91. From Homeless to Multi-Millionaire Tech Founder, How Harry Sanders Grew Australia's Largest SEO Agency

I was at a YPO event and I was chatting to one of the biggest private equity funds in the world. We were in like their conference room, this very closed meeting. And one of the things he said that really resonated with me is like, when we grow companies, we say to the owner, you got two choices, you know, red pill, blue pill kind of thing. You can either be rich or you can be king. What do you want to be? Because you can't be both. You can be king or you can be rich, but you cannot be both.

Welcome back to another episode of the Ben and Bergs podcast. I'm Ben, your favorite high school dropout, and with me is Bergs, your favorite MBA and COO of Collective Shift, Australia's leading crypto portfolio insights company, providing professional analysis and portfolio strategies for crypto investors like you. We're the unique blend of the established and the self made, and we're here to break down crypto business and personal growth. We're not just talking shit though. We're talking the real insights to make you a better investor, build successful businesses and level up your life. And today we've got a good mate of mine and fellow founder much more successful than me, Harry Sanders, founder of Studio hawk, Australia's biggest SEO agency. Harry's been featured on the Forbes 30 under 30 multi million dollar business. He's also an ambassador for the Lighthouse Lighthouse foundation, which is a youth homelessness charity and has got a very, very amazing story about coming from homeless upbringing to now multi millionaire tech founder. Mate, thanks for coming on.

Thanks, Ben. Good to be on.

Thank you, man. We're talking very briefly before the pod that Harry doesn't support me, so he hasn't listened to the podcast, so.

But he's very honest.

Insane.

That's why I appreciate that, mate.

Thanks, man.

Good, good under the bus there, man.

You've got an amazing story in all seriousness and, you know, look up to you as a fellow founder. You know, we're, we're sort of similar age and you're absolutely crushing it. You're seven, eight years in to see your Hulk now.

Yeah, Yeah, I think seven or eight.

That's insane, man. You've got 80 employees.

Yep.

The largest SEO agency in the country. Yeah. And you started out with literally nothing.

Literally nothing.

What? Yeah. Take us back.

Yeah, I mean, so I started, you know, a lot of people think that the story starts at like 17. Homeless. I actually kind of story starts at 14. You know, my parents were divorced at a young age. We weren't really well off. We had A, you know, one of those dinosaur computers, you know, the ones big monitors. And I used style up mate 100%. Yeah. And I used to play a lot of Runescape because all my friends are playing Gamecube and stuff, but I didn't have any of those. I had RuneScape, which is best game ever. And through playing then I really, I learned about this thing called SEO. Right. I wanted to build a travel website because I really wanted to travel. I'd never traveled before and I learned you could either pay for traffic or earn traffic through SEO. So I went down this rabbit hole of SEO and I think it was the first time in my life, maybe you remember the first time you did something at a young age that you were genuine passionate about. And that was that moment for me. I started learning everything about it. I used to test things and I actually got a job in the industry.

A few months later as an SEO specialist at a company. Just kind of like a intern kind of position. And that's where I learned and stayed for, you know, two, three years. I was 17. So I had those skills. But then obviously the rest of the story is all kind of where it went downhill for me. I left that company, tried to start my own business and ended up homeless.

That's insane. I think the very rush resonate with like going down the rabbit hole like that was bitcoin for me. And you and I are wired very, very similar. Once we find something that we love, we just really go deep.

Infatuated.

Yeah, exactly. And, and talk us through. Like you are, you're literally homeless. I read a story about when you first got your client, like the first. Well, one of your first clients literally paid your way to move into a share house.

Yeah, yeah. Well, so very early on, obviously, you know, going from homelessness, I didn't have any idea of know that I would end up homelessness or homeless. It was kind of, you know, a very surreal confronting thing. And for people listening in, it's, you know, emergency housing takes about six months. It's a substantial period of time where you just won't get any support. You might get a social worker. I was very lucky to have a social worker, which helped me through a lot of the mental health challenges I had. But then I met a guy called Graham Robertson who was the CEO of Tetley T and a few other major fast moving consumer good brands. And he taught me everything I know about business. He really picked me up and helped me out. And that was the segue into getting that first client, he said, because I Was telling him, you know, how I wanted to get a job at McDonald's or you know, something like that. My dream back then was to get another agency job. And he said, well, you've got this business, why don't you do something with it? I thought, well dude, who's gonna hire me? I'm some like homeless 17 year old kid. But I, he introduced me to these different events and I kept meeting people going through the ringer until I finally got I think a couple clients and that paid for that sharehouse. And we're talking, you know, most barren of share houses. I think I was with four other guys.

