The Accidental Entrepreneur: Benas Leonavicius on Niche Specialization and Client Selection

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When AI first came into play, there was no sort of search involved, but there were sort of maybe signs that maybe something will change. But then I think after a year when since ChatGPT was released, this is where a lot of fear starting to creep in and do whole like SEO and Google World because we thought, you know, this is it. This is the end of Google. This is the end of search. You know, people are going to move to ChatGPT and ask everything and there and that's it. You know, Google is doomed or something like that.

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I don't know that I've ever had somebody come on who immediately has such an energetic vibe and smile. So Vanas, thank you so much for bringing that energy because it is the end of your day, it's the beginning of mine, so I can use all of the energetic confusion I can get right now.

Oh, wow. Thank you so much for such a sweet introduction. Yeah, I actually thank you for and also like, you know, thank you for having me on the show. Glad to be here. Yeah. Yeah.

For those who are just meeting you for the very first time, Bayness and I'm going to. Sorry, Butcher, your last name probably Leon Vicious. You are from Lithuania and you have talk Thrive Agency. What I find really interesting is that you are an accidental entrepreneur. You started SEO while writing articles for Pocket Money. Talk to us a little bit about that early journey. What were you doing and how did you discover that this was something you were really skilled at?

Yeah, sure, I, to be honest, like, I never thought I was gonna like be a full time freelancer or even do agency or anything like that. Back when I was at university I knew I wanted to kind of do something, start something on my own, but it always felt like kind of a side hustle thing, like I want to do some side of a sort of a side hustle. And that was actually back when I was in high school. So as soon as I started university I just tried a bunch of things. E commerce stores, writing articles, just doing anything and everything that I can kind of think of. And just opportunity popped up with a friend of a friend who had a website who needed articles. That was, wasn't early SEO days, but it was still sort of a time where SEO was even less understood than it is, maybe even now. So I basically started, you know, kind of just writing these articles, started learning about. I didn't even know what SEO was. I didn't even know why we were writing those articles. So that was basically just my introduction to this whole SEO world. But for some reason I kind of fell in love with them SEO. Since I then later on tried other types of digital marketing. So I went for email marketing, I worked at Skyscanner, did digital paid ads. But for some reason search engine optimization really stuck with me. And after I finished university, it's kind of just a natural progression of things kind of happened and I went on kind of doing my own thing.

Yeah, well, I, I really appreciate that you quickly, you tried a lot of things but then you discovered what worked for you. And I think that you probably did that a lot earlier than most people do in their lives. It can be really hard.

But yeah, I suppose so. I mean, yeah, I started in basically the first year at uni. I just started like, I, to be honest, I mean the many. I had probably all of the side hustle gigs as there are like, I even like wrote books that, that published on Kindle. I mean they're not available right now, but they were something that I kind of was trying. I, I thought of like buying websites, kind of doing my own website. So just. Yeah, it was, it was very, very messy start. Yeah.

What was that moment when you realized though that this wasn't just a side hustle, that it was actually a business and that this could be your full time business?

Yeah, actually. So a very short answer is when I was fired from a marketing agency. So yeah, so this is an interesting one. So after the university I was still kind of freelancing and it, you know, gave me some, some pocket money. I was able to, you know, to kind of spend, do some things, travel a bit. So it was very nice. But I was still kind of eyeing into actually work at some sort of company. Even like maybe Google, maybe Apple, you know, that was kind of even my dream job at some point. But I kind of randomly got an offer from a marketing agency that is back in Lithuania because at that point I was living like seven years abroad. So I was living in uk, I was living in Denmark and I got an offer from a Lithuanian marketing agency and I thought, I mean I haven't lived in Lithuania for such a long time, maybe I should go back for like a year, live there, see, see, see what's happening. And then that was kind of a great opportunity. But I was hired for a manager role and I never actually been a manager at that point. I was still very young. I, I knew how to do like SEO and things but I didn't have a lot of other soft skills. So what happened? I have no idea how I got that job, but I failed miserably and they basically let me go like after just I think barely two months passed and he had to say like yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was a very big mismatch from probably what they expected from maybe I performed well on the interview. But yeah, my skills were not there so. But at that time I didn't really sort of understood what happened with the situation. I was just really angry. I was really angry at the whole maybe like corporate world for some reason. And then I decided, hey, like why am I even bothering with this marketing agency stuff where I can just do things on my own? And this is where I made a decision. Let me just give this freelancing thing a try. Like because I, before that I didn't, I was never really kind of doing it seriously. And this is, was, was the moment where I like let me just do this. And I mean that year I made three times more money than I would have made if I was stayed at the marketing agency. So yeah, so I mean I realized basically that year that this is the thing that I should be doing.

