutting edge strategy stuff that he's doing.

which I think will be really cool and valuable for you guys out there. And then we're also gonna be talking about some ways that you stimulate deal flow. So if you're like an agency owner and you wanna know like how do agency owners get deals, this is something, some things that Alec's doing, I'll talk about some of the stuff I'm doing as well. And then we'll wrap up with my favorite three questions. I think this is just gonna be like a staple of the Optimize podcast where we talk about the most overrated marketing thing that you're seeing today, the most underrated.

And then also just how you cope with stress as an entrepreneur, like marketing or sales leader. So with that being said, Alec, are you ready to get started?

Alec Beard (01:35.502)
Yes, let's jump into it.

Ian (01:37.791)
Let's jump into it, man. All right, so Alec, let's get started. Could you tell us about your agency and what you guys do?

Alec Beard (01:45.422)
Yeah, absolutely. So the agency, it's called StoryWon One.  And I basically started it after I left my full -time position. I was working at kind of a scale -up, start -up stage, fintech company. Prior to that, I was working at another early stage task company. I was doing content SEO.  And I knew for a while that I wanted to put on my entrepreneur hat, but I was too scared.  And I needed, you know.

to kind of get my ducks in a row. But I made the leap. I've kind of productized and packaged my service. I'm doing content in SEO for early stage SAS. And I'm about a year in at this point. And yeah, it's been great. I've learned a ton. And yeah, that's kind of what I got going on.

Ian (02:34.687)
That's so cool to hear that you've like productized your service. I've actually been talking to a lot of other agency owners as of late and they've kind of mentioned how they've been having a really hard time scaling their agency because of how custom tailored every solution is for the clients they work with. And they don't have like a, you know, a comprehensive templatized strategy that they could use across the board. And I think it's like awesome that you're doing that, bro.

I guess this gets into the next question here. So like, what have you been up to as the founder of the agency? So you've been productizing, you know, you've been working with the clients. Like what have you, what have you feel like you're spending the most amount of your time on?

Alec Beard (03:17.518)
So I'd say right now, again, I'm about a year in at this point. Right now, it's just service delivery. I mentioned earlier, I'm in the weeds a lot of the time. And I'm at this weird inflection point where the logical next step is to potentially scale. But right now, it's just me. I have a few contractors helping with things like putting content briefs together, editing articles, reporting, graphic design. But for the most part, I'm just kind of in the weeds every day.

But a few months ago, I'd say about six months ago when I was halfway in, I was all over the place. I was working too many hours. I was stressed out. And that was actually the moment where I said, OK, I need to really take a serious look at my operations. Because I'm not the most operationally minded person. I think everyone comes into marketing or entrepreneurship with their own background. Some people are very technically strong. Some people are creative. I think I'm good at the creative and the strategy.

And so that was the biggest obstacle for me was putting really clear operations in place. And so since then, I spent the majority of the past few months documenting all my processes, putting SOPs together, really just the granular details of what does each step in the service look like so that I just have a running checklist that I can hand off to someone else. And I think if anything, it makes the actual day to day work easier. And it allows me to really lock in.

to deliver the highest quality service possible. So I mean, I can get more in the weeds of like what that those SOPs look like, but that was the biggest, that's been the biggest game changer for me as someone who's operating as really a solo consultant with the help of a few contractors and freelancers.

Ian (04:49.951)
Yeah.

Ian (05:01.631)
Yeah, no, I love that man. I mean, a couple of things stood out to me and what you just said. The first thing was you were focusing on service delivery. I, I don't know. We both work, in coworking spaces a lot and I don't know, like there's sometimes people will be on or they'll be talking really loud, right? And they'll be on a call and there used to be this one person that I would hear all the time. I swear he said this on literally every sales call he had and he would say,

good business breeds more business. And he would always, basically he was alluding to like, hey, we have really good service and if you have really good service, then it's gonna bring on the next referral or the next client that you're working with. And I mean, like as annoying as it was, like it made perfect sense. So number one, like I just wanted to kind of build off what you're saying, like focusing on service delivery. I think a lot of agency owners are not, which I think is like, it's really sad to hear.

