Tag: business

Business Advice From An SEO Expert

On Episode 90 of The Edge of Innovation, we’re talking with SEO expert Jeremiah Smith. He’s Founder & CEO of Simple Tiger and he’s sharing his business and entrepreneurial advice with us!

Sections

How Jeremiah Got Into SEO
Jeremiah Smith: “Living My Dream”
How Jeremiah Started His Own Business
Jeremiah’s Business Lessons Learned
Advice For Starting Your Own Business
Jeremiah’s Business Book Recommendations
What’s With The Name “Simple Tiger?”
Closing Advice
More Episodes
Show Notes

Business Advice From An SEO Expert

How Jeremiah Got Into SEO

Paul: Welcome to another edition of The Edge of Innovation. Today we’re talking with Jeremiah Smith with Simple Tiger. He’s the founder and CEO. So, you’re an SEO company.

Alright, let’s shift gears a little bit here. This is The Edge of Innovation. While we’ve been spending a lot of time talking about – and I think very useful time – talking about how to do this incredible, important aspect of our web presence in SEO. We’d like to talk to people about why did they start a business? What in the world led them to do this? I’ve likened starting and running your own business as one of the hardest things you will ever do in your life. So, you told us a little bit about the mom and pop that you were working for and you learned SEO. Did you have an aha moment there and say, “I’m going to do this for the rest of my life?”

Jeremiah: Absolutely! It’s so funny that you asked me that because that’s exactly what happened actually. So, my mother was doing the book keeping for that company and she actually was the one that connected me with the company to begin with. They saw a website that she was showing them that I built, and they loved it. They wanted my web design ability, so I did that for them. Then I did the SEO thing because they asked for it.

And when I kind of got this little hunch that I’d seen the leads coming through the site ever since I built it and then did the SEO for the site and was actively working on it every day and I got really curious. I’m looking at the analytics and I see these big names that have come through. That these are guys that I’ve actually met out in our show room and shook their hands. And I generated them on my effort, playing on this little laptop in my office over there. And I was like holy cow its really cool! Something hit me that this is very, very real. This is, at the gut, at the core of a business and these guys are standing out in the showroom with a semitruck out in the loading bay area getting loaded up with twenty ATVs.

I was like, there’s so much value in what I’m doing here, and I got curious at the end of six months and I went and had my mother pull a report for me out of QuickBooks and I said, “Look. Here are the leads that we’ve generated from the SEO effort so far. I’m able to track those because again, this was about 12 years ago, so this was the early days of SEO. Google Analytics data was so wide open. You could get anything you wanted out of it. And so, I knew all these leads came in, out of all these different keywords and so I said I need to look at the books and see what kind of revenue these kinds of people gave us.

And so, she showed me. She generated a report, handed it over to me, I saw that two million dollar increase in revenue and my jaw hit the floor because I knew what they were paying me, which was peanuts compared to that but it was a good living for me at the time. I didn’t care and there’s no hate there at all. I was totally happy and blessed with it. But I saw the value. The proportion of what they paid me to what I was able to deliver through that effort and that was when I said, “I am on to something. I’m on to something that I think I can help a lot of other businesses with and this is what I want to do.”

So I put it on my resume and I said I do SEO full time and stuck my resume out there on Career Builder and it got picked up a couple weeks later by an agency in Atlanta called 360i and 360i – I didn’t know who they were at the time – but when I went in for my first interview, I walked down this long hallway with all these plaques on the wall that said MBC, MTV, E*TRADE, LG Electronics, Sports Illustrated, and I was like, oh my god, this is the big league. So those were my clients when I went on to work there and I took everything that I knew from helping that small mom and pop shop in to working at that agency and noticed that the difference was not that big between what I was doing before and what I learned there. It was just scaled up dramatically based on the budget that these clients had. So that was really the only difference.

Paul: Wow!

Jeremiah: And after that, I realized not only is this valuable but the playing field is level and it’s based on your pace – What can you do? What resources do you have at your disposal? You could leverage all those for SEO and you can see equal sized results.

Jeremiah Smith: “Living My Dream”

Paul: Interesting. So, when you were growing up, did you think you’d own your own business? What was your vision for your future?

Jeremiah: Thanks for asking that. So, it’s funny, when I was a little kid I liked to take this little kitchen set thing that I had. It was like a little kids Fisher Price thing. A little plastic stove and refrigerator, sink and everything. And I’d drag it out to the edge of the street where my parents lived, and I’d take some of my toys that I didn’t want anymore and write some prices on them and stand out there all day and wait for someone to stop and buy one of my toys. No one ever bought anything from me except Mom and Dad. They’d come through and give me a quarter for a plastic dinosaur or something. I loved that and so did my brother. He did the exact same thing. We both did that all the time. Didn’t get much for it but we loved doing it.

