Harry Sanders, from homeless to CEO

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Transcript

Philippe (00:00.142)
Hey, welcome, I'm Harry to the pods. Appreciate you being here today. Youpretty, pretty famous on LinkedIn with your work at Studio Hawk. You're thefounder of this amazing award winning SEO agency with a team of 80 peopleacross Australia, UK, and now North America. That's impressive, man.

Harry Sanders (00:21.043)
Mm.

Harry Sanders (00:24.774)
Yeah.

Philippe (00:27.35)
You've been like Australian business awards for marketing innovation and globalsearch award as well for best large SEO agency and SM rush agency of the yearas well. Right. So like that's a pretty, pretty impressive man. And last butnot least like Forbes under 30 founder building, you know, this agency's job.me, tell me a bit like, you know, about yourself. Like, I know that there wassome

Harry Sanders (00:43.869)
Yeah.

Harry Sanders (00:49.779)
Mm-hmm.

Philippe (00:57.08)
tough childhood and teenage years. Tell us a bit more about this.

Harry Sanders (01:03.645)
Yeah, sure. So, I mean, I've been doing this business now for 10 years. Firstof all, thanks for having me on. Appreciate it. But yeah, I've been doing thebusiness now for 10 years. I started the business when I was 17. And we cankind of drill down into that. So when I started the business, I'd been doingSEO since I was 14, but I was actually homeless at the time. I had a fantasticsocial work and a fantastic mentor that actually steered me into creating thebusiness.

Originally it was just something to kind of get some clients and ideally bestcase scenario get a share house or enough money for rent and it just kind ofhasn't stopped. Here we are 10 years later. You know, we've built a global teamacross Atlanta, New York, London, Melbourne, Sydney. You know, got a lot ofpeople, a lot of clients and yeah, just loving the journey.

Philippe (02:00.045)
Wow, that's crazy. Tell us a bit about your, you said, you know, it's prettyamazing that from like, you know, homeless at 17, like how did you end uphomeless?

Harry Sanders (02:11.251)
So, you know, it's kind of a long story, but to give you the short version ofit, when I was young, my mom was forced to sell her house. And so I moved inwith my dad, who I didn't really spend a lot of time with growing up. And hemoved from house to house with whichever partner he was kind of dating. one ofhis partners decided that I was no longer welcome, that I was baggage.

Unfortunately, a very common story on how a lot of young kids end up homelessand she kicked me out. And my dad was homeless when he was young, so he didn'treally see an issue with it. He thought it would be, you know, I was very nerdyif it doesn't give it away now. I was a super nerdy guy. And so dad was more ofa kind of, guess, a blokey kind of guy. was a sailor. And so he thought itwould toughen me up. And yeah.

Philippe (03:08.941)
Wow, okay, that's crazy. I don't imagine myself being homeless at 17 for sure,but I guess like, did you, what led you to sort of like start this agency? Yousaid you had a mentor, like, yeah, keen to learn more about your journey fromthere.

Harry Sanders (03:32.305)
Yeah, so I mean I got started in the world of SEO at about 14 when I just, youknow, I used to play a lot of video games and I buried myself in that and youknow, I was really excited about this one game called Runescape, which I don'tknow if anyone plays it, love Runescape, still play it from time to time. Andsome of my buddies in my clan back there, they were all web developers and so Iwas, you know, I really wanted to get into web development and that's how Ikind of started and

Philippe (03:49.045)
Yeah.

Harry Sanders (04:02.653)
built a travel website and long story short, because I wanted to travel. I'dnever traveled anywhere. So I really wanted to travel. So built a website, gotsome content, and then I needed to learn about SEO because I wanted people tocome to the website, right? And I fell in love with that part. I love thecreativity of, I guess, marketing blended with tech and logic and really felldown this pathway of SEO and I ended up

you know, a local company reached out and I ended up selling the website, thetravel website to them for what I thought was tons of money at the time, butwas $2,000. And they asked me if I would do some contracting work with them.And I said, yeah. And so I ended up doing that from 14 to 17 before eventually,you know, I actually started the company and then ended up homeless.

Philippe (04:36.383)
Wow.

Harry Sanders (04:58.363)
And then I gave up on the company because I was just trying to find a job orsome income before I met Carly, who was a phenomenal social worker.

Philippe (05:07.957)
Wow. Wow. Wow. That's crazy. And like, I mean, like this, yeah, this is a,obviously like a very interesting story. And like, when you got back to, youknow, your studio and this agency, like, was it easy for you to, find, youknow, clients?

Harry Sanders (05:27.665)
No, mean, so Carly encouraged me to join a business program. It was like agovernment funded business program. I wasn't super crash out of the idea, butshe told me that you got $20 for lunch. So I was in. And I met Graham throughthis business program, really, know, really wise ex CEO, you know, in his lateseventies retired. And he helped

Philippe (05:42.303)
Hahaha

Harry Sanders (05:56.357)
encouraged me to go to some events and meet some people and that's eventuallyafter many months where I got my first kind of client and then I did some Iworked really hard for them and just like every business you know you startgetting referrals so I got referrals from them and I remember after about ninemonths on this between the streets homeless camps and couch surfing I got myfirst share house September 12th will never forget that date and

I just had the idea of, you know, I just sat there and I remember I had nofurniture and I just, I promised myself I'd never go back.

Philippe (06:33.205)
Wow, wow, wow, wow. I guess like what's sort of like, you know, been pushingyou so hard to grow this business, from that day to now, 80 people across like,know, different countries, like, yeah, always the defining moments.