Yeah, I've had a lot of conversations with people recently about that alignment. When you are living in the work that you're really skilled at and that is path, then things come much more easily. And it sounded like that happened for you, but you did take a lot of risks and opportunities before you came to that realization.

Yeah, yeah, it's it's very weird. I remember like there is a famous Steve Job, like this talk. Like it's. I think It's Stanford in 2005. And he has this very, very amazing line where he says that you are never, you cannot connect the dots looking in the future. You can only connect the dots looking backwards. And the more my life goes on, the more it makes sense looking backwards, but it never makes sense looking forward. So at that time, now it makes sense why I kind of chose freelancing. And it made it was the right choice. But back then I had so many doubts, maybe like, well, what if this doesn't work, what am I going to do? You know, I'm kind of fresh out of university with no experience. So yeah, it's easy to look back and say, yeah, this was the right decision, but back then, you know, your mind is just full of doubts.

Yeah, talk about that leap into deciding because you had taken other opportunities. Right. You did go to school in Denmark, you lived in the uk. You talked about that you worked for some other companies before stepping out on your own. Did you have clients lined up already or were you really just stepping out on faith and a chance on yourself?

I mean, I did have some clients and some income, so I wasn't kind of going to nothing because even before I was hired for the, before I started working at the marketing agency, I was actually already still like freelancing with several clients. So even when I was working full time for those like two months, I was still had some side projects still kind of going and I kind of kept them going. So I was actually quite busy because I was working full time and then went home and sort of did all the work. I mean, I was single at that time, so that was a lot easier to do. So I just basically dedicated my whole time to working. So when I was fired, I still had some income. It wasn't a lot, but I, I think the more important thing was not the actual income but the confidence. I've been freelancing at that. I think it was about like on and off, sort of trying things out for like two years before I was fired for my marketing agency. So I had some kind of experience of how things can go. And I think that confidence is what allowed me to propel this a lot faster than if I would like say just quit my job and started freelancing from zero.

Yeah. In the freelancing journey or even having an agency, a lot of times we try to stay away from hourly perhaps, but maybe we do project based you have moved. And I think that, and this is also something that I do right to retainer models, which hopefully lends a lot more consistency to our income streams and doesn't give us that feast or famine that you can sometimes have. Can you talk a little bit about that decision process? Because when I look at your LinkedIn and you have several projects you've been working on for quite a while, you know, and then of course you have your agency and are always finding new clients.

So in the sense I was a bit lucky because SEO like search engine optimization in general, I mean, not necessarily, but in general kind of requires that long term thinking and long term work with clients. So I actually moved to retainers pretty early. But then again, only looking backwards, I realized that it's a very good thing because I was, I had a brief period, but I never really tied my work to the hours that I work because I think that's probably the worst thing that you can do as a freelancer because then it incentivizes you to actually work more hours, which is the wrong thing. And then it basically reports to the client how many hours you work instead of what the outcome or results you provide. So it's just, it's backwards from both like sides looking at this. So retainers and fixed projects are fixed fee projects are definitely the way to go with this one. And I did discover that quite early, mainly thanks to the SEO and the way sort of it's, it's kind of set up. Although you can do like one time things and one time projects, it's just easier with the retainer because this is the biggest value that I can provide to a business is the actual organic traffic growth. And, and that can only come after like you know, four, five, six months of working with them. So. Yeah, yeah.

