Joey Randazzo is the Founder and CEO of Portland SEO Growth by Becoming Media. He has a team of 19 women (mostly military spouses) who produce over 2 million words of SEO-focused content each year. They've worked with enterprise-level clients like Autodesk, WebMD, and NextEra.
- CEO Hack: Wim Hof Breathing Method
- CEO Nugget: Do something now, stop waiting
- CEO Defined: Building something valuable for people and with people
Website: seogrowthpartners.com
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Transcription
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00:24 – Intro
Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.
00:51 – Gresham Harkless
Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Joey Randazzo of Portland SEL Growth. Joey, it's great to have you on the show.
01:01 – Joey Randazzo
Great, thanks for having me. Yeah, looking forward to it.
01:03 – Gresham Harkless
Definitely looking forward to having you on the show too. Before we jump into the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Joey so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. Joey is the founder and CEO of Portland SEO Growth by Becoming Media. And he has a team of 19 women, mostly military spouses that produce over 2 million words of SEO-focused content each year. They've worked with enterprise-level clients like Autodesk, WebMD, and NextEra. Joey, great to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?
[restrict paid=”true”]
01:29 – Joey Randazzo
Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it.
01:30 – Gresham Harkless
Let's make it happen then. So to kind of kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit. Here is a little bit more on how you got started, what I call your CEO story.
01:39 – Joey Randazzo
Yeah. So, I love writing. So I graduated from college and I wanted to be a writer. I knew nothing about digital marketing. I knew nothing about SEO. And, I got connected with a gentleman that was doing his own, his own SEO agency at a member and he needed him, you know, some content written for his clients and I was like, sure, let's do it. That agency grew very, very quickly. So I took on a larger role with a kind of content strategy internally. I became this TMO. It was a 15, 20-present agency. So pretty small, but basically I had to learn everything that I could about SEO and content marketing. I had 0 formal training.
I just watched probably thousands of hours worth of YouTube tutorials, and read every single article I could get my hands on. That agency wasn't the best fit for me. And I love the content side of things. They were focused on some different aspects of digital marketing. I said I love this content thing. I think that we could do this well. So I left and I started my own business that does SEO, but that focuses on the content side of SEO. As Google has said over and over again, your website needs comprehensive, valuable content that your readers care about. And so that's where I started and I started about 2 years ago, actually just over 2 years ago.
02:53 – Gresham Harkless
Nice, well, definitely happy 2 years. And I love hearing about that journey and that growth and how, For one, I mean, I feel like you found a lane and opportunity where you were working with, and for before they didn't necessarily wanna go that way, but you saw that. And I feel like to me like you kind of alluded to, it sounds like SEO and content are hand in hand anyway. So when you do have that strong content strategy, that's going to just help you out tremendously with your rankings.
03:20 – Joey Randazzo
Yeah, absolutely. You know, they were, they were focused on hyper-local SEO and really just, hammered in the GMB, the Google my business strategy. But there's, there's way more than I believe that could go into that. And their clients saw cool results. And I was like, we could probably pour some gas on this and kind of layer in content on top of it. And so that's what we've done. And I just want to also share that, that step is scary, right? Like I, I hovered around doing it for months and I was like, man, do I do it, do I not do it?
Am I capable? Should I just go to another job doing content strategy for another company that maybe has a larger lane that they want to build for content? It took me a long time to make that decision. And even when I made that decision, it was still 2, 3 months of probably more than that of that voice in the back of my head saying, why in the world did you do that? So sort of making clear that it's not this grandiose, beautiful, like I'm just going to do my own thing, And it's amazing right away. It was a challenge and it took time.
04:23 – Gresham Harkless
Yeah, I appreciate you so much in sharing that because I think so many times people that might be listening to this or people may even recall when they made their decision or their leap or their step or whatever that looked like, think that it just kind of happens. And then next thing you know, you have a movie written about you. You're on the New York Stock Exchange and all those things happen, but it's a process. And a lot of times we have that imposter syndrome. We have those fears, all of those things that kind of are in the back of our heads, but sometimes we have to kind of lean into that. And, you know, we all kind of go through that same kind of journey. So I appreciate you so much for talking about that.