Room there and they were so lovely. They're like, do you need a hand moving in or anything? And I don't have anything to move in. But I was so ashamed and embarrassed that I said no, no, it's all good. Like you know, I'm buying some stuff. But yeah, it was, I remember it was like 125 a week. The date was September 12th. And I remember getting in that room and just bawling my eyes out, man. It was a very, very crazy day.

That's intense, man. How did you get your first client? Like what was that? Who was it? Or how's that process?

Well, the process, it was a healthcare client that had some medical centers. The process was just literally going to free events. I mean if you were at some free networking events 7, 8 years ago in Melbourne, chances are we've probably met. I was at any event that was doing breakfast, food, whatever and free networking. Now I was the scrappiest looking dude in that room, if I'm being honest. But because I was in tech, it kind of didn't matter too much. I mean, lucky I wasn't in finance or anything, right? But yeah, I was able to catch up with people, mate. I had these business cards that I bought on vistaprint which is, I mean that's a sin in itself. But these things were like I bought the cheapest cards on Vistaprint and I don't know, I think it cost me $10 for a pack of like 200 or something. These are like one ply toilet paper things.

Like I'm handing these, mate, 100. Like you wouldn't, you wouldn't wipe your bum, right?

And so I'm handing these things out to people at these networking events because I didn't have any money, right, Hoping that they would call. And yeah, eventually a couple people gave me a chance. Like I charged them bugger all. And I work, I moved mountains for these guys, dude. Like, you know, we work with you guys like Vodafone and New Balance today. Like, I was doing the same work that we would do for Vodafone for this guy paying me like, you know, 250 bucks a month back then, you know, and. But I did it because I had a passion for SEO and I had this, well, idea that, you know, if I, if I got enough clients, I could get a share house, which is what happened. That was a catalyst of everything.

That's amazing, man. And I don't think we've covered it. But mate, how old are you now?

25.

Look at that. So you're 17 to 25 and you've achieved so much already. It's already amazing story. And mate, take us on the journey a little bit more. So you've been homeless, you know, you've kind of, you, you had a job, your goal was to get another job, but you met this guy and you started another business and you were networking your ass off. And now you've grown the business significantly. So you've kind of gone that 0 to 1 and you're in a sharehouse and you've created this business, you've got a few clients. How did you go about kind of scaling that up and talk us through that process?

Yeah, I mean, from there.

The snowball was rolling down the mountain. Right. So I knew that if I could keep doing good work, I would get referrals from these clients and then they would refer us new work. And that kind of is exactly what happened. I started getting a lot of referrals from these clients. I was working with enough so that about a year, year and a half later, I was out of that share house and I was in a place of my own in Paran. And that's about when I met one of the first guys I hired who was. Didn't have any money to pay rent. And so I kind of saw that, obviously, given my circumstances, I saw that as an opportunity to help this guy out.

And that was the first hire. And then from there, I mean, that's no ball. It's well and truly rolling now. By then I was just getting more and more traction, so I was training him. And then I hired two other people who have since become my general manager of Australia and my general manager of London. So Anthony and Lawrence. And that really kicked things off. And I think as soon as you hire people, things start to feel a lot more real because when it was just me, I think, you know, put some numbers to it. I think I was probably making, you know, 70 grand a year. And this is, you know, with no tax or anything on it. And no, none of the business expenses factored into that. But that was enough for me to have my own place. And in the span of a year, I'd gone from, well, two years, I'd gone from homeless to having a place of my own, which I was pretty stoked about. But. But yeah, just that kind of ball started rolling and the big moment for us was about six months after.

I get a call from officeworks who were looking to go to market with a new SEO provider. And so of course I came in, did the pitch with officeworks.

And realized, you know, if anyone seed Mad Men, that's a lot of how this advertising world still works. There's all these beautiful people walking into these meetings with, with the people doing the, the deal. But we ended up in the final stages. And I remember officeworks asked us, they're probably a, you know, multi billion dollar company in Australia, like a Staples. And they asked us, what other big brands have you worked with?

And I think there's a moment every founder, every entrepreneur goes through when you go, when you kind of get that ego check where it's like, okay, like where we want to work with you, but we want to know you guys are big. And I start fumbling because we don't have any big clients.