But I think that's also an educational point because a lot of people don't realize that to build something you have to take that time and intentionality. It's not overnight success. Right. You have to take the time to build. And speaking of success, you've built a six figure freelance agency business with an 80% profit margin, which is almost unheard of. And you've been able to do that with four to six clients where normally people think you need to have 20 clients or a big team or, you know, lots of things going on in your company to hit six figures and then get to seven figures. So can you talk us through your thought process on Less is More?

Yeah, I am kind of that part. I always prefer more minimalistic approach. I Always look at things what can be done with like least effort in most minimalistic and simplistic way. And then we can only add complexity. So I always start with the most basic things and then sort of like to add it at the top. So I think this is just the sort of person that I am and I think that is what allowed me to kind of build this sort of freelancing agency business that I have. The thing is I actually, I am reaching. Well, last year I realized that I actually reached my limit. So because I am doing everything on my own, I do have some help for, with like a few people, but mainly it's like 80% it's me working on the projects. And I was able to basically reach this six figure sort of goal by nailing down the specific result that I can provide to people, specific client niche that is happy working with me. And basically I figured that specific service and package where it doesn't require working like you know, 20, 30 hours per week to do. Because I used to only have like one to two clients per month on a retainer, but then I was working like 40, 50 hours per week for those two clients. So there was no way for me to do any sales calls. All to scale. So what I, I think one of the biggest it was again, it was very difficult to move away from that because when you're a freelancer and you're kind of stuck with these two clients, it's very difficult for you to let go because usually you have, you think you have it so good, you don't want to basically start from zero. But I again, I made that leap and I'm very happy I did. So I kind of reduced my hours on my contract with those clients. And then we thought, okay, what is the offer that I can provide, which takes me maybe like 5 hours per week to do and then, you know, I can add more offers on top. I still want to focus on the result and the outcome, but I needed to find which clients are happy with what kind of result, which then can actually pay me the same that the previous clients are paying me for 40 hours per week. So once I realign myself with all of these things, then this basically this agency kind of model is exploded.

What was the offer and the category or the type of client that hit your sweet spot?

Yeah, so the way I found the client was very unusual. So I do love making YouTube videos. It's sort of kind of my passion. My hobby is like I love to. I'm kind of building a personal brand there as well. And I joined, if you probably heard of Ali Abdul, very like, big productivity YouTuber. And he has this course about how to make YouTube videos. And I think, I think that was like four years ago. I joined his live cohort and basically just to learn how to be better on camera, what camera, to use microphones, all of that stuff. And the best part about that course, that it was a community. There was a lot of people interacting on circle, kind of commenting, sharing ideas, and there was people from all over the world. And I met a keynote speaker there because he also had his YouTube channel. He was also sort of improving. And we started, I think he had some issue with his website. He wanted me to take a look, have a quick fix. I did that and that's basically it. But then we kind of kept in touch. He then needed another sort of thing from me. I also sort of did that fix. And then I kind of eventually offered him, hey, let me just, while we're doing these little minor fixes, let's just work on the real thing, on the real problem that you have, and then let me actually help you. And once I started working with him, I realized that if we Compare, for example, SaaS companies and SaaS websites, their SEO process is very complicated. There are a bunch of teams, there are a bunch of moving parts. The website, the offer. You need a lot more time and effort to produce a good result for them. Now if we take a look at the keynote speakers website, it usually has like five, six different pages. The keywords are usually a lot easier to rank for. So it actually made sense for me to work with keynote speakers going forward because I found out that I can provide an insane result for way less hours that I need to work on. And then, I mean, the clients themselves are very happy. And another great thing about this keynote speaking is that keynote speakers usually are very well connected people. And I didn't know this before, but apparently they really like to talk to other people about the people that they work with. So like half of my business was built just from the referrals and from good word of mouth. And when I saw this opportunity with this specific client type, with this specific offer, with this specific service, it just made sense for me to basically go all in. And that is what I did last year. I reached my limit and now I'm actually thinking of not thinking. I'm actually already in process of building more of an agency with like, you know, three to four people sort of scaling a bit more, you know, with all of this stuff.

