IAM661- Digital Marketer Constructs Powerful SEO Strategies

Jason started doing digital marketing freelancing back in college. When graduating he co-founded a SEO and Web design agency that he ultimately sold. He now is the founder of Zupo, which is an SEO consulting agency helping construct powerful long-term SEO strategies for our clients. Jason also enjoys multiple cups of tea a day, hiding away on weekends catching up on reading and rewatching The Simpsons for the 20th time.

• CEO Hack: Utilising mental energy, hacking my day into 4-5 slots of 1 1/2 to 2 hours
• CEO Nugget: Get all the advice you can but make decisions quickly – one that gives you peace of mind
• CEO Defined: Learning to run an organization on another level that does not need you

Website: http://zupo.co/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonjkhoo/

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Transcription

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:29

Hello. Hello. Hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Jason Khoo of Zupo. Jason is also married on the show.

Jason Khoo 0:38

Hey, happy to be here.

Gresham Harkless 0:39

Super excited to have you on. And before we jump in, I want to read a little bit more about Jason so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. And Jason who started doing digital marketing freelancing back in college, when graduating, co-founded an SEO and web design agency that he ultimately sold. He now is the founder of Zupo, which is an SEO consulting agency helping construct powerful long-term SEO strategies for its clients. Jason also enjoys multiple cups of tea a day, hiding away on weekends catching up on reading and watching The Simpsons for the 20th time. Jason, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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Jason Khoo 1:11

Yeah, happy to do it.

Gresham Harkless 1:12

Awesome. Let's do it. So they kick everything off. I guess I wanted to hear how everything got started. Can you take us through your SEO story? And what led you to get started with the business?

Jason Khoo 1:20

Yeah, so my story pretty much starts. Like in college, when I was in college, the Zuckerberg of the world were really at the forefront. I think Facebook and Twitter were really hitting their stride. And so it was all the rage to kind of start a business in college. And for myself, you know, I really wanted to do that too. The problem was, I wasn't a programmer. I didn't have strong technology skills, or I could build a platform. And so I was kind of like messing around in my dorm and in college, like buying books on investing business, entrepreneurship, just trying to get something going. And the one thing that caught one summer, was I did a free internship. I don't know why I say it like that. It's because it was free because I didn't get paid. So it's free for the business. However, I did this internship where I learned some SEO skills. And I remember the CEO always saying this internship, this is one of those skills where the best thing you could do is not get another internship, but just start doing it for businesses.

And so, you know, I tried going the normal route of you know, asking my friends and family for any businesses that I can help with, and nothing really caught. So for me, the big moment was like, I guess my number one fear before I got all started was like starting a business and seeing it fail. I just thought nothing was scarier than that. But I told myself, like, you know, college is a very formative year, I had strong friends who were kind of like, you know, you can either run away from it or fight it head-on. So I remember like, I was hyped up the night before by a really good friend of mine. And then on January 17, like, 2013 I woke up in the morning, put a tie on some khakis, and went to my local university town, I just knocked on the door, asking if they would give me a shot. And lo and behold, I got lucky that first day one said yes. And then I pretty much just started my entire SEO career.

Gresham Harkless 3:13

Nice. No, I absolutely love that. And I think so many times, people don't you know, realize the some of the things that you have to do to kind of get things going and you have to a lot of times look outside of the box and look for opportunities. When one door may not open. You keep funding the doors if you're really you know, if you really want to be able to try to do that and build the business. So I know I touched on it a little bit when I read your bio, but could you take us through your company exactly what you're doing to support the clients you work with?

Jason Khoo 3:37

Yeah, so Zupo is my SEO company and just a little background Zupo my wife's name is Zupo is in Chinese to Paul. And that's what my great grandma was called in Chinese. And so she was really instrumental in my own family. She, you know, took care of my father and myself. And I won't go into the family dynamic, but she didn't really need to, let's just say, and so when my mom had me, my mom was bedridden, she flew across the world to take care of me. So why kind of named Zupo was to, demonstrate the same attributes? My great-grandmother did, as you know, she took care of my entire family, but I got like zero spotlight and Zupo. What we do in a lot of SEO consulting, SEO is the one part of marketing. That's not very showy. It doesn't have a lot of social media, so not in your face, but a lot of the work we do in the background helps people rank.

So that's just a little bit about Zupo and why we named it that. But second about what we do and the clients we serve, Zupo, we help a lot of B2B clients. So we do a lot of work with any businesses that are trying to work in the B2B space. And ironically, a lot of my clients are marketing agencies, a lot of marketing agencies today, you know, they do the full suite of things. But I actually have a lot of market agencies do their own SEO so that they can rank in search engine optimization. I'll want to know I do help a couple of startups tech startups fail sort of Orange County, and then some engineering firms. So anyone generally in the B2B space is kind of who we service.