So I'm like, oh, have you heard.

Of, you know, Paran Medical Center? And they're like, yeah, yeah. And they're like, oh, have you heard of Jim's Electronics? And they're like, no, no. And you're just naming these names of like, you know, probably million dollar companies that are like, no, not household brands, you know, and. But I must have said something because they gave us a shot and within six months of us winning that campaign, we had grown them about 30%. It was, it was just, I wish every campaign was as like that, but it was just one of those holy grails. And off the back of that we had New Balance reach out to us and we were basically the kids on the block. Everyone wanted a conversation with us because they knew we'd grown an already massive brand new even bigger off the back of what was previously a two year lull in their growth. So that was the catalyst. It just exploded after that.

That's insane. What, what do you put it down to? Do you put it down to like your understanding of SEO, like new strategies? Like, what would you put it down to?

I think it started my understanding of SEO. It certainly isn't today I would be. If we had a tier list of SEO knowledge in the agency, I'd probably be C tier, some would argue D tier in the agency. Which is funny because, you know, everyone still wants to ask me the SEO questions, which is, you wouldn't be, you wouldn't want to.

But I would put it down to a weird, boring one, which is structure. Our business was structured from the get go very differently than a traditional agency. So the first thing we only do SEO. We were very disciplined in what we said no to. We would, you know, we're not doing your website, we're not doing your paid ads, we're not doing your search. We were very disciplined in what we said no to, which made our.

Expertise very deep but very narrow. But that's what people wanted. And the second thing was how we structured is a normal agency has like a account manager and then an engineer behind the account manager. So you don't speak directly to the engineer. We got rid of that account management role. So we said, well, given that we only do one thing, why the hell wouldn't you be speaking to the engineer? So we linked people directly with that SEO engineer on the other end. And it turned out in a time where SEO was kind of seen as something like unmeasurable, like hard to kind of, you know, quantify, those two changes were just exactly what the industry wanted. So it just took off.

That's incredible because a lot of people have that fear where if you think of the quintessential engineer, someone you hide in the basement, shove pizzas under there and Coke comes out. Right. And I love that you have that operational efficiency to cut out that middle person and go direct. So it saves you money and it's better for the customer.

Yeah.

Was it challenging for the customers talking to some of those engineers and those engineers having to be client facing or did it all just kind of work out?

At the start it was very easy because I was an engineer that could also talk to people. And then I hired people that were engineers that could also talk to people. If you ask me that same question now, it's a very different answer. It is. I am constantly freaking unicorn hunting. I'm out there with a sniper rifle. No, not a sniper, a lasso.

A lasso is a bit. I'm not trying to kill these unicorns.

I'm trying to find. I'm trying to herd.

You got tray exactly. In there, mate.

Not bullet.

Exactly.

So.

Exactly Right.

So they're very hard to find these, these people that can do both. So we have A full learning and development hub called Hawke Academy, which is where we train these people. We take basically the top 10% of students that go through that. We have a couple thousand students that go through that a year. We take maybe, I don't know, we take a few of those into a learning and development program that we put into Studio Hawk and we train these guys, but that takes a long time and it's very expensive. And then we also ship people from London to Australia. So we literally, you know, really there's a lot of good engineers there that can also talk. So we move them over to Australia. But it's obviously a very involved process.

And the salaries are quite high and what they're able to do, given the valuable nature of it. One thing that we've also noticed that is very frustrating is we've become the guys to poach from. You know, everyone knows our guys are trained and that they're very good and so they try and poach our guys, which is very frustrating. So holding on to these guys and giving them the career progression, the assurances is all a big part of what we do on a day to day basis to make sure that we're always the best offer.

And how do you, sorry, how do you think about talent now? Is it predominantly from Australia or Melbourne or are you looking internationally now that people are. It's quite easy to work remotely if you want that kind of really top tier talent?

Yeah, we, we kind of look at it like hubs. So controversial opinion. I'm not fully sold on the full remote. I like the hybrid kind of model. I like having hubs. So we have people coming in Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and then flexibility Monday, Friday and you know, we have exchange programs of London, Australia, yada yada yada. But.