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Congratulations on finding that. I think it's really vital and it's really exciting when we find that moment right, we reach that moment of, oh, I know exactly how to market these people. So now I know who I should be reaching for, my client base, how to help them reach their ideal audience, what to charge. And I can do this on my own, have a high profit margin and then, you know, start scaling. And I, I really feel that smaller agencies are the wave of the future because we can be more nimble, we can really specialize and we don't have to have all the overhead and all of the different things that other agencies might have to have. So I applaud you as you start building out your agency and bringing on more people.

Oh, thank you so much. To be honest, I also believe this is something that a lot like. I think these boutique mini agencies where you have like three to five people, like you can some, some people call it even like a lifestyle business where you have a specific offer for specific people. You only have a few people on board. I also believe this is going to be more and more popular going forward.

Yeah. I recently had somebody ask me how large I want to scale, what kind of company I see myself having, Do I want to have hundreds of employees? I was like, no, not imagination. Because like you, I know, I mean that I'll make six to seven figures with a small nimble team with a very specialized offer and then that will still afford me the ability to travel if I want to or to take some time off or to do the things that bring us enjoyment in life as well. You mentioned when you started it was before you, you know, were married or had a family. And those things are really important and we realize more and more how important they are instead of pouring our entire lives and selves into work.

Oh, exactly. I mean, this was one of the reasons why I decided to actually go this agency route. I was like, for some reason I was very against the agency because I always, like very naively for some Reason I thought if I do agency I need to have like 15 people in an office and like why? No, for some reason I had this old school way of thinking about agencies but one of the reasons why I'm actually going this agency route because I do want to actually spend more time with my wife, with my dog, just travel a bit and not be, you know, because now if I get sick, if I travel, if I go on holidays, a lot of things actually, you know, kind of stop on my end. So I actually would love to have you know, a few people and some systems, more robust systems where the work doesn't stop if I'm not there to do, to see it.

Yeah, and that is another thing, setting up the systems and processes behind our businesses helps with all the things you're talking about knowing that you can take some time but that other people will be able to step up or that you can have things running and maybe you can still take time off and not need to have weekly contact with the client at that point. Yeah, I wanted to ask about because I'm sure you still get referrals from clients who are not your ideal customer Persona. So what do you say to those people? Do you just try to redirect them? Do you have other people that you say hey maybe this organization be better for you? Do you try to at least give them a few steps to start with?

Ah, yeah. So good thing is that in the last maybe five, five, six months I haven't received any referrals from non keynote related since I'm kind of built in the last kind of couple of years really built up more business with the keynote speakers. So I have more and more referrals from them actually than any other. So I'm glad that I haven't. But yeah, at this point maybe if you, if you would ask me that like eight, nine months ago I would probably say it's very difficult to say no. It's like it's I want to take on the project so but now I do see a value of really saying no to not the right client type and only focusing on what's right because I actually made this mistake like a year ago where actually exactly a year ago like last January, I took on a project to work on this SaaS with the SaaS company and again it took so much time, so much effort, so much energy where I could have been putting into actually making my agency better, getting more keynote speaking clients. So I regret taking that and it took like half a year to do that project. So I think I learned my lesson. Now if somebody comes to me, I might just help them whatever sort of they need in terms of consulting, but I might just redirect them to other people that I know that work with these types of projects.

Turning to SEO itself, what are some of the biggest mistakes that you see people make when it comes to thinking through SEO for their business?

I suppose the biggest mistake is the expectation. A lot of people still think that SEO is something where I can go into a website, go into some settings, flip some switches, and you magically will rank. So unfortunately, the expectation part is still very. Not very much understood. And majority of my time is spent actually educating clients of how SEO actually works. What is the expectations? What is the timeline, what is the process? So that does take like 20, 30% of the, especially the onboarding phase before we even start working. That takes an enormous amount of time and effort. But I feel it's very necessary because I want us to be aligned and not the wrong questions being asked. Just after the month we work together, where is the results that they think that should be there? Because if it would be that easy, you would rank like every single website would rank for every single keyword every single month. So, you know, it would be chaos. So it. Something that is valuable is usually difficult to achieve.