04:53 – Joey Randazzo
Yeah, absolutely.
04:55 – Gresham Harkless
Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I know we touched a little bit upon, you know, Portland SEO growth and how you work. Could you drill down a little bit more? Tell us a little bit more about what that process looks like and how you're serving the client you work with.
05:05 – Joey Randazzo
Yeah. So what we do is we work with all different types of businesses, local businesses, and then more content-focused brands. So what I mean by local businesses is either single or multi-location brick and mortar. So it could be a physical therapist, it could be a cannabis dispensary, it could be anything that people are searching for locally, the best chiropractor near me, anything like that. And then the other side of it is just more content-driven business. For example, we work with a national travel nurse staffing agency. So they help travel nurses get put into positions around the country.
Naturally, people are searching more nationally for these keywords, such as How do travel nurse stipends work? Where's the best area to do travel nursing? We lock in tons and tons of data on both sides, it's the local brands and the national brands about, what is your target audience searching for. What are the high volume, low competition keywords that maybe your competitors haven't thought about that we can write content for to drive high-intent traffic to your site? And how we do that is we actually interview our clients. We're not the subject matter experts. We don't know, you know, is cracking your neck bad for you?
The chiropractor is going to know that best. So we interview the chiropractor and we hear from their words, their beliefs, their ideologies of what that means to them. We record that interview and then our writers can write SEO-friendly content, getting all that data, getting all that keyword research, but that aligns with our clients and their beliefs and their ideas. And so that's kind of what we do at scale. So most of our clients get a couple of pieces of content a month, and some get up to 10 a week. And those are all about 2000 words of long-form content. And so we produce, as you mentioned earlier on, this year will probably be close to 4000000 words of content.
06:58 – Gresham Harkless
I feel like one of the things that, and I don't know if you would consider this to be your secret sauce, but I love that strategy piece. And I don't know if we, we've said that word, but it seems like that is something strong in what it is that you do and how you work with clients. Do you feel like you've been able to kind of not just see those data points, not just know how to do this, but bring it all together? Do you feel like that's part of your secret sauce?
07:17 – Joey Randazzo
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, there are so many components that go into SEO, right? There's Google has said there are over 200 ranking factors from how you tie, you know, the, the, the, how you title your images to all of these different things on your site, there's a million things that you can focus on. And that's where a lot of folks get kind of confused and bogged down as they say, we need to do SEO. Do I need to go get out and get backlinks? Do I need to create content? Do I need to optimize all my meta descriptions and say, what do I do?
And there are 500 things that you could be doing. And that's where we kind of step in is we say, let's take a look at your current digital footprint. Where are you at? What is your goal? And so it's not, let's drive more traffic. Who cares about traffic? It's what's your goal? Is your goal to double phone calls locally? Okay, then we should probably heavily focus on local SEO. Are you trying to build and increase your domain authority?
We probably should do content at scale, content that people would love to link to and share because it's just so valuable and interesting. And so it really depends, that strategy is huge and every brand is different. I think that's another component that needs to be thought about before people say, let's just go out and do SEO, What does that mean? What's the end goal? What is SEO trying to do for you? And then you can build backward from there. You say the end goal is, let's get 50 phone calls a month. Right now we're getting 20. Okay, where are those phone calls gonna come from? How can we do the lowest-hanging food opportunities to get you those 50 phone calls as quickly as possible?
08:49 – Gresham Harkless
So I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?
08:59 – Joey Randazzo
That's a good question. One thing that I used to do more regularly, and I need to get back into it is the Wim Hof method. I'm not sure if you're familiar with Wim Hof's breathing. So Wim Hof is a gentleman out of the Netherlands, and he's got this certain breathing technique and cold exposure ice baths and breathing technique that he does and that he teaches people how to do. I usually start my mornings with 10 10-minute YouTube video of one hop breathing and that usually is a great start to my day.