We need that collaboration. What we do is intrinsically we're sharing strategies, we're talking about different things and you need to foster environment collaboration when you do that. Now the example I always took when I was coming up with Studio Hawk's policy around this was looking at game development companies because I'm a nerdy game dev guy and I looked at these game development companies and I looked at what was going on and every game was getting shipped late. Look at Cyberpunk, look at all the games that came out during COVID They were all messes. Everyone was delaying their games because we were all trying to collaborate through Zoom and through Discord and stuff, which is fine to a degree, but a lot of that creativity and knowledge sharing just doesn't come out the same way. I don't think there's a direct substitute for it. So I'm not saying it can't be done. Don't get me wrong, don't be sitting there being like, wow, this guy's a asshole. Doesn't believe in remote working. Like for us we have a lot of those juniors paired with a lot of those seniors. We need that collaboration and sharing for that to be viable.

Yeah, it's I think a very people skilled business. Yeah, like that's super important. I mean we find that it's difficult, you know, sometimes to really get that collaborative communication and can be also quite lonely if you're not like coming in.

For sure, for sure.

Doing client work. What's the biggest challenge that you face in your business? Like is it people?

People? For sure. We're a people business. We've got about 80 people globally across London and Australia. So.

What that means is yeah, we can't take on work unless we have people to do the work and our standards of work are quite high.

So yeah, we need to constantly have people in and developing them, which makes it very tricky. Yes, there's a lot of stuff we can automate and do and change but at the end of the day people want strategies and you can't get chatgpt to come up with a strategy for, you know, campaign like that or analyzing data or reports in the way that a human can or else everything would be AI run, you know, will it in the future? No, I think it'll be doing reporting. I don't think I will ever have such a good grasp on strategy as a human. There's just too many factors and variables.

But yeah, so that's, that's probably the biggest limitation at the moment is like getting good people, training them and retaining them, which is always going to be a challenge for I think any people organization.

What about like in the business journey over the seven years, what has been like the biggest hurdle you've had to go through? Like either personally or in the company?

Probably the whole homelessness thing.

I mean there's definitely been road bumps along the way.

People leaving to start competing agencies or.

You know, just keep. Yeah, not so much key people leaving. More, more just like those hurdles and those different things that happen. Given that I didn't have a background in business or an understanding of it, there's these values of death. We call them 1 to 5, 5 to 10, 10 to 20, 20 to 50, 50 to 100. Well, not necessarily people. Where businesses crumble because.

Or revenue.

Well yeah, like, I mean I know People. Sorry, you're right. People.

Yeah, yeah.

These valleys death, where.

If you don't change a structure, organization, things fall apart very, very fast. And people that are stuck at 20 people for years, well, the reason why they're stuck there is because they've never figured out that valley of death. They've never figured out how to make that leap to that next level. So constantly reinventing the business is hard and it means making really tough decisions. Because some of the people that you've been on the ride with, not all, I mean, we still got Lawrence and Anthony and they're absolute guns. But some of those people that have come on that journey, they're not the ones to take it to that next level. And that's an awful thing to do. I value loyalty a lot, and so I think that's a, you know, you always want to make sure they're looked after and they've got the best opportunity. But sometimes that means not working with you. And that's probably one of the biggest realistic moral struggles I have.

That's a. That's a huge challenge as well. Like sometimes the zero to one people aren't the one to end people.

Exactly.

And they don't want to be those people.

Exactly.

You've got a decision to make and I'd love to know, like, when you're going along that journey and you're reinventing the business and, you know, you're restructuring, how'd you go about doing that? Did you bring experts in? Did you have co founders? And I know you and Ben both go to eo. You know, were those the kind of things that. That helped you through that? Because these are huge, huge challenges and it's. There's never really any one right path.

Yeah.

You know, you kind of have to make your decisions.

Yeah. Especially when it's a kind of a unique business that people haven't done before. You can't look to how other people have structured it. It's very frustrating.

I don't have any co founders, but I definitely, you know, sit down with my GMs and a lot of org chart chats, which are actually some of our favorite. It's almost like it's like planning out a skill tree in a video game. It's like, where do these people need to fit how we're going to progress people, what's our succession plan, all that stuff. But the biggest thing is. Yeah. Chatting to EO people, YPO people, to see how they've done it and what experience shares they have. I mean, the value on being Able to tap someone on the shoulder and be like, hey, mate, I noticed you've got this structure in your business. You know, why? Why not? And for them in private, in confidence to be like, dude, don't do it like this. Like, these are the lessons I've learned. Or, you know, everyone's always got a learning about their business and I find that you don't have to look at people in the same industry. It's actually not relevant, you know, people in the same industry as you. If I reach out to, you know, key competitors globally, they're not going to give me the facts, right. They're going to give me a watered down version. Or they might say, go do this because they don't really want me to succeed. We're all friends, but we're not going to give key IP away to each other so freely. Whereas if I can go to Ben and I can understand his structure or anyone else's structure, they're going to be way more open about what works and what doesn't work with me, which is valuable because I can then take that and apply that to my business.

