Tag: entrepreneur

An Introduction to SEO With Jeremiah Smith

March 5, 2019 / / 0 Comments

On Episode 86 of The Edge of Innovation, we’re talking with Jeremiah Smith, CEO and founder of Simple Tiger, an SEO and marketing agency. He’s sharing with us an excellent introduction to Search Engine Optimization!

Sections

Introduction
What is the Promise of SEO?
Push and Pull Marketing
Is SEO like the Old Yellow Pages?
Searcher Intent
Marketing BPM Software: Why Keywords Matter
Should You Be Paying Google to Display Your Result?
Paperclip Ads
Organic SEO Versus Google Ads
SEO & Google: The Game of Cat and Mouse
Producing Content: SEO is Never Done
Writing Blog Articles: How To Get Ideas
Breaking Down Your Audience: Creating Personas
Who Is Your Target Customer?
Closing
More Episodes
Show Notes

An Introduction to SEO With Jeremiah Smith

Introduction

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. Are you responsible for all the emails that I get asking me about SEO in broken English?

Jeremiah: No comment

Paul: Okay, okay.

Jeremiah: No, we definitely aren’t responsible for those, but I know a lot of companies in our industry are and it’s kind of the bad side of this whole industry. I find myself kind of having to be the ambassador of the search engine optimization industry to companies and people all the time, letting them know the truth about search and things like that. So yeah. I will apologize for those offenders in my industry that send those mass spam emails.

Paul: But I think we get a lot of emails and in the past, you’ve gotten emails for all sorts of different things whether it be for certain medicines or whatever. But there must be a tremendous appetite out there out there if people are sending spam emails for it. You don’t send out spam, if you’re a spammer, on something that nobody’s going to buy. I’m trying to think of a good example of something stupid to send spam about. But just about anything is going to be something that there’s going to be a huge desire for and a need for.

So, you’re an expert in SEO and you’ve been doing this awhile. We’ll have contact information in the Show Notes so you can get in contact with Jeremiah’s company.

What is the Promise of SEO?

Paul: But I wanted to get your opinion. We’ll talk about what SEO is, in a detailed way, and your unique approach to that. Before we get into all those details, and how you’ve built your organization to help people manage that, what is the promise of SEO?

SEO for people that are listening, just to remind you, is Search Engine Optimization. If I go off the rails here, stop me, but let’s start here. So, search engine optimization. Google is a search engine, Bing… are there any others? Yes, there are a few more, excreta, but those are the ones that people primarily use. And they search. There’s an engine that goes out and helps you find things on the internet.

So, if I want to find what’s the best food for my hamster, I can type that query into a search engine and then get a response back. As you can imagine, there’s a lot of power in the people who own or run the search engine because they can bring up this pet food or this pet food or generic pet food that you can make in your own kitchen for your hamster. So, we want to optimize the experience but that doesn’t sound like it’s optimizing it for google, it doesn’t sound like it’s making it better on behalf of Google or it’s making it better on behalf of Bing but it’s making it better on what I want people to find. So, if I make the best hamster food in the world, I’d come to you and say, “Can you help me with my search engine optimization?” And I know you don’t focus on hamsters or even animals and we’ll talk about that in a minute, but really what’s sort of the core of what are we trying to do? What are we trying to optimize?

Push and Pull Marketing

Jeremiah: Sure. So, I think a really good explanation for search engine optimization and why it’s valuable is this: Years ago, I heard marketing broken down into two camps and it was really cool to see this. One camp is called Push Marketing and the other camp is called Pull Marketing. Push versus Pull. So, the idea with Push Marketing is that you’ve got to go out there and you’ve got to get into peoples’ faces. You’ve got to get in their way. You’ve got to interrupt them, so think of interruption marketing. It’s another way of saying Push Marketing is interruption. You’re interrupting the flow of something. You have billboards on the highway, commercials on television, radio announcements. Things like that. Those are all interruption type marketing. Now, that carries a negative connotation with it, interruption or push, that kind of sounds a little rough but it works. So, I’m not hating it, I just want you to understand that’s a connotation.

Now, on the same time, on the other end of things, we have Pull Marketing and with Pull Marketing, you actually have an audience that is actively seeking out something. They’re trying to find something. So, with Pull Marketing you have things like, well, search engines are probably the single, easiest example for me to make. But I would say maybe phone books are another example. People actively go into phone books to look up a plumber or something like that back in the day. And there are other types of Pull Marketing. If people are interested in receiving emails from you and want to get more content or they want to learn more from you and so they sign up to receive emails from you on your website. That’s permission-based pull marketing. Seth Godin wrote a book years ago called “Permission Marketing” and it’s all about that pull side of marketing.

So, I liked SEO right away because it falls into that second camp of Pull Marketing. I like it because it just made sense to me. If I need to go buy something or I’m really interested in something and I go Google it, I am very engaged in learning more about it and I’m a self-directed type person when it comes to making a lot of buying decisions and education and stuff like that and I’ve quickly realized that I’m not alone in that. A lot of people, and as a matter of fact, the masses at large, are moving more toward that self-directed research and buying decision mentality which is a shift from the old way of things. SEO stuck out to me because its promise, you asked earlier “What’s the promise of SEO?” Its promise is to deliver highly targeted audience directly to your door, directly to your product or your service offering or your business. And I just saw that as extremely valuable and thought every business ought to be doing something with SEO and working with Google in some way.

Now I’d love to get into the mechanics of SEO in a moment if that makes sense to you but I’m going to let you decide that.

