Why I Joined Click2Rank

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It’s funny how life takes us on a path of learning and growth that is sometimes blessed and sometimes feels cursed.  In reality, whether we understand that it’s all blessed, comes down to how we choose to perceive what’s in front of us, and what in that, we choose to learn from, or leave behind.

For many years, I personally shouted from the rooftops how being a renegade, an outlier, and a defender of non-corporate culture was the best thing since sliced bread.  Let’s face it.  Being able to wear whatever I felt like, say what I believed to be honest truth, and act in ways far outside typical corporate norms was a pretty fun experience.  It was a great ride while it suited who I was at the time.

Yet underneath that public persona, there’s been a more conservative truth to who I am in the world, and in business.  Built on decades of life experience as an entrepreneur, on some great successes and some truly painful failures.  And it’s those lessons I learned through trial and error, through the ups and downs of long-term experience running, managing and participating on advisory boards for many small and mid-size companies that, for quite a long time now, have guided my path.  And ultimately, led me to accepting the offer to work for Click2Rank.

Myopic Business Methods Vs. Sustainable Business Methods

Myopic business methods come from a belief that the short-term is what matters most, and that what we know in how to run a business today must also be how we’ll operate business tomorrow.  If we grab enough money today, surely we’ll have that much more money down the road.  If we create the appearance of a Zappos or a 37Signals, surely we’ll become as successful as them.

Sustainable business methods are based on sound business decisions, internal growth only when it’s justified by judicious budgetary constraint, and respecting the concept of legal ramifications as relates to business governance. They don’t however, come from seeing successful companies we admire and just guessing that we think we understand how they got there.

These are critical concepts that come from knowing that economies change, business models need to evolve, contractual obligations and financial expenditures have consequences, not to mention that  just because there’s money coming in today it does not automatically ensure that we won’t hit lean times down the road.

REWORK – the 37Signals Culture

Just as important, as those realities are, if we don’t truly pay attention to what appear to be subtle factors regarding successful companies, we’re really not modeling ours after theirs.

The geniuses behind BaseCamp and its related products have, what appears on its surface, one of the most enjoyable companies to work for on earth.  They don’t believe in having to have business meetings, a board of directors, or a host of other “corporate” structure methods.  So surely, since they have apparently tossed out all the “rules” of corporate process, then why bother having any such rules at all?

There are a number of key factors many people who read Jason and David’s story overlook.  It’s intoxicating to think they completely abandoned traditional business thinking and yet still found such immense success.  And that intoxication causes people to over-simplify, ignore or otherwise block out some key issues.

In the introduction to ReWork, Jason and David’s bestseller on how they got where they got, they state:

Some people consider us an Internet company, but that makes us cringe.  Internet companies are known for hiring compulsively, spending wildly, and failing spectacularly.  That’s not us.  We’re small (sixteen people as this book goes to press), frugal and profitable.

Nimble, Frugal and Profitable

That one statement, in a nutshell, is one of the core reasons I was asked to take on this job.  As much as it pains some people to hear, the truth is that for all of their previous accomplishments, Click2Rank was far from profitable.  Whatever some people believe the reasons for that are, it’s a fact.  A big fact.

Several people in the company were not productive in the least.  Not because they aren’t skilled, or lack the passion to do the work.  But because the work was not there to justify their presence.  And at least some of the projects that were being worked on, or about to be worked on, were so ridiculously undersold that it was impossible to reach profitability from a 30,000 foot budgetary view.

Other costs of doing business, the overhead behind the scenes, were not being tracked based on sound accounting practices.  So while there may have been talk that the company was profitable based on total contracted client projects, that single numeric was never properly held up to the light of balance sheets or profit and loss statements.  Decisions on company hiring and morale-boosting perks therefore, were tragically misguided.

Click2Rank Was Far From Frugal, Sustainable or Healthy

Up until a few weeks before SMX Advanced, Christine Gibbs, Click2Rank’s CEO, had a hands-off approach, as she has the responsibility for running a bigger business with over 170 employees.   She’d had the belief that the company was in good hands, and what was being reported to her as fact was actually fact.  As she was able to pause long enough from those other efforts, it was rapidly apparent to her that not only were things completely amiss, they were wildly and dangerously out of line with sustainable business methods.