Traveling around with mom, she was doing bookkeeping for different clients. I’d go to all these different businesses that she worked for and I loved the variety of going into these different businesses as a kid. Just getting to see them, you know. And she would talk to me about how the business worked. I would watch her balance her checkbook and keep her gas receipts and charge those to her clients and things like that. I just learned a lot about business by kind of watching that happen. And then my father being an actor, he was the self-starter and he had to really sell himself for roles. He had to put everything he had into making his roles something that he could win. And so, I was really just kind of a self-starting, business motivated person.

When I was about to graduate high school though, I was deeply interested in robotics and I thought that I was going to go to school for robotic engineering after high school. But my math grades were terrible. All of my grades were terrible. I had a terrible time in school so my prospects looking at Georgia Tech, robotic engineering degree was just shot. They weren’t going to happen. So right after high school, I did a semester of college, maybe a semester and a half, before I discovered SEO. Then I just dropped out of college and did SEO and it wasn’t until a few years later, that I realized, wait a second, I’m doing robotic engineering on the largest robot in the world! And I didn’t even think about it at the time!

And then fairly recently, about three years ago, I got pulled into the University of South Florida to do some honorary guest lecturing on search engine optimization to senior level marketing students in the marketing program there. And so, it really hit me that I came full circle from failing school pretty much and dropping out of college, to actually teaching college at a very high level on robotic engineering and so now I’m living my dream, knowing that I’ve accomplished that.

But I have to say that I don’t look backwards and see a lot of my personal efforts that led up to that. Based on my faith, I kind of see God’s hand at work and so a whole lot of divinity in that case.

How Jeremiah Started His Own Business

Paul: Very cool. So, you made the crazy decision at some point to start your own business. You were sort of doing it as one person, but there’s a big difference when you hire your first employer, your second employer and you actually realize you’ve started a business. Tell me a little bit about that because you were working at this… you made it to the big leagues and you were working for somebody else. But now you own your own business so how did that happen?

Jeremiah: Yeah, so while I was working for the agency that I mentioned earlier. I really loved it. I gained a lot of intelligence working for that agency. A lot of corporate expertise and understanding and got to dive really deep into working with large brands and playing the corporate brand. But after a very short period of time, I knew I did not fit that corporate model. It just wasn’t for me. And this was around the time that the four hour work week came out and I read that and it totally just shattered everything that I was doing at that agency and so I decided to start trying to shift things a little bit. I approached the agency with some ideas for doing allowing remote work and some other stuff. And my ideas kept getting shot down and so I got demotivated.

I was building this consulting practice on the side, and I was helping clients on nights and weekends. And eventually just decided, “I’ve got to grow my consulting practice into my own agency.” I had Simple Tiger then, but it was still just a little consulting business. It wasn’t until I brought on my brother Shawn, and he and I really joined forces and decided to actually start hiring a team and kind of adding more clients and offering a service that included implementation and production of content, links and things like that – Beyond just the consulting that I had been doing so far. So, when we decided to do that, we opened a whole new can of worms which was building a marketing agency and that was really fun. But I never expected to be here, to be honest. I didn’t plan to be here, but I would not want to be anywhere else. I absolutely adore what we’ve been able to create together and what we’ve been handed.

Jeremiah’s Business Lessons Learned

Paul: So, what would be… Well, I’ll ask that in just a moment. But what’s your business lesson learned or unanticipated event or “Oh my gosh! I didn’t realize that part of business!” Or staring your own business?

Jeremiah: Hmmm. That’s a good question. I think that being the somewhat visionary entrepreneur that I am, where I have these little ideas in my mind of what I’d like to create, having those get shot down so many times by the harsh realities of the world, was at times, demotivating. But it has, over time, educated me to realize that the world wants a thing and will pay for it, so you build it and you win money and sometimes that may not be as enjoyable to do because it may not be as enjoyable as the big grand grandiose idea that you originally had. But in doing it and in building it, on the way to delivering it, once you start to see it work and once you start to see people happy with what you’ve created, it suddenly can become much more enjoyable, especially given that the great idea that you had was just getting shot down. It was not getting validated.

So for me, I think you know, I started Simple Tiger as an agency that did everything. It was web design, logos, business cards, it was awful. I was doing way too much. When I narrowed it down to SEO, that helped me a whole ton. Simple Tiger actually started growing. And then we narrowed it down from just SEO to just software companies, Saas companies specifically. It got super narrow and I was able to have basically almost the exact same conversation on every call with clients and deliver better results, deliver a deeper product, a more innovative solution on everything, every time, for each new client to the point now, our customer success is so high and so strong that I am just elated every time I sign on a new client because I know I’m about to have a new best friend or a new happy customer. Whereas before there was a lot of heartbreak in everything because I was kind of managing a mess that I created and not really delivering happiness to my clients as much. So, I think for me, to answer your question, the challenge and the “ah ha” moment was, for me, to develop something the world wanted versus something I wanted to develop. If that makes sense.

