The Beginning of a New Career
My career began with a dot-com startup called What’s For Free Technologies. The pitch to investors was that we were building a website that aggregated all of the free offers found across the web that were categorized into logical business verticals. The website would be optimized to rank prominently for a variety of high search volume terms. Once the website gained enough traffic, our sales team would reach out to companies with each vertical to rent the landing page.
I started as employee number 8 as content aggregator to make some extra money for my family while I went back to college. However, they landed an $11M infusion of venture capital money and began growing quickly. I was immediately made SEO Manager and my job was now half recruiting and hiring and half trying to wrangle in the original group of aggressive and ambitious young college graduates into a cohesive team.
We were successful at developing the website, aggregating the free offers, and creating a sales strategy of which companies we would pitch advertising to. However, the one thing that was overlooked was how to actually get pages to dominate the search engines. They leaned on the old Field of Dreams perspective that if you just build it they will come. But it turns out that there is more to it.
Entrance Into the World of SEO
I was pulled in by the SVP, Marketing and told about the situation. He asked if this was something that I could do. I told him, “yes.” But in reality I had no idea how to. I collaborated with my right hand person and we spent the next two weeks figuring out how the search engine algorithms work and how the top ranking websites earned that visibility. We compiled a 176 page POV on what would become search engine optimization and what we needed to do to be successful – and we were!
Just as our webpages were starting to land consistently on page one, and sale was beginning to rent these pages to big name companies, it became apparent that there was something more going on behind the scenes. We had a party to celebrate our 100th employee within only 8 months when things began to fall apart. We stopped seeing executives in the office and were getting less and less guidance and direction.
The End of the Beginning
That was when I learned what a “pump and dump” scheme was. Unbeknownst to me, was a popular scheme in those days where investor money would be infused into the latest and greatest new tech concept, the company would go public and begin to prop up the share value. When it hit the peak dollar per share, the primary investors would begin selling off huge numbers of shares. The would cash out leaving investors, clients, and employees high and dry.
Although the ending of this story was arduous and painful, I leaned a lot from it and there were a few great takeaways from it. Although I was not paid for the last month of salary, I was given a new career path in a field that was just beginning to take shape.
The Big Takeaway
In addition to the unexpected gift of breaking into the brand new world of SEO, one of most valuable skills that I learned was how to be an effective leader. I saw the best and the worst of leadership at this dot com. Many of the leaders where very cut-throat and created that atmosphere with their teams. I would soon find this similar leadership style in other stops along the way, in both agency and in-house positions. I determined at that point that I was going to lead with integrity and be as transparent as possible with my direct reports and teams.
I was lucky to get a VP that had a lot of legit experience and integrity. I leaned heavily on my SVP, Operations for guidance and mentoring throughout my time there. He always pushed me to be more than I was. He always gave me great advice on how to lead and called out some of the bad direction I was given by other leaders. He also shared a lot of strategy that was playing out behind the scenes. He was not part of that inner circle that would cash out, so in essence was taken advantage of as well and got out before it completely crashed.
What’s For Free died a quick but painful death after only one year. I even have the court judgement in our civil suit against the leaders for unpaid salary. Unfortunately that was never paid. But the lessons that I learned in that single year would prove to be invaluable. It gave me a solid background in a brand new marketing channel and leadership, and widen my vision for the other stops that I would make in my future.