I'm not sure if you remember this, but the first time we had a proper conversation was three years ago. I met you at that cafe, which we saw you on Saturday and sat.

Down where we met.

That's where. Well, we met at. And then we went for coffee at that. At the same cafe where. The one that I came across when we got your car, we having breakfast.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Went down and, and we went through your org chart. Yeah, I was having problems in my org chart and I was like, harry, can you help me? I run a crypto company and Harry's an SEO agency. And I learned so much because we were talking about, how do you, you know, I don't have a gm. How do you bring someone to that role? We're talking about the problems and challenges you've had of hiring externally versus. Yeah, someone up at the different departments and walked away with like, holy. That was super valuable. And I think I really resonate with, like, you know, how the way you learn or tend to learn is just through talking to people that have done it before.

Yeah, I'm a total, like just a sponge. Like, I mean, sponge is a plyweight. Ask hole's another way to put it. Like, I, I literally will just. Yeah, it's about time I played that forward with you because I will literally go to people and just be like, hey, dude, you've obviously grown this to 100 million. How have you done it? What are you learning? Yeah, sit me through, walk me through your org chart.

Yeah.

Like, there's nothing more interesting to me than sitting down, like P and L. Cool. Like money's money, who cares? But sitting down and going through an org chart, Damn. And that's where, like, because from an org chart you can tell the culture, you can tell, you know, all these different things, like KPIs, you can tell all these different things and really get an understanding of an organization. Because one of the most important factors, if you look at, you know, Harvard's research into successful companies is structure. It's a boring, unsexy answer. But structure, you know, there's structure, there's a talent of like, you know, driven success and providing consistent customer excellence. They're the three biggest primary attributes. And you can go online and read the study that are the factors in successful companies. So if you neglect structure or you think it's boring, why? Yeah, I got bad news. Like, that is going to be a key component for you, understanding how you're going to structure this business.

And you can learn so much, whether it's like hierarchical, how much middle management you have, and then what are reporting lines. But then also that's great. But then how do you get work done? How do you assemble teams around work? Are they free to do it? What are the boundaries and how long will that take? I've just fallen in love with org charts again, mate.

Here, come on the journey with me.

Oh, it's fantastic. And mate, so you, you're about what, seven or so years on? What is your role in the business now? Like, what do you do? What does your day to day look like?

Yeah. So I made a conscious decision about six months ago to step away from the director, CEO role bluntly because.

I had an ego check and realized I wasn't the best person to do that role. And I think that's very important. I think one thing I see a lot of especially young business owners do is they kill. They kill their business with their ego before anything else gets a chance.

How was that realization for you? So that moment there where you're the CEO, you're the director, and you have that kind of humbling moment where you realize you're not the guy.

Yeah. Not amazing.

It doesn't feel good to get rid of yourself.

Yeah, it's just one of those realizations. It's like, I remember the thing I remember I was in New York, I was at a YPO event and I was chatting to One of the biggest private equity funds in the world. And we were in like their conference room, this very closed meeting. And one of the things he said that really resonated with me is like, when we grow companies, we say to the owner, you got two choices, you know, red pill, blue pill kind of thing, right? You can either be rich or you can be king. What do you want to be? Because you can't be both. You can be king or you can be rich, but you cannot be both. And I thought about that and look, get rich is probably a very crude way of putting it, but being king, I think, who cares? Honestly, who cares? It's exciting when you have your first employees to be the boss. When you grow and scale a company, you realize, well, any good leader realizes I don't want to be the boss. I. All I do is like deal with other people's issues. And that's because that's what a good leader does. And I didn't have the attention to KPIs or performance management and the different disciplines that you need to be a great manager. I was a great leader, but not a great manager. And a CEO is a manager, a director is a manager.

