2 Critical Traits you Need to Get Up and Succeed from Failure and Mistakes

5 MIN READ

May 13, 2020 By Sean Leave a Comment

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Excerpt

This is a reverse-guesting episode where I was interviewed about my story in starting up SEO Hacker as the leading SEO Services company in the Philippines.

How do you usually recover from setbacks?

First, I remove myself from failure.

Don’t say that “I failed”. Rather, say that it was a mistake and move forwards.

A lot of entrepreneurs personalize failure. That is the mindset of a loser. You will be buried under a mountain of failure rather than standing on top of it.

If you separate yourself from the failure and see them as lessons, then it’s inevitable for you to get better.

With that, recovering from setbacks gets easier.

People who personalize the failure never get better because they are traumatized by it. They don’t want to try again because they believe that they will repeat it and fail again.

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One of our core values is experimentation. We have a short excerpt there that I wrote: “We try new things in the spirit of having a positive outcome”.

There’s an implicit mindset behind it. That is to be courageous. Have the courage to try new things.

No one goes to a gold mine to dig for dirt. But we have to dig through the dirt to get the gold.

You also have to have the tenacity, the grit, the resilience in the face of rebellion, betrayal, and failures.

They’re heavy words because they happened to me, but I have changed because of them.

People who give up in the face of adversity will not succeed. You have to have the strength and will to win and keep moving forward.

That is what we see in most successful people nowadays. They all failed. Most of them failed in a big way, but they still got up.

Elon Musk almost went bankrupt after selling Paypal, but now he’s as famous as ever.

Steve Jobs said in his Stanford speech that “It was bitter medicine, but the patient needed it” In line with him getting fired as CEO of Apple. After that, he sold Pixar to Disney, was reinstated as the CEO of Apple and made it the number one company in the world.

Know that you’re going to fail. But you don’t have the strength and resilience to get back up especially in the face of adversity, then you’re just going to stay in the mud.

You said that you’re ruthless in your decision-making process and speech. Are you still struggling with these?

Yes. There is a part of me that it became instinctive. I don’t like being ruthless, but it’s now my natural tendency for me to say things that way.

There are times when I hurt people’s feelings. Sometimes people argue that it’s because of my Dominant personality. I don’t use that as an excuse. I know I have to improve on that and so I try to first delay my first reaction to every opinion that I hear.

I also tell the truth. Trying to be less ruthless doesn’t mean you should sugar coat your opinions. You have to be clear. You have to make sure that your message gets across.

That being said, there’s a difference between being ruthless because of your clear and being mean.

Being mean is personalizing the fault and blame. That’s wrong.

If you’re being ruthlessly clear, you might shut down some opinions, but that’s because you’re trying to prevent them from making mistakes and protect the company. All because I have been in their place.

There are ways to say things better. I know that I don’t lie and I’m not mean but people say that I’m ruthlessly clear depending on the people I talk with.

The people who get hurt by it will not tell me that they’re hurt, then probably spread gossip.

What else do you struggle with?

I think one of the ways we can improve as an organization is the reporting system.

Everyone is accountable but it’s not clear what’s really happening on a big picture perspective.

It could be avoided if we had a big picture reporting system.

Personally, I want to improve my sleeping habits. I want to wake up early around 6 or 6:30 in the morning. A lot of people are saying that it’s difficult, but it’s something that I want.

Again, for me to be able to rise to that goal, I need to fall back to my systems.

This is something that I hope I’m able to achieve by June this year.

Adjusting my entire lifestyle is difficult. I won’t be able to work on creative things at night, instead, I need to do them early in the morning. It’s better but I’m not there yet.

For now, there are two ways to go about it.

First, I will lack sleep every day until I am able to wake up early in the morning.

Second, I should force myself to cool down and sleep at a certain time. It’s healthier, better for my decision-making abilities, but is harder to do.

How do you Manage your Time Better? The Magic of Delegation.

6 MIN READ

May 12, 2020 By Sean Leave a Comment

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Excerpt

This is a reverse-guesting episode where I was interviewed about my story in starting up SEO Hacker as the leading SEO Services company in the Philippines.