Interesting. And I have come across people who've thought, oh, I can just turn on SEO and add some blog posts, and all of a sudden I'm going to be discovered, or that thing I don't want to rank on Google will be pushed down and the thing I want to be known for will go up. So it's such an interesting strategy. And what's interesting to me is that SEO pays a. Plays a large part in podcasting even. There are specific websites I can go to for pod SEO to make sure that I have the right keywords or the right data, even if it's the YouTube video version versus the audio version. Right. Or on the website in the blog post. And so there's nothing that we can do in business or communication that doesn't. That SEO doesn't touch. So we know that with the LLMs that they search in a slightly different way than a Google or a Bing or Safari or what have you. So can you talk a little bit about that? Has that had to change the way that you position your clients at all?

Yeah. Oh, this is interesting. So when AI first came into play, there was no sort of search involved, but there were sort of maybe signs that maybe something will change. But then I think after a year when since ChatGPT was released, this is where a lot of fear started to creep in in the whole like SEO and Google world. Because we thought, you know, this is it, this is the end of Google, this is the end of search. You know, people are going to move to ChatGPT and ask everything and there, and that's it, you know, Google is doomed or something like that. So there was a lot of fear kind of going around, but I think there was a lot of more hype than anything that came to be true. Now we've been like what, like three, four years in and it seems that the whole SEO space is evolving, but it's a lot less impactful than we used to think. And it's more like now like a natural progression where yes, search is evolving, but I think new opportunities are kind of coming up. And the way you do strategy also changes a little bit. Because right now with the, for example, when you type in, in Google, now even Google has AI overviews where it says like, you know, it basically answers your question and you don't even need to click anything. But that doesn't mean SEO is not important because now the tracking part is very difficult nowadays to track this specific sort of how people, it's basically how to track word of mouth. It's very, very, very difficult to track that. So it's the same thing kind of happening here. So the tracking part is incredibly difficult, but the main thing is still in play where if a person Google something and it sees that answer or your name, for example, let's say you're a keynote speaker and it sees your name listed there, they might remember you, they might save it into notes, they might not even go to the website. They might actually then later on try to Google you Google your name and then go to your website. So it seems like it's at the direct, like a person has known you from somewhere and then went to your site. So the whole search industry is changing into more of an impression based industry where it's very still important to have SEO, important to have link building, important to have PR and mentions across the website. Because this is how AI Search and ChatGPT will reference you. This is how Google will reference you. And the more references you basically have, then the more likelihood is that you will get your leads, your customers that way. So it's kind of turning into a little bit of a social media kind of thing. If like, you know, the more, the louder you are on podcasts, on YouTube, it might not be trackable. Well, trackable are the Subscribers and followers, but it's still. You are getting emails and opportunities this way. So I think SEO and the whole search is moving in the same direction.

Interesting. So there's less ability to, like you said, use the data to find out how people are discovering you or, you know, even do attribution at different data points. But it's still really important part of the overall ecosystem. So I imagine that's also been education you've had to do for your clients, because as long as they're getting great results, they should be excited and happy. But a lot of times we say, okay, we want the analytics and we want the storytelling together, but we might not always be able to have the full picture.

