Time Flies: 1 Year and Still Growing Centori
On a hot late-May mid-morning last year I pulled into the parking lot of a local restaurant to meet my product designer in person for lunch.
Over plates of spicy chicken and rice, we had our final one-on-one, because this was also my last day at this job. My next stop was to drop off my laptop at the local FedEx and celebrate with a burger and a beer later that evening with my wife (fittingly using a gift card).
When people asked me “What’s next” I smiled and shrugged my shoulders.
It wasn’t trying to be cagey. I knew I was leaving to build a business and I fully intended to be successful in doing so, but everyone likes to cite the statistic that 200% of businesses fail in their first week (it’s actually 40% in their first year, but it feels like the former doesn't it?) so in all honesty, I had no idea how far I’d actually get.
Well, it was a hot day in May when I began typing the draft of this post, and a hotter day in June when it was published. I’m happy to report that Centori has continued to grow and evolve, I’m proud of the impact I’ve made, and boy am I tired some days.
Would I do anything differently? Not a chance.
What’s my name again?
Not too long after I quit my job I ran into an old coworker at the local park.
We exchanged the usual pleasantries and got to the inevitable “So what are you working on?” To which I replied, “Oh I left my job and started an SEO company, I’m trying to help sites rank on Google.”
“Oh that’s great… hey you should try Upwork to get clients!” was her response.
My wife (kindly, yet wisely) chastised me after the fact: “You do so much more than that, why’d you say it that way?”
She’s right. I do so much more than “just SEO” and you know what else? Sometimes I kinda hate SEO.
I think most non-SEO specialists will agree with me too. I get SEO spam in my inbox every single day. It drives me nuts. I see teams taken advantage of by so-called specialists who do little more than update their titles and collect a monthly fee.
I thought that what I did was SEO. But a year and about a dozen new clients later, it turns out that I do a lot more than SEO.
Yes, I drive traffic - and I drive it for free with SEO - but there’s a huge piece missing from the equation here: what happens next?
If you could flip a switch and drive all of the traffic in the world to your website, if it doesn’t convert then it’s useless to you. You paid for a vanity metric (which is the case for many SEO agencies that sell “improved DA” or “more traffic”).
So what do I do?
I help ambitious companies drive traffic and fill their pipelines with qualified leads from their website.
And while nothing is certain with marketing, in most cases we bring in results within the first 90 days.
What I learned in the last 12 months
Beyond the above, I learned a lot in the past year.
I’m a reflective person by nature so if you’ll indulge in a little walk down memory lane, here are three lessons I learned/re-learned:
- Sales is a constant process
- Keep it stupidly simple
- Focus on the output, not the inputs
Sales is a constant process
It feels like every month that goes by teaches me something new about sales.
Lately, I’ve realized that sales is a process of constant motion more than anything else. A dry pipeline is the result of inaction, nothing more and nothing less. You can do a lot of unproductive an ineffective things, but even the most ineffective outreach or ad campaigns can bring in a positive result if done at scale.
As a friend of mine loves to remind me: You eat what you grow.
So am I pitching people 24/7?
Not even close.
But I’ve learned that I need to always talk to and try to help my target market. Always engage people. Always ask questions. Always probe to see what the problems are.
That’s one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in continuing to grow Centori no matter the headwinds we run into. It’s a tough economy, but that just means I need to sell better and sell smarter.
Keep it stupidly simple
We all think that we’re going to be on the big stage like Steve Jobs revving up a crowd… but in reality, we get 3 seconds of someone’s time when they have their laptop or phone open and 50 other concerns.
I talk to SO MANY founders who over-complicate their marketing and messaging.
The simple fact is, if you confuse then you lose.
Even though I talk to founders all the time about their marketing messaging, I make the same mistakes too. I try to talk about what I do in grandiose terms… except it’s not grandiose.
I don’t cure cancer.
But I do help people grow their businesses (which is pretty darn cool).
So rather than use big words like “omni channel digital strategies” I just keep it simple: I help businesses drive traffic and convert more of it into leads to fill their pipeline from their website.
Sometimes, simplest is best.
Focus on the value and output, not the process and input
The harshest truth I learned that allowed me to quit my job is this: my ideas are worth nothing, it’s the problems I solve that are worth something.
This lesson is so important that I force myself to re-learn it every so often. It’s also important to make sure I am solving the right problems, and the types of problems I am good at solving and enjoy solving.
Solve problems, everything else is completely extraneous. And focus on the value created and output, not the processes and input.
No one cares that you mixed flour, butter, eggs, sugar, and vanilla extract - they care that you made them an awesome birthday cake.
Similarly, no one cares that I have a 5-step SEO strategy process or I write 5,000 words worth of content each month.
They care about the fact that I have:
- Gotten new sites to rank without backlinks
- Grown traffic 300%, 400%, and even 1,000%
- Generated thousands (and hundreds of thousands) in organic revenue
"I write blog posts" is usually a dead-end. But the above outcomes can start conversations.
Where to next?
At the start of the year, I (ambitiously) predicted I would help 100 companies as opposed to the hundred or so I worked with in the pervious three years.
It’s been a bit of a slower going to start the year than I had hoped, but as you can see I learned quite a bit through the process. I’m glad I shot for the moon and found out the hard way that a bit more work might be required to break out of orbit.
So what is next?
Taking it one day, week, and month at a time.
My North Star continues to be helping businesses think strategically about their content and use their content to grow their traffic and generate leads. If I can continue to deliver on that aim, I know this crazy adventure will continue.
BTW: if you made it this far, thank you. It means a lot to me that you read my post. If you own a business (or know someone who does) and need help with using content to grow it, I’m here to chat. Request a call here and we’ll make it happen.