What were some things that you had to let go of?

One of the things that I had to let go of was playing computer games. Back then it was a borderline addiction and it took a real effort to stop.

I managed to control that by completely deleting the games that I really liked. It would be a huge hassle to play it again because I had to download and install it again before I could even start.

James Clear who wrote the book Atomic Habits says “We don’t rise to the level of our goals; we fall to the level of our systems.

I had to make a system that had to create a system that would enable me to keep that addiction at bay. For me, that was uninstalling the software.

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He also said that if you were struggling with binge-watching on Netflix, then you should make sure to keep the TV out of your bedroom or put it in your cabinet. It puts in another obstacle before you can do so, making it harder for people to do it again and again.

Time management has four quadrants. These computer games fall under not urgent and not important. Some of the things that are urgent and not important I delegate.

For me, it’s important that you have other people helping you out. This is why we have grown to over 50 people in the company.

It’s so we can focus on making the decisions that are near the commas, not the decimal point.

If we have more people making bigger decisions that are closer to the commas, that will make for a bigger and better company with bigger and better growth.

If you’re the business owner, you want your people to move closer to the commas.

I delegate a lot of my old tasks. I used to do Legal, HR, SERP watching, project management, accounts, and sales.

Since I’ve delegated them all now, I can focus on other things. This year, my thematic goal is to raise up more leaders. Last year, I focused on making sure that the sales team is intact.

I just choose the things that I need to do and the things that can only be done by me.

To do that, you should discern and ask other people, mostly your mentors, what they delegate to other people. You realize things along the way so you experiment and delegate to other people.

For me, delegating is like going with them.

It’s like driving a car and giving the keys to someone. You’re not going to give them the keys without checking first if they can get to point A to point B and back without a dent or scratch.

You’re going to be riding with them for months to see if they can drive well. Finally, when the time comes when you will give the keys to them, you won’t be nervous. Instead, you’ll be happy that you don’t need to stay with him along the ride anymore.

The opposite is the two extremes, the micromanager, and just giving them the keys and leaving them with it.

You have to balance things out. Ride with your people. And when the time comes, award the keys to them.

It’s part of leadership to know the strengths and weaknesses of your team. Was this something that you learned along the way or something that you knew earlier?

This is why the hiring process is very important, along with the tests and exams that come with applying and becoming a regular team member.

They’re important because you’ll be able to see their personality, their competence, their temperament, and their strengths and weaknesses.

You can delegate better if you know all of these things about the person.

Influential people who are fun and talkative are good for sales.

Corrective or Compliant people who are into details and asking questions are good for programming.

You can also check it out via Strengths finder.

My main strength is Self-Assurance, those with this strength have an inner compass. They know what to do and what to say at any given time. They know what the vision should be.

Those with the Command Strength are great for managerial positions. They can take command of a room. They can lead a group of people.

My brother and I have a theory that the strengths that you have will be different at x stage and y stage of your life.

Was delegating something that you wish that you knew back then?

I’d rather want to know how to hire better because if you don’t know how to hire correctly, then you can’t delegate well—because you don’t have anyone to delegate things to.

Once someone that is stealing nuts and bolts from a train track goes to university and graduates, they’re not going to steal nuts and bolts, they’ll steal the entire train track.

You can’t change their character. You can just help them in what they’re doing. Improve their skills and knowledge, but you can’t change their fundamental character.

Get the right people in your team. Make sure that they fit into your culture. Take time in your hiring process.

How do you Prevent Employees going AWOL?

4 MIN READ

May 6, 2020 By Sean Leave a Comment

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Excerpt

This is a reverse-guesting episode where I was interviewed about my story in starting up SEO Hacker as the leading SEO Services company in the Philippines.

In reality, contracts are the lowest form of trust… I don’t trust you, you don’t trust me, so we have this piece of paper to keep us in check.

What do you think is the cause of people going AWOL? Was this a problem when you were still starting out?

AWOL was a problem. We even had a recent experience with people going AWOL just around a year ago. That was when we already improved our hiring process.