Methods that helped her take a company from nothing and turn it into a global success.  So she reached out to me (more on that later) to help provide insights specific to our industry.  As successful as Christine has been for many years running multi-million dollar enterprises, the SEO world is not her specific area of expertise.

So she needed someone she could trust, with the right kind of experience, that both understood the fundamental business process flaws she’d already seen for herself, and to help her nail down the exact industry-specific factors that were causing the larger “regardless of business type” problems she knew had to be addressed.  And that’s where I came in.  And together our findings were monumental…

The Outsourcing Panacea

It’s easy to believe that outsourcing saves costs.  When individual wages are a tiny fraction of in-house staff, it’s tempting to think, based on that notion, that you can then charge a lot less than everyone else, and as a result, automatically become profitable.

Sadly, if that’s all you see or consider, if you overlook the true costs involved, it usually turns out that outsourcing can cost you a lot more than your initial belief.  So in the case of Click2Rank, the actual costs of outsourcing were much higher than they had been made out to be.  And at every turn, purchasing decisions and “culture-related” spending was beyond unjustified based on what real world profit-and-loss statements showed would be reasonable.

In-House Perks

If you don’t first produce realistic profit and loss projections, nor maintain such fundamental bookkeeping records, it’s irresponsible at best, and reckless at worst, to then decide you’re going to be lavish in your company perks. Presenting the notion of a glamorous big budget lifestyle as a reason people should come to work for a company that is not backed by an equally healthy base of start-up capital is one of the single biggest reasons so many dot-com era companies imploded in such spectacular ways.

Anyone who lived through that time-frame, including myself, (I owned a company that got hundreds of thousands of dollars of seed funding and was on the verge of signing a deal for $15 million in 1st round funding when the collapse happened) knows now how foolish and dangerous such a policy is.

So Click2Ranks “perks” and hiring carrots were anything but wisely decided upon.  They created the illusion of an amazing company to work for. One that had the appearance of being on solid financial ground.

Billable Rates

Something I had to learn the hard way regarding business is what to charge for services rendered.  A severely under-priced offering will, eventually be the death knell to a business.  Yet time and again, all too often, sales people think it’s perfectly acceptable to charge a rate they think will get the contract.  Regardless of business finance, balance sheet reality, or true overhead expenditures.

Quite often this comes from a short-sighted desire to bring in clients.  The project may be quite sexy just because of the client name, or the potential achievement that can then be touted as a “look what we did for X” mentality.  Just as often though, it’s due to a scarcity mentality, the belief being that “we have to get this one because it’s in front of us to have…”

In reality, if you don’t first understand the real costs of doing business, if you don’t have the financial resources in the bank to tide you over until you reach long-term consistent positive cash flow, you’re doomed to bleed the company dry.

When I came on board, Click2Rank had at least one contract on the table at the whopping billable rate of $75 an hour.  Including at least some hours from the then senior-most manager. I don’t care how efficiently work is performed- $75 an hour is unrealistic in professional services businesses.  When it’s for 80 hours of work, it’s unhealthy.

Company Culture

If you’re going to create a relaxed atmosphere at the office, with unlimited energy drinks, round the clock work hours, come-and-go-as-you-please policies, you do so at the expense of understanding the ramifications such an atmosphere may bring.

You need to consider the possibility that if it’s too relaxed, employees are going to fail to grasp the fact that you’re working in a professional services industry.  As though you’re instead, a garage start-up.  Everyone’s going to lose sight of the desire or need to have an outside life.  People are going to become so free-for-all-ish that even when you work in the same building as your parent company, themselves being a business casual yet truly professional environment, you’re going to be seen as the black sheep.

People are going to disrespect your space, your work-flow, and your ability to contribute to their success as relates to internal projects.

Your staff will, in turn, become stressed to the breaking point.  Work that should take hours will take days.  Work that should take days will take weeks.