Is SEO like the Old Yellow Pages?

Paul: Yeah, I think it does. But I do want to draw out that example you gave that 30 years ago if you needed hamster food, to beat the analogy to death, you would go to the yellow pages and look up pet food. But you wouldn’t necessarily be able to look under a category called hamster food. It might have pets or then rodents or whatever it is. So, what’s evolved with, and I’m asking this to get your confirmation here, is that now we have infinite yellow pages that can have as many sections as it wants. I remember in the yellow pages, way back in a galaxy far far away, that people would list their company under multiple headings because let’s say you were a cleaner and you do business cleaning and housecleaning, you would be in both sections of the phonebook and they would charge you for each one of those listings.

Now the world has changed. The disruption has occurred with the internet, is that now there aren’t any headings. There were directories early on but now those are gone and now I can search organically to very specific things. I want a house cleaner that cleans a certain brand of windows and they’re the experts on that and could actually ask that question. So, what is your thought on that? Is that right or is that a good analogy so that our listeners can latch onto that and say “Okay, that’s what I’m thinking about.” Is SEO is just lists on the end of the headings? Or is it like the old yellow pages? Or is it something more than that?

Searcher Intent

Jeremiah: Yeah, it’s something significantly more than that in my opinion. What we’re getting into now is what we call, in the SEO industry, Searcher Intent. As an SEO person, I try to deduce what it is that a searcher wants by what they’re searching. For example, if I look up the word “men’s suit”, you know very little about me except that maybe either:

A. I’m a man looking for a suit or B. I’m a woman looking for a suit for a man.

Paul: Or you’re a woman that wants to be a man and wants to have a men’s suit.

Jeremiah: Sure, but you can see how the lines are blurred around what my intent might be.

Paul: Sure.

Jeremiah: And then, if I’m looking up a black pinstripe Hugo Boss men’s suit, size 42 long. That’s a very specific search and at least now we have a much better idea that this person is likely in the transactional phase. Now there’s an assumption there but the assumption is strong based on the amount of data in the keyword search, that that person is looking for a very specific suit and so its likely that when they find that, they are likely going to purchase it because of how specific it is.

So, I think with Searchers Intent, what we find is that some people are online to learn. Some people are still in the awareness phase of something. Or maybe they’re not quite in the awareness phase.

Marketing BPM Software: Why Keywords Matter

For example, I didn’t know about this whole terminology around this whole business process management software until we started working with a lot of SaaS companies and we stumbled across a company that offers BPM software – Business Process Management Software. Well, I looked into that terminology and it had very low search. Very few people are actively searching for BPM or Business Process Management software. However, after many, many conversations with this particular client and trying to figure out “What is it that your software does? What is it that you’re offering? What’s the value that your end users getting?” They said, “Well ultimately we build web flows or mind maps or diagrams.” So, it’s kind of like a diagraming software to help you visualize or see business processes.

And I was like, “Wow! That actually gives me a whole lot of other keywords to play with! So, I started playing with those keywords and found massive amounts of search volume and I realized that people were looking for Business Process Management software, they just didn’t know they were looking for that. They were using other keywords and they were not quite in the awareness phase of BPM software yet. So, we had a challenge. We had to go out there and we had to actually target them with the keywords they’re using and help them bridge the gap to understanding that, “Hey, what you’re looking for is BPM software.”

And so, I think Searcher Intent is a very interesting thing. It’s fun to play around with. But I think that that comes down to how users interact with the search engine. And we have to keep an eye on that if we want to do a good job in business doing SEO because we ultimately have to follow the users and try to provide for them what they’re looking for.

Should You Be Paying Google to Display Your Result?

Paul: We could go very technical very quickly here and I want to avoid that initially, but I do think some of that would be interesting. So, the success of SEO is for you to bargain with Google that when someone types in – I’ll use the business process management example – they type in “business process management” and are you going to pay Google to display your result?

Jeremiah: Alright, so your bringing up a very good point here. I’ve got to differentiate what that is, from what SEO is. Because with SEO, we are not paying Google anything, we’re not affiliating with Google in any way. What we’re attempting to do, and I know you were setting that up for me, because a lot of people have that question, “How much does it cost to get into Google and stuff like that.” Well that’s not exactly how it works.

Paperclip Ads

The idea with paying Google, is to run ads in Google. So, whenever you do a search in Google the ads run across the top there and they say “ad” in tiny text underneath. Those are what we call PPC or Paperclip Ads. When I refer to doing that type of marketing, I call it generally “paid search.” The whole idea with paid search is that you can grab a handful of keywords, you can create some ads, you can set up some targeting like “I want to target users in the U.S.” for example. And then you have an account in Google Ads and you say “Google, here’s the deal. I’ve got three hundred bucks a week and I would like to target users in the U.S. for this handful of keywords and I want to show them these ads.”

And then Google comes back and says “Okay you’re probably going to pay about this many dollars per click or this much cents per click in order to display that ad. And every time somebody clicks on the ad you’ve going to pay a click fee. And so, ultimately what that does is that it helps you to force your website in front of your target audience that is actively searching your keywords, but in an advertising way.

So, this is kind of like at the gray zone of Push and Pull Marketing, in my opinion, because you’re still running this advertisement that is somewhat interruptive in terms of its process but at the same time, it wouldn’t be there if the person didn’t search for something through kind of a pull technique. So, I don’t know exactly how to categorize that. I’m sure somebody else out there can fix that for me. But I think it’s right in that gray area.