It was more common before because they got in too easily. I hired the wrong people.

My whole hiring process sucked. It was just one seating where I asked a few questions. They’ll get in immediately just because we needed help.

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I should have worked harder to fulfill my need in hiring that spot instead of hiring someone that will just leave more problem with us.

If I just took time in the hiring process, they would have AWOL’d within the hiring process.

Contracts are another thing. We make our people sign and they’re bonded with us for an x number of months or years.

For me, contracts are the lowest form of trust and agreement. The highest form is verbal.

Needing a contract is the lowest form because it basically says that you don’t trust one another and that you need a piece of paper as proof of your agreement.

That being said, it would be stupid of me not to have employment contracts. These are to protect the employees and us, the owners, as well.

I can argue that even with the contracts, people still go AWOL. It will not solve AWOL problems.

You still need contracts, but what will really prevent that from happening is to prolong the hiring process. Weed out the people who would have gone AWOL anyway.

The reason why people go AWOL is several. Most of them get bigger job offers, some say they have family problems.

What we do to them, is we put them in a blacklist.

I don’t think a person went AWOL because they didn’t like how things were done here. Instead, most of them do so because they found something else, or they were not mature individuals.

You can’t really say why they’re going AWOL. What you can only do is to prevent it by prolonging the hiring process. Optimize it so that you can really check on your applicants.

Do you think there are still many holes in your hiring process?

When we started our current hiring process, we’ve only hired two, maybe three people that were wrong hires compared to 80% of the past hires being bad ones.

We’ve already hired 50 people over the course of one year. Some of them didn’t become regulars and that’s fine. At least we part ways well.

Those who did choose to be regularized will be staying with us for two more years and then they’re going to graduate. It’s up to them whether they want to stay or go.

One thing that we can improve is something that I’ve been thinking about for a long time. That would be to have the strengths finder exam for the probationary hires just to know them better.

We pay for that exam, but it wouldn’t be that much help to someone if they didn’t enter the workshop.

It’s difficult to learn how to internalize it if they don’t see how it’s supposed to work.

My wife has suggested doing that in the hiring process, which can be too risky and costly.

We’re still trying to improve our hiring process, but right now it’s working fantastically.

The 5 Enemies of Unity in your Team and How to Defeat Them

6 MIN READ

May 4, 2020 By Sean Leave a Comment

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Excerpt

This is a reverse-guesting episode where I was interviewed about my story in starting up SEO Hacker as the leading SEO Services company in the Philippines.

Gossip is the antithesis of unity… I can’t tell you that I know each and everything that’s happening in the office. But my team knows my stand on gossip.

What is your Why and how did you find it?

Our purpose statement is different from our mission and vision.

Our Why statement is we exist because the world is underserved by digital marketing companies. There are some out there that are not good, not outright, and even go as far as scamming companies.

There is a huge gap that is yet to be filled by digital marketing companies.

We exist because of that gap.

We want to serve the world, in the best way we can, through digital marketing.

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My Why is directly related to my identity. I am a child of God and we have a mission. That is to go out and make disciples of all nations.

It’s not easy to influence millennials. We’re not all Christians in SEO Hacker. We hire any and all kinds of people with different beliefs. It’s just that one of the things that I want very much to happen is for them to get to know the Lord. That will always be my Why.

How I will be able to do that is dependent on where God has called me. Right now, God has called me to be a businessman, an entrepreneur, and a voice in the Philippine startup market.

People will not listen to you if you’re not good at what you’re called to be doing. You’ll just be another person with an opinion.

People will criticize you. Society will tell you to become successful. But when you are successful in a way, people are going to criticize you.

What I realized is that you should just go the path that you’re called to and don’t pay any mind to the critics.

There have been so many times when I heard voices from critics all around. If I let it get to me, then I wouldn’t be here today.

You have to realize that you’ve been fighting a worthy fight. There is a reason why you exist.

It’s your choice to allow what they say to get into your heart or not.

Unity is an important thing. How do you plan to keep everyone unified while still maintaining professionalism in the workplace?

First, we have to educate them on the five enemies of unity.