So as I said, I used to do it every day. I probably did it every day for 3, or 4 months straight without missing a day. And now I do it maybe 3, 4 days a week. But it's, you wake up and you got everything going through your mind of like a checklist, checklist, checklist, what I gotta do, what I gotta do. And by starting with that, it just kind of having that, that similar start to the day for me has been pretty valuable.
09:53 – Gresham Harkless
Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget, and you probably might've already touched on this a little bit, but this is a word of wisdom or piece of advice, it could be around SEO or it could be something if you were to hop into a time machine you would tell your younger business self.
10:07 – Joey Randazzo
Do something now, stop waiting. I mean, you know, I've thankfully been blessed to be pretty good about this throughout my life is I'm a action oriented person. I'm a quick start. If you've ever done some of these types of kind of your personality and who you are as a person, I'm a quick start. And so I'll get an idea and I will not sit on it. I'll just start doing it. And it bit me in the butt. It's been me in the butt. I've done things wrong because I put stuff out there too fast or I've thought of something and haven't thought through every single detail. But it's allowed me to move really quickly and figure out what works and what doesn't.
So instead of hypothesizing for 3 months this strategy might work, let's do it today and get let's get 70% of the way there today. Sure, if I waited 6 months from now, I could build it out 100%. But if I get it 70% of the way there, 80% of the way there, and push it out today or next week, I'm going to have enough data to know that it works. And so that's, that's a huge nugget that I would share with people is just do, stop thinking sometimes and just start taking action. Because the more you talk, the longer you talk, it's likely just not gonna happen.
11:15 – Gresham Harkless
Yeah, I think that's huge. And I think it brings up a lot around like, quote-unquote, failure, and thinking when things don't go according to plan. And I think Robert Kiyosaki if I'm quoting right, has this quote where he says, I found out 9 out of 10 businesses fail. So I decided to start 10 businesses because you kind of know that you learn so much from those processes. And I think that if you have that kind of quick start mentality where you're like, okay, I'm going to start this thing, and that didn't work out. So I'm going to try this. Then you start to realize that you still get farther along in maybe 6 months than what somebody gets in 6 years, just because you have that mentality.
11:52 – Joey Randazzo
Yeah, it's the idea of, I'm trying to look up the quote real quick. It's like in the tech world, it's just kind of shipped first, right? Like shipping the product first and then figuring it out later. It's almost like building a plane as you're flying it. I mean, that's kind of how I operate my business at times. And you can fly a plane that's 80%, maybe not. But that's kind of how I do it is let's let's get this thing off the ground and let's start making those tweaks to the you know, to the left wing to the to the rudders as we're going because with this plane sitting on the ground, we don't know how it's going to fly. We're making assumptions about how it's going to fly, but we don't know until it gets off the ground.
12:33 – Gresham Harkless
Yeah, absolutely. One of my favorite books, and I talk about it a lot of times, and from a marketing perspective as well too, is the Lean Startup. And it speaks directly to what you're talking about, the MVP, create the minimum viable product that can get you out the door to get market feedback so that you can iterate from there. And I think so many times when people spend years and years and years, and of course, if you're building planes, you know, you might want to take a little bit extra time. But if you're trying to figure out the next widget that's going to make peanut butter and jelly better, maybe you can do that and get that out the door, get that market feedback and indinge kind of iterate from there.
13:05 – Joey Randazzo
100 Percent.
13:07 – Gresham Harkless
Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on this show. So Joey, what does being a CEO mean to you?
13:18 – Joey Randazzo
A CEO, that's good, I told you not to give me the questions ahead of time so I can make this really raw. And the first thing that comes to mind is, is building something to help people with a group of people. So, you know, As a CEO, it's my mission to help our clients and to do that with my team. As a CEO, I think you've got to be a leader and you've got to add value to people. You've got to do those 2 things simultaneously.
You're adding value to some external group, person, thing, organization, or business, and you're doing that with a team and you're building that together. And so that's what a CEO means to me is, is, is building something really valuable. It's going to add, that's going to change people's world, going to change their business. In this instance with SEO, it's going to transform their business and do that with my team, which they're kind of the foundation of it all. As a CEO, I'm just kind of the orchestrator and that's what I think it means.