Organic SEO Versus Google Ads

Jeremiah: Whereas with SEO, your listing shows up organically. And we call it organic because there is an algorithm, there is a process for determining where your site ought to rank and that process is not something that we directly control. It’s something that we indirectly allow to happen. So, Google is going to crawl your website, it’s going to index it, and then it’s going to compare your website to a bunch of other domains that also say they do the same kind of thing, that use the same kind of keywords, that talk about the same kind of stuff on their sites. Google has to decide, “Well, which one of these makes the most sense for this keyword?” And Google makes the decision organically on their own and therefore you can’t completely control how you show up in Google for certain keywords organically, but you can strongly influence how you show up in Google and so that’s the idea with SEO.

The major difference in terms of the output and the outcome in terms of you, the business or the company engaging in either one of these tactics, is that users commonly understand when they’re clicking on an ad that they are clicking on an advertisement and they carry a bias that “I cant trust someone who is trying to sell me” and so that comes with clicking on an ad. Whereas users inherently trust the results that are coming up organically and Google because they don’t think about them: A. being manipulated or influenced in any way or B. definitely not being paid to be there. They trust those results a little bit more and so your conversions tend to be a lot better on those organic clicks. So that’s another attractive element in SEO.

Paul: So, you bring to light that – let me see if I summarize this right – that SEO and your job, is to influence the ranking as much as you can. So, when Google reads your website, or the website you’re working on, you want to – I’ll use the crass words – you want to trick Google, you want to manipulate them, whatever those words are, to ranking your site higher than somebody else that has the same product interest.

Jeremiah: Yes, that’s ultimately it. You can use the word “trick.” But I really like the term “influence” because influence can be negative or positive depending on what you’re doing and your intention.

SEO and Google: The Game of Cat and Mouse

Paul: But that is a constant ongoing battle. It’s not something you can do today and then tomorrow have that same influence, because it’s a cat and mouse game in a lot of ways because Google changes the way they judge things.

Jeremiah: You’re right. You’re totally right on that. It is an ongoing effort. There are some elements and some things you can do. I don’t want to say plateau because it doesn’t do Google justice to what’s happening here but once you get to a certain step – maybe think of a staircase – once you get to a certain step that was difficult to get to, sometimes you can kind of just relax and hang out on that step fairly easily with minimal input. And then in order to continue up the staircase, you’ve got to put in more effort, and you’ve got to keep climbing. But also, you have to remember the competitors are walking up that staircase at the same time and so sometimes they’re going to walk in front of you and if they’re standing in front of you, what that means is that you’re going to have to take a step back down to get out of their way.

And so, with Google, if there are ten listings on the search results page, there are only ten listings there and so if you’re number three and then some competitor moves up to number three, guess what? You’re either number two or, you know, either number four which is bad because it means you fell down, or you’re working really hard and you outpace them so you’re number two and now you’re in front of them. But there’s this shuffle that happens, that’s natural and its very competitive depending on the industry you’re in. So yeah.

Producing Content: SEO is Never Done

Paul: I agree with that and the point I want to highlight to our listeners is the fact that this is not a one and done kind of solution, ever, regardless of whether you get Jeremiah to do the work or you get one of those spam emails to do the work. I think one of the things that the spam emails on SEO make you feel like, is that it’s something I can buy. It’s not like buying a jar of peanut butter. “Okay, I got it. Now I’m done.”

Jeremiah: Right, right. Yeah that’s the thing. Companies can do SEO in-house. I run an agency, we sell this full time, but I’m very open and honest about talking to people about the fact that if you’re a small company, or even a large company, if you’re any size company, there are powerful things you can do in-house to actually impact your rankings organically. I think that producing content is probably one of the most important things.

Writing Blog Articles: How To Get Ideas

Jeremiah: Types of content that you can produce today if you run a business, is if you deal with anyone in the sales process where you’re trying to sell your product or service or offering of any type, and you deal with objections or questions in the sales process. The next time you get a good question where you think “Oh that’s a good question. I’m going to have to explain that and it’s probably going to take me longer that a sentence or a few more words to explain. It’s probably going to take me a paragraph or two to explain it.” Write that question down and go ahead and answer the question for that person. When you get off the phone write that question down and write a blog article answering that question.

Paul: That’s good advice.

Jeremiah: Just go through those kinds of questions and just write blog articles because then what happens is, believe it or not, people are actively Googling those same questions all over the place. And they’re Googling that question and then you’ve got that question answered on your blog. It’s very likely you might show up in Google and that you might be able to answer the question for someone where that was their final objection and after answering it, they’re like “Hmmm, this person has it figured out. I think I’m going to give them a shout and go ahead.” And guess what, you’ve already answered their questions so they’re going to be really easy to close.

Breaking Down Your Audience: Creating Personas

Paul: Let’s go back to the example of business process management. So, on that website, if I search for “business process management”, and that’s off target from what people are searching for, do you still rank in that for SEO?

Jeremiah: Yeah, we do still try to rank in that because it turns out that this particular client, they were trying to – and this is where we get kind of higher up into the realm of thorium marketing – they were trying to appeal, I think, to to broad of an audience. What they needed to do was actually personify their audience which means break their audience down into individual personas and say, “This type of person here, were going to call him Engineer Eric. And he’s going to be the engineer at companies like IBM or Oracle and something like that. And then we have Small Business Sam over here. He actually is just running a small business and he wants to create nice processes and replicate them.”

