EPISODE 153 INTERVIEW WITH JASON PITTOCK: THE LONG GAME OF SEO

Transcribed by Otter.ai

Erin Marcus  

Hello, hello and welcome to this episode of The ready yet Podcast. I’m excited to have Jason paddock here with me today because, well for a wide variety of reasons, but your story intrigues me because it’s very much a self taught situation, it’s very much a figure it out, make it happen situation, and it’s very much a things can happen quickly if you let them. situation I think people stay in the struggle for so, so long. And you’re a great example of why that’s not even necessary. So before we get into that, and also share your knowledge with folks, why don’t you tell people a little bit more about who you are and what it is that you do.

Jason Pittock  

Okay, thanks, Aaron. And, yeah, I’m excited to be here. So yeah, my name is Jason Pittock. I am an SEO Coach and Trainer. I’ve been doing SEO for nearly the last 10 years. So it’s been nearly a decade now. started as a hobby became a full time, full time side hustle full time side hustle became a full time employment. And, the interesting thing is, in the last couple of years, I have also opened a paid media lead generation company focused on video. So I’ve had my eyeballs might say, on both sides of the market, you know, the paid side and the SEO which is more organic, and to be to really be honest, it’s been a really, really, really wild ride the last couple of years. And probably the thing that I do the most with today is really work with small medium businesses, helping them get understanding, get insights, and really connect the processes, the systems to be able to scale SEO within their organization. And I do work a little bit on my video marketing business, which we help generate leads through paid paid video, we cover from production, creativity, production, and through to optimization and placement.

Erin Marcus  

That’s in a nutshell, right? So I, from my perspective, and you might have a different experience. I think one of the biggest challenges in the digital marketing world is this marrying of marketing strategy, which is, to me, the visuals, the language, the touchy feely almost of the brand, and the tech, and so many times, those are not skill sets of the same person. They don’t usually go together. So how have you been able to marry those two abilities?

Jason Pittock  

Yeah, I think it’s actually a really good starting point. Because you know, technology. Technology is really a huge assistant to like two paid professional paid marketing professionals and SEO professionals, paid media and SEO have one thing in common is that you both on both ends of the spectrum, you need technology, and you do depend on technology. Now the problem that we have, I think that has really come up in the past couple of years is that technology is becoming so advanced, that the average business owner really doesn’t know how to leverage those tools or applications. And also, technology doesn’t fix a bad business problem. So if you’ve got a bad business model, you know, you can throw lots of dollars or get more eyeballs on your product, your service, but you haven’t fixed the core problem. And often, when I step in and do an SEO discovery session, you know, I’m really honest and straight with my clients in my cart. And obviously, respectfully speaking, I like to get to the core understanding of where the business is in the context. And really all of the other things that happen on the outside, like the technology, the processes, the strategy, they’re all really trade offs for really understanding if you can understand the business model, we can choose any strategy that fits your business strategy, we can choose any technology and use it and leverage it. Often the problem is, is really not being able to understand what is going to move the business to the next level. And often the root of that is because either they’ve been focused on promotion, promotion, promotion, and really not figuring out, you know, what they’re actually offering and who they’re offering it to. And I’ve got a statement, often I’ve got a statement that I often share with people, which is choose one buyer persona, choose a channel and stick to it. There’s often SEO that is like, hey, you know, we can’t work to figure out PPC. So we’re gonna like test SEO, and we’re gonna buy you know, this technology stack that’s gonna kind of fix the problem for us. And the strategy is just to get as much content out there and then you know, they spend a bunch of dollars and they realize, oh, like I actually don’t understand how to use this technology. I don’t know what content to put out there because I haven’t understood who I’m actually selling to. And then you know, it kind of snowballs from there. So really it’s about providing transparency about being very honest and avoiding the gray areas and I’m trying to be black and white as to what we can and can’t do. And obviously working with the business’s strengths, and really positioning those, figuring out what those weaknesses are and how we can fix them. Because every business has weaknesses, every business has strengths when it comes to SEO, they are amplified.