Harry Sanders (06:51.653)
Yeah, I think back then it was this promise I made that, you know, I wasrunning from something. I was running from this idea of being homeless again.I, you know, having two or three clients wasn't enough to diversify my income.I'd, I'd learned that, you know, if you sometimes you just lose one client, youcan end up back where you were. So I was really focused on that. And then Ikind of semi accidentally hired my first staff member because there was anotherperson that was in a

kind of difficult financial situation at the time. And so I lent them somemoney to help them out and said, why don't you come work it off and I can teachyou about SEO and we can kind of collaborate. so once I did that, I was, youknow, all of a sudden I was like, holy shit, I've got to build this thingbecause I've got people that depend on me and rely on me. And I guess that'sbeen the driving force ever since. One of the big things I've always...

Philippe (07:41.287)
Hahaha

Harry Sanders (07:50.451)
found important is to, you know, bring people along with me. So if you look atthe talent of StudioHawk, a lot of them, we've got a world-class trainingprogram for juniors. We take a chance on a lot of people. We hire people with,you know, non-typical background or disadvantaged backgrounds. Because we thinkthat a lot of these people are diamonds in the rough. And so we...

Philippe (08:09.963)
you

Harry Sanders (08:19.315)
We really take it upon ourselves to kind of shape that. And that's, think, havebeen a big part of why we've been so successful.

Philippe (08:25.899)
Wow, okay. So you think that's sort of I guess, shaping from actually noexperience to leading teams and stuff like that. This is the best way to createthe best employees, do you think?

Harry Sanders (08:42.131)
I think if you've got something that makes your employees unique, so for us, wehire unicorns. We say we hire two things in our hiring description. We wantwholesome nerds, that's what we want them to be like, but what we're reallyhiring are unicorns. What we want our unicorns to be able to do is not just dothe work, but be able to talk to clients. And you don't have to be the mostcharming, charismatic person.

but you have to be on top of project management on clients and dealing with allthat stuff, as well as being able to deliver on the work. Because we don't havemiddlemen in our agency. You work directly with your specialist, which is verydifferent than the typical agency model. That was another reason why I think wewere so successful.

Philippe (09:28.702)
And I guess like what was the the biggest you know struggle I guess from likewhen you started the business you hired your first employee now like sort ofWhat was the next big thing?

Harry Sanders (09:41.875)
I think the next big thing was once we hired that first employee was honestlyjust, you know, the business journey at that point, I think is very similar toa lot of business journeys you hear, you start scaling. And for that, wasgetting referrals from our existing clients, training up other staff. And thenI ended up hiring two more staff members. One of them is now my general managerof London, the other is now my general manager of Australia. And so...

You hire more, you get more clients, you make sure you service that. It doesn'treally change until you get to about a million dollars. And a million dollarsis the point where you need to really scale and change the way your agency doesthings. I'm not the person talking to the clients anymore or being the frontfacing. It needs to be, you know, the team managing their own clients. Andthat's when we really shifted more that model of direct access to specialistsby instead, because the business model we have is just SEO.

instead of traditionally agencies that offer a ton of different services andlet's be honest, maybe not all of them very well, we very quickly just said,no, we're only going to do this kind of work. That means everyone in ourbusiness needs to know how to deliver this kind of work. And so that helped usa lot with our scale and also our USP because scaling was a lot easier when weonly needed to focus on one vertical and we could say no to a bunch of otherverticals we didn't want to do.

Philippe (10:53.096)
Mm.

Harry Sanders (11:06.675)
But likewise, it was just, you know, we could deliver a much better qualityproduct because we again only needed to focus on servicing one area.

Philippe (11:17.267)
Yeah, no, totally agree with the middleman parts. And I guess like what wassort of like the biggest change you made from like zero to 1 million and thenfrom one to 10, like what was sort of like the big change in terms of managingyour team?

Harry Sanders (11:34.971)
In terms of managing the team, so when you have 10 people, you know everyonevery intimately. When you have 20, 30, you start having other managers withinthe business. So you have start having different team leaders, you start havingall sorts of different roles. When you start having 80 or now, I think, youeven over the next last few months, I think we've almost got 100 people aroundthe world. It's, you you start having general managers in each region andoperations leads and

Philippe (12:03.239)
Mm.

Harry Sanders (12:04.443)
All sorts of stuff. The whole business changes. The whole way you look at thebusiness has to therefore change with it.

Philippe (12:11.249)
Yeah, gotcha, gotcha. And I guess like, when from what, from the start and whenexactly did you hit your first million?

Harry Sanders (12:23.485)
first million I think it took us honestly it probably took us three years tohit our first million which is quite a long time but once we hit a million wehit three million then five million then ten million quite quickly in a few youknow years of succession from there but it took us a bit of time because Iwasn't you know I was still very new to the journey and I was stilllearning

Philippe (12:39.387)
Wow, okay.

Philippe (12:52.007)
Mm.

Harry Sanders (12:52.979)
Whereas in the UK, hit our first million in two years, in the US, we hit ourfirst million year one.

Philippe (13:01.319)
So what did you, I guess, what did you change like, like go starting in Londonnow and starting in the U S well, so you just, just what changes you make to,to fast track that sort of growth.

Harry Sanders (13:18.343)
I think the key is having more of a global brand, understanding what your USPis, using connections that you have in different markets, different contactsyou know. I think that's all very key to it. mean, the US, had a lot ofbusiness groups. was a part of buddies I could ask for favors or get a foot inthe door. Also, we had marketing budget. We had money to spend. Whereas when webootstrapped Australia,

Philippe (13:25.83)
Mm-hmm.

Harry Sanders (13:48.007)
We had zero dollars. In the US, I had millions of dollars literally to playwith. Same in the UK. You can do things a lot faster with funding. The famoussaying, you've to spend money to make money.