And so those are two good personas. Well, Small Business Sam was the one that’s using the terminology around like visual diagramming or visual web mats. The real simple kind of more board terms around what he’s trying to get. Whereas Engineer Eric was definitely the business process management type of guy even though only, maybe, fifty to a hundred people a month are searching business process management. These are total here, say numbers. I’m not giving actual numbers out here. Even though very few people were searching business process management compared to diagramming software, something like that.

The conversion value of an IBM or Oracle buying from this particular software company was worth potentially millions for one conversion. So, the volume was not as important. It is okay that there are only a hundred searches per month because if they can sell one of those, they’re going to get a huge, huge amount of revenue. Whereas on the other end, the Small Business Sam, he’s going to pay five bucks a month for some web diagramming software so you’re going to need ten thousand conversions a month from that guy in order to see the same kind of value. So, that’s the idea there.

Who Is Your Target Customer?

Paul: Okay, so let’s put a comma here and ask the question who is your target customer? Is it the ones that have a high value conversion? Or is it the ones that have many small low value conversions, dollar wise.

Jeremiah: That depends entirely on the business and the business model that you seek to secure. For example, my company, we’re an agency. We do SEO and we do it specifically for SaaS companies or Software As A Service companies. Now, there are so many different types of SaaS companies out there but we’ve found that for our target niche, we like to go after companies that typically have been established for longer than a year, typically a few years. They’ve done other types of marketing as well and they’re really just trying to broaden their scope or their horizon of marketing techniques. So, they have more faith in marketing, but they are not in that speculative phase, necessarily, of trying to find what works. They believe SEO will work, they’ve seen some value in it, but they’d like to make a focused effort on it. Typically, they’re funded with five million or above in annual revenue. Something along those lines. So, that’s our typical target audience. A conversion of that is very valuable for that.

Where, at the same time, a lot of people are starting software companies or creating startups and tech boards and trying to learn about SEO and they’re not valuable as a customer, but they have valuable concerns. They could eventually turn into the type of client that we want to work with. So, for us, those aren’t as important for us to get on the phone with, but at the same time I do still want to offer up some sort of product offering to them.

So, we’re working on an online course to help small software companies get from brand new funded, no marketing, no experience under their belt, to a year into business, with some strong marketing growth so that we can build them, through education, into the type of client that we actively want to then work with. And so that kind of gives you an idea of how to personify your target audience. And different businesses have different targets. For some industries the volume is key. You have to have a high volume of customers. For some businesses, you only need a few conversions per year in order to make your budget.

Paul: Cool!

Closing

Paul: Well, we’ve been speaking with Jeremiah Smith of Simple Tiger. He’s an SEO expert, and they’re an SEO agency. As you can tell, there’s a lot of value here in what he said. 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 Show Notes so I encourage you to look there. You’ll find links to Simple Tiger and a way to actually contact Jeremiah.

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 Part 1 of our interview with Jeremiah Smith. Stay tuned for Part 2, coming soon! We’ll be talking about SEO, Google, and Artificial Intelligence!

Show Notes:

Masters of Science in Financial Analysis: Alexander Lowry

December 11, 2018 / / 0 Comments

On Episode 80 of The Edge of Innovation, we’re talking with Alexander Lowry, Master of Science in Financial Analysis at Gordon College.

Sections

Introduction
Gordon College’s New Masters Finance Program
A Different Kind of Entrepreneur
Growing Up in the Shadow of New York City
A History Major at Haverford College
“I Guess I’ll Go To Wall Street”
What is a Personal Board of Mangers?
Putting Together a Personal Board
Approaching People to Be On Your Board
Who Should Be On Your Personal Board?
Why Alexander Went Into Finance
Internship at Wharton School
Pursuing Management Consulting
The Bubble Burst: Losing a Job
More Episodes
Show Notes

Master of Science in Financial Analysis: Alexander Lowry

Introduction

Paul: Well, welcome to the Edge of Innovation. We’re here today with Alexander Lowry. Alexander, say hello.

Alexander: Good afternoon. Good morning. It depends where you are, I suppose.

Paul: That’s true. And when somebody listens to this. It could be in the past, the future… Who knows?

Alexander: Could be good evening.

Paul: Yeah, that’s right. Exactly. So, what are you doing right now? You’re working with a school, a liberal arts school here on the North Shore of Massachusetts. We’re in Beverly, Massachusetts. So, you’re working at Gordon College in Hamilton.

Alexander: I am the Director of the Master of Science in Financial Analysis program at Gordon College. And in a situation like this, I just abbreviate it down to say the Master’s in Finance program. It’s a lot easier for everybody to wrap their mind around.

Gordon College’s New Masters Finance Program

Paul: Okay. Alright. And so this is a new program at Gordon?

Alexander: It is. We just launched out first classes in January.

Paul: Okay, January. So that’s four months ago? Five months ago?

Alexander: We’re now finishing our first semester.

Paul: So we’re in May of 2018. Financial analysis? Master of Financial Analysis.

Alexander: That’s right.

Paul: And this didn’t exist before you were there.

Alexander: That’s right. I was hired to launch and lead the program. I’ll also be teaching in it, but it is a brand new endeavor for Gordon.

A Different Kind of Entrepreneur

Paul: Okay. So you’re an entrepreneur today.

Alexander: That’s funny. You and I were talking about this before we started. I would not have thought of myself as an entrepreneur when I was growing up, but I am.