Erin Marcus  

Because one of the things that you’re describing the way that I that you’re doing so So, so correctly, if I may compliment you on that is one of the things that you realize that you realize that so many people don’t, is that the problem that they’re trying to solve is actually an effect and not a cause? Right? Like they’re there, they want more sales, which is usually the right the problem every, that’s what we want, they want more sales. So they’re thinking they just need visibility, and meaning if I just word vomit all over everything and make sure I’m everywhere. Poof, problem solved. Like you mentioned, that’s not the actual problem, if you don’t know who you’re talking to, and what you’re saying and what they want. Volume doesn’t solve the problem.

Jason Pittock  

No, no, no volume is a really important factor at a different stage in the SEO game. And I really like coding SEO again, because it’s all a journey, it’s really a journey. And often,

Erin Marcus  

the rules keep changing, and the parts keep moving,

Jason Pittock  

I’m gonna have to argue that when we do, I don’t think they’ll change, I think the parameters that we work with then change, you might say like, you know, the speed on the highway is always going to be the same, the turn offs are going to be different. And the roundabouts are going to, you know, be differently spaced out. But the reality is, the The journey starts and when people understand those key partners, key drivers, you know, I’ve stepped in and worked with businesses for three months and kind of provide some understanding and insights and kind of get them to start asking the right questions and start going down that healthy path of implanting the right things that are really going to contribute to the long term growth. But coming back to your question is that it’s more about understanding. And instead of trying to throw numbers and people and dollars at it, right, I can give an example. So the average SEO agency today in the US will be charging around $50 to $100,000 a year to handle SEO for a company, right? And my coaching packages start like $4,000, right for $4,000. They can get into a conversation, get a ton of information, a ton of value, get access to all of my content, my webinars and start to understand, obviously, there is going to be a learning curve. But the problem at the moment we have is it’s extremely expensive to do the things right, because the people that do it right are not cheap. Right. So good agencies, there are great SEO agencies. I know Greg and I work with some very good SEO agencies. They’re really no, they’re what they’re going after. There’s also some very bad ones. But there are some very good ones out there. And I respect them for what they do. And they understand they understand the game. And they price themselves high. So what happens is, is you get a small business, they’re trying to fix their SEO problem. And they just go and throw as you said through volume, and it can be money sometimes can be a lot of internal resources and energy, and not really still understand what those key drivers are. So we always break the key drivers down, which obviously, I’m not gonna go too deep into now because it’s a long conversation, but we try and break them down. So they kind of stand a which ones to prioritize regarding ROI. And B, which ones make sense to where they’re right in their business journey. Yeah, there’s no game that is similar to your business game. What is your business aim is an exit in three years? Is it an acquisition in 12 months? Is it a, you know, a 45 year game plan to become the next chicken filet, whatever or you know, to compete with Starbucks? I don’t know, your business strategy goes hand in hand with your SEO strategy.

Erin Marcus  

Well, and the other thing that you mentioned that I really appreciate, is picking the things to focus on because SEO, so a lot of entrepreneurs and what I’ve learned is as you grow your business, and you’re on your entrepreneurial journey, the fears don’t really go away, they just kind of show up differently, right? Same problems, new levels of versions of the same problem. And one of the things I have found is SEO and tech is a great place to hide. It’s a great place to hide from going out into the world and really getting bold and doing what you need to do. Because it’s a never ending game. There’s not a real clear finish line if you don’t set one. So having those priorities. Like if you’re a solopreneur if you’re an entrepreneur, if you’re at that multiple six figure mark and you’re not going to spend the millions of dollars and the 50 Grand on SEO, having those couple of things to focus on Yep. makes all the difference in the world.

