Grumpy SEO Guy (0:00)

This is Grumpy SEO Guy, episode 96. So you want to start your own SEO Agency, Part 2. You're listening to Grumpy SEO Guy, the SEO podcast that doesn't waste your time with nonsense that doesn't work. I'm the grumpy SEO Guy, and I'm sharing with you the strategies that have helped me successfully run my SEO agency for the last 14 years. In this podcast, I'll be sharing my knowledge and experience, discussing tips and strategies, and trying to help you cut through the confusion that permeates this industry. If you listen to this podcast, you will know more about SEO than 99% of people on the planet. Ready? Let's get started. I'm the Grumpy SEO guy. Let me tell you why I'm grumpy today. I'm grumpy today because a lot of people want to start their own SEO company, but they don't understand what is involved in running your own business or being an entrepreneur. So we're going to talk about that today. We already have an episode called so youo Want to Start yout Own SEO agency. That's episode 55 that talks about the things you have to do when with SEO in order to start your own agency. But this episode is gonna talk more about starting a business, what that means for you, and things that you will have happen if you are an entrepreneur. So let's get started. But before we do that, my lawyer tells me that I have to say this right now. A quick disclaimer before we get started. Everything I say here is based on my experience and opinion from 14 years in the industry. I don't officially know how Google or any other search engines work. Everything I say here is hypothetical and based on my experience, this podcast does not constitute adv or services. What worked for me may or may not work for you. Okay, back to the show. The first thing I'm going to tell you, and this is the most important thing, excluding maybe the last thing I'm going to tell you, and that is this. If you already have a job that you enjoy and you have a good income, do not quit that job to do SEO. A lot of people would not tell you that. They would probably say, oh, you should totally quit your job and do SEO. But I bet you those people are trying to sell you a course on how to start an SEO agency agency. Okay? I am saying stay at your job. Continue to get your weekly or monthly or whatever paychecks, and if you like your job and you get paid well, you should continue at that company, if you want to do SEO, like at night or something like when you get home, that's fine. But I'm telling you, it's probably not a good idea to quit your job to start doing SEO. Okay? With that said, the next thing I'm going to tell you is this. Do not even think about starting your own business before you have at least one year, and maybe two or three years is better of living expenses saved up. When you start your own business, you're probably not going to make money for a long time. And so you're going to want to have a good amount of money saved up before you start. We're going to talk a little bit more about that later. Okay? Here's another thing you should know. Your colleagues, your friends, they are not going to comprehend what you do. And I'm not referring to SEO here. I mean, they're not going to understand how you manage your life. Your friends probably have normal jobs. They probably go to work and then they come home. Your friends might want to come see you or something in the evening. And you might still be working because you're an entrepreneur now. And you can't just quit working just because it's afternoon. So your friends are probably not going to understand. Understand that. Just be aware of that. We're going to talk more about this later, too. Here's another thing you're going to need to know while we're on the topic of people and friends. It is not rare for entrepreneurs to focus heavily on their new business to the exclusion of everything else in their life. You might stay in your house or your apartment or whatever for weeks or months without leaving because you're working on your business. Okay? What I'm going to tell you is sometimes you can get a little bit awkward when that happens. But you don't understand that you're becoming awkward until you do leave and try to talk to somebody and realize that you don't know how to talk to anybody anymore. You'll get your skill back. But I just want you to know this can happen. And you're not going to realize it's happening when it's happening because you're not talking to anybody in the meantime. On that note, maybe you live with a roommate or a significant other or something like that. You should know that if they have a regular job and they come home from work, they are probably tired from dealing with people all day long. If you have been working from home all day not talking to people, your natural desire might be to run up to them and Tell them all about your day and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They probably do not want to hear that because they're probably very tired from being at work all day. So just understand that that can cause some concern. Here's another thing you should know. Just because you start a business doesn't mean you're gonna make money. I talked on a different episode about how you can be very good at something, but if you don't have any sales and you don't have any customers, you're not going to be successful. Okay? A lot of people think, oh, I'm just gonna be an entrepreneur and I'm gonna make so much money. No, that's not necessarily right. You might make some money, you might make a lot