And they're so focused on like, I need to get more leads. I need to get more clients. But I think like, yeah, just good business breeds more business. So I think that's awesome to hear that you're doing that, man.

Alec Beard (06:07.662)
Yeah, and something I think is really interesting is to your point, I think anytime someone goes down the entrepreneurship rabbit hole, a lot of what you see on the internet, the ads you get served, the forums and communities that you look into, everyone's always asking about lead gen, about scaling revenue, it's always about scaling, which is such an important part of building a business if kind of that's where you're at. But I think when you are in the weeds, that you have this instant feedback loop where you can say,

this is what works, this is what's getting people results. So you can really build that solid foundation. And from there, that's infinitely scalable. You can scale that into something that really is high quality. And I think from what I've seen, and what I'm sure you've seen as well, is in my past full -time positions working in -house, I would work with agencies, and I'm like, this isn't quality.

And I think that's what planted the seed in my mind of I think I want to go out and do this is because I'm like, you know, they have operations in place. They have employees. Obviously they have a business, but the actual output isn't good. And then of course, you know, a few months from then, you know, we would drop them, you know, they'd be turning clients, which is so interesting that I think a lot of people in the agency space always say churn is such a problem. We have a really tough time with turnover, which I do think is just part of the business model, but I think it's exacerbated by the fact.

that people aren't focused on the quality of their service. Or they get so far removed from it that they don't really understand what it looks like. I'll get off my soapbox.

Ian (07:40.095)
Yeah, and I, no, no, no, that was great. I mean, I was just gonna say a couple things. So like, one, I think what you're doing is really good because you do want to scale at some point in the future. So you have these SOPs so you can get people on the same level of at least experience and quality of work that you want for all of the clients you work with. Especially since you're a little bit niche down too, that helps is that basically all of your SOPs are tailored to.

towards that niche and the output that you're expecting. So yes, like a hundred percent, that's like gonna be how you scale. I wanted to say this though too. I've talked to agency owners that, you know, especially people that go like the fractional CMO route. And in that situation, you can't really scale, right? Like you are the service in a sense because you are the expert and you're providing strategy. So some people...

Like you and I, I think are kind of aligned on the fact that like maybe we want to sell our agencies in the next like five years or so, or maybe not. I know I do, but I don't know if I do, but, but it's people like that are in like the fractional CMO role where they're just providing strategy. They're not necessarily looking to sell their agency. They're looking to make solid income every single month and you know, prime their pipeline every once in a while with people. but like they can't take on more than like maybe four clients. After that, it becomes like pretty unscalable for them to like provide.

the level of service and quality that they want. So I think just like keeping that in mind, it's not necessarily all about lead gen, even though that's all the ads you see, but it can definitely be, you know, just like, Hey, make a living off of this too, and do what you want in your life. So yeah, that's cool, man. Let's get into the next question. So, you know, we're talking about your agency. I'd love to hear some of like the cutting edge trends that you're kind of seeing in like the content space and what you're using with your clients.

Alec Beard (09:16.11)
Yeah, absolutely.

Ian (09:31.423)
and potentially even just like some case studies you'd like to share, man. That'd be awesome to hear about.

Alec Beard (09:36.078)
Yeah, absolutely. So I'd say the SEO as a channel has not been boring over the past like year, two years. And anytime I talk to someone about SEO, I usually get mixed reactions. Some people swear by it. They're like, I built my business off of it. Or they think it's the best channel that everyone should invest in. Some people think it's snake oil. I think it's super contextual. It depends on your industry, your go to market.

in a motion, are you product -led, are you more enterprise? But I'd say my biggest observation over the past year, and what I think all content people and SEOs are dealing with, is the fact that Google is constantly changing. And with the most recent search updates, it's like if you go onto any search page, first page of the search results, you see a lot of Reddit threads and communities. And I think in my opinion, they overcorrected.

because you go into these Reddit communities, and they're not curated. So the information is kind of all over the place. It's not the best search experience. And now, as all marketers are bound to do, they're becoming saturated. Again, you have people saying, we need a Reddit strategy. We need to be active in Reddit. So in Google's attempt to create a better search experience, now people are just polluting Reddit threads, and they're also becoming not super viable for content.