Jason Pittock  

Yeah, 100% so I can give you I can you really, really A short example. So I worked with this guy a couple of years ago, he’s based out of Munich. And he has recipes. Like he has a recipe, like his in the world of recipes and like, so he’s got, he’s got a sourdough website. He’s got an espresso review website. So he reviews different types of espresso and like, also is doing a match up now. So it’s got like, lots of different really tight niches. And I sat down with him like three years ago in the middle of the pandemic, one cold, windy evening. And I was like, if you had to like it because he’s also like, in the SEO community, and he’s been talking about doing things the right way for a long time. So I really look up to him. And I asked her, I was like, why don’t you share this with the like, with the rest of the world? Right? Like, why don’t you go out and say, guys, like, the right way is here, like this is, you know, everyone, like 90% of what you read online is, unfortunately, leading people down the wrong path. And he said, you know why? He said, because no one’s gonna listen to me anyway, because no one wants to hear it. And that’s when I understood that the bigger problem is that we’ve been kind of like, digital marketing, unfortunately, has burnt so many entrepreneurs, that there is, like a misconception or misunderstanding that everyone is the same and kind of nothing works. And kind of it’s very, very, the learning curve is very, very steep. And people get that. But what I still kind of find every day that I’ve talked with people is that it’s the people that are in it for the long run that understand what they can and can’t do. And people understand their businesses to the point that they can talk about their clients as though they’re a family member. That’s, that’s when my light bulb moment goes on with people I talk to, and I like these people, SEO will be a great fit. There’s oftentimes when I have to be, even with very large businesses, I have to be very honest, and say, you know, I don’t think SEO is going to be a good fit for you guys. You know, I talked with an e-commerce person yesterday. We have 12,000 products on our website, and they want to do SEO training, and help me kind of upskill their team and understand how to connect the dots. And unfortunately, I’m not going to help them. And there’s obviously some reasons behind that. But the main reason is that they don’t have the time to invest in understanding how to connect the dots. And you get one guy in Munich with three websites, who’s getting over half a million impressions, a half a million eyeballs on his websites a month, and has understood a handful things and done them very, very well.

Erin Marcus  

And the way that I describe that is people don’t want to do the work before they go to work. They just want to go out there and do their thing. Random Acts of business random acts of marketing, just doo doo doo doo doo. And they haven’t spent the time doing the background work. Yeah. Yeah, that’s not really the fun part. I will tell you, as much as I love it, and think it’s important, it’s not the fun part of the business.

Jason Pittock  

No, it’s not. And I really think what’s so cool about SEO, understanding SEO and kind of gaining insights and grasping at least some of the aspects of this, this whole language is the following like, in December, I talked with a very elderly gentleman. At An end of year event, one of my clients invited me to interview events, and he has been in the military. He is a technology consultant. He’s a security consultant. And he was elderly and he talked, he told me that he was in the middle of his career, right. And that is when I realized, that only when people are committed to the long term play, they will truly get the benefits of anything, right. But specifically, when it comes to SEO, there is a time factor, which is so crucial. You can turn on the tap to knowledge, you cannot turn on the tap to traffic. And I always make that analogy. Because honestly you can walk away in four weeks and understand exactly what your SEO roadmap should look like. But you can’t walk around for weeks and have 15,000 people hitting your website every day. And that’s when this time factor. And as time plays it becomes really important and managing expectations. Being very, very, very honest with what you can and can’t do and where your current digital assets are, what the context looks like, your understanding of your buyer persona and your product and your value proposition. They all come into a really, really tight metric matrix. And that matrix is really your business. So I often say well,

Erin Marcus  

isn’t it interesting that you say the SEO doesn’t have I absolutely agree with you. It doesn’t happen overnight. You can’t turn the tap on. This is the long game. This is all about consistency. And yet it’s the other side, it’s the user side of that same technology that completely annihilated everybody’s instant gratification problem.

Jason Pittock  

Yeah. That’s the problem like the technology today is Bill some of the software out there like yes yo technologies out there. have been built to kind of show short term gain and nothing is, you know, not like I, I’ve probably worked with less like single finger websites that have more than 10 years under their belt. And with that, I’ve taught everything you know. And I think last year, I caught 200 websites, I worked with over 100 websites. So less than 10% of my last 10 years of work has been with websites that have less than a decade experience.