More. So I moved from that to what I call founder, which is just whatever nameless title I made up like, whereas I chair the board. So I work with the board to catch up with the executive team or the heads of and steer the direction of the company. And then I also work on strategic projects. Jesus, that came out bad. Strategic projects where. So normally a chair is a very non executive role and I don't get involved in the day to day by any means, but I do consult with the general managers about strategy. And also I build different things. So let's say I see a massive gap in the market for this thing that we're not doing. I kind of hover around and I identify that and I start building out a department to support that. Now once I build the department, I hand that over, right? I'm not running that, I'm not doing that. But I'll come up, I'll hire the initial people and just work on special projects. They work out probably 60, 70% of the time, which is really good because those special projects are worth a lot of money and they grow the business to the next level. So I still love that and I'm very passionate about the business. I'm not looking to exit the business.

But for me it's kind of building those special projects and making sure the company stays on that, you know, pathway of Helping the little guy, helping out people that haven't been given an opportunity.

You know, that's why we do so much work in Lighthouse foundation, all that kind of stuff. That's what I'm very big on and that's what my role is today at Studio Hook.

That's awesome. I love, I love that framing. Do you want to be a king or do you want to be rich?

Yeah, I always think about all the money. Another. Another nugget for people. Listening is something that Graham told me early on about social media. I'm not massive on social media.

But he always told me people post on social media for two reasons. Number one, for business, which is good. Number two, for ego, which is, you know, up to you. Now in my line of work, when you have a lot of people or a lot of employees, you don't want to be the flashy guy on a private jet posting photos that doesn't make you look good. It's just ego.

If you're, if that's what you do, maybe you sell, you know, I don't know. I don't know. Some people, that's their line of work, they need to present that inspirational front. For me, I don't. So the only things you see on my socials are more like business related things or updates or what's happening. But that was a little nugget that I always hold on to. It's like, remember before you post something, you posting this for business? Are you posting this for ego?

Yeah. And a lot of it is like it comes down to you want to be rich and anonymous. You don't be that flash every single way, dude.

I know some don't want to be that very successful people and they're the most humble, down to earth guys. You can always tell who's fake rich because they're wearing like, you know, all these designer clothes with all the brand labels and stuff. And you just know.

This is, this is funded with debt.

Yeah, exactly. That's how you like, you know. Whereas you see these guys that are legitimate billionaires who rock up in jeans and a hoodie, you know, some no brand hoodie. And that's when you're like, oh, this guy's.

Yeah, this guy.

Like this guy's got money. Yeah, 100%.

It's fascinating where we spend our whole kind of careers or lives trying to get to that top level. And it's like trying to get into that room. And you get into that room, you realize there's another door and there's another room behind it. You get into that race. But then you're like, you're in the room and you're like, you're trying to get out of that room. Like, when you're right at the top and you're running things the whole time. And after you made that decision and you had that ego check and you hired another CEO and you installed that CEO, what was that like for you? Because I think it must have been very challenging because your whole life and everything you've ever done would have suddenly changed.

Yeah. I'm not going to lie. It really challenges your identity.

Everyone says, don't tie your success to your business, but I think that's. To be honest, I think it's stupid advice. Yeah.

Because it's, like, good in theory.

It's like, yeah, it's like, yeah, I don't know an analogy, but it's. Dude, this is your baby. It's like, it's like having a kid and being like, hey, man, try not to be. Try not to be too happy, like, just because of your kid.

Yeah.

It's like. Like, you tell a parent that. You tell me how that goes for you.

Can I just add something before you get to this? I rang up Harry. This was probably in January, and I do remember this was just after you made the transition. I was like, dude, how you been? Like, what's going on? You're like, well, man, I don't really know what I'm doing.

Yeah.

100. That's very accurate. Like, for the first couple months, I was like, well, I felt useless.

Like, I was like, anything I touched, I almost felt like.

You know, this kid in a museum or something.

Don't touch that.

Like, don't.

Like, oh, yeah, what is it?

You're like, oh, and you touch this, and then you'd. You'd break something, and then someone would have to come and fix your mess. And you're like, oh.

What do I do?

What am I good for here?

And so, yeah, that's. That took a lot of learning. And to be honest, I only just learning that, like, when I spoke about my role now, like, taking that chair of the board role. I was previously just a board member. I still own, you know, 100% of that company, by the way. But I took that board role. I wasn't even chair of the board, but I recently taken that chair, board chair role after doing. There's a course in Australia called the Australian Institute of Company Directors about running and sharing a board. Yeah. All that kind of stuff. So I graduated that. Learned some more about that and Then took the chair role. Like it's almost like you have to think, would I hire myself for this role before I did that course? Dude, you got some 25 year old founder that's got the company to a certain point. Is this the guy that you think is going to take the business to the next level or is he just a nice guy that you put in a nice seat and say, hey man, thanks for helping out, but is he going to be the chair of the board? So that's where I had to go, okay, what would I need to have for me to hire myself?