Philippe (13:48.612)
Yeah.

Philippe (14:00.551)
Yeah, yeah, it makes sense, makes sense. What was some of the most unexpectedthings that you discovered about the SEO industry when you started?

Harry Sanders (14:13.543)
Well, I think, and I say this a lot, but I think everyone expects, I alwayssay, nobody starts, nobody goes out to start a shit agency, right? Nobody. Sowhy are there so many shit agencies? Because every agency owner I've everspoken to was like, I started this company so that, because there was so muchbad quality work out there and I was gonna do good quality work. Great, that'sa great mindset. The problem is every agency ever born is thinking that.

Me included. So what actually makes you different and why are these agenciesbad? Are they bad? Do you think because people want them to be bad or they badfor different reasons? And that's what you really need to drill down into

Philippe (14:57.894)
Gotcha, gotcha. So I guess like what were the most important thing you focusedon in terms of like growing your business? Like finding the USP, like whatother things did you focus on?

Harry Sanders (15:10.419)
think we focused on the people side was super important. What I mentionedaround hiring the right people. I think that hiring the right people is 90 % ofthe job. If you can hire the right people, you're off to the races. And what Ithought were the right people, so you don't want to hire yourself, never hireyourself. Hire people that compliment your skills. They can do things thatyou're not good at doing. I don't like being a manager that much. I don't enjoymanagement. I don't enjoy KPIs.

Philippe (15:28.419)
Mmm.

Harry Sanders (15:38.771)
I'm better at being a leader than I am being a manager. So find people that aregreat managers that really enjoy going into KPIs and helping people through allsorts of problems. Whereas I found that quite challenging. I was always more ofa big picture person. Like this is where we're to go. Let's figure it out.Whereas some people don't like that approach and that's why you need managers.But other things in the business, you want to find your USP fast. You want tofind

why someone would give you money over someone else. Like, and I mean, not useyou, but give you money. A lot of startups these days are like, they're toofocused on, they lose track of what problem are they actually solving. Likewhat's the actual problem you're solving? Why is someone gonna pay money forthis solution? Because if someone is not gonna pay money for this solution, ifit's just another chat GPT, AI wrapper that someone could build, frankly, it'snot a business. It's not a scalable business.

Philippe (16:33.368)
Yeah, gotcha, gotcha. In terms of like, you said about like, everyone needs toknow, anyone be able to talk to client and do the work. Is the manager as well,like the typical manager or like you also have them working on theproject?

Harry Sanders (16:50.653)
Yeah, our team leaders still have billables. So they've got less billables thantheir team. But I strongly believe that if you need to have the experience ofwhat your team does, especially in marketing, too often marketing managers, notmarketing managers, but marketing leaders don't know what their teams do. Theyjust manage them. And I think there's a real fundamental problem with that. Andso I really believe that you have to know what your team does and also be doingthat work because SEO is changing so frequently.

Philippe (17:10.105)
Yeah.

Harry Sanders (17:19.869)
to really effectively lead a team.

Philippe (17:22.406)
And how what's what what you think is the best way to retain people?

Harry Sanders (17:30.099)
think the best way to retain people is to make sure you're their best option.Everyone's always talking about like perks and massages and shit like you'renot wrong. Like, okay, that could, if that's what they're really interested in,that could make you the best option. But frankly, I think people are moreinterested in career progression plans. What is my career progression plan?Where am I going in the next 12 months? When can I expect my next raise? What'slike, what do I get if I outperform my KPI? That's the best way to retainpeople.

giving them a good salary, a good progression plan is how you retain staff.Having a good culture is very important and we invest literally hundreds ofthousands of dollars into every year into having a good culture anddeliberately designing that culture, creating culture books, handbooks, teamlunches, I could name the amount of things we do and you will see that everyoneat StudioHawk really appreciates that culture but how you really keep them iscareer progression.

Philippe (18:30.085)
Gotcha, gotcha. So I guess this is something that you talk from the start, likewhen you hire them, or is this something that you've built across all theseyears? Is it defined already, or is it person?

Harry Sanders (18:48.573)
So the great thing about just doing SEO means that there's a very, very definedcareer for anyone that's doing SEO, right? Now, if we were to do differentservices or if we were a smaller business, it'd be a lot harder. But I can tellyou exactly what the journey will look like from your junior level one throughyour junior level two, three, specialist level one, specialist level two,senior level one, two, three, executive search specialist one, two. These arethe career, these are the salary brands, these are KPIs.

Philippe (18:55.947)
Mmm, yeah.

Harry Sanders (19:17.331)
These are the things that each of these roles have. At the end of junior, yousit an exam. At the end of specialist, you sit an exam. And there's testingperiods with our head of learning and development. These are things that we'vebeen able to build out because we just do one thing. Now, these weren't allbuilt out at the start. That would have been an impossible task. But withscale, we now have a budget for a dedicated learning and development managerwho does nothing but make sure that our team is up with.

standards, the latest and greatest tech, the latest and greatest learning,Wikipedia tools, or wiki tools, and just training, hands-on training with theteam.

Philippe (19:54.036)
Got you, got you. What's your thoughts actually, since we talk about latesttechnology and SEO, what's your thoughts on the future of SEO and the rise ofAI search and everything?

Harry Sanders (20:04.691)
Mmm.

think it's a super exciting period. a nerve-wracking period, but also anexciting one. I think SEO has been for the past probably year, maybe two years,I would say now, two years transitioning more into this idea of earned media.It's not really about, and I don't think SEO has been this way for six years.SEO hasn't been about cheap tricks for six years. It's been about buildingcontent, building technical, building backlinks. It hasn't been cheap tricksfor a long time.

Philippe (20:27.383)
Hahaha.