Paul: Okay. Well, let’s talk a little bit about that. You know, we’re trying to get sort of more of a long-form story than just the soundbite of people and how they’ve gotten to where they are and why they’re there.

Growing Up in the Shadow of New York City

Paul: And so when you grew up, where did you grow up?

Alexander: I grew up in New Jersey, not too far from Newark. It didn’t look like Newark, but Essex County, New Jersey, a stone’s throw for New York City.

Paul: Is that a good place to be from?

Alexander: I grew up in a town that was sort of a little bit of a bubble. It was one of those homogeneous towns you envision as a very safe place, great schools, nice spot to grow up. But you had the access to New York City to the point where you started to think New York City is average. New York City is anything but average. Right? It is a unique place.

Paul: So you grew up in the shadow of New York City?

Alexander: Correct.

Paul: Is that fair?

Alexander: They called us Bridge and Tunnel.

Paul: Bridge and Tunnel. Wow. Interesting. How old are you?

Alexander: Forty…one.

Paul: 40. Okay, 41. So when you were a kid, what were you interested in? What were you going to be when you grew up?

Alexander: There were definitely times where I would be playing for the New York Yankees which was my team growing up. I’m sure that’s a myth about everybody around here.

Paul: Well, yeah, that’s true. But we’re international, so that’s okay.

Alexander: So it was probably about third grade. I was an all-star on a baseball team, but, as you would see me, Paul, I’m 6’8″ now. I’m a pretty big guy, so my strike zone got a bit massive. I’m not a Stanton. I’m not a Judge. I can’t really keep up with the ball, so it was clearly not my sport.

Paul: Okay.

Alexander: And at that point, we grew up, and we got bigger, and I thought I was going to be a doctor like my father. My — just to give you a sense of the medical family — my dad’s a doctor; my mom’s a nurse. My grandfather’s a doctor; my grandmother’s a nurse. My great-grandfather’s a doctor. You kind of get the idea.

Paul: Yeah, okay. Your dog’s a doctor on TV. Do you have any siblings?

Alexander: I have two younger sisters.

Paul: Two younger sisters. Okay, so you’re the oldest. So you’ve got to perform. You’ve got to do all this, and you decided to go to college, I imagine. Where did you go?

A History Major at Haverford College

Alexander: Haverford College outside of Philadelphia.

Paul: Okay. Not too far from home.

Alexander: It was actually the perfect distance. It was close enough I could come home when I wanted to but too far for my parents to come every time.

Paul: Okay. And what was your course of study?

Alexander: So I was a history major. Haverford is one of those small schools, not too dissimilar to Gordon. It’s a little bit smaller, 1200 students, great liberal arts school where you get to learn a bit about everything. You know, we were not great at sports. I played basketball, which, you know, God gave me height, not athletic ability. Right? But it was one of those places where you could do what you wanted to do. I’ve always loved history, read it, studied it as a passion. So for me to be able to spend four years as a deep dive, it was great. It didn’t necessarily lead to the right career choices because I didn’t want to get a PhD, and didn’t plan to be in education at that point.

Paul: Okay, so history. What’s your favorite part of history? What do you love to read?

Alexander: Well, I will put this into context. So I also lived in London for seven years, and I majored in American history here. And the British like to make fun of you. Their terminology is “take the piss out of you.” And so I would tell them I majored in American history, and they’d say, “What did you study the second week?”

Paul: That’s true. Okay. We’ll get to how you got to England, I guess.

Alexander: Sure.

Paul: Okay. So you graduated with a bachelor of arts in history?

Alexander: Yes.

Paul: And what happened then?

Alexander: Well, I had the equivalent of a minor in economics. So at the time, Haverford technically didn’t have minors then. They do now. And the only real business subject we had was economics. We didn’t have finance majors. We didn’t have business majors or accounting. So I did it about as much as I could have, I suppose, to be ready for business, so I thought.

Paul: Was that intentional?

Alexander: Yes.

Paul: So what gave you the insight to think that?

“I Guess I’ll Go To Wall Street”

Alexander: I’d always been fascinated by money and finance sort of as a passion on the side. I went into college thinking I was going to go into medicine, follow in my family footsteps. And after about three semesters realized this was not what I wanted to do. So then I was enjoying history but thinking, you know, I’ll just get a job. I’m a smart person. I’ll get a job in finance afterwards. I guess I’ll go to Wall Street. I grew up around New York City.

Paul: Whoa, hold on though. I mean, it’s one thing to say that, but was that viable for you? You’re how far into college, you’re saying that?

Alexander: Well, it was probably about junior year when I thought I should do this.

Paul: And were your advisors saying that’s viable? Or did you have any mentors that were saying that’s a good way to go? Because your parents are like “Oh, we’ve lost him. He’s not going to be in the medical industry. It’s a hopeless thing,” you know.

Alexander: So, ignorance is bliss is part of it. And I would also say that one of the wonderful parts of working in academia now is I understand behind the scenes more, maybe, what happened to me along the way. So if you get people that are successful in their career and have always been in academia, that’s what they know. So Haverford is a very small school. Not a lot of the resources you’d have at, say, some of the bigger institutions. So I didn’t necessarily have access to some of the business mentors that I would have had today now that everyone is more focused on it. So I was probably making a lot of those choices on my own in absentia.