Erin Marcus  

And it’s the same thing with podcasts. I didn’t know that someone pointed out that I had a guest who specialized in podcasts. And he pointed out to me how crazy it is that we’ve got well over 100 episodes, we’ve been doing this for two years that people don’t do that. And so to someone like you and I who it doesn’t occur to us to not do the work. Right, it’s just not in you’re not not doing the work that was so surprising.

Jason Pittock  

Yeah, yeah, the thing is, is kind of to wrap up the context of where the market is out and kind of have people understanding, things are changing, and really pushing people to the, I’d say, to the edge of realizing that this is gone from optional to When should I start, right, I can give an example a little bit like your health, right? You can, you can leave it on, you know, as a second party or a third party maybe for so long to a certain amount of time. And, there’ll be a point when it comes back. And you know, and lets you know that you need to sit down and figure things out. It’s like your finances, you know, you can be very, very loose, and it’s going to pay, you know, you can forget paying your taxes, you can forget, you know doing you’re talking about that we’re just right now in the chaos. So, yeah, you got it. But that’s why it came to

mind. It’s that time again.

Jason Pittock  

So you know, if you don’t put in just that, like 1%. And I would that’s why I’m a big fan of you know, the James clear atomic habits are actually one of my biggest 2018 was one of my biggest years. And in regards to transforming my mindset, or only my what I wanted to really do and how I want to move forward. But that 1% Every day accumulated compound is huge. Five years is huge. I’ve got some clients who have been working together for probably the past since December 2019. So we’re in January, yeah. Three, three years and a month. And I’ve in three and three years in one month seen transformative experiences. I can’t imagine if they were to commit 30 years, you know, well, and

Erin Marcus  

people, you know, in the beginning, you think, oh my god, three years, it’s gonna be so long. But when you look back, and you go, Oh, my God, look how far we’ve come in three year

Jason Pittock  

law. It’s a blur. It’s a flash. Yeah. Okay, so

Erin Marcus  

Let’s shift gears a little, because I’m intrigued before we hit the record. And because we’ve had previous conversations, and I know a little bit about you, I know a lot about the animals. And I know a lot about music. How did you end up where you are? What made you choose to get into this business?

Jason Pittock  

Yeah, so long story short, when I was a kid, I grew up in a house where my parents wouldn’t let me have access to the internet. And at the age of 15, when I was 15, I was in school, and we got lessons. And these are like very, very basic lessons literally learning how to use a PC and like, it was like those big black desktop, you know, Windows. Yeah, yeah. And I love how

Erin Marcus  

you say that. So nostalgic, because here’s the deal. The Internet and computers weren’t even a thing until I was in college. Not because I didn’t have access to them just because it wasn’t a thing.

Jason Pittock  

Yeah, so 15 years ago, I was in school, in high school, and I got access for the first time to a computer. And to be honest, I think the sense of possibility and experiences just intrigued me. And I hadn’t even yet browsed the internet. This was just like,

I did this thing

Jason Pittock  

that just did come on, you could come on things. And it happened and it was so efficient. And so I started I obviously did some extracurricular studies just to kind of understand what this whole, you know, technology, computers, like space was right. Very, very basic. A year later, but access to the internet. So when I was 16, I first browsed the internet. And that really was just I, I was just fascinated by this, this whole internet thing. We didn’t know, in my house, I didn’t have a computer in my home till I was 17. I was already driving, and we’ve got our first lap like our first PC. So yeah, that was just

Erin Marcus  

probably post college well into my career before.