14:09 – Gresham Harkless
I love that definition. And you didn't say this word, but I was actually thinking of it when you were kind of, you know, defining it as kind of like a bridge because you said help one group of people with another group of, you know, help one group to help another. And I almost feel like that I can see that being a bridge where a lot of times you're maybe creating that business, that, that service, that product, whatever it is to be that bridge so that you can make a huge impact in so many different lives by doing what you do.
14:34 – Joey Randazzo
Yep, absolutely.
14:35 – Gresham Harkless
Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, Joey, truly appreciate that definition and I appreciate your time as well. What I wanted to do is just pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best they can get ahold of you. Find out about all the awesome things you're working on.
14:49 – Joey Randazzo
Yeah, I mean, I think the big thing here is again, just take action. So if you've been sitting around thinking, I gotta create content, I gotta create content, try that strategy. Pull out your phone. It could be just an audio recording on your phone. Think of the top 10 questions that your target audience is asking right now. And just answer those, 60 seconds, 2 minutes, 3 minutes, whatever it takes, go to a tool like Rev, and for 20 seconds a minute, you can get that transcribed.
And so, you know, a lot of people think they have that, they need to have it perfect, you don't. Just get started today. I think that's valuable when it comes to content and just SEO in general. In terms of us, you can find us at Portlandseogrowth.com. That's gonna be the best place to find us. We've got content on our site, SEO tips, and all that good stuff. And that's gonna be the best place.
15:40 – Gresham Harkless
Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. We'll definitely have those links and information that show notes as well. And you also work with people in Portland, but beyond as well.
15:46 – Joey Randazzo
Yeah. So portlandseogrowth.com is the website. We have clients all over the country and even some internationally. So folks that are looking for that support, of course, my phone is ringing right now, it's over there. That's gonna be the place to go.
15:59 – Gresham Harkless
Yeah, Absolutely. It's probably somebody internationally that's giving you a phone call. I'm sure. So I love it, Joey. We will definitely have the links and information in the show notes. I love everything you're doing, all the great actual things that you give, even that homework of creating that list of 10 questions your ideal clients might be asking you as well. It's absolutely huge and gold. So appreciate you, my friend. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.
16:18 – Outro
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.
00:24 - Intro
Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.
00:51 - Gresham Harkless
Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Joey Randazzo of Portland SEL Growth. Joey, it's great to have you on the show.
01:01 - Joey Randazzo
Great, thanks for having me. Yeah, looking forward to it.
01:03 - Gresham Harkless
Definitely looking forward to having you on the show too. Before we jump into the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Joey so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. Joey is the founder and CEO of Portland SEO Growth by Becoming Media. And he has a team of 19 women, mostly military spouses that produce over 2 million words of SEO-focused content each year. They've worked with enterprise-level clients like Autodesk, WebMD, and NextEra. Joey, great to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?
01:29 - Joey Randazzo
Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it.
01:30 - Gresham Harkless
Let's make it happen then. So to kind of kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit. Here is a little bit more on how you got started, what I call your CEO story.
01:39 - Joey Randazzo
Yeah. So, I love writing. So I graduated from college and I wanted to be a writer. I knew nothing about digital marketing. I knew nothing about SEO. And, I got connected with a gentleman that was doing his own, his own SEO agency at a member and he needed him, you know, some content written for his clients and I was like, sure, let's do it. That agency grew very, very quickly. So I took on a larger role with a kind of content strategy internally. I became this TMO. It was a 15, 20-present agency. So pretty small, but basically I had to learn everything that I could about SEO and content marketing. I had 0 formal training.
I just watched probably thousands of hours worth of YouTube tutorials, and read every single article I could get my hands on. That agency wasn't the best fit for me. And I love the content side of things. They were focused on some different aspects of digital marketing. I said I love this content thing. I think that we could do this well. So I left and I started my own business that does SEO, but that focuses on the content side of SEO. As Google has said over and over again, your website needs comprehensive, valuable content that your readers care about. And so that's where I started and I started about 2 years ago, actually just over 2 years ago.