Yeah, yeah. The education is kind of happening right now, sort of as we speak, because this sort of thing is just like everything's changing so fast. So this whole move to sort of impressions thing is only science sort of started appearing and happening maybe since summer, when people are kind of realizing. But the interesting part is that Google is actually doing a lot better. The traditional search is actually doing a lot better than, for example, a lot of people thought it would. We thought that Google would lose market share a lot faster and a lot more, but it's still dominating. And it's, for example, for my clients or even for the case studies that a lot of people sort of do and use. Search traffic is actually increasing in a very weird sense. So the attribution, the tracking that is becoming very, very difficult to do. That's a whole other problem to be solved, especially with AI search, where we don't even have anything comparable to Google Search console, where you can see clicks and some data. With AI, you're blind. But I assume that some kind of a search console will come to AI search eventually. But until we see the data telling us otherwise, it still makes sense to actually build your site for SEO, since when you're building for SEO, you're also building for AI search, because AI search, at least for now, is using the same signals as Google does. So the way I usually like to tell people is that the way AI search works now is the way Google used to work, like 15 years ago. Very simplistic. Yeah. For now, if you want to rank high on AI search, you have to be mentioned more times than your competitor. So the more backlinks you have, the more links, the more sites, the more news, the more podcast appearances, the more YouTube videos, just the more your name is out there. AI search right now, it's very simplistic way. It just calculates who is mentioned more and basically puts that person in. I mean that will probably change and evolve. But Google used to work the same way 15 years ago where the more backlinks you have to a site, you're going to rank number one. Now it's more sophisticated than that. But AI search is using, it's starting to use the same signals as SEO. So by doing SEO, you're kind of doing AI search and SEO at the same time. So at least for now, that's a very good deal.

Yeah, interesting. Thank you for sharing that. And I want to go back to. You talked about personal brand, building brand awareness, your YouTube channel as one way that you build it. Talk a little bit about that. How has building up YouTube channel helped your discoverability and your position as a thought leader in the space?

Yeah, so it's very weird. For example, my YouTube channel, I mean I've built it again. I think it's part of my identity. But when I started doing YouTube channel, I think I started doing all kinds of videos about tech videos, product videos, reviews, software reviews. I had freelancing videos, investing videos. I was just doing everything and anything. And now I kind of see a pattern of that repeating for myself where I just, whenever I start something, I just try a bunch of things and basically see what sticks. And for some reason I landed on doing videos mainly related to my agency building journey, my freelancing journey and just freelancing in general. I think I finally like a year, beginning of last year, I basically found my niche. But I don't really talk anything about SEO or clients or even target my target demographic. But interestingly enough, somehow if you build a YouTube channel, somehow people kind of find you. The right people find you. So I started to get inquiries and emails. I mean it's not a lot, but compared that I'm not targeting those people at all, that I'm still getting sort of people viewing my channel reaching out. To me, it just showed me that building a strong personal brand doesn't matter. Your niche or topic is just very valuable in all sorts of ways.

I find that so interesting and intriguing that you don't talk about your client case studies, you don't talk about SEO, but you've still been able to find the right clients. And that really just truly shows the power of personal brand.

Yeah, yeah, that's probably the weirdest part where I, you know, get inquiries from the YouTube channel where it's. This is probably the reason why I think a lot of freelancers struggle is that let's say you find a Freelancer somehow they might have a website, they might have a personal Instagram with maybe a few photos and that's usually it. It's very difficult to judge. I think a person's like just character, vibe, anything. I mean we have like social media, we have video like I think video is so, so important to have as a skill just to be able to present and talk on a camera. And at least that's my assumption. The fact that I have a YouTube channel where I just share my ideas, where I talk freely, just I assume it makes a good impression and that what basically draws people to message me otherwise if they would just see a website with a profile photo, they would might not be inclined to message me because I'm just as any other website. But the fact that I have a YouTube channel to have, the fact that I'm showing my face, I think that is what sets me apart from other similar freelancers. LifeLock. How can I help the IRS that.

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Yeah, you're building that trust and likability factor because they can see who you are even if you're not talking directly about what they might want to hire you for.

Yeah, but I am thinking, I mean that's, maybe that's a bit for later but starting a new YouTube channel directly focusing to my target clients where I have like a very specific like work channel for, for that specific thing. But that's just an idea that I'm kind of thinking maybe when I have this agency model set up that might be an opportunity where I, you know, explore something like that.

I'd like to talk a little bit about faceless YouTube channels as fun projects. You talk about how you do show your face, but you've mentioned this in other places and I think that's an intriguing concept. For my podcast, obviously people mostly listen audio, but we do have the video component. And then I have other podcasts that I'm tinkering with right now where one might not be me, it might be a cartoon version of me. Right. So it'll still be my voice, but I want to do just differentiate a little bit. So could. Can you talk a little bit about the difference between being the face of the brand, the face, that personality, and this idea of faceless channels?