Paul: Okay, so I’m trying to think because we’ve talked about, and you’re doing this new entrepreneurial thing, which we’ll get into later, and people are sitting out there listening, and there’s some catalyst that’s going to occur that happened in your life. Maybe you just stumbled into it, and that’s possible, but would make them consider maybe investing in a financial analytics or an MBA or whatever these different types of finance degrees might be. How did you stumble into that? So you didn’t have the advisors is, I think, you’re saying. It wasn’t deliberate. You had a minor in economics. Did you try and go get a job? Or what happened?

What is a Personal Board of Mangers?

Alexander: Well, so I think there will be a couple of parts to this. There will be some lessons learned and takeaways for other people at different stages along this story, and it will also be my journey and how it came about. So, we’ll get to both of those in time. But one of the lessons learned will be just what you’re alluding to now, is making sure, the way I describe it, you want to have your own board of managers around you at all points in your career that change and grow as you change and grow — whether that’s your industry focus, your sector knowledge, whatever it might be.

So, if we look at someone in college thinking about “I want to grow and develop,” say, depending on where you’re studying, some schools are really strong at helping their students think about it. I think Endicott, locally, has a very good reputation about preparing students for careers. Other schools maybe not as much. And so your job is, if I don’t have the right people around me automatically, how do I find them and get them?

So just as you were alluding to, I could have used more of those, not just truth tellers but people knowledgeable about in their different space and how do I learn and grow from them.

Paul: Alright. So let me just reiterate what you’re saying. So are you saying to me — I am in college; I’m a sophomore or junior — I should put a personal board together?

Alexander: Absolutely. I think everyone should have that at all points in their life, and I’ve got it in different aspects of it. Right? I sort of divide my life, when I think about my goals, into what I call the five F’s. So you’ve got your friends, your family, your faith, your finances, and your fitness. And if you think those are the five big buckets, I’m never going to do really well in all five at once, but I can do well in three of them at once. I could be mediocre in all five. So think about it almost as your board composition, as you prioritize your life into different buckets, do you have one or two people that you can go to for those different areas to say, for example, like I’m a new father. I would go to one of my board members and say, “I am really struggling to find the time on my fitness side compared to what I used to before. How did you do it when you were a new dad?” That sort of thing.

So you want to have those people around you that I could have gone and said, “Hey, I’m a history major, and I think I want to go into Wall Street. Is that going to be an easy thing? Am I being a little bit silly here?” I didn’t have that, and I know to do that now.

Putting Together a Personal Board

Paul: Okay. Well that’s a great opportunity for everybody listening to think about that. So let’s just take a little tour down that road. Have you put together a personal board?

Alexander: I do. And I think about it as it sort of constantly evolves. And the way I’ll often think about it is, the way many of us do, January is the time of year people make resolutions. And I will take those five buckets, and I will say “What’s the one thing — maybe two — but really, what’s one thing each year that I’m going to prioritize and do around those and that’s achievable?” And so I’ve got my goals, and then I’m going to share them with my board, which also gives me a chance to reassess, are the people…you could think of it as mentor rather than board, if board sounds too formal. Who are the people around me in my life that are going to help me in that this year — not only guidance but also keeping me accountable? Right? Some of them are friends. Some are associates. It could be anybody you want it to be, but do you have people in your life who are going to give you that salt and that light in the sense. Sometimes they need to tell you, “This is great. Go get it. Work hard. I will support you.”

Other people that say, “I’d put the brakes on there. I don’t if that’s realistic. Maybe that’s a five-year goal,” whatever it might be.

Paul: Interesting. So it sounds very deliberate.

Alexander: Intentional.

Paul: So in January, did you like send them an email? Call them? Do you do it together?

Alexander: Great question. I didn’t need to change any of my board members this year, if you want to think about it that way. Sometimes you need to, whether you’re changing jobs or you’re relocating to a different part of the country or maybe you’re shifting from school to work life. You might need a dramatic shakeup. I didn’t this year. So I already have the people I interact with, and, for me, it was partly just being very clear and open with them. And an email is the best way because it’s on record. “Here’s what I’m going to do this year. Here’s how I need you to help me do that.” And, you know, if someone didn’t have the time or the energy, they would tell me that, and they’d opt out, and I’d find a replacement for them.

Paul: So did you do that in January?

Alexander: I did.

Paul: So you sent out an email. Individualized for each board member?

Alexander: The group I have at the moment—

Paul: They know each other?

Alexander: – was from New York. They all knew each other.

Paul: Alright. So you just sent one email and said, “Hey, men and women, this is what I’m doing. Am I insane? Am I sane? Is this good? Give me your wisdom, caution, encouragement.”

Alexander: Right.

Approaching People to Be On Your Board

Paul: Okay. Cool. I’ve heard of this, but I’ve not heard a lot of people get into the details of the nitty gritty of it. So it’s like, “Oh, yeah. I should get a personal board. That’s a great idea.” Alexander said that. Okay. And then a year later, I still don’t have a board. So when you ask these people to be on your board, did you say well here’s the compensation. Is it done when they’re tired so they make a mistake and say yes. How, how did you approach that?

Alexander: I think it’s dependent on the individual and your relationship with them. So, imagine it’s a work environment, and you have a senior person who you would love to mentor you. How you approach that is very different from someone you might know from church or soccer or somewhere else where you have a relationship established. And I don’t necessarily feel like I’m putting myself out on the line because I tend to think of it as a pay-it-forward type model where I know I need to grow. And I sort of think about it, I’ve got three directions in my life — upwards, downwards, and sideways. I need people above me who are mentoring down to me. I need people below me that I am mentoring and bringing up. And I need people who are my peers who are probably helping keep me sane about where should we be in this journey.

