In previous pieces I’ve alluded to the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Agency I started in 2023 and how my efforts to promote it led to Becoming Polymathic. For this week’s piece, I thought it would be relevant to discuss that experience in detail. It’s a winding story with a simple message – take control of your dreams.
A Year in the SEO Agency World
Before officially launching in September 2023, I’d taken several hours of education on how to set up, grow, and ultimately step away from my agency. One to the core strategies was leveraging third party fulfilment providers to perform the actual SEO work while you acted as the consultant interfacing with clients. This approach seemed logical in theory, therefore I started with this model. I reached out to several different fulfillment providers and eventually settled on one.
To test the provider’s capability, I gave them three months to improve my own agency’s SEO while I took on the responsibilities of business development and networking. Again, this approach seemed logical enough, but then I found my first potential client.
The Theory Begins to Die
The client was an engineering consulting firm who’d never done SEO. Great, I thought, here’s my big break! In our first meeting, I told them about my agency, the third party fulfillment model, and the price. To summarize how that meeting went, the price was too high, and they wanted to speak with the fulfilment provider themselves. I was glad I didn’t attend that meeting.
After speaking with them, my potential client was not pleased. The exact words were “they didn’t get our business.” Understandably, this feedback led me to reconsider my own relationship with the provider. In this case, reconsider meant getting rid of them and going back to the drawing board.
A couple weeks of research and testing later, I reported back to my client I found a software tool which monitored their website and provided SEO actions for us to complete together. It was a “done-with-you” model as opposed to a “done-for-you” model. They agreed this solution was much better, and eighteen months later we’re still working together. They’re my only client, and for one specific reason I’m happy about that.
Take Control of Your Dreams by Learning Everything Yourself
This experience provided a necessary lesson – learn to do everything yourself. It won’t afford the easiest path to success, nor will it make your business money quickly. However, like curiosity, it will pay off in droves over time. That is why I’m perfectly happy with them as my only client; they are providing me the opportunity and space to develop my skills.
The Process of Skill Development
Skill development, unlike other processes mentioned in prior pieces, is simple from a neurological perspective. When you set out to learn a new skill, that excitement will provide the necessary dopamine boost to start learning. Once started, norepinephrine takes over to focus and sustain you for the challenges and novelty of the learning experience. While the norepinephrine sustains, a third neurotransmitter, acetylcholine, acts in the background marking new neuropathways based on the consumed information. When you’re finished learning for the day, the subsequent rest is when the brain begins forming new neuropathways. Repeat this process over the course of several weeks, months, or years, and boom, you develop skills.
Furthermore, the benefits of your learning aren’t isolated to those specific skills. Remember, at the highest of high levels, the brain learns by association. The more potential neural pathways, the greater opportunity the brain has to associate ideas and form more of them.
It’s a snowball effect. If you elect to outsource to a third party, you obviously don’t receive these neurological benefits. More worryingly, you are gambling, relinquishing control of your future to an entity who does not share your dream. That thought should disturb you.
Framework for Clarifying your Dreams
As I’ve come to learn, most of our problems stem from our dream bring unclear, or us not believing in it. Clarifying our dreams, therefore, should be the first action when embarking on a new venture or when a critical milestone is reached. Here’s the framework I use for this clarification process:
- Block out the Noise – Remember, these are YOUR dreams, and yours alone. Nobody is to interfere with developing them. It is a solo pursuit. Do whatever it takes to isolate from outside input during this stage.
- Reexamine your Reasoning – This step is the most important as it will be the root of every subsequent action you take. If you’re struggling to determine why you’re pursuing certain dreams, keep thinking. Through time, you will reach a crystal-clear reason as to why you should or should not continue.
- List out Every Necessary Skill – This list should be incredibly extensive. Cast a wide net, and don’t limit it to mass marketed, tangible skills (sales, website development, etc.). Think about uncommon skills such as becoming a better reader, optimizing your diet, and improving your writing. It’s these uncommon skills which allow you to break down more silos within your life and improve its overall quality.
- Prioritize these Skills – If you’ve done this correctly, you should feel overwhelmed by the volume of skills you need to manifest your vision. Let your subconscious take over from here and begin prioritizing them by ease, time frame, or whatever categories you see fit. The organization WILL change, so don’t be too rigid.
- Commit to the Long Haul – This one doesn’t require much explanation. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and your dreams won’t magically manifest themselves overnight. It will take consistent, unavoidable, hard work. Buckle up snowflake.
Our dreams were not intended to be outsourced. They unique to our individual experiences and our vision of the world we want to create. Learning everything yourself is the only way to ensure they are not compromised by other entities who do not share them, even though they will do everything to convince you otherwise. Don’t outsource your dreams. Stay pure. Stay committed.
Be more.
Become Polymathic.
Quote of the Week: “Many things which nature makes difficult become easy to the man who uses his brains.” – Hannibal