Gresham Harkless 5:06

Yeah, it makes so much sense. And a lot of times, and I don't know if you find this a lot too, is that when you are in the marketing space, sometimes we can kind of get clumped together and say that every you do everything. But in reality, each digital marketing agency usually has its own mind or its own kind of thing it prefers to do, to say the least. And you have that opportunity to kind of help them and also sometimes compliment them as well.

Jason Khoo 5:27

Correct. I think it works well when you can work with someone who's honest and transparent with their own skill set. And I used to be afraid of saying, like, Oh, I'm not I'm not your guy for PPC, or I'm not really your guy for website design. But it actually makes you more, I think, trust, like trustworthy when you say that. And I think other marketing agencies get that. And that's why I've had a lot of success we just don't, once you want to tear down the need to look like a hotshot, I think things get much farther along.

Gresham Harkless 6:00

Yeah, it's so funny that you say that, because I feel like a lot of that also overlaps with business in general, I think a lot of times when you understand, these are my strengths, these are the things that I do and I don't know how to do the other things. So you either partner or hire or do whatever to find those things that you're not weaker at. You're not trying to say I know how to do all of the things and I have no weaknesses, because that's not true, really, for anybody or probably company either.

Jason Khoo 6:20

Yeah, if I want a sales call or meaning or just hear someone say, I can do that, I can do that. I'm like you said that like five times now. Now I'm getting nervous.

Gresham Harkless 6:32

No, that makes so much sense. So I want to ask you now for what I call your secret sauce. And this is for you or your organization, what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

Jason Khoo 6:40

Yeah, so I think was a big thing for me is we've taken a different angle, when it comes to SEO, I haven't been in the space where I, you know, I unintentionally with my first agency became I don't say a churning business, but we helped a lot of local small businesses who didn't have big budgets. And so what ended up happening is we had like 30 clients, and me being like the main account manager, that's, if you're working weekends, a call a day, if you want to stay one day a month, talking to each client, which is, if you're in marketing, you know, it's the bare minimum to be talking to someone. So the angle I took with Zupo this time around is I really focus on high touch and very strong communication. So the clients I worked with were in the B2B space, and the angle we have taken is I am not your SEO service, and we're not your SEO service, if you want to just hire us.

And we're in the background. I think a lot of people think of SEO that way. The angle that we have taken, has just been much more fruitful SEO, like any marketing campaign is needed to help each other kind of game. So I will construct these big SEO strategies, and I will work with clients on getting the resources to do so. So for a lot of my clients, I tell them we figure out collaboratively, what's your end goal? What are the keywords they want to rank for, I work with them say okay for us to do that. Do you need to have this much content come out? What are what operations can we put in place? Do you have writers on hand? Are you going to write it? Do you need us to help you? Second, you know, we need you to do more, you know, interviews, thought leadership, or just be out in the community more?

What resources do you have? And I think that's where our value comes in is that we don't just kind of like tell you what you need to do. Every business knows what they need to do. But the hard part is pulling your resources and knowing how you're going to get there. And so that's kind of where we help is on a week-to-week and a month-a-month level I I'm on my clients of like, Hey, your contents late, if we're going to hit our goals, we need to get this out. And then second, you know, advising clients, like, as we're progressing, this clearly isn't our strong point. So we should probably pull resources away from that and focus on what we're good at. So it's kind of utilizing typical business strategies in the SEO sets. And that's kind of where our secret sauce is, is that high touch high strategy, you know, and iterating on that with clients on a week-to-week level.

Gresham Harkless 9:01

Awesome. So I want us to switch gears a little bit. And I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be an apple book or habit that you have. But what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

Jason Khoo 9:11

So the hack that I have been really working on this year, and 2020 is like utilizing mental energy. And the reason why like I'm so big about this is because like growing up, and especially I think in modern media, and I live in the US and I'm assuming most of your listeners would too. Like the way we get our motivation. Inspiration is usually through athletics. I'm a big NBA fan, I was my entire life. And like it's easy when it's physical, like, oh, you should run but don't run too much because you might overdo it. But when it comes to like your mental energy, like there's like almost zero literature about it. So a lot of the hacks I want to talk about today are like utilizing your mental energy.

And so the strategy I use right now is it's kind of called the ultradian rhythm. It's similar to circadian rhythm, where you need to eat and sleep every day. There's some science that I'm not a scientist. So please reach out if this is what I'm saying it has no basis. But based on what I've read in studies I've read, there's an ultradian rhythm where our bodies go through their own cycle every hour and a half to two hours. And so what I do is I literally hack my day to four to five slots, I'm an hour and a half to two hours, where I will literally plan in those 1.52 hours what I will do, and then in between them, I take a 25 to 30-minute break, no phone, no laptop, no reading whatsoever. And I feel like I have been much more productive doing so.

Gresham Harkless 10:37

Yeah, absolutely. I love that. That hack and so now I want to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. So that could be like a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It could be around SEO or kind of anything related to business or something you might sell to either a client or maybe even a younger business self.