Advice For Starting Your Own Business

Paul: Yep. I get it. What would be your best piece of advice for somebody out there saying, “I want to do that?”

Jeremiah: If by “that” they mean start a marketing agency?

Paul: No, I mean more general than that. There are all sorts of specifics in every different vertical and people are probably listening and saying, “No, no, tell us that.” No I mean, really everybody has their own ideas for businesses or those that have them, have them. What would be your advice, warning, caution, whatever it might be?

Jeremiah: So, for me, from my angle, my last name is Smith and I often times think of myself as what you would consider kind of an old-fashioned smith. A trade person who works with their hands to create something. A technician to a degree. And so, I think of myself as a technician often times. And sometimes, if I really want to get into a groove with my agency, I just jump in at the technician level and do some technical work and I’m like, “Ahhh!” I feel like I belong. It just works for me. I think that’s just in my blood, so my recommendation is probably going to come from that angle.

If you find yourself doing some level of technical work, whether you’re with a company or you’re an employee of a company or an organization or you volunteer in some area of your life. Maybe you’re not doing some technical work for your professional trade or anything like that but you’re doing technical work in some volunteer area or you’re consistently helping family or friends or something like that. And it’s something that you actually, when you get into it, you just know that you’re good at it. I recommend crafting something around that.

It’s something like, there’s this Venn diagram but it’s made of three circles, if you can kind of envision this with me for a moment. One circle is something that you’re good at. Another circle is something that you enjoy doing and then the third circle is something that the market itself wants. Alright. Now the market wanting it doesn’t mean there’s no competition there. A lot of people hear that and think, “ohhh, no competition.” No, you want competition, trust me, because if there’s no competition there, you’ve either struck gold which is highly rare or there’s no money there. No body wants it. So that third circle has to be a good market.

In the middle of these three circles – what you’re good at, what you love doing, and what the market wants – is what I think you ought to build a business around. And if that business is just you, doing freelance consulting work for a while, do just that. And don’t build anything else out of that unless, at some point, you feel compelled to move on to the next step and grow up from a consulting company into something else. But for me, actually, I got to be honest, while I love running my agency as it is right now, my second favorite job I ever had was when I just did consulting and Simple Tiger was not producing content, not implementing things. I was just consulting companies. I really, really enjoyed doing that.

Now during those days, I was the technician and I was the only guy so if anything was wrong, it was one hundred percent my fault. Nowadays, I run my agency and I try to remain humble where I can, so if something does go wrong at my agency, I still take responsibility for it. And I’m still to blame for it but in those days there was not a system there was just me. So, it was a little stressful and if I didn’t go out and do sales, I didn’t have sales. And so that was really hard too. But yeah that’s what I would do. I would look at that tri-circle Venn diagram I came up with there and find out what’s in the middle and then build a business around that.

Jeremiah’s Business Book Recommendations

Pual: Now, good business books or books that you would recommend reading, one or two?

Jeremiah: One or two? That’s tough. Well, coming from the marketing angle, one would definitely be, “Start with Why” by Simon Sinek, which if you want to, you could just watch the Ted Talk. Its eighteen minutes. Look up “Simon Sinek Ted Talk Start With Why.” Then the second one is probably, “Tribes” by Seth Godin, where he talks about knowing your tribe and appealing to your tribe. Your audience basically is what he means. So those are my two favorite business books from a marketing perspective.

From a business perspective, I’m just going to leave “The 4-Hour Workweek” and its hall of fameness. That would be one of them, but I don’t want to recommend that one because everyone would probably say that. Something by Peter F. Drucker. “The Effective Executive” most likely would be one of my number one business books. Absolutely incredible and eye opening and some simple things about business.

And then actually some of the writings by Edward Deming as highlighted by Tony Robbins in his book “Awaken the Giant Within.” I recommend that book personally. I think it’s a fantastic book but in that book, he goes into Edward Deming and defining some business principals and Edward Deming’s business principles were just stellar and they’re so awesome and they’re still completely applicable today. I think they’re elegant. I think they’ll probably apply for the next fifty to a hundred years potentially, so I’d highly recommend people study that.