The first enemy is gossip. It is the antithesis of unity. With it, you can never have unity in your team. It breaks down trust.

Without trust, you cannot have unity.

I can’t tell you that I know each and everything that’s happening in the office. But my team knows my stand on gossip.

It’s an everyday fight. You have to make an effort to keep these things at bay because if you let your guard down, these things will really wreak havoc within your team.

The second thing I really don’t like is unresolved conflict.

If there are people between teams that don’t see eye-to-eye, have bitterness in their hearts. They might even go as far as to sabotage each other’s output.

When that happens, both you, your clients, and your shareholders will suffer. This can lead to letting go of people just because you’re not making enough revenue.

When you know something is happening between two members of your team, get them in a room and act as a mediator in their alignment.

I don’t require my people to become friends, even outside of work. What I require is that they respect one another.

The third enemy of gossip is sanctioned incompetence.

If you tolerate incompetence in your team, they will follow suit with it—creating more mediocre output.

They will hate you for it because you’re protecting a donkey, while you let your stallions suffer, or worse, leave.

You’ll lose loyalty and your unity will breakdown.

Next is the lack of a shared vision.

It’s difficult to run a united team when everyone is going into different directions.

You always have to pull them back in line.

During our lunch breaks, we make sure to recite our core values, mission, and vision. We also have our purpose statements in our meeting areas.

It’s clear where we are going.

The main problem with vision is that it leaks. Sometimes people just lose sight of it.

Last is poor communication.

A lot of companies run their organization by just giving a map to their people saying this is where the party is at. Be there on time so we can have fun.

But when people use the map, it’s vague and ultimately takes them to the wrong places. These people get frustrated, get angry, and then vent out to other people leading to gossip.

When you have poor communication, your people will get frustrated. The reason why there’s poor communication is that the management is afraid to communicate or they’re so arrogant that they keep things from the team.

When you keep things from the team, you undergo mushroom communication. You leave your people in the dark and give them crap—that’s how you grow mushrooms.

In SEO Hacker, we would rather overcommunicate. I would tell my team that they are mature individuals and adults and I will treat you as such. But you must carry the burden of keeping things in the circle and solving the problems within the meeting.

I give them the burden of being mature individuals who will carry the burden with me.

This is done without gossiping, but instead by communicating clearly.

All of these things are being wrapped up in software that we develop and use internally. It’s called Teamstrr and we will be opening it up to the public this May.

Teamstrr has helped keep the team as united as it’s ever been. And I know how hard it is to feel betrayed, to experience the mutinies and mass resignations.

Right now, we have the greatest number of people, which means there is the most number of tendencies for these mutinies to happen, but it doesn’t.

And that’s because we have been communicating the importance of unity and we have Teamstrr that helps keep unity intact in the company.

< 1 MIN READ

The irony of this information and knowledge economy is that instead of stronger minds, we have developed weak minds. By now, you could imagine that we have harvested, harnessed and developed so much for our knowledge to keep things such as anxiety, fear, and depression out in the cold.

Instead, these things somehow finds its way easily into the heart because it is not barred out by the wisdom that comes from the fear of God.

Wisdom has been replaced by cheap knowledge – most of it counterfeit.

We have traded the absolute truth – which is the most valuable thing our minds can hold – for that which is relative, wobbly, and weak. Things that feels good for the moment but dissolve soon after.

“… Until at last, having educated himself into imbecility, and polluted and drugged himself into stupefaction, he keeled over–a weary, battered old brontosaurus–and became extinct.” – Malcolm Muggeridge

#ceoat22

< 1 MIN READ

“Using a dull ax requires great strength, so sharpen the blade. That’s the value of wisdom; it helps you succeed.” – Ecclesiastes 10:10

This is the time to sharpen your blade. You are not out there chopping down trees. There are no urgent tasks to be done.

You have the time to learn, improve, and reinvent yourself to come out better, stronger, sharper for the work ahead when the world economy resumes.

The question is, are you sharpening your blade right now? Are you investing in wisdom to help you succeed?

Or are you setting yourself up to fail?