02:53 - Gresham Harkless
Nice, well, definitely happy 2 years. And I love hearing about that journey and that growth and how, For one, I mean, I feel like you found a lane and opportunity where you were working with, and for before they didn't necessarily wanna go that way, but you saw that. And I feel like to me like you kind of alluded to, it sounds like SEO and content are hand in hand anyway. So when you do have that strong content strategy, that's going to just help you out tremendously with your rankings.
03:20 - Joey Randazzo
Yeah, absolutely. You know, they were, they were focused on hyper-local SEO and really just, hammered in the GMB, the Google my business strategy. But there's, there's way more than I believe that could go into that. And their clients saw cool results. And I was like, we could probably pour some gas on this and kind of layer in content on top of it. And so that's what we've done. And I just want to also share that, that step is scary, right? Like I, I hovered around doing it for months and I was like, man, do I do it, do I not do it?
Am I capable? Should I just go to another job doing content strategy for another company that maybe has a larger lane that they want to build for content? It took me a long time to make that decision. And even when I made that decision, it was still 2, 3 months of probably more than that of that voice in the back of my head saying, why in the world did you do that? So sort of making clear that it's not this grandiose, beautiful, like I'm just going to do my own thing, And it's amazing right away. It was a challenge and it took time.
04:23 - Gresham Harkless
Yeah, I appreciate you so much in sharing that because I think so many times people that might be listening to this or people may even recall when they made their decision or their leap or their step or whatever that looked like, think that it just kind of happens. And then next thing you know, you have a movie written about you. You're on the New York Stock Exchange and all those things happen, but it's a process. And a lot of times we have that imposter syndrome. We have those fears, all of those things that kind of are in the back of our heads, but sometimes we have to kind of lean into that. And, you know, we all kind of go through that same kind of journey. So I appreciate you so much for talking about that.
04:53 - Joey Randazzo
Yeah, absolutely.
04:55 - Gresham Harkless
Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I know we touched a little bit upon, you know, Portland SEO growth and how you work. Could you drill down a little bit more? Tell us a little bit more about what that process looks like and how you're serving the client you work with.
05:05 - Joey Randazzo
Yeah. So what we do is we work with all different types of businesses, local businesses, and then more content-focused brands. So what I mean by local businesses is either single or multi-location brick and mortar. So it could be a physical therapist, it could be a cannabis dispensary, it could be anything that people are searching for locally, the best chiropractor near me, anything like that. And then the other side of it is just more content-driven business. For example, we work with a national travel nurse staffing agency. So they help travel nurses get put into positions around the country.
Naturally, people are searching more nationally for these keywords, such as How do travel nurse stipends work? Where's the best area to do travel nursing? We lock in tons and tons of data on both sides, it's the local brands and the national brands about, what is your target audience searching for. What are the high volume, low competition keywords that maybe your competitors haven't thought about that we can write content for to drive high-intent traffic to your site? And how we do that is we actually interview our clients. We're not the subject matter experts. We don't know, you know, is cracking your neck bad for you?
The chiropractor is going to know that best. So we interview the chiropractor and we hear from their words, their beliefs, their ideologies of what that means to them. We record that interview and then our writers can write SEO-friendly content, getting all that data, getting all that keyword research, but that aligns with our clients and their beliefs and their ideas. And so that's kind of what we do at scale. So most of our clients get a couple of pieces of content a month, and some get up to 10 a week. And those are all about 2000 words of long-form content. And so we produce, as you mentioned earlier on, this year will probably be close to 4000000 words of content.
06:58 - Gresham Harkless
I feel like one of the things that, and I don't know if you would consider this to be your secret sauce, but I love that strategy piece. And I don't know if we, we've said that word, but it seems like that is something strong in what it is that you do and how you work with clients. Do you feel like you've been able to kind of not just see those data points, not just know how to do this, but bring it all together? Do you feel like that's part of your secret sauce?
