EP 20 - Hugh Taylor - The Importance of SEO and Getting Your Profile Found on LinkedIn

On this episode, Steve introduces Hugh Taylor, the president of EconomyPR.com. Hugh is a seasoned marketer and he's a passionate player about helping companies go from where they are to where they want to be. Here are more awesome things you will learn on this episode:

• Why you need a niche so you can focus on your target customers.

• The importance of SEO on getting your profile found on Linkedin.

• Why quality content is another form of equity.

• And the importance of adapting to change and never giving up.

So pay attention to today’s episode and find out more about marketing, SEO and how to level up your Awesomers game.

Welcome to the Awesomers.com podcast. If you love to learn and if you're motivated to expand your mind and heck if you desire to break through those traditional paradigms and find your own version of success, you are in the right place. Awesomers around the world are on a journey to improve their lives and the lives of those around them. We believe in paying it forward and we fundamentally try to live up to the great Zig Ziglar quote where he said, "You can have everything in your life you want if you help enough other people get what they want." It doesn't matter where you came from. It only matters where you're going. My name is Steve Simonson and I hope that you will join me on this Awesomer journey.

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01:15  (Steve introduces today’s guest, Hugh Taylor.)

Steve: This is the Awesomers podcast number 20 everybody. To find all the show notes and details about this episode just go to Awesomers.com/20. That's Awesomers.com/20, to see all the particulars about this episode. Today my special guest is Hugh Taylor, the president of EconomyPR.com. Hugh over the years has created marketing content for clients like Microsoft,  IBM, Google, Oracle, and many others. He's also been a public relations manager for Microsoft SharePoint technologies. In fact, Hugh was responsible for generating the billion dollar juggernaut story that helped make SharePoint a high profile product for Microsoft, generating over 800 pieces of press coverage in just a single year. Hugh is a certified information security manager as well and lecturer at University of California, Berkeley: Law School and Graduate School of Information. He's author books and has done so many things but most of all he's consulted with dozens of entrepreneurs and crafted business plans to help these new ventures get funded. Hugh graduated with honors from Harvard in 1988 and his MBA from Harvard in 1992. Today, he lives in Cleveland Ohio. One of my favorite things about Hugh is he's extraordinarily, well educated, he's very articulate, he's a brilliant writer but he brings all of those skills to bear for Awesomers and entrepreneurs that maybe are not as big as Microsoft or Oracle or Google. He remembers how these little guys get started and he's a passionate player about helping companies go from where they are to where they want to be. I'm thrilled to have Hugh on the show today.

Steve: Hi, everybody welcome back to Awesomers.com podcast. We're thrilled to have you here today. And today we have a very special guest, Hugh Taylor. How are you, Hugh?

Hugh: Terrific, thanks for having me on Steve.

Seve: Certainly it's a pleasure. I've known you for a couple of years. We're going to talk about that and what makes him an Awesomers as we go here. Tell us where you live right now Hugh.

Hugh: I'm in Cleveland, Ohio.

Steve: Ohio is in the United States, everybody.

Hugh: Yes.

Steve: It’s in the middle. We call it the flyover part of the country, is that fair to say?

Hugh: Yes, but it’s the home of Lebron James, the Cavaliers.

Steve: Well there you go. They're still something. Now, I'm not a sports fan. Update me on the outcome of the latest finals.

Hugh: Well, unfortunately, the Cavaliers lost the NBA championship in four games in a row. So it's not been a great year but we're still excited.

Steve: Oh that's good. I like that. That's a very peppy attitude. So now we know where you're from, can you just summarize kind of what your business does and the types of things that you know take up your time day to day for the audience.

4:06 (Hugh talks about what he does.)

Hugh: Yes, I am essentially a freelance writer but I'm very specialized. I do content creation, I do like I write with the content and other kinds of collateral like white papers, press releases, case studies, articles for companies that want to increase their with presence or marketing. A lot of what I do is aimed at helping tech companies sell technology solutions like I've done work for Microsoft and some of the other big companies where they're pitching you know multi-million dollar solutions and they want to have written materials that backup their value proposition. So I write a lot of that kind of stuff.