At Click2Rank, the biggest single fail-point in all this was that internal projects (the sole initial purpose of the company’s existence) fell by the wayside.  Initial achievements all those months ago languished and never got past half-success.  Causing severe road-blocks for the parent company to grow and take on even bigger opportunities.

And employee morale was, in truth, tragic.  Families were frayed to the point of ever-increasing pressure they should never have been put under.  Coupled with their feeling disrespected, misled and lacking in any kind of healthy leadership, the potential for individual breakdowns had become quite real.

A House of Cards

Myopic business methods are ultimately built on a house of cards.  They’re short-sighted, they lack true understanding of what makes a great company successful in the long-term.  They may give the initial appearance to be the greatest thing since sliced bread.  Yet over time, the surface appearance inevitably gives way to major flaws.  Because that surface appearance isn’t truly built on sound business practices, they’re not sustainable.

Sustainable business methods ensure the foundation is much stronger, more likely to weather the ups and downs of any business life cycle.  They’re designed based on modeling one’s business after other companies that have been able to grow and succeed through decades of ups and downs.  The culture built isn’t just on the surface.  It runs through and through.  It ensures the most likely chance for long term success because it doesn’t just consider appearances.  It considers stability, structure, and consistency over time.

Words used after I came on board and began bringing order to chaos have included “relieved”, “excited”, “finally respected”…

Exceptions To A Rule Don’t Themselves Justify Choices

Myopic business methods only succeed in the long-term in very rare situations.  Extremely rare. Sure, they’re the ones that grab headlines the most in the tech sector.  They’re sexy.  They’re the stuff that makes up “the grass is greener” illusion most people become enamored with who work for more traditional companies.

In reality, most myopically run companies fail miserably.  The short-term ride is wild, for sure.  It’s even fun for a while.  But inevitably, most such companies end up leaving everyone disillusioned, saddened, and in severe personal and familial crisis.

Sustainable business methods don’t all succeed either.  Yet they succeed more often.  They offer a better likelihood of opportunity for more people within the company.

Click2Rank was in such disarray when I came on board that a complete sea-change was needed. The person needing to steer the ship on a day to day basis was going to need to really grasp the underlying issues, the causes of the symptoms, and the best way to bring about change.  It would take someone who happens to have the vast combination of experience I have.  A young, shoot-from-the-hip, “act now and figure it out later” gun was not going to work to fix this.  It’s what got the company in the mess it was in to begin with.

Jerry Maguire Syndrome

Jerry Maguire ended up going on to start his own thing.  He got the opportunity to run his own ship, do things his way. Yet if you know the whole story, you’d know that when he did so, he ended up learning several very harsh and painful lessons – things he’d refused to see, acknowledge or accept before he went his own way.  And just as important, life became filled with more hardship than he could have previously anticipated.

Well, for me, the reality is I was Jerry Maguire.  I had to go through many years of pain, suffering and disillusionment.  Personally, it led to me turning to pot and alcohol in order to just cope enough to get by. I ended up sleeping on friends and families couches.  A shadow of my true inner self.

My life became even more of a mess than I thought possible.  I caused wreckage and destruction along the way as well.

One day however, August 27, 2004 to be exact, I woke up.  I found God.  “My way” was no longer the illusion I’d made it out to be.  Real world reality took on a whole new light and meaning.  And it was at that point when I began to shed the Jerry Maguire belief system.  It slowly, over time, became less and less about me having to prove to the world that I was right, and more and more that first and foremost, we’re placed on this earth to be of service to others.

Each of us has unique gifts, passions and talent.  Yet if we don’t get out of our own way, we’ll never rise up above ego long enough to see those used in a way that not only elevates us as individuals, but truly helps others to reach their capacity as well.  If we don’t give up having to be someone who thinks they have all the answers, we never truly learn to model ourselves after others.

If we don’t continually have the willingness to be honest with ourselves and others, the courage to change and adapt in healthy ways rather than self-centered ways, we’ll never grow, evolve and mature.

So too, do these same principles apply to business.