of money. You might make a little bit of money. But just because you're doing a thing doesn't mean anybody's gonna want to buy from you. So I'm not. My point here is be aware of that. You might not have any customers for a long time. Remember when I told you to save your money and don't start until you have a lot of money? Okay? That's the reason. You might have expenses, you might go months without making any money at all, but you have expenses. So you're spending money every month, but you're not making money every month. Are you psychologically prepared to handle that? Okay, when you're used to getting a regular paycheck, you don't think that way. You need to think that way if you are going to run your own business. Here's another one. Let's talk about being frugal again. This is true here. This might not be true where you live, just FYI, But I want you to be aware of this if you want to buy a car. Okay? What do you need to buy a car? You need proof of employment and you need proof of income. Okay? You're an entrepreneur. You do not have proof of employment and you do not have proof of income. Therefore, you probably will have a very hard time getting a car loan. Okay? If you want to buy a car, I would suggest paying cash, which means you're going to need more money than you think you will do. You want to rent an apartment? What do you need to rent an apartment? You need proof of income and proof of employment. You are self employed. You do not have proof of employment and you do not have proof of income. You might have a hard time finding an apartment to rent. Okay? I want you to be aware of this. I'm going to tell you a story one time. I was trying to rent a house, okay? And everything was fine. Everything was good. And then I had been self employed for like seven years at this point. Everything was fine. And I could not provide proof of employment because why I'm self employed. So I offered the person renting the house. I said, I will pay the entire year up front in cash. How about that? And the person still didn't want to do that. So I don't know, maybe. Maybe I had a problem that I'm not knowledgeable of and that person just didn't want to rent to me. I honestly don't know. I'm still figuring that one out. But I just want you to understand it might be more difficult to rent than you think. But I'm telling you, you might find yourself in a place where you have to pay a year up front because you cannot prove that you have income. Here's a question. Do you want to buy a house? What do you need to buy a house? You need a mortgage. What do you need to get a mortgage? You, you need proof of employment and proof of income. Guess what? You're an entrepreneur. You cannot show either of those. You probably cannot get a mortgage. Therefore, save your money and pay for a house in full. Which is why I said, be super frugal before you start. Now, this may not be accurate for you, but it has been my experience it is going to be harder to make big purchases if you are self employed because you cannot prove that you have an income. Now, of course, you might be able to show bank statements or you can possibly show tax returns, okay? But that's no guarantee. I just, I just want you to be aware. It doesn't matter how much money you're making, okay? You cannot show proof of employment or proof of income if you are an entrepreneur. Can, okay? It might depend on how you have your business structured. And the point is, it's going to be harder than you think. I just want you to be aware of that, okay? I just want you to be aware of that. So to describe it differently, if you go to a car dealer, okay, and you're like, I want to buy a car. And they're like, we want to sell you a car. And they're like, what do you do? And you're like, I make money online. I want a loan. They're going to be like, yeah, no, just FYI, just FYI, here's another thing that you might experience. Most people at some point in their life want to start a business, okay? Come on. Everybody's like, I would make a Business that does blah, blah, blah. Right. Like everybody's thought of that, but the majority of people keep working their normal jobs. Okay. The reason I'm telling you this is if you ever mention to somebody that you're a business owner or an entrepreneur, they're going to be people that are very curious about it. They're going to ask you a lot of questions because somewhere in their mind they envision themselves doing that too. You did, however, and now they want to know how to do it and they want to know what it's like. And they're going to ask you a lot of questions. I just want you to be aware of this. So maybe if you would prefer to have other conversations, avoid telling people that you're a business owner. Oh yeah, I work in marketing. Okay, that's cool. You know, I'm just. Look, you can answer that question however you want. I'm just telling you it's probably gonna happen. Or you might have friends that go up to other people and are like, this is so and so he owns his own business. And then like, you're gonna get a lot of questions. I just want you to be aware of that. Most people think it's cool to own a business. I just want you to be aware. You're going to get a lot of people that ask you questions like that. Here's another thing you need to know. When you become self employed, your belief and your picture of yourself might change. If you've always had a job at a company, okay. And then suddenly you don't have that anymore. The feeling that appears can be a little bit distinct. And I'm