Just a quick highlight and a reason why you should study Edward Deming. He went to the big three auto manufactures in the 60s and said, “Hey, here are some things that you guys should do instead of what you’re doing right now, that are going to make you behemoths in the automotive industry forever.” And this was the 60s. The automotive industry was booming. We just came out of the 50s, where we had this kind of credit thing being created and people were buying cars on credit now and they couldn’t manufacture cars fast enough in the US. So, the three auto manufactures laughed him out of the room. So, he went to Japan, and he talked to Honda, Toyota and Nissan, who nowadays are eating our lunch. They listened to him. They paid him, and they implemented what he said. So, I think you should listen to Edward Deming. He’s incredible. He will teach you things that apply to your tiny small business all the way up to Toyota sized companies.

Paul: Excellent. Yeah, I’ve had a lot of experience with Deming and he definitely has some insight. Some amazing insight.

What’s With The Name “Simple Tiger?”

Paul: Okay, final question. Maybe. We’ll see. What’s with the name Simple Tiger?

Jeremiah: Ah. Good question and I like it. My father always used to call me “Tiger” growing up. And when I was thinking about starting a marketing agency or consultancy, I wanted a name that would stick in someone’s mind. And so, one of the key things or components you could have in marketing is something that’s not conceptual but is concrete. So, think “Apple.” Right? That sticks in your mind. You see it visually. Tiger was that for me. I wanted to carry with it a differentiator that applied to business that wasn’t so esoteric as tiger. How do you apply “tiger” to business? I wanted to take something complex, like search engine optimization, and simplify it and make it simple. And I wanted to apply the 80/20 principle, the Pareto Principle to everything. And I saw that as simplicity. And I saw simplicity as this art form where if I can master simplicity in what we do, then that would make me happy and so Simple Tiger thus was born. “Tiger” kind of carrying the effective component of our brand and “simple” kind of carrying the, I guess, the simplicity element of our brand.

Paul: Cool. Very cool.

Closing Advice

Paul: Well, we’ve been speaking with Jeremiah Smith of Simple Tiger and he’s an SEO expert and they’re an SEO agency and as you can tell there’s a lot of value here, in what he said. So, as you’ve been listening, we’ve been throwing out book names and different things you should go and look at. All of that will be in the shownotes so I encourage you to look there. You’ll find links to Simple Tiger and a way to actually contact Jeremiah. So, Jeremiah, thank you very much! Is there anything you want to close out and say as we sort of wind down here?

Jeremiah: I guess, if I could just leave everybody with one marketing maxim, it’s something I really like. I think the CMO of Ammex said this about branding specifically. So, if you’re dealing with your brand messaging right now and everything right now, this is just a really cool piece of advice. It’s really simple. “Be clear, not clever, be different, not better.”

And I love that because the idea there is that a lot of brands try to come up with some clever name or clever lingo or clever brand messaging and end up confusing people and not actually connecting. So, instead of being clever, just be clear. Be very clear about what it is that you do and who you are. And then, don’t be better, be different because better is completely subjective but different is very objective and you can speak directly to a person’s concerns if you can differentiate yourself into their category. And then, that’s how you can appeal to people. So that my favorite marketing kind of maxim.

Paul: Very cool. Well, I want to thank you. Thank you for spending the time with us. And who knows, maybe we’ll have you back soon.

Jeremiah: That would be awesome. I’d be happy to come back. Thank you so much for everything, Paul. It was an honor to be here.

Paul: Alright, thank you.

More Episodes:

This is the Part 5, the final episode of our podcast with Jeremiah Smith!

If you missed any of the previous episodes from our conversation with him, you can listen to them here:
Part 1: An Introduction to SEO With Jeremiah Smith
Part 2: SEO: Google & Artificial Intelligence
Part 3: SEO: How To Create Content For Your Business
Part 4: Is SEO Always Worth It?

Show Notes:

Ethics in the Financial World

On Episode 82 of The Edge of Innovation, we’re talking with Alexander Lowry about ethics in the financial world and how Gordon College’s new MBA finance program is placing a special emphasis on ethical decision making.

Sections

Challenges of an Entrepreneur
The Faith and Finance Forum
Ethics in the Financial World
Ethics: Different People Have Different Standards
Compliance in the Finance World
People Are Important: Why Every Hire Matters
Find the Right Person
A Different Kind of Entrepreneur
All Over the World
Finance MBA at Gordon: Better, Faster, Affordable
Closing
More Episodes
Show Notes

Ethics in the Finance World

Challenges of an Entrepreneur

Paul: So how have things played out since? You came in, and you knew there would be some challenges, but things always become much clearer as you get closer to them. So how, where are you now in your formation? Is it more of “Oh my gosh, what did I get myself into?” So give me some color on where you’re at now.