So for me, in order to kind of differentiate myself and help my clients, the biggest thing, and what I think all good content people do, is really pulling on those internal experts within a company. So I'd say in terms of SEO, you do your keyword research. You put together a brief. You see what's going to rank. But more than anything, I think conducting interviews with product teams,

customer success teams, account execs, and even customers, if you can get in front of them and ask them questions, I mean, there's your content topics right there. You can cross -reference that with what your keyword research says, and from here you can say, OK, now we can really build a content plan that's, one, relevant to search intent, but also is going to help us stand out in the SERPs. That's helped me see a lot of success, because with tools like

Alec Beard (11:58.83)
ClearScope and all these other content briefing tools, everyone has access to. So you might put together the perfect SEO plan, the perfect SEO strategy, but you're not gonna stand out in SERPs. And even if you do end up ranking, your conversion rates are probably gonna be super low because you don't have a unique story, your product isn't baked in. So that's what I've been experimenting with. That's kind of how I was brought up with my past two content roles in -house. And so far it's worked really well. So I'm still...

doing the work every day, trying to be better, but so far I've found that's the best way to stand out for people doing content in NSU. I think I answered the question, I don't know. Okay.

Ian (12:37.439)
That is actually so, no, this you did, man. No, you went really in depth. Okay, so there's two parts of this I want to talk about. You talked about like SEO, how it's changed a lot in the past couple of years and also how Google is constantly changing, especially with like the Reddit threads and the community. So I want to talk about that. But maybe we should talk about first, like what you just talked about, which is, and this is like crucial. I've worked with a lot of like content people, content strategy people.

Even when I was just working full time, I've worked with these people and I don't think anyone I've worked with has done what you just said, which is going to the experts that are in the company that are especially client facing, right? They're talking to the people that they are providing the service to and they have a unique perspective on what works best, what doesn't, what clients want to hear and what clients don't want to hear. Because at the end of the day, right? The content that's being made is supposed to answer questions.

that your prospects will have before they ask them. So that way, your salespeople have less work to do and your prospects feel like they're understood, so they wanna work with you because they're like, hey, this guy's answering my questions before I even have them, this is great. I think that's so cool. And then, especially because you said you're marrying that to SEO, basically optimizing the article or the blog that you're writing so that it has the keywords that are semantically related.

so that it does show up in Google. And so you're basically pairing best of both worlds because there are some people that just do the interviews and don't optimize it. And then there are people that write optimized content, but it's like really boring and generic. So when you do both at the same time with your content, sure, it takes a little bit longer, but like it's actually a good piece of content. So I think that is so cool.

Alec Beard (14:27.63)
Yeah, I think it's the best way to do it and there are ways to streamline it. I think it's a lot of effort upfront, you know, setting time for the interviews, asking the right questions. You're basically kind of having to onboard yourself and learn about their product and their industry. But if I get in front of say a customer success manager and I say, you know, what's helping you retain clients? You know, what are people's pain points? They're going to have all the answers for you, you know, because they're stealing with every single day.

You record that conversation, you have a transcript. All you have to do at this point, because people always like to talk about AI and content, is I just take that transcript, put it into Cloud or GBT or whatever you're using, and just say, hey, pull out all the major insights from this. There's your content topics. And from there, you can look at your keyword research. And then you can really identify where you need to put your focus. Because at this point,

anyone can sign up for an Ahrefs account, anyone can sign up for ClearScope or SurfRessio or any of the tools that are online as long as you have the money for it and you know start pumping out content but unless you have real insights you're not gonna get the results you want to see and they're not gonna be as relevant. So yeah that's my that's my tactical takeaway for this podcast.