not sure how to explain it because suddenly you're no longer part of everything else. You're no longer part of the company, you're no longer part of that social group, you're no longer part of that team, you're no longer part of whatever. And you might feel like, I don't know, like lost, maybe that's the word. Like, and you might, and you might feel, you might feel that way and it's going to be weird because there's going to be times when in your brain you're like, what am I even doing right now? I should just go get a job. Like, what am I even doing right now? Okay? You're like, I don't have guaranteed income and you're not gonna know what to do because the road hasn't been laid out for you. If you're working for a corporation or something, you reasonably know what to do. Hopefully you reasonably know what to do how to get there every day and whatever. But if you're. But when you don't have that, you're not gonna know what to do all the time. So just be aware you're gonna feel that way. Okay? Okay. Now it's time for the last point. And this is the biggest, most important point. This is the main recommendation I have to anybody who wants to be an entrepreneur. Here's an example. Before we do that, I want you to picture. You want to learn a foreign language. Which do you think would be easier? You're trying to study on your own, but the people that are around you don't understand it and they kind of tease you for learning it and no one understands it and they're just like, oh, you know, don't study that foreign language, let's go do something else, you know? Okay. Or do you think it would be easier if you were surrounded by people that studied the language or knew the language already and were encouraging and could help you whenever you had questions? My highest recommendation if you are going to be self employed is that you locate a good shared office or co working space and join it and work from there. The reason I say this is most but not all coworking spaces are full of entrepreneurs. Okay, not full, but like half of the people there are probably entrepreneurs. They are going to have seen the hurdles that you are facing and surpass them. They will know how to fix them. They will know how to help you. They have done it before. You probably have experience they do not have. You can probably help them. I joined a coworking space a long time ago. It was absolutely underrated. It was probably the greatest decision and most and most helpful decision I made ever in my life. As far as being an entrepreneur goes. The people I met were smart and helpful and cool and there were people there in all the different industries. Sales, marketing, development, user experience, programming, design, legal, accounting, development, health, technology, coaching. It was great. Whatever questions I had, there was somebody there who was an entrepreneur who knew the answer to my question. And of course there was no problem for me to help out somebody else if they had a question too. If there was ever a time when I was feeling overwhelmed because of client hassles or whatever, there was somebody there who could help me see what I needed to see in order to get through the thing. If I ever didn't feel like working and just wanted to go be social, I could do that too. They had events and parties for us, so there was networking events. I met a ton of awesome people. Okay, there was differentiation between work and home. So I had a separate workspace from a separate home space. But more importantly, at least half of the people there were entrepreneurs. So when it comes time to go and you're working into the evening, there's gonna be other people there because they know what it's like. If you can't do something because you've got a last minute problem on a project you're working on, they get it because they've been there too, okay? And maybe these people will become your new friends because you're with them all the time anyway and they're pretty nice people. So I'm saying if you want to be an entrepreneur, and yes, this is not like you have to pay to join a shared office space, right? But if you're going to be an entrepreneur, I strongly recommend that you look into this. And remember, not every shared office space is the same. Okay? But where I was was neat. So to me, being at a shared office space made the difference. From my perspective, that is what I would recommend you do. I hope this episode was helpful. Let me know what else you want to know about this. Thanks for listening. Don't forget to subscribe and if you enjoy this podcast, please leave a review. It would really help the show out. I hope this episode was helpful. If you have any questions or want to suggest a subject for a future episode, you can contact me on Reddit. My username is Grumpy SEO Guy. You can visit the Grumpy SEO Guy subreddit or you can email me@hellorumpyseoguy.com if you email me, please either whitelist my email address or check your junk folders because I've been told that my replies are going into the junk folder and it's probably because we're talking about things like SEO and backlinks and I think those words will classify an email as spam. And if you want to support the podcast because it's the best source of SEO information on the planet and it's free, you can do so@patreon.com grumpy SEO guy and I will talk to you later. You're listening to Grumpy SEO Guy, the SEO podcast that doesn't waste your time with nonsense that doesn't work. Join us next Wednesday when we talk about SEO. Actually, not kidding.