Yeah, I think both of these strategies have like, their advantages and disadvantages. I think, you know, having your face and your. Just your, your face, your voice, this is the most powerful way of doing it. However, it is the most difficult one because, you know, you have to show up to actually be there with the faceless one. Yes, it's a lot easier to have systems, processes, automations where you only need for example, to record your voice. Or for my case, I have a faceless channel that is all about heating and cooling. So it's an H vac niche. I stumbled upon that very randomly when I started a website like a blog about this. And I didn't know much about it before, so that's why I kind of. I hired people that have been working in H vac industry and they basically wrote me articles. And I was trying to sort of come up with this sort of business plan where I am the go to place for anything about heating, cooling, heaters, air conditioners. That's, you know, all of the answers are answered there. And from there I kind of randomly again decided, after a few years of doing this website, I decided to, hey, what if I just kind of translate those articles that, the information that is there to a faceless YouTube channel? So I think the first maybe 20, 30 videos, I actually did the audio myself. Just basically kind of reading them because they were written in that first person in a very speaking manner. So it was very easy just to read as a script and then put it there and then have an editor have all the animations, the text, whatever is there. And it slowly but surely evolved into an even bigger thing. So that YouTube channel is now even bigger than a website was ever. And it's kind of running kind of on its own. I have people that know about H Vac, I have editors that edit so it's pretty much automated by this point. I just need to come up with the ideas, and I have everybody that makes a thumbnail. So it's a very little side project that is kind of going on. And what I like about it is that you can batch things, you can create systems, you can automate. It doesn't require a lot of time on my end, so it's something that kind of runs in the background and it's growing, but I don't need to spend a lot of time on it now that I've kind of figured the way to make all of this. So it's just something that I have on the side. I have no idea what I'm gonna do with it. It's so weird. It's so out of context from anything. So it's. Yeah, I'll just keep building it until I find a place for it to maybe even sell it at some point. Maybe do something with it. I have no idea. But, yeah, it's something that I have. Yeah.

Well, I love this random fun fact about you and the fact that it's also taken on a life of its own as a business, even though it's not your central business.

Yeah, yeah, I think that's. Yeah, that's probably the funniest thing. It's like H vac and whenever I tell people, oh, you know, especially, like, the people that I know are friends of mine or acquaintances, like, yeah, I have a YouTube channel about heating and cooling. They're like, what? How do you even know how the heater works? I'm like, I don't, but the people that wrote the script do. So, yeah, it's a fun side project. I mean, I guess it just shows you that I started that YouTube channel because I wanted to help my SEO and my traffic for the website. So the YouTube channel was never even a big. Like, I never imagined it to be a big thing. It turned that by accident. And I think it just shows you that you never know which project, client type, niche, or thing will gonna. Is gonna turn out sort of to be your business, your income source, your side hustle. So I always suggest people just experiment, just do that. What I did is. Oh, and by. I think if I'm not mistaken, if I'm not mistaken, this. This is probably. Okay. This is probably. Let me just check. But I think if I'm not mistaken, I think the first video that I. First video that I ever made is for that channel is. Is the second most popular video on that YouTube channel by a big margin. So. And I think that first is just. Also was released like as a third or fourth video. So it's just. It's crazy that the first video popped up so much that I released 178 videos and that first video is still number two in the spot. So you have to give it a try. Whatever you're doing, you never know what's going to happen.

Wow. Amazing. All right, so what is one piece of advice you'd give to somebody who is looking at starting their freelance journey, wants to take a correct, if you will, first step.