Harry Sanders (20:35.941)
Now more than ever, it's your digital PR, it's your content strategy, it's yourinformation architecture. It's these things that maybe historically weren't ascommon in SEO that are now becoming more more common. Even things like video isbecoming a big trend, but AI search is still growing. It's still evolving. Inthe tech world, feels like everyone's using it, but realistically, very fewpeople are.

Search GPT is still about the same market share as Bing, and it uses Bingsystem. I have high confidence though that there will be more AI adoptionbecause that's obviously a great thing for SEO, more LLMs, more optimization,more stuff going on. And we've been very busy doing that and optimizing forthat, but the secret's kinda out now.

Philippe (21:09.473)
Yeah.

Harry Sanders (21:30.695)
How do you optimize for chat GPT, search GPT, perpexity or anything like that?Well, they're all search engines fundamentally. And so if you're doing theright stuff with your digital PR, with your information architecture and withyour content strategy, guess what? If you're ranking well, you're gonna get inthose. I expect in the early days of LLMs, it's still very, very early, therewill be some cheap tricks that get figured out. Whereas SEO is a bit morerefined, but.

Philippe (21:36.749)
Ha

Harry Sanders (21:58.867)
I think that even then, cheap tricks don't last long. It'll be about whounderstands the earned media landscape.

Philippe (22:04.556)
Hmm, gotcha, gotcha. So let's say like, you know, someone is looking to start abusiness in whatever industry, like what would you recommend them or give, youknow, advise them to start doing like from the start? In terms of like, youknow, the SEO and like the marketing.

Harry Sanders (22:19.761)
In terms of what so?

Harry Sanders (22:25.073)
offer a brand getting started. Frankly, I would just focus on getting goodpress, making sure that the website's laid out in a simple manner. The amountof startups I see that they make such a crazy website layout and crazy menu andcrazy graphics and everything. And it never even gets picked up by Googlebecause it's all client side rendered using JavaScript on their latest techstack. It's like, guys, keep it simple with this stuff.

Your consumers frankly don't care what cool tech you have on the website ifthey can't use it or find it. So make it something simple. Use Next, use Vue,use whatever, but make sure it lays out really well and you're actuallydelivering the content that people want to find. Your pricing, your about, yourcase studies if you're B2B or if you're B2C, your reviews, all the differentthings or the industries that you serve or the customers you serve, all thethings that people actually

want to find.

Philippe (23:24.002)
Yeah, gotcha. So it's more about the experience than like the tech itself.Like, is that what you're

Harry Sanders (23:29.915)
Absolutely. Yeah, and if you if you're sitting around thinking that you've seensome YouTube video and you're gonna create a hundred chat GBT articles a monthYou are dreaming like Create one or two really quality articles. You can usechat GBT to help you draft them up But I guarantee if you use chat GBT for thewhole thing you're gonna create crap You know how many you think you're theonly genius out there that's using chat GBT to output content like you reallyin this day and age

original content gets better cut through than any time in the past five yearsbecause so many people are now trying to rely on chat GBT.

Philippe (24:07.778)
Yeah, gotcha, gotcha. What's your thought on YouTube and like the social mediaand stuff like in terms of like helping you with the SEO and everything?

Harry Sanders (24:18.149)
Yeah, I think organic social like we talk about this thing called brand signalslike good organic social Can send a good brand signal. I think video is waymore powerful organic social media is You know, don't think it's thatimportant. I think your like video is becoming a very powerful Brand signal,you know consumers like consuming those those short video clips and

and being able to find ways to produce those, think is very important.Depending on your industry, if you're in e-commerce, you've already heard ofUGC for years. If you're in SaaS or B2B kind of thing, well, it's probably lessimportant from a video perspective unless you've already got a big brand.

Philippe (25:05.441)
Hmm. Gotcha. like for service business or like, you know, people selling like,you know, the small SMEs and service business, do you think like YouTube willbe like a good way for them to get clients?

Harry Sanders (25:23.047)
Not really, unless they're solving a very niche issue, then yeah, that peopleare looking for, otherwise no.

Philippe (25:25.503)
Mm-hmm.

Philippe (25:30.88)
interesting.

Harry Sanders (25:32.613)
Yeah, I think that look and that's a probably a pretty controversial opinion Ithink that if you have something that's visually engaging that people arelooking for then absolutely but Okay, so seo for instance. We do we've done alot of video and we haven't seen that much uptick as a result That's not to sayit doesn't work. I've seen guys like know, nil patel and guys do a lot But theywere quite early on in the game Whereas now you have to pivot it and have aninteresting angle

We're working on some concepts around that but you really have to have a reallyinteresting angle. Otherwise you just become another voice

Philippe (26:09.045)
Hmm, gotcha, gotcha. What's, I wanna obviously ask you about very SEO specificquestion and stuff, but I guess like what's your thoughts on WordPress andlike, you know, the tech itself and the fact that it's losing popularity interms of like, you know, tech for their websites. Like what's your thoughts onWordPress?

Harry Sanders (26:18.502)
Yeah.

Harry Sanders (26:32.893)
Yeah, WordPress is a great CMS. It's been around for a long time now.Developers hated WordPress when it first came out, and they're starting todislike it again because it's not anymore the latest and greatest toy. I thinkthat WordPress is great for 80 % of service-based businesses, right? Frankly,it is all you need, and it does the job.

very very well it's very easy to find a WordPress developer to do things andget things set up that's hence why I don't think developers like it too much atthe moment because it's they're looking for and smiley they want to find waysto you know find new knowledge and new things that they can charge more for youknow HubSpot's another great alternative HubSpot is very expensive okay it justis we're on HubSpot now you know it costs ten to thousands of dollars to do aproper HubSpot

Philippe (27:23.988)
Yeah.