Alexander: I think some days my wife might be saying that based on the workload. But I’m very clear with her. “Darling, we’re looking at a year or two at the quality of life that, that’s going to come when this is very successful.” So for me, it’s an energizing situation, and I would assume, for any entrepreneur. Hopefully that’s what it is. There are days when it’s overwhelming, but hopefully you can see the rainbow on the other side. You can. You have that vision because you’ve got to deliver that for other people. And for me, that’s a big part of that, is I can see what’s going to happen. I can see how it’s going to happen. I can see the transformation that will come through it.

But for me, it’s also not just staying in my own little box. I’ve gone out of that box to connect with other people and share with them and ways that we’ve been helping Gordon College in other ways.

So, for example, we are launching tomorrow. We have the first event. We’re starting a quarterly event in Boston called the Faith and Finance Forum. We talked about Bob Doll before. He’s their first speaker. This is a way for us to get into town, to connect with a lot of the Christians in finance using that space to our advantage, because it will raise awareness for the program, but it’s also good for everybody else to be connected.

So I as an entrepreneur, again, looking for the right channels, the right influencers. These are people that will know other people. These are people that want to be involved bringing in interns or mentoring students. So you could argue it’s a bit Machiavellian, but it has a larger purpose that’s good for everybody. To me, that’s a win-win.

The Faith and Finance Forum

Paul: So you mentioned, Finance and Faith? Is that what it’s called?

Alexander: The Finance and Faith Forum.

Paul: Finance and Faith? So what is this faith aspect. Gordon College was founded as a Christian school. How old is it now?

Alexander: 1899.

Paul: 1899. So…

Alexander: Just over 125.

Paul: Yeah, okay. How does that apply to finance? I mean, can it even apply to finance?

Alexander: Sorry. I misspoke. 1889. I’m a finance guy, right?

Paul: That’s okay. Yeah.

Alexander: For us, it’s a part of what differentiates our program. So there is a faith component for us. And the way that some people also think about it is 10 years on from the great recession, we think about we could use more ethical decision making in financial service. Right? A lot of the scandals that went on were shocking. Like the rigging of LIBOR that some of the leading employees at banks were coming together to rig how the market would price it so that they could make more money and their bonuses would go up.

Now you could argue that that’s not uncommon in capitalism. People make those sorts of decisions. The view of our program is that we take that ethical decision making very strongly.

Ethics in the Financial World

Alexander: I’ll just give a comparison. I don’t mean this to bash on Wharton, but it was my experience at Wharton. So my ethics class — and every business school will have one ethics and leadership class. It’s just what you do. You want to be able to say you’ve taught that, just like we talked about all the other general classes you take your first year.

And the first day of the class, our professor had been teaching it for 40 years. And you’ve got about 80 or 90 students chatting away in a room, having a good time. The professor walks in, walks down to the main stage area up in the front, throws down this giant manila folders, makes a loud thud. So, of course, all the students stop, turn, and they try to see what’s going on. Points at the folder and he said, “These are all of my students from Wharton over the last 40 years who have gone to jail.”

Paul: Wow.

Alexander: Now you could argue, okay, Wharton is the first or second biggest. Between HBS and Wharton, there are a huge number of alums who come through that. This is the elite capitalism, probably people pushing the barriers. You know, Michael Milken went to jail, for example. So all sorts of things happened, but it’s indicative that our class, we envisioned just have a manila folder with nothing in it saying we would prefer to stay way behind the line. And that’s the approach that we want to teach our students.

Paul: Is that possible in 21 century finance?

Alexander: Well, the rules change all the time. So I think some people will accidentally footfall over them unintentionally.

Paul: Sure. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about is it possible to have the billion-dollar-level companies — Fortune 100 — without that line being crossed? I think by individuals, it is. But collectively, does the whole, the finance person that the finance entity cross that line? Or is it possible?

Alexander: I don’t think you have to cross the line. You might say, to make the most profit, you’d have to cross the line, but that’s when you get into thinking about who are your different classes of people that you’re trying to satisfy. If you’re only worried about your shareholders, they would mostly care about maximizing profits. Now you could argue avoid lawsuits and leaving some money on the table, maybe that’s better for the long term. Goldman Sachs used to have the term “long-term greedy,” which they don’t use anymore, the assumption being you wouldn’t want to take all the money from your clients so they continue doing good over time, and they’ll pay you a lot more.

There are some finance companies out there who are very intentional about we would rather not take some business because it crosses an ethical line for us. Social impact investing is a good example. People talk about not investing in sin stocks. But the reality is sin stocks make a lot of money, so maybe you’re leaving money on the table by not investing in them.

So you can set your own limits and set your own boundaries. How you then manage your employees to stay within those is an interesting challenge in a place like JPMorgan where you’re talking about quarter of a million people, one of the hugest organizations. That’s a hard thing to manage.