So, if you’re thinking about also the board composition, it’s some of those different types of people. Like people, the downwards ones for me, I’m on their board.

Paul: Yeah, exactly.

Alexander: And my peers are going, “Hey, who’s on your board? How did you do your board? What do we do? How do we talk about this?” Because you don’t have to reinvent that wheel from scratch.

Paul: But what did that conversation look like to one of your mentors?

Alexander: For me, it was as simple as Tom Cole who runs NCS Manhattan, one of my dear friends, one of my best mentors, and it was being very clear of I know I am open and ready for coaching and advice. I’ve seen you pour into other people. I would love some of that knowledge dropped on me.

Paul: And then his acknowledgement was “Yeah, we’ll see” or “Maybe” or “Yes”?

Alexander: I think it was probably more of “I’ve been waiting for you to get to this point.”

Paul: Right. But it just happens to be a conversation that you have, or is there something more formal? Or is there a more emotional commitment to it? It’s sort of like “Hey, would you be my mentor? I’ve seen you do all this stuff. You’re a great person,” and all this different stuff.

And they say, “Yeah, yeah, sure.” And then they really didn’t understand what it was. And so there’s that aspect of it. Then there’s the person who does it, and then doesn’t respond to your questions but basically pries open your life and says things. “Hey, you shouldn’t be doing this,” or, “You should be doing this.” How does that work? What’s that balance?

Who Should Be On Your Personal Board?

Alexander: Great question. It will vary. So let’s take the work environment. So, for example Bob Doll is speaking at an event I’m running tomorrow. Let’s pretend I work with Bob in Nuveen. Bob was very senior. If I could get some of his time in my life on a regular basis, I would be immensely valuable on so many fronts. He probably has a lot of people that ask for that. So I would go into that conversation, knowing in my mind what my ask is, very specifically. It’s probably not a lot because I may not know him. I don’t have a strong relationship. I want be able to set expectations. “Hey Bob, if you say yes to this, here’s what I’d be asking of you. Here’s the frequency. Here’s the detail. And are you comfortable with that?”

And obviously, you need an opt out for the person to say no or not now. And that’s totally fine too because you only want board members who are willing to live into your life.

Paul: Right. So now these people that you’ve selected for your board, is it that they pretty much are passive and wait for you to say something, and then they respond? Or are there people that are actually reaching into your life?

Alexander: It goes both ways.

Paul: Really? Well good.

Alexander: And I think I need two types of those people. Right? So if I had everybody who was passive and I was in a spot in my life where I was overwhelmed, probably nothing would ever happen. So you want to be thoughtful about your board composition — we talked about sort of upwards, downwards, and sideways, different sectors, different industries, different types of your life, probably also different approaches to how they do life, different mentalities — so that you’ve got some people who, you know… I’m a planner. I’m a project management type person. It’s very easy for me to write a note in my list on my phone because that’s where I live. It will be like, oh, every week, I’m going to check in with Bob. I’m going to see how Ted is doing. I want to know what—

Paul: Is that the level to which you’re doing it? Are you in contact with these people weekly, monthly?

Alexander: Not necessarily. But, for me, that is the way that I would manage someone. So I’ve got a buddy who is going through some tough stuff right now. I’ve got a note on my phone, and every three days, I want to call him. And if I don’t, I’m going to move it to the next day.

Paul: So he’s more of your mentee.

Alexander: Yeah.

Paul: Okay. Alright.

Alexander: And there are some of the people on my board who, they just wait for me. They’re really busy. They’re happy to give me time when I’m ready, and there are others who are going to go, “I haven’t heard from you in a month. Are you doing okay? What’s going on?” And I need that.

Why Alexander Went Into Finance

Paul: Excellent. Okay. So let’s rewind a little bit here. We were talking about…you’re in college. You don’t have a personal board. Right? You’re a junior. You’re thinking about finance. The school didn’t really have any advice. Now, what in the world made you think about finance? Was it the money?

Alexander: I’ve been curious about finance and investing, which we’ll find out later when we talk about my current role, is a perfect with that. So that had always been something I had been reading about and studying about, growing up in high school, I really enjoyed, which is probably why the minor in economics made sense. I loved that sort of topic, but it wasn’t something I was as passionate about as the history, which I just enjoyed. Right? So for me, picking up a history book, reading on the beach, something like that is fantastic.

Paul: Yeah, okay.

Alexander: So that was fun. That was a fun study. For me, thinking what do I want to do with my life? What’s practical? Where does the intersection between my interest and my skill set work? And it seemed to be finance.

Paul: In what way?

Alexander: So investing and the idea of being involved in what actually makes the money behind the scenes and helping other people manage their money. It just seemed to be something that I loved reading about so much. So it would be a great fit, I thought.

Paul: Okay. Alright. Good. That’s fair.

Alexander: Fairly ignorant of the whole industry at that point.

Paul: A junior in college.

Alexander: Yeah.

Paul: And you didn’t really have any advisors.

Alexander: I didn’t really know enough to get them. But I would say I was probably a little arrogant back then as well with the assumption that when I got my first job a year after that, I was determined to do it all on my own. And I did. Which I would say is actually pretty stupid because the whole point is, why do it the hard way?

Paul: Well, yeah. I guess it’s what do you think was your rationale of doing it on your own.

Alexander: A little bit of hubris.

Paul: Well, certainly. But I mean, why would you try and lift a car by yourself?