Harry Sanders (27:32.211)
you know, integration website, then you've got your monthly charges. It dependson how big your business is, but business aside, as a StudioHawk, you know,we're spending tens of thousands of dollars a year on HubSpot. And that mightbe more than that. I don't actually know the number off the top of my head. Butmost people WordPress is fine. If you're e-commerce, probably Shopify. Ifyou're not on Shopify, you know, probably a platform. If you've got somethingreally customized that you can't put on Shopify, then you're probably onsomething like Magento or...

neato or something like that. But the platform itself doesn't really matter.Everyone gets so obsessed with the platform. The platform is, let me promiseyou, is not going to make or break your business. Promise you.

Philippe (28:02.087)
Hmm, what's your thoughts? Yeah

Philippe (28:12.723)
Hehehehe

I guess it's also like, you know, the use of ease of use and everything. Andlike, you know, I don't know if you have worked with website using workflow andall this. Do you think that the SEO capabilities is, all right to, to, peoplewho start their business?

Harry Sanders (28:24.775)
Mm-hmm.

Harry Sanders (28:33.021)
you're starting out they're amazing as you get more advanced you know you startfinding problems right this is you know if you're starting out on a Squarespacea Wix website all these amazing platforms you don't have to worry too much youknow webflow the problem is and you start wanting to do international rolloutsif you start wanting to get more data if you start wanting to tinker withreally specific things that's when these platforms

Philippe (28:41.192)
Yeah.

Harry Sanders (29:02.397)
sometimes might not be the best option. So you just have to kind of look atthat and really make an assumption.

Philippe (29:11.507)
Hmm. Okay. Interesting. let's talk about more about, the, like your day to dayin your personal life and like how you handle sort of like your, guess, like,I'm not too sure about your personal way. I guess like, what's your, what'syour day to day routine and, and a habit that you, you keep to make yourself,you know, like, your, your best self, I guess, for your, for your work.

Harry Sanders (29:39.763)
Day-to-day routine I don't have like I know there's a lot of gimmicky shit withfounders being like I wake up at 5 a.m. And I have a run or I drive my car or Ido this or Frankly if that works for you great I think most of its bullshitmost of my mates that have got very successful businesses don't really have aroutine like that for me I wake up I Get a coffee and I start my day. I go havea shower wake up. Have a shower. I'll get coffee

Realistically, I just hit the inbox. I immediately start with high prioritytasks. I look at my calendar. Where's my car? I've actually probably looked atmy calendar the night before just to see what am I gearing up for the next day.Looking at my calendar again, seeing if overnight, because again, I work on aglobal time zone. I might have someone put something into my calendar fromLondon or from the US that was critical or from Australia, depending on, youknow, my assistant will be kind of coordinating against different time zonesand kind of working on that.

See what's pressing. Is there anything absolutely pressing or anything I reallydon't want to do that day? I try and do that first. And then I go through justthe rest of my inbox. I've got my Slack, my WhatsApp, you know, try and, thenwhenever there's a lulls kind of like, okay, where do I think I could spendtime? Where is the business heading? Where should it be heading? What am Igoing to gut feel on? What does my founder gut?

tell me right now that needs to be looked at. Doesn't mean I'll make a decisionbased on that, but I might ask my general manager in respective business histake on something. It could be founded, it could be unfounded. That's what myday to day really looks like. And I think that's an honest take of what, youknow, hundred person company's day looks like. I'm not dealing with anyclients. I don't directly manage any staff members, but that's what my daylooks like.

Philippe (31:30.802)
Hmm, interesting. You talk about gut feelings and like founders gut feelinglike, tell us a more like how do you sort of sense that like yourself?

Harry Sanders (31:35.027)
Mm.

Harry Sanders (31:42.515)
So, I mean, you just kind of like one of my, actually, that mentor in the earlydays, he always told me to walk the floor. And these days, you don't have likea factory where you walk the floor, but you kind of just kind of get a vibe inthe office. What's the culture like? Do people appear stressed, overworked? Doyou think there's capacity in the team? Do you think there's certain segmentsor areas that are lethargic or lazy? Do you think there's certain areas of thebusiness that are working really hard that could use additional support?

That's kind of what I mean by the gut feel. Now sometimes, you you might get agut feel on someone. Remember, it's a larger agency. I might look at someone inthe agency like, what is this person doing here? Like who is this person? Likejust gut feel impressions. Like what are they doing? I'm never ever going tofire that person. That's not my job. In many cases, I'm probably three levelsremoved from them. It would be a disruption to the business.

Philippe (32:25.053)
Mm-hmm.

Harry Sanders (32:37.695)
And frankly, I don't even know what would happen if I tried my general managerwould just be like what the hell you're doing So I would then in turn go to myhead of operations or my head of people and culture and just get a vibe ofwhat's going on there this person seems like a bit checked out or somethinglike that what's Sometimes I would like be like, yeah, they're like We'rewrapping them up or something like that or in their own performance improvementplan or you know, be something like that other times it could be

they're actually having a really tough personal time and you're like, okay, youknow, back off, let them go through that. Everyone goes through things. I willsay I'm not often like, you know, I've given a very harsh example there. That'snot really what I would tend to do. I'm more looking at like, okay, I feel likeour sign on process isn't, could be tweaked. I feel like I'm not feeling thelove in the first week when I sign on. And then I will bring that up with

head of client retention who handles that process and he might go, Harry,frankly, I don't know what the hell you're talking about. We had one customerout of 400 say that they didn't feel the love, but we did a CSAT score and 99 %of people are happy with the onboarding. So then I'll drop it because I'm justlike, hey, how'd it go? It turns out it wasn't right. And you just have to lookinto that. You have to trust the people you hire that when you identify someoneand something can bring it to them, if they say it's not a problem, cool. It'snot a problem.