Ian (15:44.511)
That is incredible, man. No, seriously, like you could sell that advice and that's why you know it's good. Like you could get on a call with someone that like is paying you for that. Like, so exactly. No, but that's such a cool man. It's such a cool strategy. and then, okay, so let's get into the SEO, like what you were talking about with SEO and how it's been changing. I want to talk about the Reddit communities real quick because I have definitely noticed that and I don't really know why I think.

Alec Beard (15:46.254)
Yeah.

Alec Beard (15:50.382)
Ha!

and say, do this.

Ian (16:15.295)
I honestly, I don't know if you have like a hypothesis as to why that's been happening, but to add on to SEO being super weird right now, the AI functionality too. Like whenever you ask a question, because a lot of people don't use Google the same way they did 10 years ago where they do like the modifiers and the ands and stuff, which was basically like bully and logic, which I never did that by the way, but like my partner like used to do that all the time. And she would always be like, why are you?

why are you typing in a question? Just do this, this, and this. And I was like, no, this is how SEO works now. But yeah, but I'll say this is like, man, the AI takes up so much space, especially on the phone, man. So how, especially for you, someone who is focused on SEO and on content too, how are you dealing with that?

Alec Beard (16:49.678)
Trust me, this is it.

Ian (17:08.735)
Like how you deal with the AI that's coming into play too, which I've thrown a curve box. I know I didn't ask this question before, but yeah.

Alec Beard (17:14.318)
That's totally fine. So just to clarify, the question is, how am I dealing with AI articles kind of polluting search results?

Ian (17:23.295)
Yes, that's the question. Yep.

Alec Beard (17:26.446)
I think every marketing channel has its pros and cons. And one of those cons of SEO is that there is going to be a lot that's out of your control and that it is constantly changing. And I think as an SEO, you kind of have to get into this mindset of you're playing the long game and that Google will eventually crack down on a lot of the AI articles that are ranking.

Of course, you know, there's ways to get around it. Like there are AI detector tools where you can go in and rewrite your article, you know, until it passes. But I think at the end of the day, what you're dealing with is user intent. And ultimately, it's the searcher who's going to click on those articles and decide is this quality or is it not? And also, I think, you know, SEO needs to be supported by other channels. Like, yes, you are writing with search in mind.

But if you have access to a team that's in -house, say, hey, we're writing this content. Make sure you get it in your newsletter, on your client -facing emails within your communities. And people are going to discover anyway. The higher the quality is, you're also going to earn backlinks. We can talk about some backlinking strategies that don't necessarily just involve purchasing backlinks. But if you're doing all those activities, eventually Google is going to correct itself again. And it will be an issue. I just think right now,

We're in the thick of it, we're all dealing with it. And everyone's frustrated. It's just, yeah, it's just one of those things.

Ian (18:52.927)
Yeah, that's such a cool answer, man. I think it's just a long -term thing, like you said, I think as long as you're focusing on quality content that can be used as sales enablement tools as well, then like you're kind of getting the best of both worlds. So that's awesome, man. Cool. Let's get into the next question here. So...

Alec Beard (19:04.046)
Yeah.

Ian (19:12.703)
You know, as this is maybe more geared towards like our agency owners, but like, how is, you know, lead Jen going for you as an entrepreneur? Someone who's been doing this for several months, almost a year now, right? Like it's been, it's close to it, right?

Alec Beard (19:28.494)
Yeah, I'm getting close to the year mark. It feels like it's been, it's weird at the same time. I feel like it's been so much longer, but also it's like I just, I started yesterday. I don't know if that makes sense or not, but yeah, I'm almost a year in at this point.

Ian (19:36.351)
Yeah.

It does. No, it does make sense, bro. I feel like the days, the days go by fast and they stack fast, but at the same time, like every day you go into it and you're like kind of excited about it. So it feels like you just started. So like, I love that, man.

