Normally I'm pretty skeptical of these types of stories but I must say I'm pretty impressed. I think you have to hit rock bottom sometimes to get the best out of yourself. The trick is making sure you can push yourself when you're not at rock bottom.
I've seen a few of these types of articles here - I'm just wondering... since this is one of the most intelligent communities I know of, how many people here have given up everything for one reason or another, and pushed back from rock bottom?
With a young family to support, I gave up a secure career in a stable sector to pursue the startup dream. I taught myself programming and started working on my idea full time.
Three years and two failed startups later, I had only $200 left in the bank and decided to throw in the towel.
I started interviewing for jobs but wasn't having much luck. This was a real low point in my life, I had asked my family to live on the poverty line for an extended period of time with the promise of success in the near future. But I had failed. And now I couldn't even get back into the career I had left behind.
I started working on a third idea while looking for a job. But after suffering knock back after knock back from potential employers, things were looking pretty bleak. A family friend wrote out at a check for $4000 to see me through until I got back to work. I accepted the check but it was a humiliating experience to do so.
"The temptation to quit will be greatest just before you are about to succeed."
Then out of no where and completely unexpectedly, my latest idea went stratospheric. It was so unexpected that even now I sometimes pinch myself and wonder how it all happened.
I never did cash the check my friend gave to me and keep it in my desk drawer. From time to time, I take it out and look at it to remind myself how far I've come.
I have hit bottom. Financial issues caused me to declare bankruptcy and the whole affair had me contemplating ending my life.
I'm doing a soft reboot of my life. I love writing software, so there's no need for me to leave my field, but I do need to make a dramatic change in the kind of company I work for. I've spent too many years at big, stale companies, thinking I'm doing the right thing and living the right life, only to end up in more debt and misery that I'd ever experienced. I'd much rather live on less, if necessary, and not end up miserably every day. I'm also considering moving to a new location, if it means getting a better job and living somewhere I love.
This also impacts my family, but so far, the changes have been for the positive. We've spent more time together and both my spouse and I have been happier. It's going to take some time, but I realize I've been living society's dream (big house, big company, etc.) rather than my own to some extent. Hopefully I can carve out a better future.
This site has been a great help. Many people here go off an do things they love, which has inspired me. Sometimes the stories here aren't even about startups, but about a really cool project someone has made, proving it isn't always about the money, but about being happy, and that's what I'm after.
It happens to the best of us. One good thing about rock bottom, there is usually nowhere else to go but up.
And other times, just when you think you can't get any lower, you are hit with a truck.
Unfortunately, I have gone through at least 3 (depending on how you count) of these rock bottoms. Although it was unimaginable at the time, I am a stronger/better person for these experiences.
Funny thing about humans, we always dream. It is important to go after these dreams, but also equally important to realize that we can fall down at any time. Unfortunately, sometimes you just lose control. It is how you get up that matters.
I left a perfectly plausible career, in a field I knew well, to learn enough programming to implement an idea of my own. (I'll recruit a real technical person when I have enough traction to do so.)
This wasn't exactly pioneering, we did have some savings. I would have been better off stripping off still more cruft and going down deeper, but I've got a family and "bottom" wasn't an option.
It's still nuts, as I've heard from many wise and loving people. Those savings could have gone to many other important uses, and I have a duty to make them back. So every day has had an urgent quality, and there have been many sleepless nights. (Come to think of it, what the hell am I doing here on hacker news?)
Not there yet, but things are starting to look up.
I didn't give up much because I didn't have a great deal, but I voluntarily put myself in a place very low (homeless) in the belief that it would be a better place, and have come back from it to be who I am today.
I'm not the only one.
When I put a summary of my story on HN a while ago ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1201162 ) I received a few emails from individuals who had done similar things but felt that they couldn't talk about it and thanking me for doing so.
So yeah, there are others who have put themselves low just to start from there.
In 2001, after 5 years in the army and three years of soul searching, schooling and very junior web programming work during the dot com, I packed up my snowboard and bought a one way ticket from Toronto, ON to Whistler BC with about $3500 in the bank all told.
It wasn't so much a recovery from rock bottom as a fresh start, and it was probably one of the best moves I ever made, but it took another year or two after that move to "come full circle".
I now live in Vancouver, am married to a wonderful woman and have two amazing kids. While at the moment I'm looking for more professionally, for a large portion of my life since that move I was extremely happy in that area as well.
From what I've seen, a lot of people go through these moments at two key times in their lives: In their early to mid twenties, and again in the mid 40's (the famed "mid life crisis"). I think it's more common than most people seem to realize.
As a student at school, (coincidentally, the University of Tennessee) trying to figure out where I really want to be and what I am doing with my life, this is absolutely inspirational.
I usually shy away from these "Do what you love" stories, but when I saw the domain it came from I had to read it. I thought the universe (or PG) was sending me a direct message via HN! (And no, I'm not that stupid or that much of a megalomaniac, I hope.)
So, from one Justin Briggs to another, thanks for an inspiring story, a newfound respect for SEO, and for bringing back some similar memories from my path.
As the writer of the story, I guess I should answer this.
I think the acronym "SEO" feels a bit outdated. The problems and strategies involved in SEO are far more involved than it often gets credit for. There are a number of people who do the name a disservice and do bad SEO.
But the type of work I do at Distilled is working on incredibly creative projects.
It might include projects like managing domain consolidation across 3 domains comprising of pages in the millions without allowing for a massive drop in traffic. To solving speed optimization issues, to account for crawl budgets that limit indexation. Or determining IA on large scale sites. Or helping optimize a site running on a 16 year old CMS that won’t switch.
And in the same day, I may switch gears to brainstorm some of the most popular viral content on the internet. Then I'll work with a client on their customer service center problems, because it's leading to reputation issues online.