07:17 - Joey Randazzo
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, there are so many components that go into SEO, right? There's Google has said there are over 200 ranking factors from how you tie, you know, the, the, the, how you title your images to all of these different things on your site, there's a million things that you can focus on. And that's where a lot of folks get kind of confused and bogged down as they say, we need to do SEO. Do I need to go get out and get backlinks? Do I need to create content? Do I need to optimize all my meta descriptions and say, what do I do?
And there are 500 things that you could be doing. And that's where we kind of step in is we say, let's take a look at your current digital footprint. Where are you at? What is your goal? And so it's not, let's drive more traffic. Who cares about traffic? It's what's your goal? Is your goal to double phone calls locally? Okay, then we should probably heavily focus on local SEO. Are you trying to build and increase your domain authority?
We probably should do content at scale, content that people would love to link to and share because it's just so valuable and interesting. And so it really depends, that strategy is huge and every brand is different. I think that's another component that needs to be thought about before people say, let's just go out and do SEO, What does that mean? What's the end goal? What is SEO trying to do for you? And then you can build backward from there. You say the end goal is, let's get 50 phone calls a month. Right now we're getting 20. Okay, where are those phone calls gonna come from? How can we do the lowest-hanging food opportunities to get you those 50 phone calls as quickly as possible?
08:49 - Gresham Harkless
So I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?
08:59 - Joey Randazzo
That's a good question. One thing that I used to do more regularly, and I need to get back into it is the Wim Hof method. I'm not sure if you're familiar with Wim Hof's breathing. So Wim Hof is a gentleman out of the Netherlands, and he's got this certain breathing technique and cold exposure ice baths and breathing technique that he does and that he teaches people how to do. I usually start my mornings with 10 10-minute YouTube video of one hop breathing and that usually is a great start to my day.
So as I said, I used to do it every day. I probably did it every day for 3, or 4 months straight without missing a day. And now I do it maybe 3, 4 days a week. But it's, you wake up and you got everything going through your mind of like a checklist, checklist, checklist, what I gotta do, what I gotta do. And by starting with that, it just kind of having that, that similar start to the day for me has been pretty valuable.
09:53 - Gresham Harkless
Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget, and you probably might've already touched on this a little bit, but this is a word of wisdom or piece of advice, it could be around SEO or it could be something if you were to hop into a time machine you would tell your younger business self.
10:07 - Joey Randazzo
Do something now, stop waiting. I mean, you know, I've thankfully been blessed to be pretty good about this throughout my life is I'm a action oriented person. I'm a quick start. If you've ever done some of these types of kind of your personality and who you are as a person, I'm a quick start. And so I'll get an idea and I will not sit on it. I'll just start doing it. And it bit me in the butt. It's been me in the butt. I've done things wrong because I put stuff out there too fast or I've thought of something and haven't thought through every single detail. But it's allowed me to move really quickly and figure out what works and what doesn't.
So instead of hypothesizing for 3 months this strategy might work, let's do it today and get let's get 70% of the way there today. Sure, if I waited 6 months from now, I could build it out 100%. But if I get it 70% of the way there, 80% of the way there, and push it out today or next week, I'm going to have enough data to know that it works. And so that's, that's a huge nugget that I would share with people is just do, stop thinking sometimes and just start taking action. Because the more you talk, the longer you talk, it's likely just not gonna happen.
11:15 - Gresham Harkless
Yeah, I think that's huge. And I think it brings up a lot around like, quote-unquote, failure, and thinking when things don't go according to plan. And I think Robert Kiyosaki if I'm quoting right, has this quote where he says, I found out 9 out of 10 businesses fail. So I decided to start 10 businesses because you kind of know that you learn so much from those processes. And I think that if you have that kind of quick start mentality where you're like, okay, I'm going to start this thing, and that didn't work out. So I'm going to try this. Then you start to realize that you still get farther along in maybe 6 months than what somebody gets in 6 years, just because you have that mentality.