Steve: Yes, a very specialized industry that wants lots of details and I can't wait to dive in a little bit more about that. There's a lot of good stuff in there but before we dive in the main Q&A, I want to just tease up the audience. We're going to get into Hugh's origin story here in just a minute. First, we're going to talk to our sponsors and hear what they have to say and then we'll be right back

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Steve: Okay we're back to everybody and we're talking with Hugh Taylor and we're going to dig into his origin story a little bit here and first of all Hugh, I'd like to start with where were you born?

6:06 (Hugh talks about his origin story.)

Hugh: I was born in New York City. I grew up in Scarsdale, New York which is a fancy suburb of New York City and I had a very privileged upbringing and I was fortunate my parents were well-off. I was in two very good schools and you know found myself look coming out of Harvard Business School in 1992 and going into television which I worked in for a couple of years doing TV movies and miniseries. I was a script development executive. I would look for true crime stories to turn into TV movies which were I think good training for enterprise software sales and marketing. I would call up anybody for any reason and you know I had a zero shame. I would be calling people up like I'm so sorry your sister got murdered yesterday but we can make a movie about it if you like on ABC and you know it's that kind of thing. But I burned out of that after a while. It's a little too much.

Steve: Well I can imagine the burnout but just for the audience's benefit, in my own honestly perhaps as morbid curiosity but as a producer of those shows you would actually call somebody who had the recent tragedy and their show idea.

Hugh: Yes, you'd have to say you know we'd like to buy your life story rights and turn it into a movie you know like an ABC Sunday night movie kind of thing there. So I was working for a producer. We did a lot of those and it was fun and creative and it actually provided a good foundation for a lot of the work I do now which is you know like when I worked at Microsoft for example on my challenge was to make Microsoft Office interesting to the reporters and I said like well hey you know if I can make Jaclyn Smith believable as a neurosurgeon, I can make Microsoft Office interest.

Steve: Yes, high challenges both. So you were born in New York and it sounds like you know parents are well-to-do, well what did your parents do if anything for a living?

Hugh: Both my parents are doctors. My father's no longer alive. My father was a doctor. My mother was a neurologist. My brother's a psychiatrist. So between the three of them, I'm all set medically but yes I had a lot of positive role models for education and hard work in my life. My father you know grew up, work down south and was here a war hero in World War II and went to medical school in the GI Bill and was very successful. So you know I was brought up with admiration for hard work and you know pursuing goals in an organized, disciplined way. So that more or less paid off for me as my career progressed but the country had changed a little bit and the kind of opportunities that you ran into were different from what my parents experienced coming up and my mother also for her own self was a pioneering woman. She was one of, she was the only woman in her medical school class in Oxford University in 1959. I'll give you an idea, you know and so she became a neurologist. It was unusual at that time for a woman to go to that kind of specialty. So she was also someone taught me like you know don't just do what everyone else is doing. Don’t be afraid to be different and pursue things even if people are signaling to you that it'll never work. So and she's a great example.

Steve: That was fascinating. I definitely think that there are some good lessons there. You know that the fact that you know in 1959 you know a woman you know pops over to Oxford and decides hey I'm going to be a neurologist. I'm sure that they weren't like oh yes come on over, let have a great time, we're going to really make this easy on you. It's probably a lot of opposition at that time

Hugh: I think it was difficult I mean she wasn't the first woman to go to that school but it's just like it wasn't done. It wasn't a normal thing. Now you know women, are frequently, become doctors. In fact, in 1964 my brother was in nursery school, they said does your mother work and he said yes. He said yes, she's a doctor and they said no, no sweetie she's a nurse.

Steve: Well it's nice of them to help him out. That's really the key you know. So pushing past all of that and after you went through Harvard, by the way how did you like the Harvard experience?