Jason Pittock  

Long ago. I mean, this is like 14 years ago now. And I was, you know, fascinated. And so I again didn’t know anything about websites, building websites, didn’t know anything about code, didn’t know anything about like, just SEO like diff was I was totally out that something happened very, very interesting. As soon as I started work, I was given the task of kind of looking at this website and kind of understanding, you know, what should we do? And I just naively stumbled across like SEO and like, visibility, you know, what is? How do you get like something occurred to me? You know, how do you get visible on the internet? Oh, okay. I saw on the back of like, I remember literally picking up like a flier and seeing like the back of this this, my ex employers flier had the website like WW dot, you know, ABC. com. I was like, Alright, okay, so people see the flier, and they like, type it. And then what about if people search, like is content? Like, can you actually find content on the internet? And then I started realizing I’m making searches like, and everything I remember it was I was nearly nearly 18. And it all started connecting with it. I was doing like a summer intern, like a furniture factory.

Erin Marcus  

I’m gonna Okay. It just occurred. It just occurred to me. Yeah, that your music ability is the same as what you’re describing? Because I mean, have you ever heard that music is math. And people who are great at math often also understand music and your ability with music and the way your brain works? Is probably, because I will tell you when I learned about the internet that that stuff never occurred to me. Not where I started,

Jason Pittock  

right. It’s probably my inquisitive, curious. And but

Erin Marcus  

your ability music, was it transferable?

Jason Pittock  

Yeah, this isn’t any, you know, dramatic story or exciting. So that’s about as exciting as it gets. I just suddenly remember right to this moment where I was sitting at this tiny desk in a warehouse in an office in a warehouse that had no air conditioning and was boiling hot. And it was the summer, it was December. And it was just before

Erin Marcus  

December summer, you’re in the southern hemisphere.

Jason Pittock  

I was in Argentina by the Yeah. Yeah, we’ve got to think of what our target audience there is talking about avatars. Anyway, So yeah, this is boiling hot. In the summer holidays, I was helping out doing a stocktake. So literally manual stock taking we’re entering these stock items onto like an intranet, which is back in the day, like the internet was what we would call cloud based applications, anyway. And I remember thinking, Hey, why can’t I find the internet intranet? Like, why is it only hosted on the server? And then it occurred to me, like, I started researching servers, I started researching kind of cloud applications. I started researching, you know, where are the files of websites hosted and it all just, it was probably the, it was probably around three days. And I finally got my head around how this whole thing kind of worked, right. And it didn’t occur at that point. I didn’t do anything other than go and talk to my boss and see if I could convince him to look after the website, because I thought, Well, hey, like, if I can get my hands on the website, I can kind of learn for free. So fast track a few, a few months, I graduated, I left high school. And then I got shipped off to England to get some work experience and do some extra studies. So I did economics and business. I did like math, I wasn’t great at math, just average. I preferred business and economics. I liked that a lot. I actually wanted to finance. I was kind of like myself, like finance and business finance. I liked that. Anyway, I am at my uncle’s, my uncle’s house, I had access to a computer. And that is when I first found out about search engine optimization for the first time I came across this word. And I remember being on back in those days, it was Myspace, finding some people talking about this. I talked to people on Skype, and tried to kind of understand what this was all about. At the same time. Obviously, I was working. Then I got super busy and completely forgot about SEO for four years.

Erin Marcus  

I was wondering where you went from and how you became an entrepreneur from that background.

Jason Pittock  

So for four years, I basically worked my way up a business and I started in the warehouse and I wanted to be like a business manager or market manager. And anyway, I worked myself up and I was in like sales and marketing. So that’s kind of where I got the sales and marketing experience. My manager actually invested a lot in training and helped us kind of, but it wasn’t the typical sales and marketing I’m talking about today. This was more outbound and more like in person, you know, going to meetings doing presentations.

Erin Marcus  

That was my background as well. Absolutely.

Jason Pittock  

It was getting product specified and construction intent. We’re working on tenders, looking at bidding, you know, putting bids on projects, etc. So before you I forgot, like this internet thing I used to email I used you know, like I think WhatsApp was Yeah, around them WhatsApp appeared somewhere on the scene. And I was BlackBerry Messenger like I was using technology but I was just like the SEO thing was like archive I zero for years now. I moved to Buenos Aires to the Capitol because of my career. Like I was doing some getting some deals. I was super young. I was getting really really good pay And I moved to the big city, which is Buenos Aires and started traveling around South America, working with some different clients and projects. And it was a really good time, in the sense from my career, like, I felt like I was actually going making a lot more progress than I expected to be at that age. So I was still very fulfilled. But I didn’t like the factory or the construction scene. Like I didn’t feel comfortable, I felt very out of control the whole time. So I felt I had the impostor syndrome every single meeting,

Erin Marcus  

isn’t it crazy how you could be doing such a great job having all the outcomes and still, like something’s not right.