Stop whatever it is your doing. Think.

Because when you fail in these tough, uncertain times, it is much harder to get back up.

< 1 MIN READ

“When a crime is not punished quickly, people feel it is safe to do wrong.” – Ecclesiastes 8:11

I was asked a question during the Breaking Through the Crisis webinar that mentioned their workplace breaking down with rampant gossip even when they would praise and congratulate exemplary workers.

While praising other people for their great work, competence and character, you cannot turn a blind eye to the wrong things.

If gossip goes unpunished in your organization, people will think it’s ok. And since gossip is insidious and dangerously contagious, it will spread like wildfire.

In the end, it will eat up and burn everything you have worked so hard to achieve.

Find out how to fight gossip in your team and how we implement a no-gossip policy at SEO Hacker by downloading the replay of the webinar here.

The 6-Step Hiring Process that Allows us to Hire Great Team Players 99% of the Time

5 MIN READ

April 29, 2020 By Sean Leave a Comment

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Excerpt

This is a reverse-guesting episode where I was interviewed about my story in starting up SEO Hacker as the leading SEO Services company in the Philippines.

What kind of traits do these people have to have for you to entrust the gatekeeper position to them?

We have two Human Resource personnel. They do all of the hiring and legal work in terms of application. They do a thirty-minute drive-by interview just to get to know the applicant. After which they’re sent home. If we need to talk to them again for a second reason, then we’ll call them.

The second interview is all about the DISC and culture tests. Everyone in the next steps will look at these exams.

The third step is the exam for the position that they’re applying for. The team leader is the one who will interview them.

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The next step is the interview with my wife. She has this amazing gut feel that I listen to. If the applicant is not good with her, then she doesn’t need to bring the applicant up to me. I trust her 100%.

What is the culture like in SEO Hacker?

Culture is the product of the DNA of the founder.

When I was starting out SEO Hacker, I was still a freelancer.

I had to respect what I was doing by respecting my time and efforts. When I did that, I finished everything ahead of time and I was able to experiment after finishing meetings and my legwork.

I would always push myself to learn something new.

I wanted to have a dream team. I wanted us to be united, have one vision, and one direction.

All of these culminated in our core values. That is the direction of our team.

Our core values are Grit, Respect for Work, Challenger, Clarity, Unity, Experimentation.

We depreciated some because we realized that they’re not core values. Integrity is a necessity. Beyond Technology is all about hard work. Empathy was not used correctly.

To live out the core values, it should first be set in your mind so that it will settle in your heart.

Culture is something that you just realize once you step into the room. I think it’s best described in a YouTube video called the Smell of the Place.

I can’t tell exactly describe what our culture is. What I can tell you is that It’s young, dynamic and unified.

How does one cultivate this self-awareness? What are the right questions that you have to ask yourself?

The first time I was able to draft a set of core values was in 2014. I’ve changed them three times now.

The first one was a huge failure. It wasn’t working.

One thing I learned in a podcast I listened to was that it was a gift from the past. It was something that your past self gifts your present self. But it’s your choice whether to accept that gift or not.

My first core values sounded nice, but it wasn’t working, and it didn’t make sense. It was useless.

Jim Collins, in his book “Built to Last” says that you can only have six core values. 7 or more will be to remember and practice.

The first ones that came to mind were integrity beyond technology and empathy. They are so important that if someone doesn’t have them, then they shouldn’t be here.

These became necessities that we set aside. We chose core values that not everyone would have at the get-go.

There are three kinds of core values. Aspirational, Accidental, and Permission to Play

Integrity and Beyond Technology are both Permission to Play. Our core is Grit and Respect for Work. Challenger, Unity, Clarity, and Experimentation are Aspirational values. We want everyone to practice it, but not everyone has it as of now.

These core values are a culmination of a lot of things including my experience and the books that I’ve read. I didn’t give much attention to accidental values.

I learned these things from big mentors like Jim Collins, Patrick Lencioni, John Maxwell, and Dave Ramsey. I read their books, listened to their podcasts, followed their advice, you develop this court sense meaning you’ll know when and who you should pass the ball to in your team.