Alec Beard (19:51.246)
Mm -hmm.

Yes. Yeah. And in terms of lead gen, man, I'd say at the first two, three months, I'll be honest. I was like kind of in panic mode. You know, I left my full time job and I, you know, I checked all my boxes, right? I'm like, okay, I have six months cash runway. I have this service in mind. I have people interested. I've done everything I need to do. But as I'm sure like you've realized too, like once you're actually in the weeds and you're doing it, everything changes.

For that one, that was at least my experience. And so I got two, three months in. And one, I realized I didn't like the services I was providing. I mean, I was doing everything content. I was like, I'll do your newsletter. I'm doing webinar campaigns with email. I was doing everything. And it made my messaging and positioning really, really cloudy. I didn't know how to pitch myself to people. I didn't know what I was trying to pitch. I didn't know what clients I was trying to target.

And so eventually after those two, three months, that's when I really laser focused and said, I'm just doing SEO and content, you know, the best service I deliver. I am really interested in the FinTech space. And that's, you know, the bulk of my in -house experience because I understand those buyers and what they need. And I really like earlier stage companies. So I'm like, let me just take all that, you know, get laser focused. And from there, a lot of it has been referral based.

Ian (21:13.919)
Yeah.

Alec Beard (21:21.038)
I know when he sent me over some of these questions, I'm really active in a couple different Slack communities. And also, this is a quick sidebar. This is a cool story. When I first left, I was really fortunate that I ended up reconnecting with an old, I guess you'd call a mentor. He is a mentor to me. He's an agency owner based in the Atlanta metropolitan area. They're an agency called 5Tool. They also do SEO. And I met him at my first in -house role.

Ian (21:30.303)
Yeah, I would hear it.

Alec Beard (21:50.702)
And he was the SEO agency we hired and once I started working with him I was like that's what I want to do this guy's awesome, and they did they did they're a great agency they do quality work When I left my full -time position to start story one he said hey Sorry, you're leaving. Why don't you come work out of my office? He's got like an industrious office He's like come work out of my office come in whenever you want. I don't care He's like do your own thing, but just come shadow me and I I did

and I white labeled for them, I did contractor work from there, from them, and every once in a while they'd say, hey, this client that we have, they're not a good fit for us, because they've way scaled at this point. They're like, why don't you take him on, because otherwise we're just going to send him to someone else. And I said, yes. I could talk about the story for another 20 minutes, but I think the lesson from that for me, and I think what's huge for anyone who's a freelancer and agency owner, is this idea of partner -led growth.

is huge. Like if I come across someone who's into paid advertising or has a need for PPC, I'm not gonna spread myself thin and try to figure that out. I'm gonna say, I know this guy, Ian, let me send you his contact information. And so I'd say building those relationships and being active in those communities and just kind of spreading knowledge has been a really good source of inbound leads. And I'd say also because I'm operating,

Ian (23:00.895)
Yeah.

Alec Beard (23:15.822)
at the scale of a consultant, I do have a limited capacity. So I'm not as worried about Legion at scale, but it has worked for me so far. I haven't had a ton of churn and it keeps me very busy. So it's going well.

Ian (23:31.935)
That's awesome, man. Yeah, I, man, I think like one, like your story is so cool. I think that's just like a, you know, that's just like a lucky instance. I believe a lot in luck and like, I truly think that to be successful nowadays, like it does require luck. Like you can do everything right and still be unlucky. And that's, you know, that's just how it goes. But, dude, I think what's really cool about your situation really and.

Alec Beard (23:33.166)
Yeah.

Alec Beard (23:53.486)
Yeah.

Ian (23:59.903)
it resonates in these because whenever I started out, the first two or three months, like I'm only on month four now, probably. I don't even remember. It's like four, I think. and yeah, this first two or three months are stressful because you don't know, you have like this skillset that you are offering for your full -time role and it's very far reaching. You can do a lot of different things, right? And you go on a call.

