Hello Jesse! Tell us a bit about yourself.
Heya! I’m Jesse, and I’ve been traveling the world for the past four years funding my adventures through building a profitable remote agency, launching affiliate sites and building software.
I began my career in the fitness industry, working for a bundle of companies managed under one firm. It was a family business and very close-knit.
Working directly with the owner across all businesses, mainly focused on operations, sales and marketing, there wasn’t a day that went by where I wasn’t learning, growing or building a new skill set to help one of the companies earn an extra buck.
It was a rollercoaster of a ride for 19 year old Jesse, but I became addicted to it all.
Out of all the projects I worked on, I realized I had a knack for SEO on our eCommerce business. We managed to rank the site #1 for a broad range of terms in Australia (even for the term “supplements” for a good while) that generated millions in revenue for us.
After awhile, I realized how valuable this skillset was to us and that I could sell it to others.
I decided to take that skillset that I had developed and then use it to fund my other passion: travel and photography.
So I quit my job, packed up, moved to Asia then worked hard to keep the adventure going.
Since then, I stair-stepped my way to where I am now by starting a small consultancy, growing it into an agency, then using the profits from the agency to fund development into software and buying affiliate sites.
As I stand now, my focus is on three areas:
- Ranking a small handful of clients in really competitive niches.
- Building Bento into the company I’ve always dreamed of.
- Scaling out my affiliate sites to generate revenues to pour into passion projects.
What motivated you to work on these projects?
I’ve always enjoyed hacking away at my computer and tinkering, and the fact that I can use my skills to build a life I’m passionate about and love is just such a blessing.
I choose my projects based on what my gut feels like is a good decision at the time and just take things one day at a time. If something begins to drain on me, I delete it from my life without any remorse. My ability to ditch failing projects without suffering from the sunk cost fallacy has been so valuable to me over the years.
I have no goals, don’t store ideas or write them down, and like to just let things bubble up with importance. I find keeping things open and flexible has always allowed serendipitous moments to happen — often the most lucrative ones!
How have you attracted users?
Each business I only focus on one channel.
For the agency, it’s Twitter. I chat, make friends, help people out for free and if they like what I’m talking about they’ll check my profile and see I’m offering a free 30-minute call in my bio. They’ll schedule time, we’ll talk and if they’re a good fit we’ll work together. I probably have 30 calls per month from this alone, and only select 1 client to actually collaborate with.
For Bento, it’s manual sales and outreach as well as chatting and talking in communities (Slack channels for example).
For my affiliate sites, it’s pure SEO. Content and PR baby!
What do you believe helped bring you to where you are today?
This is a hard question.
I’d honestly say, I have no idea other than I just take things one day at a time. Something that really helped me out early on was create a list of values I wanted to uphold.
This article will help you understand how to think about this task:
https://taylorpearson.me/core-values-list/
When you know what you value, and you stand strong on them, you’ll feel in control of your life and be able to shape it exactly how you’ve always wanted.
The other big thing is family and friends.
My parents have been so supportive and loving through this journey, that I really couldn’t have done it without them. My friends too. They’ve always been there when things have gotten tough, or I’ve run into a problem that I can’t resolve.
Learning to code, business skills, sales and marketing are all easy to learn as you go when you know what you stand for and have a layer of foundational support to keep you standing strong whenever you hit a road block along the long journey that is entrepreneurship.
Where do you see yourself in ten years?
In ten years, I’d love to be happy and fulfilled with the journey I’ve been on over that decade. I feel blessed to have kept this crazy story going for as long as I have and I can’t wait to see how many adventures and stories I’ve been on by then.
But honestly, I don’t know where I’ll be next week.
“Go with the flow” has always been my motto.
What are some of the biggest challenges you have faced?
Too many to list over the years.
The one that comes to mind recently is being careful of running down the wrong corridor.
What I mean by that, is that when you’re the type of entrepreneur to put your head down and work for months or years non-stop on an idea — you want to make sure it’s the most leveraged business you could tackle, and you’ll love it in 12 to 24 months when it actually becomes something.
If you can’t answer that question for yourself, perhaps you need to work for a competitor or spend time getting mentored to see how those businesses feel when they’re mature.
If you list your values and regularly review them, this won’t be an issue.
What advice would you give to new makers?
On the top of my to-do list, I have a short note in light grey that reads:
“Be kind to yourself, if you won’t who will?”
If you’ve chosen an alternative life script, it’s going to come with challenges.
So be kind to yourself and empathetic to others.
I see so many makers beat themselves up, or talk negative, and honestly, it doesn’t really help anything. You’ll just turn yourself into a mess (I’ve been there, many times).
If you feel yourself doing this, get help or talk through it with someone you love. It’s a long but rewarding journey if you can stick with it.
Where can we go to learn more?
If you want to schedule a call with me, come to Twitter to talk.
If you want to hire our SEO agency to scale your traffic and revenue go to SearchSprints.com.
If you want to try my software, Bento, visit BentoNow.com or talk to us on Twitter at Twitter.com/Bento.