It’s that court sense and the many experiences that I had over the years that culminated in our core values.

< 1 MIN READ

“When your dreams are vague, it’s easy to rationalize little exceptions all day long and never get around to the specific things you need to do to succeed.” – James Clear (Atomic Habits)

You can never build good habits or identify and deny bad ones unless you know where you want to go in life.

Decide who you want to be first.

Visualize it.

Dream it.

Then make every single decision count to becoming that dream.

The Most Important Skill a Leader Should Have

5 MIN READ

April 27, 2020 By Sean Leave a Comment

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Excerpt

This is a reverse-guesting episode where I was interviewed about my story in starting up SEO Hacker as the leading SEO Services company in the Philippines.

What are the skillsets that a great leader should have?

Being decisive. Leaders have to be decisive.

If you’re a carpenter, your job is not to hammer nails onto the wood or to paint the fence. Your job is to make decisions.

What am I going to do today? How am I going to do it? Should I put this piece over that wall?

The world may see you as a person who works with stone, wood, and pain. But what you’re really being paid for is to make decisions.

The question now is “Are the decisions you make closer to decimal point or the commas?”

Some decisions closer to the decimal point are being done by our administrative people. Some decisions closer to the decimal point are being done by the grassroots people.

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Picture this typical scene of an animal trying to cross a road. The presence of headlights makes them stop and become roadkill.

That happens because the animal was indecisive.

As the leader, it’s that dangerous as well when you’re indecisive. You paralyze your whole organization. When that happens, people will start to see that you cannot make decisions.

It’s fine if you make the wrong decision because there are no mistakes. Only lessons. Just don’t repeat the lessons until it becomes a fatal mistake.

Singular lessons, however, are important. Failing forward is important but never be an indecisive leader.

Another trait that leaders always need to have is humility. Humility to learn and to listen to other people.

I know leaders with big egos that when you tell them off, they just bite those people’s heads off.

You cannot improve if you’re like that.

If you bite people’s heads off in meetings, then they will not tell you the truth. They will only tell you what you want to hear. Not what you need to hear.

I am an extremely high D in the DISC spectrum and my top strength Self Assurance. In meetings, I can be a big personality in meetings. This doesn’t mean I’m shutting down their ideas. In fact, I want my people to debate with me so that ideas will flow out.

The problem is that some of my people in those meetings will share their opinions outside of that meeting. And then they will tell them to other people who will then tell it to me.

I don’t understand why that wasn’t brought up during the meeting because I want healthy conflict in the team.

Patrick Lencioni says conflict is nothing but the pursuit of truth. The search for the best possible answer.

I am in this business to search for the best possible answer. We are doing the meetings to make the best possible answers to the surface. If you’re not going to have healthy conflict with me, then nothing’s going to happen. We cannot get to the truth.

It goes both ways. You have to be humble enough to listen to people and discuss it with them as well.

Now, we are at the stage where we delegate a lot of things to other people. I really don’t know everything that’s happening to the company. Some people know more than I do. If you’re not humble enough to listen to them, then you will lose touch with your operations.

What are you doing to encourage this free flow of ideas? To encourage people to speak up?

You must realize that how you say things matter.

One example is in a meeting that we had yesterday.

There was something that was suggested that will change one of our keyways of ranking. One of our key strategies would be to change temporarily.

When I heard that, I mentioned to them the implications in my mind. As long as you know this, and you will still push through with that knowledge, then do what you think is best. At least I gave you my opinion.

That was me telling them that I don’t know everything. That they might have found something that I can’t visualize, and that’s fine.

At least I know that you know what I think about it. I can only commit to your decision if I know that you heard my opinions regarding it.

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You said that you’re ruthless in your decision-making process and speech. Are you still struggling with these?

What else do you struggle with?

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It’s part of leadership to know the strengths and weaknesses of your team. Was this something that you learned along the way or something that you knew earlier?

Was delegating something that you wish that you knew back then?

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What do you think is the cause of people going AWOL? Was this a problem when you were still starting out?

Do you think there are still many holes in your hiring process?

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