Hugh: Well you know I went to Harvard undergrad and business school. Undergrad was a great education. A little bit perplexing and a sort of social and like existential way but I learned a lot there. Business school was it's really a great experience. I learned a lot and made some good friends and they're really good in the whole like you know get psyched, everything's going to be great you know you're going to be really successful kind of attitude and then when it doesn't happen you're still like hey it's I'm still great right. While it's happening, it's not happening anyway but it was a good experience and it set me up well for working. And this field of help you know like for example if I'm helping a company like Hewlett-Packard or IBM sell a multi-million dollar technology, I have to understand the buyers mindset. What they're going to get out of it on a return on investment basis and so having the MBA and some finance background helps me make the pitch and you know and I can sort of speak the management language to them. So it's been great for that.

Steve: Well it's one of those lessons that the Awesomers, out there, listeners should pay attention to which is hey what if you actually cared what the customer thought about what you're making. Too often we think about what we want to brag about or these features and really the customer is largely interested in benefits is my impression. So I think that's a job well learned. So when you start, as you are working for these very large companies, we're talking about fortune 50 companies, you know was there any a defining moment that put you on the road that you're on today and we'll talk a little bit more about your freelance stuff. But was there anything that kind of you know helped steer the shift that direction.

12:13 (Hugh on focusing on your strengths.)

Hugh: Well yes and it wasn't entirely positive. I, it took me a long time to figure this out but eventually came to the realization that I wasn't good at managing other people. And that I fact was very deficient in almost any kind of organizational relationships and I don’t know why that is but I just it was just reality and I couldn't excuse it away anymore. I was constantly messing up situations with teams and assignments and isn't it but anytime I did anything sort of creative where say hey did you write a blog for us or everyone's like well that's awesome. That's the best you know so I’m thinking well maybe I should have more of that in my life and less of that. Well, you know things could be better. So and that and then as I got to be a middle aged person in corporate America, I began to experience some of the downside of the way the business world was going and I got laid off from IBM when I was 44 years old and you know ended that was sort of like you know in a panic and I made a decision and I was in 2009 and I said I'm never going to be in this position again. I do not want to be out of work with you know three children and a house and a wife who doesn't work and just have nothing going on. So I started to do freelancing on the side just to kind of nurture. It took a couple years. So it was partly a negative kick in the butt but also a realization that I could do something that I was good at and get rewarded for it financially and emotionally and not have to deal with what I wasn't good at which was you know being executive.

Steve: Boy, this is again one of those times where people need to pay attention. So you know lightning bolts come. That's what happens whether it's IBM laying you off or some other unexpected happening or circumstance. The reality is what you do with it and how you deal with it and I really do agree that focusing on your strengths. You know I regularly talk about the book Strengths Based Leadership and kind of identifying what those strengths that are kind of wired into each person are and then pursuing those strengths because it really can't feel like torture to put yourself in a position where you have to focus on weaknesses and focus on things that you don't like. And in our culture, in our society often you know if we come home from school and we say hey I got five A’s and one F. Everybody's like hey what's going on with the F, right? That's just how the mindset is in this country instead of go on wow you're so awesome at these other things. You know maybe you don't need to worry about that gym class or that you know whatever class as much. So I love the idea that you decided to focus on your strengths and how did that freelancer journey get started for you?

Hugh: Well you know like I'm saying I was doing some of this work already in my regular job that the initial thing was I was working as a VP of marketing communication at a venture-backed software startup. And they said we need leads but we have no money. Yes, so I was like well I guess I can't just sit around and look handsome all day like I normally do you know. I so I had to start writing white papers that could be registered you know downloadable upon registration like you know register, give us your email address in exchange for a paper. So I started writing them myself because we didn't have any money for writers and but that was the beginning of it and so I was also in charge of lead generation at this company and so I was in the whole process. Write the paper, publish it, get the leads, all that kind of stuff. So that was the beginning of it and then I began to realize well you know people might pay me for this. I did it you know a little bit on the side with non competing companies and you know I, they were, it was a you know up and down kind of process like you know I was I liked the story. I still kind of shudder when I think of this but I took on, I was taking on assignments. I want to, my approach was let's build up a portfolio of examples of work I've done that I can show it to get more work. So I wanted to, so I took on a lot of assignments and I wrote a hundred fifty page software manual for $9,900 which was like torture but and I don't do manuals anymore. I mean I will if I absolutely have to but I don't but it was just like okay let's make a start. We got to start somewhere and I had some ups and downs. I mean I had a project with him, a freelance with a major client where I didn't see I didn't understand how these big companies work. That's why it's valuable to have had the experience even though I didn't like it but I was working, I was told to write something by this very big company and they said this is what we want you to write XYZ and I said I thought about it, I researched, I came back I said you know I think you really might want to try it a little bit differently. They said no and you're fired. Okay, I got it. So what's funny is now having been on the other side of that table just knowing how long it takes them to organize their plan, they don't want someone like me coming in saying try something different. They don't want at that point they don't want it to different. Even if it's wrong, they don't want it different. So that's, I've learned now to I still might make suggestions but this idea that I will presume to you know restate the Oracle you know mark go to market plan like just I recognize that's not what they're asking.