I think what's going to help that person the most is completely ignoring the fact whenever you get a no answer when you're a freelancer and you have to do a lot of outreaching, like called outreaching is the number one thing to do as a freelancer, especially when you begin your journey. It's the most reliable, the best way to actually get clients. But you need a lot of emails, you need a lot of cold calls, you need a lot of talking, you need a lot of discovery calls. Just you're gonna talk with hundreds of people and you are often gonna hear a no answer. And I think for a lot of people, it's crushing. You know, they hear no for like five times in a row and they're like, this is insane. Why am I doing this? Why am I like. So I think the resilience of that. The resilience is probably the most important skill for a beginner freelancer to learn. If you can like call 200 businesses, 200 local businesses, and hear 200 no's, and you're feeling okay about that, then it's an amazing skill that's gonna take you very, very far.

Oh, thank you. That framing is something that we wouldn't really think about, but it is so important in that mindset of being a freelancer and entrepreneur, starting businesses for ourselves. Next question. If there was one piece of advice you'd give to everybody who's listening on what they need to remember about SEO in 2026, what would that piece of advice be?

Oh, that's. This is a good question. It's a very. I mean, the basics are there, but there's still. It's, it's. This is the industry that probably changes the most out of all the digital marketing industries. A lot of them are, at least from my experience and knowledge, most of them do stay. So I mean, they are changing, but sort of the same SEO is very evolving one. So I'll give a practical advice just if you have a website, just have it mentioned in as many places as possible. Just have your links and mentions. It don't even have to be a direct link to your website. Even a mention these days is very powerful. So the more you can get your word out there about your name or your website, your business, whatever that is, it might not feel like anything is happening. Believe me, in the long term, it's going to compound by a lot. Nice.

Fantastic. And Venus, we're going to have the link to your YouTube channel and your site in the show Notes. Do you have a favorite quote, mantra, verse, family motto, poem words that continue to inspire you?

I think there is one thing I always like to live life simply. And it goes for personal and for work things. It might sound a bit confusing, but what I mean is whenever you start something, just don't overthink it. If you have an app, don't overthink it. Just use the most basic version. Start with the most basic thing. If you're starting freelancing, start with the most basic outreach. I think a lot of people overcomplicate, overthink and delay things instead of just going to the basics. Because it doesn't, for some reason it doesn't feel right just to use a notes app. You need a notion, you need some kind of a feature, you need something, you need a paid feature. You have to have something that feels like it's adding value. But that feeling is usually false, I think. So just if you take everything and simplify it, just. And start from the basics. That usually helped me with a lot of productivity stuff. So I guess I'll leave with that. Not the best code mantra, but maybe something like that.

Yeah, I think keeping it simple is a mantra more of us need to be thinking about because I agree we overcomplicate. We think we have to have everything perfect before we start a business. But what you're saying is just start and don't think you have to put a lot of money and investment into tools that you may not even know how to use or might not use. Just start where you're at and then you can add things as you go.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Great advice for us all thinking about going into this year and continuing our business journeys. So thank you so much for joining me from Lithuania. I really appreciate your time and energy. Again, this is my morning and I don't do very well before, say, 10:00am.

I so sorry for booking this early.

No, no, no. But you booked at 10am so that's perfect. But you also are giving me a boost of energy to get me through the day and some just more things to think about. So keep on with that energy and keep on with the road that you're going down. And now we know if we're in the world of keynote speaking or in a similar vein, we know who to go to.

Thank you so much. Thank you Anika for having me and thank you for being such an incredible host. I got some amazing questions from you so that was very interesting conversation.

Yeah. And thank you to everybody who is watching this episode or listening to it on your favorite platform. I love it when my guests come on. Even if we've talked about SEO on other episodes, Vanos is bringing us another unique perspective and things to think about and to not overly complicate things. When in a world where we have all this tech that we think, oh my gosh, now we have to do this, this and this. Take it back again. Simplicity. Take it back to the basics. Think about what the messages are that you really want people to know about your organization and how to get those out most effectively. I'll be back again with another amazing guest to share their story of their journey and some tips and tricks for you very shortly.

Thanks for listening or watching to this episode of youf Brand and the Amplified. Don't forget to leave us a rating or review on your favorite podcast listening platform. And if you want to learn more, check us out@yourbrandamplified.com.