And you're like, I do this, I do this and this. And then like your client's confused and then you're confused and you're like, dude, like, I don't even know what I'm selling at this point. Yeah. Yeah. It's horrible. and it's not to mention it's very anxiety inducing, like as the person trying to sell, you know, like I'm sure for you is probably a learning experience to get a little bit better at sales as well, because you're no longer the person that someone's trying to get a meeting with.

Alec Beard (24:34.862)
You're like, what am I doing? Why? Yeah.

Ian (24:54.655)
you're the person that you're trying to get a meeting with this other person. So you have to control the meeting flow. You have to learn all these other skills. So I love that you just kind of alluded to the fact that like, you're starting out, like it is probably the hardest part because you don't know what you want to do.

Alec Beard (25:10.83)
Mm -hmm. Yeah, starting out is really hard. And I have become really interested in sales over the past couple months, which is interesting, because I've never been in a sales role. I was never an SDR or an account exec or anything. But I think the key for any early stage agency person, freelancer, whatever, is when you're on a sales call, you're not a sales rep. You are a consultant, and you're there to solve a problem and give as much value up front as you can.

Ian (25:12.127)
Yeah.

Alec Beard (25:39.566)
enough to where you basically say to the client, hey, I've laid out for you everything that you need to do, now you just have to execute. But, you know, nine times out of 10, they don't have the skill to execute, or even if they could potentially learn or have the skills, they don't have the time, you know, and you're just, you're the obvious solution at that point. And so, I mean, I could even get into like how I've set up my discovery process, my sales process, and kind of how that translates into, you know, the service delivery.

but really getting laser focused and like having, sorry, when I talked about developing SOP, I mean I have set steps for every discovery call, for every sales call, and it's made a huge difference. And you're developing goodwill upfront, that's been huge as well.

Ian (26:15.647)
Yeah.

Ian (26:24.671)
Yeah. No, I love that. We can definitely save some of those for like the community. We have like this like Slack community and yeah, basically if you're an agency owner listening, reach out to me and I can get you in there. But basically that's just where we share some insights every single week and some cool stuff that, you know, we're doing that kind of stimulates deal flow. And then we just kind of do white label services for each other. So quick plug of that, but, but yeah.

Alec Beard (26:29.294)
Yeah.

Alec Beard (26:48.142)
Hahaha

Ian (26:50.975)
Cool, we got so I'm trying to keep this around 30 minutes long. We've been recording for about 26 minutes now so I want to rapid fire a couple questions off you Alec and The first one you know is coming is what do you think the most overrated marketing strategy or tactic is right now?

Alec Beard (26:58.286)
You got it.

Alec Beard (27:08.526)
You sent this to me and I struggled and I was itching my head. I was like, what is overrated? Because I think what's tough for me is I feel like any marketing channel or tactic can be effective in the right context. It depends on, again, what's your market motion, what industry are you in, where are your buyers, where are they looking. I'd say my biggest frustration having worked in -house is this idea of what I call checklist marketing, which is just.

checking a box on every tactic. You don't always need ABM. You don't need a chat bot. You don't need to be active in every single space. If you can find the two, three channels that work for you, if you're getting results, just double down. You don't need to spread yourself thin. And I think part of that is just a lot of downward pressure on marketing executives to be, you know,

be constantly, and I think as marketers we face pressure to constantly be doing things, constantly be innovating and looking for new sources of leads that we fall into this trap. But I guess my answer to the question is the most overrated tactic is just doing too much. You don't need to do too much. Figure out what works, get really good at it, and you know, focus on it, and you can try other channels and experiment later. But that's my opinion.

Ian (28:22.527)
Yeah, that's, that's really cool, man. I think, that's most evident in the social media game where someone is posting, maybe they, maybe they get good traction on LinkedIn or maybe they don't even have traction yet, but then they're like, Hey, we have to post the same stuff to Instagram and to Facebook into YouTube and to Spotify. And I'm just going to be real with you. That is really time consuming and really hard to do.