Then later that week, I'll be on the phone with the CEO of a cool startup talking through strategic business ideas.
I get to help work on strategies that fall well outside the acronym of "SEO" that help lead to the success of some great brands.
As an ex engineering, math, and science fanatic - I love the problems that force me to just sit in front of a whiteboard for 2 days straight until I come out with a solution I think will work best for a client.
I love the complexity of the problems. However, in the industry, I'm more known for "building links" which is the aspect that allows me to be creative. Also, my "hustle" has made me successful at getting my clients coverage. But in link building, you get to work on projects like data mining and analysis on client data to create interesting content. Then I get to take that same content and pitch it to publications. It's such a dynamic process for one content piece to cover everything from brainstorming concepts, to data analysis, to outreach.
I'm one of the founders of Distilled (mentioned in the story) and I also come from a technical background (maths mainly). The thing I love about SEO is that we get to work on harder problems in more fun ways than any other industry I've come across. You can make it whatever you want - Justin is a great example of this.
And, yeah, he rocks - but you all worked that out already.
In some ways, I'd like to keep SEO's awesomeness a secret from the HN and startup community.
As a developer (I'm not a engineer or computer scientist), I love to build stuff and see people use it. If you build things that are usable by Googlebot (as in, easy to crawl, easy to perceive the content's quality, easy to categorize and associate with keywords) and worthy of citations (links), then your reward can be astronomical...
My last site was a SEO-driven UGC site and I sold it for $10M before I turned 32. I never paid a dollar for marketing, I was the only owner, and I never had more than 5 employees. And with my help, it doubled in revenue after I sold it. It was a fantastic business. Now I'm pretty much free to work on what I like.
It's like that with a lot of things I suppose - you make it what you want. For a while I scoffed at "SEO" but my cofounder dragged me into starting a company and before I knew it I had more interesting engineering problems to solve (still do) than I could shake a stick at and I'm having fun.
Really good to get this type of perspective on modern "SEO", so thanks, Justin.
I was wondering if you can point me towards any resources (books, articles, tutorials, etc.) that embody more of the interesting and worthwhile side of internet marketing and less of the "sleazy" side of SEO?
Obviously there's nothing better than putting things in practice (and that's in the pipeline), but would appreciate any pointers from someone who knows what they're talking about :)
I hope this doesn't seem self serving, but seomoz.org has some of the highest quality information you can find on SEO. In addition to that, I'd suggest articles on http://searchengineland.com/ - they offer high quality content and news in the industry. Anything written by Vanessa Fox on SEL is usually great.
SEOmoz has webinars and a PRO Q&A. Distilled.net also offers videos of our conferences.
As for books, the best I've read are Art of SEO, which is co-written by Rand, and SEO Secrets by Danny Dover (formerly of SEOmoz, now at AT&T) which talks more about the consulting side. The problem with books is that stuff can go out of date quickly. If you're reading a book that talks about PageRank sculpting, for example, it's dated.
So since SEO has such a bad rep, and you're not just updating meta tags and H1s – why call it SEO? Just wondering. Is it because the common business owner knows he needs "SEO"?
There is still the point that my work is done through the lens of improving organic search traffic. Google has just changed to include so many factors, it's much closer to just building a great inbound or web strategy. There are also details that are search specific, that it helps having someone on top of those details, because they can have major impacts. So, at least for now, SEO still works as a title, especially when that's the service people know they need.
I find it equally frustrating that there are people out there pitching meta tag optimization as "SEO" and reducing the perceived value of what I do for a living.
And it's still possible to manipulate the search engines, and lots of companies do it, but that's not actual marketing.
Thank you for your answer (I wasn't really expecting any). I suspected that there must be more to SEO than meets the (ignorant) eye if it does indeed instill such love :-)
I've loved SEO with every fiber of my being for close to a decade. It's an absolutely phenomenal field filled with complexity, challenges, rewards for creativity, attention to metrics and execution. It's hard to find or imagine a business endeavor that produces such remarkable return, nor one that has so many interesting elements (the detective work of uncovering why a site's rankings went up/down, the excitement of a content marketing play, the variety of tactics that can be used to approach a challenge).
How can anyone NOT love SEO? That's the more salient question.
As an engineer building an SEO company, I can think of plenty of reasons NOT to love SEO. Every coin has two sides (which is, effectively, what I said in the other comment) :)
Generally speaking, I agree with you. I down voted though because it's a silly statement to make when you really think about it in a more dynamic way:
* Perspective is subjective
* SEO isn't everything you think it is
I'm an engineer and I'm actually building an SEO company; "SEO" (I really hate that acronym) is many different things. For some people it's a slimy practice, for other people it is marketing but on the internet ("Internet Marketing" and "SEO" pretty much go hand in hand these days).
You might even be interested to know that YC funded an SEO startup (http://www.ginzametrics.com) - they are an SEO tools company (my competitor).
So, can you love SEO? Sure you can, as an engineer, building useful SEO tools is rife with fun and interesting problems. Just gotta change your perspective a bit.
BUT I agree with you in that on a big philosophical whole, SEO is not something I will be doing my whole life; matter of fact I see it as a stepping stone to interests that matter to my spirit and not just my intellect (interesting engineering problems) and my ego (money and stuff).
It has visible short to medium turn returns? I don't do SEO, but it seems like it's a case where you can do some analysis, engineering and tuning, then fairly immediately see some results.
Beats the pants of slower cycle stuff where you need to work for months on the assumption that all your planning and resourcing will actually produce something that is sustainable.
I have the same impression about SEO and also about a lot of other things. While I was in college, I thought web development was easy and for people who couldn't program in C/C++. I was dumb. Now i know otherwise. It can be the same with SEO. And that's beside the point, the story is about determination and hard work. What he chose to do is a sidenote.