Jason Khoo 10:52

Yeah, I was gonna ask you real quick for the nugget side, do you think? Would it be better for me to give advice to newer entrepreneurs, or just like any business owner, what's your thought on that?

Gresham Harkless 11:02

I think either or, I think that the big thing I don't know if this will help out about the people that listen to the shows, they're usually trying to drive towards something. So it's all about kind of like the driving up to that, that next level, whatever that might be, whether it be a new business owner or a more established business owner. So I don't know if that helps out.

Jason Khoo 11:20

I'll give two nuggets then just kind of hit those a little bit. So my first nugget for the more like the newer entrepreneurs, or someone who's like going into a new thing in their life, whether it be marketing, or whatever it might be something I have wanted with my own peers, and my own life is everyone tells you to find a mentor and get advice. That's great. But like, I think the new lesson to learn is when to not take advice and be okay with it. Like, if you're starting out as an entrepreneur, you are going to get me a 160-degree level of advice.

And it's not even going to be like, oh, yeah, I got this like, like this fortune cookie, little advice. People will tell you really passionate, like advice that it's almost like a joke of like, they're almost like projecting their morals onto their advice. And you almost feel bad for not taking it, right? And I would tell people, like get all the advice you can. But ultimately, you need to make a decision quickly. And you need to make the decision not that you feel someone else is right about is the one that gives you peace of mind that you can sleep.

Gresham Harkless 12:23

I definitely appreciate that, that nugget. So I want to ask you now my absolute favourite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different, quote-unquote, CEOs on the show. So Jason Khoo has been a CEO mean to you.

Jason Khoo 12:36

You know, I'm not one for titles, I don't love titles, and I don't like what it can do to some people, I think it creates this weird level of artificial distancing. But I think, and at the filming of this, this is when a lot of the craziness of the world is happening. I think CEOs come down to leadership in the background, there is I'm not super duper philosophical, but a pretty average person, I am pretty into reading philosophy and all this stuff. And there's a Taoist saying that I really subscribe to you. So I'm gonna pivot, I think this is what it means to be a CEO. And this is kind of my answer. They say the best leaders are the ones you never hear about. The second-best leaders are the ones you rave about. And the third are the ones that you hate. They say the best leaders are the ones you don't know exist because they're planning a contingency.

And their ability to develop people is so good, you don't even know they were there. The second best are the ones that we think I think the average person thinks are the best are the ones that we Herald, right? Like, oh my god, they were so amazing. And I was gonna be like them. Those are actually the second best. So I think that the keeper CEO is learning how to almost run an organization and be a leader that doesn't need you. And I think that's, it's almost like a life issue. But if he was talking about business, though, like, being a CEO, I think is, is doing that it's not, you know, being like an amazing person or like, you know, having the fame or everything. I think most of us know that. But it's like, yes, being able to delegate and run an organization but on another level, not it almost not meeting you and no one knowing that you were the leader. And I think that's what it means in the journey of being a CEO.

Gresham Harkless 14:23

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, Jason, definitely appreciate that definition. And I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is pass you the mic so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you want to let our readers and listeners know and of course how best they can get an overview and find out about all the awesome thanks guys are working on.

Jason Khoo 14:37

Yeah, in terms of anything additional. I don't think there's much there. You know, I can go on talking for a long time. So I just encourage everyone to feel free to reach out. And I can provide SEO advice or when I say business advice sometimes I feel like it's more like a life and how to deal with life as a business owner advice. I'd be happy to discuss that. There's a lot of books and stuff that I love reading so I can see, you know, I can provide resources. So if any of your readers or fans or anything want that, like, feel free to reach out, this is a tip, I do a lot of speaking. And I always tell people, you, here's my personal email, email me any questions because I can't get through all of them today.

And for every, like 50 people I see, I think two will reach out. And of the two, when I respond, only one of the two of them will keep the email thread. So if you feel like we're not going to reach out, and Gresh is smiling, because he knows this, we will you just need to reach out so that's what I would say. And then in order to reach me, you can visit my website zupo.co. That's still z u p o dot co. And you can find all the information there. You can shoot me an email at info@zupo.co and I'll see it anyway. So I can reach out to you that way, or I can get back to you that way.

Gresham Harkless 15:51

Awesome. Yeah, thank you so much. Again, Jason, we will have the links and information in the show notes. But you're absolutely right. Very few people go that extra mile, that extra mile is actually sending an email. And going that extra mile on top of that is replying back and just making sure that you keep the conversation going. So I think I thank you for reminding us of that tool and how to go the extra mile and actually have engagement because I think so many people that have been on the show and in life really want to be helpful in some form, shape or fashion. You just have to go that extra mile in order to do that. So I appreciate that reminder, and I hope you have a phenomenal day.

Outro 16:22

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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