Philippe (33:54.172)
Mmm.

Philippe (34:03.815)
Yeah, gotcha, gotcha. Have you ever like, you know, during your growth of the,your business have a struggle with like self doubt or like imposter syndrome,like sort of things that, you know, could block you to, move forward.

Harry Sanders (34:20.755)
Yeah, all the time. mean, all the time. think everyone, if you're not, if youdon't feel some level of imposter syndrome, you're probably, you know, notstriving high enough. Um, I think that a lot. I'm 27 now I've, you know, gotthis global business. I've got other businesses that I'm invested in or, um,co-founded in. Like there's always a lot going on. Um, you know, you do oftenfeel like, how did I go from being a 17 year old kid?

Philippe (34:29.66)
You

Harry Sanders (34:50.823)
that didn't even have a house to where I am now. But I think what helps me isreally, and I know a lot of people do a lot of different things around impostersyndrome. I just look at my scorecard, like these are decisions I've made, thisis what's gotten me there. And I put my head down and I keep making decisions.Because I think...

One thing I did some training with the SAS, which is like the Australian eliteservices. And look, they're pretty high up there. They're no Navy SEALs. Butone of the things they said is in combat, like in business or anything you do,the worst thing you can do is freeze. It doesn't matter if you fight, doesn'tmatter if you flight, but don't freeze. And I think that's very true. And Ithink in a business capacity, that means keep pressing forward, always pressforward. And if you are too scared to press forward, then sell.

Philippe (35:35.845)
Hmm.

Harry Sanders (35:47.559)
But don't ever just sit there inundated with what you're gonna do. Makedecisions. Any decision is better than no decision, because no decision istechnically a decision, but a very shitty one.

Philippe (36:02.587)
Yeah, gotcha, gotcha. I guess like how did you know that SEO was like, this isit, like this is your, this is gonna be your big business. How did you sort oflike, decided that?

Harry Sanders (36:16.605)
That's a good question. I think I've really been asked that. How did I knowthat SU was it?

You know, I hired people and I made a life for myself and other people out ofSEO. For me, it wasn't, could SEO be a 10,000 person business? I don't thinkso. I think frankly, it's, you know, it's not feasible.

Philippe (36:38.448)
Mm-hmm.

Harry Sanders (36:41.971)
But I think what happened was I just kind of kept putting one foot in front ofthe other. think SEO could be a 300 or 400 or 500 person business could be. Infact, it even has been a multiple thousand person business. So yeah, I mean,who knows where the limit is. But why SEO? I was passionate about it. I enjoyedit and I still do enjoy it.

And I think that's about as good as you can come. think everyone's so obsessedwith making the next billion dollar company. Forget the next billion dollar company.How are you going to make a 10 million dollar company? If you've never made a10 million dollar company before, forget your billion dollar idea. Focus on a10 million dollar idea.

Philippe (37:25.208)
Hmm, makes sense, makes sense. No, that's, that's really, that's really true. Iguess like, you know, you talked about like, your mentor when you started thebusiness, have you got over mentor that came about and after you, you'll growfor any coaches. What's your thought on that?

Harry Sanders (37:35.955)
Mm.

Harry Sanders (37:46.897)
Yeah, I mean, I've worked with a lot of mentors and coaches over the time. Atthe moment, I don't really have like a mentor or a coach. I hire coaches for myleadership team and for my organization, but I don't personally have one. It'ssomething I would be like open to exploring, but it's kind of one of thosethings at this stage of the company, the kind of mentors I want.

very tricky to kind of organize the time and go through that. So I do need it.That's one thing I need to work on, like getting to that next level andstarting to reach out to the mentors and the next kind of threshold becauselike, it's weird, like mentoring is interesting because you can't really justgo to like the top of a field and say, Hey, can you mentor me? A lot of peoplethink that, but frankly, it's just, it just

It doesn't work. I get a lot of requests for mentorship and I wish I really dowish I could mentor everyone. I would love the idea and just sitting down anddoing that with everyone, but I wouldn't get anything done. And frankly, Idon't even know if I'd be the best person to tell you how to go from zero to amillion dollars. I would be much better at telling you how to go from fivemillion to 10 million or 10 million to 20 million. But not zero to one becausethat was a long time ago for me and I'm sure the landscape is verydifferent.

But I need to find more people that can help me go from 20 to 100. But that'ssomething I've got to work on. But they wouldn't talk to me until I was doing20 million because they're not going to, you you kind of see what I'm gettingat there. You kind of need to hit a certain score before you can reach out tothat next layer.

Philippe (39:28.898)
Yeah.

Philippe (39:34.231)
Hmm, interesting. Are you part of any business group of community or sort ofthings that, do you think that sort of could help as well?

Harry Sanders (39:46.375)
Definitely. Yeah, like I'm a part of YPO which is I'm not sure if you've heardof that. That's an organization called Young Presidents Organization Now mostof these communities most of the good ones again, they've got requirements,right? So YPO I think is a valuation of about 20 million dollars or revenue ofabout 10 million dollars EO is a smaller version of that. That's a revenue of amillion dollars But I'm not they're the only two that I'm a part of

Philippe (39:59.317)
Hehehehe

Harry Sanders (40:15.889)
I'm not really a part of anything, you know, other than that, because again,you kind of, you kind of want to network with people around your size andaround your scale or even bigger because that's where you learn. So yeah,you're not going to be able to join EO till you're already doing a milliondollars.