Steve: Well it's a Glen-Gary-Glen Ross moment right there. The good news is you're fired. We don't like your work either. So you know the reality is you know big companies they have those agendas. They already have politics behind many of those decisions and outcomes and committees and this and that whether the right or wrong is a completely different story and so that that could be a real pain. I imagine that the startup world is different than that. The smaller clients probably seek your counsel and your opinions.

Hugh: Yes, it's very different and there it's the opposite problem which is they're almost an unstructured or undisciplined. And so having been on both sides of that was helpful like you know like when I worked in venture-backed software companies you know that a meeting you say oh we need a new feature, was developed. It'll be out next week. But I’ll be yes, am a new feature. Once they make a new feature, they commit to the supporting it for five to ten years in the market. So they don't just like dash off a feature. It's there’s and that's why they're successful because when you buy an IBM product you know they stand behind it like crazy. So there's that sort of haphazard notes but what is cool about a startup environment is you can be creative or and you can try and you can be working more on the fly. The difficulty on a startup often is trying to understand a value proposition or a category that doesn't, may not exist yet. That is difficult because you know usually like if something is really well-established it's too late for a startup. So you have to kind of it's like hitting a moving target while you're on a moving vehicle you know like it's just you're sort of and the trap you can fall into is to start inventing your own terms to describe what you do and then you're like marketing using like a secret code that nobody understands and so the challenge in communication is to describe in ways that make sense to people. So it can be tricky.

Steve: So let me ask you this how many of the things that you wrote were really based on the good old fashioned that bullshit generator that was so famous on the Internet. Did you ever run across that thing?

Hugh: You know I haven't used it but I've definitely although I'd like to think that everything I write is you know transcendently brilliant but like you definitely come to fall into follow the patterns of communicating about things and if you're not careful you can be repetitious or you can start becoming like a cliche. The challenge like what you're saying earlier just to try and understand what's on the clients mind and never know don't deviate too far away from that and when I was working with Hewlett-Packard enterprises on their web copy team as a freelancer and I kept I asked the business people they're always I said who is it that you want to see this page and what do you want them to think of it in the first 10 seconds. Everything else is irrelevant. Like they would say well we want this a page to appeal to engineers and salespeople and marketing people, investors up in you know which one of those is your key and what do you want that person to take away. Everything else is just like padding. So you have to you know focus on that. What do they want, what do they need and I like to say listen,

what do they want, what do they need, what are they afraid of. You can address those three things then you're starting to you know starting to get as Alec Baldwin said in the movie, the ABC. You're getting their attention. Get their attention you know and then..

21:30 (Steve summarizes some keynotes.)

Steve: I like this. So right now Hugh is always, always be closing. He's ABCs. Really I think those are some very, very important key takeaways. One is you know you can't sell everything to everybody. That you know niching it down and focusing on who your end target customers is critical. It always has been and it's truer today than ever in my opinion because a web can be so granular and so niche focused your opportunity to talk to that you know the tiny audience and be really important to them is better today than maybe it's ever been for my perspective. So I love all of this. Hugh was very instructive. Was there it was there a particular time that you were kind of going through the journey of your own startup and your freelance that you looked and go you know I'm just going to give up and you know even though I said I'm never going back to you know the old way. You know I'm going to have to you know give up what I'm doing and you know go backwards. Did you ever give that a thought?