Alec Beard (28:49.486)
Yes.

Ian (28:51.039)
And if you're not, if you don't even have traction on one of those platforms yet, why are you scaling this stuff out to other platforms that are fundamentally different and have to have different language, different presentation of the media and the communication? It's just like not a smart idea. So I think that's really true, dude. I think there's so many people out there. They're like, we have to do everything. And I'm like, no, you don't like focus on one.

Alec Beard (29:12.526)
But you don't, but you really don't and you shouldn't.

Ian (29:16.703)
Yeah, yeah. Awesome. All right. So now let's get into the underrated man. Like what is most underrated thing that you would say people are just like not focusing enough on today.

Alec Beard (29:29.902)
Again, I feel like this is super contextual. Maybe this is just underrated to me because I wish I saw more of it, but I'm really bullish on the idea of newsletters and communities. Again, I think it really depends. There's always a what if when you're talking about marketers and just marketing. But if you're a product -led company or you want to have a one -on -one connection with your potential buyers, I think newsletters and communities are great.

because it's an owned channel. I think a lot of people talk about with things like writing blog content or posting on LinkedIn is, it's out of your control. But when you have a newsletter community, you get to talk to your prospects one -to -one. And again, you get instant feedback loop. If you have a personal newsletter, you can easily test it, segment it, see what works, see what doesn't work. And it gives you that one -to -one connection with your audience. Because I'd say for me,

in my previous role when we were doing content, the newsletter was just, it was just a repurposing channel. It's like, okay, we wrote all this content, let's just put for this webinar, like these four articles we did, let's bundle up in the newsletter and we'll send it out. And of course the engagement's really low. And they're like, man, I guess newsletters don't work. I'm like, no, they work. You just have to be really intentional about it. I'm bullish on newsletters and community. Again, it's contextual, but that's something I wish I saw more of done well.

Ian (30:57.503)
Yeah. I think, I love that you mentioned it's a newsletter is I a hundred percent agree on. Like, I'm not going to get into it because you just basically explained it really well. I spend like an hour every week on my one newsletter that I send a week. So like you have to spend time on it. But, what I was going to say on the community piece, which I think is really cool is like the idea of growing the community of like -minded people and getting them all in the same group.

Alec Beard (31:05.39)
Yeah.

Alec Beard (31:11.438)
Nice.

Ian (31:26.623)
Alec's Hermosy has like the investment in the school. Um, that's essentially just like a community platform. And that thing has been really growing fast too, which is really interesting. I like messing around with it the other day and I was like, what does this look like? So I like creating my own community, uh, on like the free trial and everything, which I actually, by the way, I need to cancel because I forgot I'm going to get charged for that. But, um, but yeah, I mean, like. It is definitely, you could make a business out of it for sure. And I think that.

Alec Beard (31:32.078)
Yeah.

Alec Beard (31:47.47)
Hahaha!

Ian (31:55.903)
You know, it also could be leveraged. I think it makes sense for some companies that are bigger to maybe even have a full time, you know, community engagement person on staff to like handle the communities that they have. Cause that could be a huge, I mean, it's an owned resource, like you said, an owned platform of media. So yeah, I think that's so cool. And I really liked that you brought that up.

Alec Beard (32:16.814)
Definitely.

Ian (32:18.719)
All right, so last question. Obviously you kind of alluded to it early on about like stress and stuff, but like, how do you cope with stress on a daily basis as an entrepreneur?