Philippe (40:32.269)
Yeah, makes sense. And so those community, do you think like, know, help toconnect with like peers like, like, know, in the same sort of stage?

Harry Sanders (40:42.023)
Yeah, yeah, incredible. Like EO was incredible for helping me like learnbusiness habits, learn, you know, read books like Rockefeller Habits orTraction or EOS, which are remarkable kind of systems for running a businessand helped us really scale from one million to where we are now. They're very,very fundamentally like great learnings and the people you surround yourselfwith and YPO has been amazing because I'm dealing with

companies that are billion dollars or a hundred million dollars or largecompanies around the world and you get to kind of network with them, chat tothem and be around them. So yeah, it's tremendously valuable. without, again,I'm not saying that by any means I've been able to do this myself. I've hadfantastic mentors at different sections and different stages and groups like EOand YPO. But I always say it's best to be the small fish in a big pond. I don'tever want to be the smartest in the room.

Philippe (41:41.528)
That's an interesting one. And in terms of personal development, you talkedabout SCS, which obviously never did that. What other stuff have you done? Andwhat would you recommend someone who's a young founder and stuff?

Harry Sanders (42:01.939)
obsessed with personal development. Look, I think the first step is dosomething, build something. I don't care what it is. Just build something, dosomething. The more boring the better, frankly. You want to build a HVACbusiness. Dude, I guarantee you, if someone comes to me tomorrow and they said,Harry, I've got this AI company that's going to do a billion dollars, or Harry,I've got this HVAC company.

Philippe (42:11.639)
Mm-hmm.

Harry Sanders (42:31.325)
that I want to scale to a million dollars, I am putting money in that HVACbusiness every day of the week because those businesses are way more likely tomake money and way more likely to be disrupted than you having the nextmulti-billion dollar AI idea. So I think to build something, to startsomething, it could be a trade, could be a service like a studio, could be aproduct.

Philippe (42:35.788)
Ha ha ha.

Harry Sanders (42:58.545)
I don't care, but you'll learn a lot just from starting something, even if youscrew it up, even if you completely fail it. Then you will by just having thisidea. like, don't, start working on it. Like everyone gets obsessed withtelling everyone what they're doing all the time. You know, there's a study Iread the other day. It's about like by telling everyone before you've donesomething, you've already gotten half the dopamine or like three quarters ofthe dopamine from doing that action and you haven't done it yet. So.

Philippe (43:26.903)
Yeah.

Harry Sanders (43:28.645)
just do it. Close yourself off, startworking on it. That would be the advice in terms of getting something started.And then your personal development will come from that. You will immediatelyhave more credibility by merit that you've built something. The amount ofentrepreneurs or people that haven't actually started anything that are soobsessed with getting advice or figuring out how to solve it first, just go outand do it. There's no amount of advice I could.

sit with you for a year and give you the playbook and everything but you willlearn more in six months you doing it than you will listening to me.

Philippe (44:03.499)
Hmm, interesting, yeah. Is there something that you've learned about yourselfthat was like, shit, like I didn't know that about myself, like throughout yourexperience.

Harry Sanders (44:15.475)
Yeah, a lot. I mean, the thing is you're changing every year. Like I would sayevery year I learn more things about myself or change the way I do things. I'mvery good at bringing people together or bringing things together like binding.I'm very good at seeing potential in people. I'm not particularly skilled atmanaging or a lot of things. So, but I'm very good at hiring people anddelegating things. So I really make sure I'm in that zone of genius and reallyworking on that.

but you're constantly finding out things about yourself. And that's what'sexciting. Like you're growing a lot on a business journey that on a pace thatyou just wouldn't be otherwise. I mean, you know, at 27, I feel like I've livedtwo lives. You know, I've lived in the U S I've lived in the UK. I've lived inAustralia. I've, you know, uh, made best friends all around the world. I've gotto travel and do experiences that 17 year old me never would have dreamed of.Um,

And that's all because I started something and I pushed the envelope. alwayssay, you know, you've always got to be pushing the boundaries of your comfortzone.

Philippe (45:19.75)
Hmm. Yeah. That's very interesting. I guess like when, when you picture your,the future of your company now, like what excites you the most and what you'repreparing for.

Harry Sanders (45:31.237)
I'm always the most excited, not about revenue or, you know, stuff like that.I'm excited about the people. It's always what inspired me to start thejourney. It's always what's inspired me to go further, whether it's the clientswe're helping and seeing their businesses transform or making them look amazingand having that experience that cascades into their life. You know, havinggreat opportunities for our team and our staff and giving people a go. I mean,that's ultimately what it's about.

The people at the end of the day if there weren't any people Dude revenuedoesn't excite me anymore like the excitement is the growth And theopportunities that come from that

Philippe (46:10.07)
You said you invest in few pieces of core value. What's your next thing?

Harry Sanders (46:19.187)
Can't talk about that right now. I've got a few things I'll be announcing atthe end of January, but yeah, unfortunately can't talk about them rightnow.

Philippe (46:26.644)
Okay, that's all right, that's all right. I guess like, you know, maybe a lastquestion for Meh, if you could give one piece of advice to someone that's juststarting out, where would it be?

Harry Sanders (46:41.159)
I love the saying, most people overestimate what they can do in one year andunderestimate what they can do in five. I've got this theory that if you canstick out even a terrible business for five years, you will somehow besuccessful, right? Just by timing market. It takes time for a business to besuccessful. Don't be discouraged because your business didn't take offimmediately. I made 40 grand in my first year of business, maybe evenless.