Jason Pittock  

Literally, I struggled with anxiety, because projects would be delivered like three days late. And my like, I had OCD about, you know, like, I need this project to be delivered because of this client, and there’s another project. And I realized just that, when you are hands on, right, when you’re hands on in projects it definitely has a lot of benefits. And I mean, this is how things are put together. And I felt, in my mind, work better when I could work with something that had so much more scope, right, so many more possibilities. And, sure, sure enough, like, November 2018, I lost my job. And with my previous employer that I’d been working with for like, since I was 18. Basically, since my summer internship, I went to work with my uncle for some time. But yeah, so it’s been a long time. And during that year, during those insecure moments, I kind of like brought up this demon was like SEO like, and I started, you know, I started for the first time building my own website during that year that I was going through a bit of a patch where I wasn’t very secure about my job. And I, I didn’t feel fulfillment that’s really came down to that I love the end product like I used to do interior construction. So the interior fits out, like offices for banks and insurance companies. I’d walk around an end product and a B and project would be like, right, the project manager be like, wow, like very,

Erin Marcus  

very satisfying to physically see that you created during

Jason Pittock  

the project. I struggled like I really did. It wasn’t my thing, it wasn’t my thing. I didn’t feel that at that time, it was the best use of my, my, you know, my energy. And at the same time, I was doing okay, I was super, like very well looked after by the business. And they Yeah, anyway, they let me go in November 2018, which was probably the biggest failure of my life. Because I was now on my,

Erin Marcus  

So what makes you stay on your own instead of looking for another job?

Jason Pittock  

Well, the reason I left mainly was probably because of a misleading misunderstanding with leadership. And, you know, just just, I would say complicated business relationships.

Erin Marcus  

But you could have gone and gotten another job at a different company.

Jason Pittock  

Okay, so I had a little bit of savings. I remember looking at my bank account, and I literally had like single figures in my bank account left, but I knew I had enough to kind of survive like three months, maybe maybe six, if I pushed it out. And I didn’t have a car, towed my car, made a lot of bad financial decisions that we might have in our early 20s. I lived in a flat that I could afford, but I couldn’t afford it because I had to, like sell my car. It’s like a crazy situation. But long story short, I left and I just immediately opened up my laptop and thought, how do I get into this world of technology and, and, and digital? Right? I just had this sense that I would find something that that you know, would give me a little bit more of a sense of fulfillment. I know how hard it is. And I talked about this a lot with other young people, it’s so difficult to find fulfillment in your work, this is not an easy thing to figure out. Well, it’s

Erin Marcus  

also hard to come from what you’re describing as doing a good job but not feeling like it’s exactly right, and then going through whatever turmoil results in you no longer being employed there. And yet to come out of that with enough self trust. To start your own business.