Hugh: Well you know there's definitely been some down moments, for the most part, it has gone pretty well. What I've seen is that there's a churn of clients you know like the clients I have six years ago or not the same ones I have now. Although some of the people are the same they moved to different companies but I've always had to invest in my time, in building up the client portfolio but mostly it's gone pretty well. There are certain months, where you start they've had a few months or I'm like this isn't going to work and I don't know what I'm going to do. The difficulty when you get to be older and what's weird is I don't think I'm an old person but 53 in the tech business is a little on the haul so I because I don't know there is no going back, there's no going back, I mean I could go do something else I guess you know but like...

Steve: No, that's a fair point I mean listen the absence of alternatives means we're going with plan A and really the plan is working. I just I do think that sounds like you alluded to this. And I certainly agree and everybody faces these things. Which is you know it's like I'm nervous at this particular time or for this particular reason and you just kind of to push those through those things and make things happen is that fair you said?

23:50 (Hugh and Steve talks about Cybersecurity.)

Hugh: Yes, and also what I've been doing and you've we've actually worked on this basis. I have a little like incubation lab going on in my office. I have my main work which is the tech, the big tech clients but I have little things I do because I'm trying, I don't want to be like in that position again where you're like okay you're out of business. So I have the economy press release service. I have a few other little businesses like that. You know very small but that it could potentially grow. And then I've started a just launches in the last six months an online publication called Journal of Cyber Policy, which is about cybersecurity. And so far it's a you know nonprofit entity. I mean it's a tiny little blog but what's interesting is I've had it's been I've been getting some traction. I write about cybersecurity. I know a fair amount about it and publicists are reaching out to me. And so that could become a business. It could take a couple of years together off the ground and that could be something that's different from freelancing but based on the same core skill set. That's a what it's sort of an extension of what I'm doing. It’s just in a different form of writing articles and then maybe doing paid you know sponsored content or whatever. Recently, I got flown to a security conference to cover it as a journalist which I've never done before. And then someone dropped a story in my lab, actually had to function like a journalist, like verifying sources and getting comments and stuff. So it's been fun but I'm always, I'm always too got my eye on the next thing.

Steve: Yes, that's fascinating but it's all embrace on that experience, right? That cybersecurity is something that is within your wheelhouse because of all that experience in the back. Alright, so listen before we start wrapping up the show and give some of Hugh's tips and tricks for folks and tell you how to get in touch with him, we're going to take another break for our sponsors we'll be right back.

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Steve: Alright here we are back with Hugh Taylor everybody and we're going to talk now about just a couple things. Maybe Hugh has some advice for Awesomers out there. Is there any favorite tool that you've used or maybe you continue to use that helps you in your day to day business. Maybe it's an app, maybe it's a Shopify plug-in or some kind of web tools or anything that you really like that you feel like you can't do without.

26:48 (Hugh shares the advantage of LinkedIn.)

Hugh: Well, I have been had a lot of good experiences with LinkedIn as a way to make contacts but I think there's kind of an art to the using LinkedIn. You have to be very low pressure on people. I've also one thing I was taught that I never would have figured out on my own is that LinkedIn is basically a search engine and if you can build your profile in a certain way you can be discovered for certain skills or services. So there's..

Steve: Optimizing, you're doing SEO on LinkedIn to get your profile found.

Hugh: Yes, I have gotten clients this way. I would never have believed it but I what I was told to do which I did was type in the search term that you want to be then copy that to the number one person's page which I basically did. I mean I didn't literally verbatim but like the same key phrase, the same structure and then I began to get inquiries. I mean it's not a lot like maybe once a month or something but I have built some business software and it's a great way to sort and then with cybersecurity I can use it for like I can sort of linked to people who are mentioned and it makes them look important..