11:52 - Joey Randazzo
Yeah, it's the idea of, I'm trying to look up the quote real quick. It's like in the tech world, it's just kind of shipped first, right? Like shipping the product first and then figuring it out later. It's almost like building a plane as you're flying it. I mean, that's kind of how I operate my business at times. And you can fly a plane that's 80%, maybe not. But that's kind of how I do it is let's let's get this thing off the ground and let's start making those tweaks to the you know, to the left wing to the to the rudders as we're going because with this plane sitting on the ground, we don't know how it's going to fly. We're making assumptions about how it's going to fly, but we don't know until it gets off the ground.
12:33 - Gresham Harkless
Yeah, absolutely. One of my favorite books, and I talk about it a lot of times, and from a marketing perspective as well too, is the Lean Startup. And it speaks directly to what you're talking about, the MVP, create the minimum viable product that can get you out the door to get market feedback so that you can iterate from there. And I think so many times when people spend years and years and years, and of course, if you're building planes, you know, you might want to take a little bit extra time. But if you're trying to figure out the next widget that's going to make peanut butter and jelly better, maybe you can do that and get that out the door, get that market feedback and indinge kind of iterate from there.
13:05 - Joey Randazzo
100 Percent.
13:07 - Gresham Harkless
Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on this show. So Joey, what does being a CEO mean to you?
13:18 - Joey Randazzo
A CEO, that's good, I told you not to give me the questions ahead of time so I can make this really raw. And the first thing that comes to mind is, is building something to help people with a group of people. So, you know, As a CEO, it's my mission to help our clients and to do that with my team. As a CEO, I think you've got to be a leader and you've got to add value to people. You've got to do those 2 things simultaneously.
You're adding value to some external group, person, thing, organization, or business, and you're doing that with a team and you're building that together. And so that's what a CEO means to me is, is, is building something really valuable. It's going to add, that's going to change people's world, going to change their business. In this instance with SEO, it's going to transform their business and do that with my team, which they're kind of the foundation of it all. As a CEO, I'm just kind of the orchestrator and that's what I think it means.
14:09 - Gresham Harkless
I love that definition. And you didn't say this word, but I was actually thinking of it when you were kind of, you know, defining it as kind of like a bridge because you said help one group of people with another group of, you know, help one group to help another. And I almost feel like that I can see that being a bridge where a lot of times you're maybe creating that business, that, that service, that product, whatever it is to be that bridge so that you can make a huge impact in so many different lives by doing what you do.
14:34 - Joey Randazzo
Yep, absolutely.
14:35 - Gresham Harkless
Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, Joey, truly appreciate that definition and I appreciate your time as well. What I wanted to do is just pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best they can get ahold of you. Find out about all the awesome things you're working on.
14:49 - Joey Randazzo
Yeah, I mean, I think the big thing here is again, just take action. So if you've been sitting around thinking, I gotta create content, I gotta create content, try that strategy. Pull out your phone. It could be just an audio recording on your phone. Think of the top 10 questions that your target audience is asking right now. And just answer those, 60 seconds, 2 minutes, 3 minutes, whatever it takes, go to a tool like Rev, and for 20 seconds a minute, you can get that transcribed.
And so, you know, a lot of people think they have that, they need to have it perfect, you don't. Just get started today. I think that's valuable when it comes to content and just SEO in general. In terms of us, you can find us at Portlandseogrowth.com. That's gonna be the best place to find us. We've got content on our site, SEO tips, and all that good stuff. And that's gonna be the best place.
15:40 - Gresham Harkless
Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. We'll definitely have those links and information that show notes as well. And you also work with people in Portland, but beyond as well.
15:46 - Joey Randazzo
Yeah. So portlandseogrowth.com is the website. We have clients all over the country and even some internationally. So folks that are looking for that support, of course, my phone is ringing right now, it's over there. That's gonna be the place to go.
15:59 - Gresham Harkless
Yeah, Absolutely. It's probably somebody internationally that's giving you a phone call. I'm sure. So I love it, Joey. We will definitely have the links and information in the show notes. I love everything you're doing, all the great actual things that you give, even that homework of creating that list of 10 questions your ideal clients might be asking you as well. It's absolutely huge and gold. So appreciate you, my friend. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.
16:18 - Outro
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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