Jason Pittock  

I didn’t. I didn’t have self trust, like honestly, it was like, I knew I could survive for six months, and I could pay the internet and I could pay the rent. So I moved house to a really small dingy flat back in my hometown, which is even further down south. So I was in Buenos Aires in the capital and I moved back down to where my parents were from and basically started from scratch and I had a really crappy computer, I knew nothing about nothing about code 000 information about content I understood more the I’d say what we would used to call like blackhat seo which is more like the off page SEO. So I knew more about that and about sub networks and PB ends and backlinks and domain authority and I understood like the different you know website structures and schema types. And during that period I linked up with a guy who helped me get into an organization which really transformed My wish is basically an SEO, SEO group of people. And as a group of SEO people that were doing SEO the right way they were talking about, like, biblical principles SEO, I call them biblical principles because they’re like, you either agree or you disagree. It’s kind of a moral thing, right? And I just immediately gravitated to what these guys are doing. In the meantime, I was posting jobs, like I was finding jobs for SEO, just really basic SEO work online. And I started getting just all types of jobs in 2018 and 2019. I was doing, like, optimize a website for 200 bucks. I’ll do it to help me, you know, build, like an SEO strategy for this econ. I just bought $500, I’ll do it. And I just started just doing these jobs, you know, and that was really like repetition of that. And talking with this group that kind of mentored me, and trained me. And these guys were absolute. I mean, they still are, they are the they are the the like, they are the father, like they’re, they’re the father and mother, like the internet. Like if you talk I’m talking big search engines, like Amazon, their algorithm, as big as Google’s algorithm is all based on something called schema. That’s S C, H, E, Ma. And that is how websites or how, like web applications or properties are constructed in a way that can be visual to search engines. So very, basically, it’s like looking at a library and knowing where to find a book. Okay, there is a mechanism, like a logical mechanism with dependencies. That is an algorithm that was developed, right? And that there are multiple schema types is basically how code on a website is constructed. So it’s visually visual for the rest of the search engines. So yeah, I really those guys helped me go from zero to kind of three, zero to 520 18 2019 was heads down, just taking really basic odd jobs and kind of prepared to do a lot of crappy hard work. And I built my website, I started to commit to one thing, which was just publishing every week. Things I was saying that well. Yeah, to

Erin Marcus  

better, right, get good at one thing instead of spreading yourself so thin.

Jason Pittock  

Yeah. Anyway, fast. It’s a long story, but it’s not very dramatic. It’s not that exciting, but fast track 2019 2020 I started kind of getting some very interesting conversations with bigger projects. And I got employed by a software company in 2020. Through 2022. I worked there part time, and I’ve kind of built the SEO and content strategy from the ground up. That gave me a lot of hands-on experience. And I yeah, in between that time I worked with some some big application technology firms that taught me a lot because you don’t learn until you make mistakes, kind of my

Erin Marcus  

absolutely and one of the things that you’re displaying so well is the information available. Is it the information available to every single person you’re talking about living in a small town in southern Argentina, right? With crappy laptops, crappy internet, crappy flat rates? And yeah, you had access to the information. They chose to do something with?

Jason Pittock  

Yeah, you everyone ever, I think in that sense, like, that’s why I really liked the internet. I think it’s very, there are obviously some players that are going to understand how to leverage things better. But we all have the same opportunity on the internet, you know, like I think more or less like we all everything is there. Like I read it the other day actually. I can’t remember who said I think Alex Vamos is like, everything, nearly everything about anything is already published. It’s already

Erin Marcus  

there. I tell people all the time that information is available.

Jason Pittock  

Yeah, I was talking it’s actually in reference to the chatty BTS, you know, thing that’s going on at the moment that, interestingly enough, like the SEO game is, you know, quite at the moment quite in, in quite a shock with this chat. GVT. And what does the future searches look like lower, but long, long, the look like the long shot is there’s so much information out there basically people who get better at repackaging it, and having a unique perspective, when they look. And so yeah, I just basically started getting more and more projects doing obviously I was executing. So I was doing execution, which means basically, I was like a soul solid solopreneur agency. So people come to me with an SEO project, and I would deliver it. And then in 2021 at the end of 2021, beginning 2022 I left the software firm and the software business and I decided to go and like full time doing SEO. And I realized that I wanted to train and I wanted to document my journey, and I was prepared to own less but feel that I was helping people at a larger scale. So I tested it and one project during 2022, the beginning of 2022. And it literally, it just, it just exploded in my face. Like, I had never felt that level of connection with my work. When I saw people

Erin Marcus  

like that, right? It means everything.