Steve: Now that's, it really is.. This follows a classic paradigm that I've used many times in the past which we call R&D and for those keeping score at home, often people confuse R&D with research and development but I tend to use the rip-off and duplicate function of that very important art. As you said you know he's taking inspiration from whoever's ranking number one. This is what anybody does in a search engine. If you go to Google and you want to be number one, you've got to figure out what the guys at number one are doing right. We don't copy in verbatim as Hugh said but we take inspiration, we figure out how to optimize to those results and it doesn't matter if it's Google or LinkedIn or Amazon sponsored products or the A9 algorithm for organic on Amazon. It's all the same general principle. Figure out what you're you know the search engines are showing and then figure out how to be relevant to those search engines at the end of the day. So a very good advice. So tell us a little bit more about Economy PR, Hugh.

Hugh: Economy PR is a small business that I run where we do press release, writing and press release distribution and blog writing and another kind of public relations services for entrepreneurs, E-commerce entrepreneurs, Amazon settlers, nonprofits and the idea was to offer a you know a good quality, a press release product at an affordable price. And it's been successful, we have a number of clients that use this every month and it's a way to create backlinks and refresh your site and my approach was always to write these releases although generally, I don't get read that much, they're mostly read kind of by machine but if the person did read it, it would read like a totally professional press release and have a story and something interesting in it and it's been you know a successful little project. It's not a big business but..

Steve: It really is actually a wonderful opportunity for you know small entrepreneurs to be able to have a you know Harvard MBA you know Fortune 50 in-demand writer to come and jump onto their team for a you know ongoing or you know whatever basis that makes us for people. So in the world of PR as you think about it Hugh, you mentioned backlinks as a benefit. Obviously content is going to be helpful for Google to find you in the first place. (Hugh: Right) Is that how you structure the PR pieces you write?

Hugh: Yes, you know press release has to have an announcement or some kind of something new like a new feature, very new products or like that and we then have a keyword which we put usually into the title and into the body a bit of the press release and there's a certain format that you go through you know title, subtitle, opening paragraph, quote and it's kind of it's like a template but the trick like a lot of things it's a template but it shouldn't look like it’s a template and that was the problem we were solving was there was, there is, there was and is a lot of low quality, low cost writing being dying places in the world where people don't really speak English very well and in earlier era that was enough for Google to just have like certain words on the page. Now Google is so smart it can actually tell you know authoritative writing from bad writing. So it's been a benefit to native English speakers like me and we just found that and having been on the other side of it like when I was at Microsoft, I had a million dollar PR budget and if I you know there was the money was very slow you know was everywhere but I thought you know when I originally I started this on 5 or about four years ago and I thought you know let's try this what the heck and I'll write a press release for five dollars which I don't do anymore but that was it then I was like am I crazy I used to write speeches for Bill Gates. I'm going to write a press release for five dollars. Yes, let's try it and that's kind of my advice is to be open to things. Try it you know what's the worst could happen. You make $4.

Steve: Yes, I love it. You know just being open is a really good piece of advice right there and you know to have somebody who literally was writing speeches for Bill Gates then today can now help you with the press release is really something interesting and you know from my perspective I want to remind Awesomers out there that having good quality content on your site is another form of equity. Content is equity. It helps people when they see it and they read it to understand your announcement. One of the common problems I think Hugh would probably be the first to tell you is when companies they say they want to do PR, they fail to have any news is that fair to say?

Hugh: That is it's a misconception. They, you need to have reporters want something interesting to talk about. They don't want to just you know there has to be a story, something has to have happened.

Steve: Yes, somebody having a sale on their product is not newsworthy for example.

Hugh: Right. Well in a practical basis also the distributors are stopping. They're not picking those releases up and need more just like the discount code announced or whatever. It's just they don't want that. They want something that looks like news and sometimes there are different schools of thought. Some people do like two press releases a year and so big deal some people do want every week. So you know if you don't have something to say then maybe it's better not to but one thing we do is we can invent some stories like a milestone we sold our 10,000 product or you know we got our 500 positive reviews. Okay, that's a story right there you know so we can write about it.

Steve: Well see and this is where somebody who has the experience like Hugh can really help guide the ship towards something that is worth telling, right? And you know for those of us who have been around a long time, we may not look at the you know a particular milestone as something that we would make news out of but that's exactly the kinds of things that news organizations look for is they want something noteworthy and something interesting versus you know today you know we have you know now in red and black you know this (Hugh: Right) widget we can sell you. (Hugh: Right) So how can we find your business online Hugh?