Paul: That’s what I’m wondering. Exactly. How do you police that? I’m wondering about the challenges of if you come into a situation where you want to behave ethically, and you may indeed do that, but others around you maybe two a wall away — so you don’t even see them — are behaving unethically. So there’s these tensions because it’s not in their nature, necessarily. It’s not in anybody’s nature to behave ethically. It might be nice. But I’m just wondering how as a society… Obviously, if more people took a finance course at an organization that maybe taught a little more ethics than saying “Here’s all the people that have gone to jail,” to sort of “Here’s how to avoid jail” as opposed to “Here’s how to do it right.” What are your thoughts?

Ethics: Different People Have Different Standards

Alexander: Well, first, I’ll deviate. Just a quick story.

So if you have to go find an accountant. How do you find the right one? Have you ever heard this?

Paul: No.

Alexander: So you go and interview the person. You say, “What is two plus one?”

And he says, “Three.”

“You’re very smart. Thank you. Let yourself out.”

You interview the second person. “What is two plus one?”

And he says, “Four.”

And you say, “You’re not very smart. Please let yourself out.”

You ask the third guy, “What is two plus one?”

He says, “What do you want it to be?”

So, everyone sets their own line and their own standard. And I know that you can’t police a whole organization. So at JPMorgan, we were setting up standards. We were setting up processes and protocol. The point was we were trying to catch the bad actors. You cannot guarantee there will be no bad actors. There are always people looking to push it because they have different standards. They have different ethical approaches; however you want to think about it.

What you can try to do it is I tend to think of it as we’re working at a micro level. And that micro level can grow and over time can become a macro level. The way we think about it is we want to put our graduates out with a certain perspective that in five or ten years, it would be successful for me to see that they have been getting promoted, that they are mentoring others. That sphere of influence is growing and changing. And you hopefully make a movement out of it. And that’s a long-term situation. I don’t think there’s a quick fix to it, but at the end of the day, I can’t control what the person is doing next to me. If I have my own personal rules and standards, I have to accept that there’s going to be cost implications. So I might get a lower bonus. I might not get promoted.

For example, JPMorgan has a reputation for being one of the better and easier places to work on Wall Street, but it is not easy. And there are a lot of terrible behaviors that go on that are allowed and even condoned by senior management. One of the things I talk about at Gordon College, people asked me, “How’s it going?”

I said, every day… “Some days I feel like I’m walking on clouds.”

“Why?”

“I never see anybody get yelled at.”

“What do you mean?”

People yelled out at JPMorgan all the time, every day. That’s the kind of culture you work in. You accept that maybe because of the high payoff, whatever it might be. But you asked me a bit before, what drives it. Well, the other part about being here is just the different attitudes and perspectives.

Compliance in the Finance World

Paul: Interesting. So would you say that there’s this huge focus on compliance over the past 10 years and it’s growing exponentially. Is that a sort of fallout of a lack of ethics over the past 50 years or 40 years? But I mean, 40 years ago, if you said you had to write a rule compliance book that said you’re going to say what you do and do what you say, people would have looked at you like “What, are you crazy? Of course it’s obvious that we would do that.”

So where are we now where we have to write down the fact that when the baby is crying, I’m going to go and get them a bottle. Or when the baby is running towards the hot stove, I’m going to stop them.

Alexander: Let’s put it in context of… A lot of these rules and regulations were designed internally to make regulators happy. Some of the rules were written externally by the government and imposed upon, and then the companies have to figure out how to implement them.

So if we look back over time — go back 100 years when Glass Steagall was implement, and they separated commercial banking from investment banking. That document produced by the government is something like 10 pages long. And if you look at the Dodd Frank Act when it came out, you’re talking thousands of pages long. I mean, literally, from the floor to the ceiling in this room. And no one knows what it means. It wasn’t even finished. No one can interpret it. There’s so much in and against each other within that document. So there’s a lot of finger pointing that goes on. There’s no clarity even for companies within themselves. So you’re talking about a big entity like a JPMorgan — “Well, how do we implement all that for ourselves? How do we make that work? How do we change a culture?” And that’s a battleship that doesn’t turn on a dime anyway.

All that’s the say that, imagine there’s an entrepreneur starting a business from scratch. And when it’s just you, it’s your own ethics and your own standards. That’s the way it works. As soon as you hire one person, well, you’re either going to impose what you want upon them because they work for you, you’re going to negotiate together, or somewhere in between. You’re a success when you grow to 10 people, you grow to 100 people. You’re going to manage that in a very different way now. And eventually, you’re so divorced that, you’ve got a big enough company, you’ve got 500 people, you don’t meet the people when they’re getting hired. You don’t talk to them. You don’t see them. How do they live the values that you wanted your company to have? That’s not easy.