Alexander: I wanted to prove I could, and I think I probably also wanted to prove it to my father too. I felt like this would… You know, not going into the medical field where he was very successful, I could be a bigshot in my own world as well. So there was definitely a little chip on my shoulder.

Paul: Okay. Alright. Interesting. That’s because I’ve been an entrepreneur in a lot of different roles, and I’ve never thought of “I’m going to do this on my own,” just because it’s insane. I mean, you can’t lift a car on your own. I’m just like…

Alexander: Just thinking about starting up a business. You could probably, already there’s three different types of people that you need and the skill sets. And you could say, maybe someone would say, “Hey, I’m good at all of those.” Well, you’re probably average at all of those. You’re not good at all of those. Pick the one you’re good in and find the other people you’re going to partner with. You need those skill sets.

Internship at Wharton School

Paul: Right. Okay. So you said a year later you got a job. So where did you go? Where did you end up?

Alexander: So I actually got an internship that summer. So my junior summer, I’m at the Wharton School at their small business development center. And I was really pleased. I’m thinking this is going to look great on my resume. And it did, but it also was a wonderful eye-opening experience for me because most of the people working there that were my peers were from the Wharton School — the MBAs and the undergrads. And what I quickly realized was, hmmm, all of the company that I’m looking to apply to, all of the people right up the road at Wharton undergrad, my peers, are also applying to. And I’m a huge believer in liberal arts. I think that makes for wonderful long-term success. But if you put the person side by side against a Wharton undergrad… Now, I’ll give a caveat.

It is not required to have an undergrad business degree because there is only one Ivy League school that does and that’s Penn. It has Wharton. If it was required, they would all have it. Right? They don’t. That’s my theory. But there is a tremendous learning curve. These are the best of the best people who knew they wanted to be in finance probably from birth. They are hugely up the learning curve. They’re enthusiastic. They’re excited. They’re doing all the right things.

For an employer to come in, it was very easy to see them and say, “Plug and play. Johnny, I will put you on my desk, and you’re going to be phenomenal.” You put a liberal arts student side by side, regardless of what they majored in, regardless of what they know, they’re going to be at least a half step behind.

Now I would argue that when you join a company, they’re going to teach you the model they want. They’re going to teach you their methods. A liberal arts student has to catch up to the Wharton student, but once they do, if they do, they’ve got other skill sets. They can take off — the research, writing, communing, the presenting that the Wharton students don’t focus on as much. But for an initial employer, that’s a big ask.

Paul: Interesting. Okay, so you were at Wharton in an internship. And then what happened?

Pursuing Management Consulting

Alexander: So after that, there was a combination of consulting and finance for that summer, which sort of opened up my mind. Oh, I’ve got these two different paths. Both look really cool. And I actually realized management consulting is kind of a perfect fit from a liberal arts background education, you know. A little bit about everything. You get to deep dive into different industries, different sectors. You’re working with executives that are way above your paygrade. You’re 22 years old sitting with CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. That’s a phenomenal experience.

So part of me thought maybe that would be a great way to start. And so I pursued those two types of jobs as I was getting out of school. And I thought, “Finance I’ve always loved. That could be great. Or there’s the consulting route.” And I realized the finance was going to be hard, like we talked about, because the Wharton undergrad students are getting those jobs and rightfully so. They are phenomenal.

So I went down the consulting route, and that’s where I started.

Paul: Okay. And what year was this?

Alexander: This was ’99.

Paul: ’99. Okay. So nothing is…

Alexander: We had had the debt crisis in ’98, which seemed like a tough year to get a job. ’99 was a little better. You were getting the internet bubble, so people were enthusiastic.

Paul: Right. That’s what I was just saying. The bubble was just forming, and then 2000, and then 2001 happened. So were you at this same job during 2001?

Alexander: So the way it started out, I actually joined a financial services consulting company, which was a great fit for me, thinking I’m going to cover both of these off. And so I worked there for a year, and I was watching all of the fun stuff happening with the internet bubble. And all of my friends with stock options, working with these really cool companies, and I thought maybe there’s a better way to do this. So I actually, after a year, moved over to one of the internet consulting companies. There was Viant, Razorfish…

There was one called Mainspring that I was able to join right before they IPOed. I thought this is a great fit. What did we have? A fully stocked kitchen. We had a bouldering wall. We had racquetball — all sorts of stuff inside. And it’s me, just a year out of college, thinking this is like the greatest business in the world. I love this. I don’t care how hard I’m working. This is fun.

And when I look back now and realize it was not a business, technically, at that point. It was a charity. It wasn’t making money.

So we IPOed and that’s great. And that was exciting. I was a part of that.

The Bubble Burst: Losing a Job

Alexander: And then the bubble burst. And then the company was bleeding cash, and they let go of all of the analysts because they couldn’t afford any.

Paul: Sure. And then is in Manhattan or…?

Alexander: This was in Manhattan.

Paul: So low rent, you know. Fascinating. Okay, so you lost a job.

Alexander: Lost a job, which, in retrospect, while very tough at the time, was a phenomenal learning experience.

Paul: Oh, yeah. I know exactly what you mean.

So, we’ve been talking with Alexander Lowry of Gordon College.

Alexander: It was a pleasure, thank you for your time today Paul. I enjoyed it.

Paul: Well thank you for coming in.

More Episodes:

This is Part 1 of our interview with Alexander Lowry. Be sure to listen to Part 2 here! We’re talking with Alexander about creating the new MBA Finance Program at Gordon College.

Show Notes:

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