Hugh: Well it's EconomyPR.com. That's the best place to look and you can see what we have there.

Steve: Okay and we will, we'll have that. The show notes as well and any links that we've mentioned along the way will show up there magically. So as we get ready to close up Hugh, are there any words of wisdom that you would give to the Awesomers out there who are you know like any of us on the path to you know maintaining Awesomers status. It's never an endpoint, it's a journey but any words of wisdom you might share with the audience out there.

34:51 (Hugh talks about adapting to change and never giving up.)

Hugh: Yes I would say I know this sounds cliche but do not give up hope. 10 or 15 years ago I was very anxious about the state of my financial life and I was honestly nervous and I had no sense that it was going to get better and you know I, it took a lot of work but I am now in a position where I make more money than I used to and I have a little stress level when I used to. So that's pretty good and I'm a little bit more in control of what I'm doing and I think the key has been to be adaptable because things are constantly changing even in the field I'm in even the last 12 years things have changed. So I have to constantly be you know shifting my, keep my ears open, shifting my positioning and adapting my process because just I mean I can't you know, I can't do the same thing I was doing even five years ago. Although it's the same core activity but the out beat, the results that people want are different. So that's my suggestion is to stay adaptable.

Steve: Well I tell you the old saying that you know change is constant is truer now than ever. Obviously, it's always true but it just feels more visceral today. You know that how algorithms change at Google constantly. How the tweaks at Amazon are happening you know terms of service and algorithms and everything else. It's all just constantly changing and evolving and without being adaptable we're not prepared, we're just simply not prepared.

Hugh: Right. If we just for a quick example like you know I write a lot of blogs for people so you know five years ago some would tell me I'm on a blog, I'd write it, I'd email to them, and send me a check, we'd be done. Now almost all blogs go through these platforms where you have to plug in the keywords. They get analyzed for keyword density. You have certain links you have to put. It's a whole process in a platform. If you're not ready to learn the platform then you're not going to get to work and so I've had to it's not a big deal but I've had to adjust to that from working.

Steve: Yes, it's you know this is again experience is really, really important but being adaptable that experience is equally important because without the ability to change with the times and change with the prevailing you know wisdom of SEO or whatever the case may be, you again, you'll be left behind and you won't be prepared. I think great words of wisdom. Thank you very much, Hugh, for those words and thanks for taking the time with us today.

Hugh: Thank you so much!

Steve: It's been a pleasure having Hugh Taylor online. Again we have everything in the show notes. EconomyPR.com is the website and you know I definitely would recommend. I have used Hugh on some projects in the past and I'm a big fan, he's super smart, he's also occasionally funny and so that's nice.

Hugh: Thank you so much! Good luck.

Steve: It’s my pleasure. We'll be right back Awesomers and more after this.

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38:12 (Steve shares his closing remarks.)

Steve: Gosh, I just love a good Awesomer origin story. You know understanding how all the pieces get put together. You know some guys like Hugh are super well educated and come from you know very rigid educated background and then other people are like no education and you know their parents were against you know them being an entrepreneur. There's just so many differences and so Awesomer origin stories are always so fascinating to me and it's quite inspiring. I hope they are to you as well. Don't forget that this is Aweosmers.com episode number 20 and just go to Awesomers.com/20 to see all the show notes and you know find the details about how to get in touch with Hugh and any of the things we've talked about during the show. That's Awesomers.com/20 and why not go leave us a review on iTunes or Android or whatever your favorite podcast platform is. They'll sure help us out and don't forget to subscribe and share this with a friend as well.

Well, we've done it again everybody. We have another episode of the Awesomers podcast ready for the world. Thank you for joining us and we hope that you've enjoyed our program today. Now is a good time to take a moment to subscribe, like and share this podcast. Heck, you can even leave a review if you wanted. Awesomers around you will appreciate your help. It's only with your participation and sharing that we'll be able to achieve our goals. Our success is literally in your hands. Thank you again for joining us. We are at your service. Find out more about me, Steve Simonson, our guest, team and all the other Awesomers involved at Awesomers.com. Thank you again.