Paul: Right. So it’s not easy. But do we have the responsibility to do it?

Alexander: I would assume, as someone… Let’s pretend it’s your name on the door, and you’re building a company for the long term, for the betterment of society. You can do well while doing good is my theory — maybe not as well as you might do in other situations. But hopefully there are reasons that you’re doing well, and maybe you’re giving some of it away, whatever it might be. Your job, your pride is on the line every day. That’s your name. But I don’t know that every employee always thinks of that. Because some of them are just getting a paycheck, working from 9-5 to support their family. Others might be buying time till they do something else that’s a better job. How do you win over the hearts and minds to have people doing what you would like them to do? I think that’s something companies wrestle with every day, and there’s no easy answer to it.

Paul: Oh, bummer. I was hoping you’d give us an easy answer. Oh, yeah, just check this box, and it’s done. Not to be too flip, but it is the challenge. And the system is, systemitization… Is that, is that the right word?

Alexander: Systematize.

People Are Important: Why Every Hire Matters

Paul: Systematizing of all of these aspects, not just what the business does but how it thinks about what it does and how it promotes what it does and how it promotes the people. You know, the people aspect of what it does and making sure that we’re not just about bottom line — at least that’s how I want to run by business. Is what’s the most important thing here — the people.

Alexander: I think you’ve hit upon what I would answer it as. I think it’s all about the individuals. So let’s take Southwest as a classic example. Everybody wants to be Southwest, and their CEO will let any company come in at any time and benchmark them. He said, “You can see whatever our processes are. I don’t care, because you can’t duplicate our people.”

You only get hired at Southwest through referral. That’s the only way you can get hired. So they have worked really hard. Think about when you go fly with Southwest versus other airlines. They’re generally a little bit nicer, generally a little bit happier, and they’re genuine, actually.

So what will happen is the flight attendants are staying overnight in some city, and they’ll go out to Applebee’s for dinner, and they really like the server or the hostess. And they’ll say, “Hey, could we give you an application? We’d love for you to apply.”

Paul: Interesting.

Alexander: That’s the way they hire. Think about it in the same way of “I’m a manager, and I get to hire for my micro team.” My boss might have a very different personality from me. We might want to hire different types of people. I want to bring my own culture and my own values. And I think that’s the way a lot of companies work. So if you think about how do I bring it forward, it is all about the people.

My favorite business book — I don’t know if you’ve read it — is called Good to Great.

Paul: Yeah.

Alexander: Okay. I love the analogy of you will get the right people on the bus — which is your business — and only once they’re on the bus do you figure out where the bus is going, what direction it goes and then we figure out what seat to put them in.

I always thought, well, you hire the CFO, and that’s where you’re going to do. There’s a story in the book where the COO is holding down both COO and CFO roles. He’s trying desperately to hire a CFO. And the CEO walks down the hallway, sees him, says, “How are you doing on the hiring?”

He said, “You know, I found someone today. I think they’re going to be okay. I think they’ll be good enough.”

The CEO turned on a dime, and he said, “That is not good enough. We will do whatever we have to do to find the right person, knowing that hire is critical, especially at a senior role.” But think about even at a small company, your company here. If you hire someone who maybe is the opposite culture from everybody else come in, and it — cancer is a big extreme — but really could change everything dramatically. Every hire is crucial.

And I think there are so many people out there that are willing to hire someone to check a box and said, “Okay, Ted, ever done this job before. We’ll just hire you. We’ll put you in there, and then I can move on with my life.”

As a manager, I feel like my job is to know my people so that they feel trusted and valued so that they’re ready to give, get feedback when I need to give it to them, and you can grow and develop them. I feel like that’s part of my job, is to share with people to grow and develop for their own careers, no matter however long they’re in my role.

Find the Right Person

Paul: Yeah. I think one of the biggest things that I’m learning lately is how much I have to change and learn to change in the things I’m doing. And more of the attitude “I’ll hire really great people, and I’ll have them do things.” But I really need to learn and understand things in a way that I might have been vacating a little bit too easily. So as you’re developing this business, there’s going to be things that you didn’t know how to do, and it would be really tempting to go off and say, “Oh, I just find somebody that can do that,” but you really need to understand it and own it and then find the right people to do it.

Alexander: And I think this comes back to what we talked about earlier, about that board of advisors. So if you have people in your camp that have been there and done it before. I think about entrepreneurs. These are people that got the scars and have the t-shirt to prove it. Right? Someone who can help me learn now. As an entrepreneur, I always feel like I’m going to fail. And “fail” might be an extreme way to say “I’m going to fall down. I’m going to get hurt.” But as long as I fall forward, I made progress. Or as long as I keep getting up, I’m making progress. That’s a successful entrepreneur — a person who keeps getting up enough times.

