About the author
For most of my career, I was a business manager in the corporate world. My experience grew with a variety of positions, from managing departments within large corporations to starting up successful new businesses.
In early 2001, I was managing 3 divisions for a large electronics manufacturing corporation. We assembled consumer electronic products for other companies in our factories in Oregon. I had 600 employees working for me, and sales were at record levels; the corporate office was happy, life was good.
By late 2001, everything had changed. A recession hit the electronics industry full force after 9-11; sales evaporated, and I had to try and maintain profitability. Our large corporate customers moved assembly into their own facilities in an effort to keep their own employees busy. We had to lay people off and shut down one division completely. Pretty soon we had dropped our number of employees to just 80. When more demands for layoffs came from corporate, I decided to volunteer myself for layoff and save the jobs of my two remaining plant managers.
I decided to start a new career as a business consultant. I formed my business and hired a web designer to build my first website. I wanted was to be found on the first page of Google for “small business consulting” and my designer assured me he could get me there.
While eagerly waiting for my website, I immersed myself in learning about how search engines worked and something called search engine optimization. I was fascinated with the science involved and read everything I could find.
After a few weeks I had a chance to see my new website for the first time. I was happy with the visual design, but something was unsettling about it. My new search engine education taught me that there was a list of things that should never be done if you wanted to rank well with Google. I identified many of the items from the “NEVER DO” list in my new website design.
My designer, a 22 year old college student, refused to make any changes to HIS website. After weeks of asking for change without success, I took matters into my own hands. I purchased web design software and, with the help of my son, finished the site. I worked hard and after a few months I‘d successfully moved my website it to the first page of Google for my goal phrase, “small business consulting.”
Some of my consulting clients were very interested in what I was doing, and they asked me if I could do the same for them. Being a hungry and relatively new business consultant, I said “Of course.” I did this first for one and then another; they recommended me to their friends and my business grew. Then someone wanted a new website. With the help of my son, we built it. The business grew . . . at least the web portion did. I hired employees to build websites and taught them how to optimize for search engines.
My passion was helping small business owners grow their business. In 2004, I finally realized that to continue with my passion, I’d need to refocus my business. We became an Internet marketing firm. By late 2009, we’d grown to 16 employees, all in a single brick and mortar location.
Our business consulting roots gave us a different approach. Our competitors were owned by either graphic designers or aggressive SEO marketers, neither of which understood what it took to grow a business. This gave us a tremendous advantage because we focused on core business strategies as we formed these online businesses for our clients.