Alec Beard (32:31.278)
There's always stress. I think if you decide to go on this path, you know, you should do it with the knowledge that there is going to be stress. But I think for me, it's just, I mean, there's stress, you know, in a full time position. It's just, it's just different kinds of stress. So I think for me, I really needed to get my priorities straight. And the first thing was just getting rid of all the external stressors in my life, you know, like don't be worried about what other people are thinking, you know, don't set unrealistic.

goals for yourself because you're just putting unnecessary pressure on yourself day to day and it's gonna make you unfocused and you're worrying about the wrong kinds of things and it's just mental energy that you're wasting. I mean this is just generic advice but I stand by it. I'm really not into super hustle culture grinding all the time. When I first started out in this first two, three months and I was panicking, I was all in all the time every day.

on weekends and evenings. And I was really just spinning my wheels and I was really busy and I was like, I'm productive, I'm getting stuff done, but I was unhappy, I was unfulfilled, I wasn't getting the results I wanted. And I think just taking a step back and getting your eight hours of sleep or however much you need, eating well, exercising, whether it's like you walk, run, go to a dance class, do boxing, like whatever that is, and just carving out time to have like a more balanced life.

Ian (33:53.407)
Yeah.

Alec Beard (33:57.902)
For me, that's been a game changer, because now when I do sit down to work, I'm fully locked in. I'm not worried about all these other things. I feel like it's generic advice, but it's generic advice for a reason, because it works. Yeah, and that's been huge for me.

Ian (34:11.423)
Yeah.

Ian (34:15.711)
That's awesome, man. Yeah, I think the hustle culture is over -dramaticized, which like I'm a victim of it. I'm not gonna lie. I work long days and I work on the weekends, but like truthfully it's because I want to and it's not because I feel like I have to. So that is like, that's a very key distinction in like the hustle culture versus, you know, versus I just want to do it. Cause like that's what I'm doing with my life right now kind of thing. So yeah, I think that's, that's a cool,

Alec Beard (34:22.926)
Yeah.

Alec Beard (34:42.734)
Yeah.

Ian (34:46.207)
That's a cool way of just handling the stress. And I like that you just mentioned too, like it's not just agency owners and entrepreneurs. I mean, like full -time jobs have stress too. And at the end of the day, it's just like what you want to do with your time. So like, if you are thinking about doing an agency or if you are thinking about doing your own sort of, you know, software company, like, yeah, it's going to be stressful, but like, you're going to be stressed and other things if you don't do it anyway. So, might as well give it a try.

Alec Beard (35:12.014)
might as well give it a try. And I think that to your point, if you want to work a 10 to 12 hour day, you know, one week, like you get to dictate that you get to dictate your schedule as opposed to when you're working in house and someone says, okay, we have this feature release coming up, you know, we need everyone to kind of get on board and just, you know, nose to the grindstone. I mean, it can take over your life, but if you want to choose to work a five hour day, work four days a week, or you want to, you know, pull on it or work on the weekends.

You can allow yourself to do that, but it's just balance. I think it all comes in waves and stuff, but just having that freedom of choice has helped me take that pressure off myself. It's just made me feel more fulfilled in my day to day, and I do better work because of it.

Ian (35:45.951)
Yeah.

Ian (35:59.167)
I love that. All right, well, we're gonna wrap up here, Alec. How can people reach out to you if they wanted to work with you or just talk to you? What's the best way to reach out to you?

Alec Beard (36:10.51)
Send me an email. It's alec at story one comm or You can DME on LinkedIn. I'm pretty I you know, I feel like you know, most of us I'm on it, you know, probably more than the average person Yeah, send me a DM. Shoot me an email And yeah, I'm always open to chat. I usually get back to people pretty pretty quick

Ian (36:21.247)
Yeah. Yeah.

Ian (36:30.783)
Awesome. All right, Alec, it was so awesome having you on the podcast today. For our listeners, you know, hopefully you found this really insightful. I know I actually learned a lot of stuff on this call. Like I'm not deep in the SEO space, but I'm sure that if you're listening to this on your commute to work or literally working out or walking and you heard what Alec said about talking to the experts and getting their insight, pairing that with keyword strategy, if you found that useful.

Be sure to give this podcast a rating of five stars. It takes literally two seconds, but it really helps a lot. And we're really brand new, so any help that you could provide us, that would be the best way you could. So with that being said, really appreciate you listening today, and I will see you in the next podcast.

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