But again, like my first job, I don’t have to do this on my own. There are a lot of people. I can read books; I can listen to great podcasts; I can have people in my corner to bounce ideas off of. For me, it’s thinking, none of this is easy. Like we were just talking about, how do you get people around you to help you? Either they have the same values or some people who don’t, to challenge you and say, “Is that really that important? Do you need to do that?”

A Different Kind of Entrepreneur

Paul: Right. Cool. So we’ve been talking with Alexander: Lowry of Gordon College. And I’m not going to try and say it but the executive director…

Alexander: Of the Master of Science and Financial Analysis.

Paul: Financial analysis.

Alexander: Rolls off the tongue.

Paul: You’re going to shorten that. Five years from now, you’re going to have a different title. It’s going to be shorter. That’s one of those discoveries during the marketing of it. So we’ve covered quite a bit. Is there anything you’d want to touch on that we haven’t covered?

Alexander: You know, I would say that, for someone thinking about being an entrepreneur, there are different ways to go about it. And I think in these day and age, people think startup, sexy. “I’m going to build a unicorn and get a billion dollars.” That’s well and cool. It’s very hard to do. Most people don’t get there. But even a different approach…

So you were talking about me as an entrepreneur today. I don’t know that everyone would see that because you can do it in — I’m going to call it — a risk-averse way. So I am, by definition, my risk tolerance, especially now that I’m a father, has changed from what it used to be. But this is a new business, but it’s a business with support. Right? So I’ve got an established name behind me. I’ve got a good brand. I’ve got resources, as opposed to me walking on the street, hanging up a shingle, and starting something from scratch. So people can go about it in very different ways. Maybe their tolerance changes over their life. Maybe as they’ve learned and tried dig things, their approach is different, or whether you have the right partners with you or not for support. So there’s no one way to be an entrepreneur. And I would just encourage people. It’s like find what works for you. What’s your way?

All Over the World

Paul: Excellent. Okay. So now this won’t be aired for some time. So this will be after the Bob Doll event and maybe even after the next one. What’s after Bob? Do you have another one planned?

Alexander: So July 19th is Wai-Kwong Seck, who is the CEO of State Street, Asia. And he was also the CFO of Singapore Stock Exchange. July 19.

Paul: Okay, so really a low performer. Really hasn’t done anything in his life.

Alexander: And then October 10th, we have Peter Greer, is the CEO of Hope International, and they do micro-loans. So microfinance, which we thought would be just a different perspective on the market.

Paul: Alright. And so we’ve got people listening all over the world. I mean, this is crazy that this little podcast, lots of people listen to it — thousands and thousands. Tens and tens as somebody… I forget who says that. I forget. Anyway, there’s a podcast that tens and tens of people are listening to this. Oh, it’s Jeremy Clarkson.

Alexander: Oh, I like it.

Finance MBA at Gordon: Better, Faster, Affordable

Paul: Yeah, on Top Gear. Tens and tens of people are listening in. You have an opportunity for undergrads to consider getting into finance, and they’ve got a cheaper way to do it by coming to Gordon.

Alexander: Better, faster, more affordable is how I would say it.

Paul: Better, faster, more affordable. Yeah, and it’s substantially shorter. I mean, it’s half the time, and like a third of the, a quarter of the price? That’s a big deal. I mean, we’re not talking a dollar here. We’re talking 30,000 compared to 150,000. And then you’ve got professionals, both companies could offer this to their employees. Or, if you work in a company that has tuition reimbursement, this is a great opportunity to get it done in a year. And you guys, as one of your people said, it’s a reverse commute, so it’s a lot easier to commute up to Wenham as opposed to going into Boston. I mean, just that time and that stress would probably make it easier.

So, you’re going to have your first or second class? When are the classes?

Alexander: We’re starting our second cohort with the autumn semester.

Paul: Autumn semester. So when does that start?

Alexander: August 30th — very end of August.

Paul: Okay. Alright. Cool. So if you’re interested in that and definitely check that out at Gordon.edu.

Alexander: Slash grad finance.

Paul: Slash grad finance. See that’s what you’re going to called. Grad, graduate finance. That’s what it’s going to be. Guarantee it.

Alexander: A bit easier.

Closing

Paul: Alright. Well, any other final parting comments?

Alexander: It was a pleasure. Thank you for your time today, Paul. Enjoyed it.

Paul: Alright. Well, thank you for coming in.

More Episodes:

This is Part 3 of our interview with Alexander Lowry. If you missed Part 1 “Masters of Science & Financial Analysis,” you can listen to it here!
Find part 2 of the podcast, “Creating the New MBA Program at Gordon College,” here!

Show Notes

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