Miracles Happen For A Reason

For the past several years, as I’ve ceaselessly worked to build myself into a respectable, productive member of society, I’ve also consistently looked to a higher power – a greater truth, bigger than me, to guide me.  I’ve steadfastly applied the concept that each of us has those unique gifts, passions and talents.  And I’ve held true to the understanding that when we show up this way, with integrity, to the best of our human ability, doing the right thing for the right reasons and not for ego sake, that miracles will happen.

That’s how I came to meet Christine Gibbs. Regardless of the “surface” reasons we met, the fact is that we met.  And that first day, a simple act of kindness on her part moved me so much, that it moved me to tears.  I was that humbled.

That, in turn, led me to want to learn more about her.  So I read her bio, and one of her articles.

Key Transforming Moments In Life

And here’s where you may choose to write this off as too bizarre for your preference.  Yet if you do, you may miss out on a pretty amazing thing. So hang in there with me just a little longer.  It’s worth it.

It was in that very moment of reading Christine’s bio that I honestly felt moved by something greater than me.  In a way I’ve never felt before.  And in that moment, I also felt that Christine is someone I need to model myself after in business and life.

So when, a few days later, Christine reached out to me for guidance on righting the Click2Rank ship, I knew within a few minutes discussing that situation, that I was the person for the job.  It all clicked.

Big Things Become Even Bigger

Initially, we both thought it would just be a 90 day gig.  I’d come in, perform a true soup-to-nuts business audit to fill in the industry specific blanks in her already thick folder of documentation, and together we’d develop processes, methods and systems for turning things around.

As it turned out, in short order, the severity of the problem, the deeply woven flaws in the fabric of the company became clear.  And unavoidable.

So when it went from “consultant” to “Director”, I prayed.  And I discussed it with the people most dear to my life.  My support group.  Personal and business relationships I have come to understand as also being critical if we as humans are to ever really get to the point where we can make sound decisions, and go from ego-based judgment calls to discernment.

A Big Vision Requires An Even Bigger Vessel

I’ve had a very big vision for where I might be able to go in life with my unique gifts, passions and experience.  Yet as a consultant, the culmination of that came this year.  Like Justin Briggs shared this past week, I too had goals that, through those years of struggle, scraping and clawing my way back up, I kept focused on.  And like Justin, I reached the pinnacle of those when I was invited by Danny Sullivan to speak at SMX Advanced.

It was in that experience I was left with “what’s next?”  “Where do I go from here?”  And “I’ll be 52 next month – can this consulting thing, as fun as it is, get me where I need to be in 10 years? At my age?”

See – that’s what’s so powerful.  I recognized that week, that consulting would most likely not get me to that next end-goal I knew it was time to focus on.  It’s a big goal.  To be able to do even greater things than I’ve already done – in business and in life.  It didn’t feel like the right vessel, that it wasn’t big enough.

And that’s why to me, it’s even more amazing how I was led to the opportunity to take on this responsibility.  As clear as anything I’ve ever felt, I knew so vividly that this was the right opportunity for me that I left all my belongings, save what would fit in my car, behind to move up here.  Even when it was just going to be for 90 days, I had packed everything away.  Which it turned out made it effortless for me to then give away after I got up here and it turned into an offer for a permanent position.

And since that day, everything about this career choice has fallen into place, come together and otherwise unfolded effortlessly.

Nothing In Life Is A Sure Thing

Now just because I’ve moved up here, and taken on this position, and just because I report to one of the most dynamic, successful and visionary people I’ve ever had the fortune to meet and work with, does not itself mean it’s a guaranteed success right out the gate.

Needing to completely change an entire company’s direction, get our internal house in order before we can even think about taking on new outside clients, and build a truly stable foundation for success is going to take a lot of work.  It’s going to take the commitment of everyone involved.  And the support of a lot of people and resources.

There are going to be a lot of challenges, a lot of perceived obstacles as well.

Yet at the end of the day, when time has passed, whatever comes to be, I’ll be able to look myself in the mirror, knowing that I’ve once again made the decision to follow my heart, do what I love, and make myself available for God’s will in my life.  And along the way, I’ll have done my very best as a human being, as a manager, as a business leader, to help those around me.

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