Jason Pittock  

And it means everything I like, Oh, if there’s, you know, I can wake up to look at a graph and see, you know, a thing, your website improved from one year to the next. And it’s really, really fulfilling, but there was nothing more fulfilling than sitting with someone like yourself or somebody and saying, Hey, like, this is actually how it works like this is how this part works. And it’s like a mechanic explaining something in the an engine that you had no idea and you’re saying, oh, you know, the fan belt and that, like, I don’t know, man mechanics, but when my mechanic takes the time to explain something, to me, it feels so much more fun.

Erin Marcus  

Well, one of the reasons that I love marketing so much is marketing, is the time that we’re able to help somebody else. Think of different and more possibilities than they like, that’s the moment when you have an ability to influence somebody to think differently, that something new is possible, that something more is possible, and you see the light go on. It’s unbelievable.

Jason Pittock  

Yeah, so that was really my aha moment. And since then, I basically built a few foundational webinars. So like they, my verse like my biblical fundamentals, or whatever you want to call them, like the SEO foundational concepts. I categorize them, because obviously, there’s so many, and there are so many ways of describing things in SEO. So what you really have to do is define your approach. So this is a bit like fitness, right? You’ve got, you’ve got people that are talking about, you know, vegan lifestyles, you’ve got people talking about keto lifestyles, you’ve got people that are zero carb, you’ve got people that are, you know, carbs, fats, and like, this is very similar to the health industry. Like, there isn’t like one

Erin Marcus  

way too real correct way.

Jason Pittock  

Right? Exactly. So you have to be very, very clear about what you’re okay with and what you’re not, and then back it up with why. So I really started by creating a foundational program. And that’s, that’s the core product. So I have five webinars, five Foundation, webinars, five training modules, and then I do in person training, either virtual or in person. And, yeah, there’s like different, obviously, different levels to the training can be a certain amount of hours. And at the moment, I still don’t myself, I don’t have any SEO trainers or any SEO coaches. And, you know, as of today, like, as of today, I have around two months of like, I have a waiting list for two months. So my next, my next, I’d be onboarding people now for March and April. So thankfully, I’ve managed to, I made sure to build up my Upwork profile on LinkedIn profile very, very strong as I could to the ability I had, and the time and resources I had available. To make sure that they were really inviting. And I really communicated my subject matter, my subject matter expertise on that. So and worked with referrals, basically, what I

Erin Marcus  

now these courses are available. Yeah, so

Jason Pittock  

Those courses are the foundational, like the foundational SEO program is the basic product. And that starts at, I think, $4,000. And then depending on how many hours that you want to do one on one training on each module, there’s different packages available. And

Erin Marcus  

perfect segue perfect, because you and I would like to go on forever. Because why don’t we wrap this up by telling people how exactly they can get a hold of you and find that information? Because I personally know a whole lot of people who are interested in it. So what is the best way for them to take the next steps with you?

Jason Pittock  

Yeah, so I don’t run any ads. I don’t do any promotion. I just work purely on testimonials and referrals, which is how I’ve built up so far. So if you just go to Jason pittock.com. And you’ve got the contact page there, you can fill out the application and you’re away. And 24 hours later, you’ll get a booking link, you can book a one hour SEO discovery call, we can talk about anything about SEO after you fill out that application. And yeah, you can book in the next available slots for training. So at the moment, as I said, we’re taking people as of the 14th of March like the second week of March. So February and the first two weeks are booked for March. And the idea is that I do it in kind of like 90 Day cohorts. So people coming in now I’d be booking them in for the second quarter of this year. So yeah, and if anyone is interested in PPC or video marketing, you can also go to my other website which is Hugo media.com. Oh, that is.co not.com And you go meteors why you geo media? If you Google PPC that’s a whole nother point.

Erin Marcus  

We’ll have to come, we’ll have to do another episode. So thank you so much for sharing your story. I love all the examples of taking action, regardless of what resources you do or don’t have, sticking with something you love and then taking it to the next level. Right. And just always being curious. Yeah, and not giving up. Not very good. Thank you and never ever ever giving up. Thank you so much. Thank you, and it’s been great to be here. I appreciate it.