And now we're doing a lot more than that. So don't be discouraged and try notto compare yourself too much to others. I you know, I chat to young foundersand one thing that really breaks my heart is when they're like, you know, I'vegot this $60,000 of business, but I'm going to stop doing it because it's nevergoing to scale to a billion dollars. Like that is the saddest thing I've everheard. Like that is so remarkably upsetting that you've said that becauseStudioHawk was doing

Philippe (47:33.222)
Yeah.

Harry Sanders (47:40.851)
$60,000 and it will probably never scale to a billion dollars, but it willprobably one day scale to 100 million dollars and Would you say a hundredmillion dollars isn't good enough because it's not a billion dollars Especiallywhen you know where I've come from on the journey No, you take those and youtake the lessons and you reinvest into another business if that's what you wantto do but sometimes people just need to focus on the next five years and aimsmaller than a billion dollars

Philippe (48:07.902)
Yeah. What are the big, I guess, like misconception that people think like,cause you know, we hear a lot of things and on social media, gotta like, youknow, hustle hard and like, were you sort of like, you know, in that samementality when you, when you worked at, you know, a studio?

Harry Sanders (48:27.653)
Yeah, I mean not gonna lie the first three years your business probably fiveyears. Let's be real You are gonna be hustling hard like I don't like the wordhustle hustles kind of like Hustle like to hustle is to like to hustlesomething out of someone. That's not what you're doing. You're working hard youare Busting your ass you are trying to solve problems that a lot of peopleprobably haven't solved But yeah, you're be working 80 hour weeks 90 hourweeks

Philippe (48:40.202)
Yeah.

Harry Sanders (48:53.959)
What you've read about sacrificing things, sacrificing hobbies, things. Yeah,shit, that happens. Friendships, it's sad. I wish I could tell you it was allsunshine and rainbows and that's how you're gonna make a fantastic business.Does that mean that, you know, that means it's not for everyone? Does that meanthat it's something that's not worth it? That's for you to decide. I think thatthe first few years take a lot of time and even now it's a lot of work.

You know, you read online about people with Ferraris and Lamborghinis andtraveling the world and doing all this stuff. That's just not, it's just notlife. That's just not the reality. You know, I love working. I love doing it.But I think that if you're, you know, chasing that entrepreneurial life becauseyou don't want to boss, you want to be your own boss. Can you do it withoutworking that hard? Sure. And some people have, but if you're trying to start abusiness in a competitive area,

Probably not, you probably need to rethink like, he's entrepreneurship for meor can I be an entrepreneur? Like there's nothing wrong with having a greatjob. That's the other thing that I think there's a big misconception about.Like there is nothing wrong with having a great job and leading change withinthat. And actually a lot of the time you can be more successful by working witha mid company or a mid-size company or working your way up, getting stockoptions or even just getting a great salary, then you might be.

Philippe (50:01.136)
Mmm.

Harry Sanders (50:20.435)
starting a business.

Philippe (50:21.649)
No, that's, that's, I think they're very true. Thank you. Thank you, Harry.I've got like a last little game. I've got a set of cars here. Let's haverandom question that I actually don't know. Even know what the question itself,but I would love to, if you, you know, there's 20 cards here. If you can pick anumber and you can like just see what, what is the question, would you be infor that?

Harry Sanders (50:29.939)
Mm.

Harry Sanders (50:45.747)
Yeah, I'll be up. Let's go. What is it? Just a number between 1 and 20 was uh,All right, hit me with uh, hit me with 17

Philippe (50:49.831)
Yes, that's it. Yeah. Between one and 20.

Philippe (50:55.283)
17.

Philippe (51:04.005)
Okay. Are there particular people around who you feel squashed or cut off ordisengaged?

Harry Sanders (51:11.91)
In terms of what?

Philippe (51:12.787)
I'm not sure. This is the question.

Harry Sanders (51:14.771)
Like people people around that I feel like a disengaged or disconnectedfrom

Philippe (51:18.63)
Yeah, squish off, cut off, or disengage, I guess any particular type of people,I think that's, that's probably the question.

Harry Sanders (51:29.265)
In my life, would say, look, I used to be obsessed with, know, I struggled withthis for a while. I wanted people to like me, you know, I really, you know, andI think a lot of people do. I wanted to do the right thing for everyone. And Istill believe in doing the right thing for everyone, but I've given up onpeople that don't like me. The people that don't like me, frankly, the peoplethat, you know, they're...

Philippe (51:37.265)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Harry Sanders (51:56.723)
They're very content in this zone. They don't ever want to leave their comfortzone and they look at me as As a threat to their comfort zone and their way oflife Those people don't like me they never will and that's totally fine becauseyou know what? They're not necessarily my people either I like the people thatpush the comfort zone or try new things or you know that have traveled that youknow Just just done something. So yeah, I would say you just gotta be

deliberate in who you know will get along with you and who won't.

Philippe (52:27.347)
And when did you understand that?

Harry Sanders (52:33.043)
probably like three years ago, not that recently. Like, was just like, why dothese people dislike me? I'll be super nice to them, I'll do everything, I'llbe super friendly, I'll like work incredibly hard to be their friend and theystill won't like me. And I realized, well, it's a mix of what I've achieved inmy life by going outside my comfort zone and by pushing, it threatens theirworld image of, well, just do the safe thing. And so by me being around, itbecomes a comparison point and

Philippe (52:34.706)
Hahaha

Harry Sanders (53:02.949)
it makes them feel unhappy because they can see that. And I think a lot ofpeople will see that on the journey. Unfortunately, you really find out whoyour real friends are.

Philippe (53:12.54)
Wow. Yeah, that's so true. Thank you, Harry, for your time. It's been anamazing interview here. The experience that you had has been very, very greatto hear. And thank you for your time again.

Harry Sanders (53:29.747)
Thank you, thanks for having me.

 

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