Dude, that's some insane like self awareness and self reflection. Like have you developed that on your own or through mentors and coaches and.

Probably mentors and stuff? Like I, again, I obsess around this idea of like, you know, people get, people get older and they look at mistakes they've made in their life. And these people are amazing because they're willing to literally tell you like everything they've done wrong. Like no bars hold. Like we talk about failure in business, these guys will talk about how they've like just done like made horrific mistakes or it's the kind of thing people that talk about like investment and compound interest and stuff. So you learn how people actually would do things if they had a go over. And so that's what I try and take from. So I kind of learn like, okay, you know, young people often screw it up because they're too egotistical, they want things too fast. They don't understand that they're in a marathon, not a sprint. So I take those learnings and go, okay, if I would apply that in my business, what would that mean? And I don't know, it's, it's. I try to keep myself humble. Given my background and beginnings, it's hard to. I guess it's kind of hard not to be humble in that regard. Like it's hard to be too flashy and showboaty when you know that's not me. Yeah, I'm the nerdy guy that wants to play some Runescape or some video games on the weekend and do some fun projects and help people out. So I think that's what it comes down to and knowing what your end goal is. Like for me, I, this is getting a bit deep but like you get to, we're all gonna die, right? I might die tomorrow, might die in 50 years, who knows? But you gotta remember what you wanna be remembered for. No one really gives a if they go, oh, that was Harry Sanders. He was a Billionaire cool, man. Like, there's a lot of billionaires. And also, who cares?

What I'd prefer much more at my funeral is, oh, that was Harry Sanders. He's the guy that gave me an opportunity that changed my life. That's because, I mean, if I'm at Graham's funeral, he's, you know, in his early 80s now. Hopefully, he's got another 80 years ahead of him. But if I'm at his funeral, I'm gonna sit there and I'm gonna be like, this is a guy that changed my life.

And I think that is so much more powerful than, oh, wow, that guy had a lot of money and a nice house and a nice wife and a nice car, because who cares, dude? Who cares?

So that's kind of, you know, again, getting deep. But that's kind of where it all comes from. It's like, well, how do I build? If that's my end goal, if that's where I'm going to end up, how do I work back from that? Okay, I want to create an organization that has opportunities for people that does the right thing, that yada, yada, yada. And I don't need to be the richest person in the world or in the room. I just need to be the happiest. And, you know, I won't name names, but I've met people that are, you know, very famous. Australian success story worth billions of dollars. And, you know, I was having dinner with him, and I always have to be so careful with names because I do this. I'll, like, say, I'll try to keep.

This anonymous, and I'll just say, oh. And then, you know, his name's old.

Whatever.

And then Marcus said, like.

And.

And then he says to me, and I'm like, dude, you've achieved so much. You're like 70 years old. You got this, you know, boat out in the Med. Like, this massive boat. Like, what do you want? He's like, I saw this Russian guy the other day. He had, like, a boat twice the size of mine. Like, my goal is over the next five years, you know, I want to go from 3 billion to 5 billion. And I'm like. I'm sitting there. I'm just like. This was uninspired, disinteresting thing I've ever heard in my life. This guy is literally, like. He's playing this game as if it's a high score. You rack up the biggest score, and that can be fun. Don't get me wrong. We all sometimes look at that as, like, a high Score. But he's not happy. I know he's not happy. And it's because he always. He fell into the most common trap that is I want more. It's like that guy's got a bigger yacht than me, dude. There's always going to be someone. There's always going to be a bigger fish. There's always a bigger fish. So figure out, like, what your end goal is.

Yeah. And it sounds like their goals are not their own. And it makes me think of comparison is the thief of joy, where if you're always comparing to other people, you're never truly going to be happy.

I love that saying. Yeah. Yeah. It really is.

Yeah. And Matt, you were so. You were obsessed with SEO at the start, and that was your life and you went deep and you built a company around it.

Yeah.

What are you focused on and obsessed with now? It sounds like it's in the impact space. So what are you focusing on and what do you really want to achieve?

Yeah, well, I'm obsessed. Like, the SEO stuff I'll always love. It's always my baby. I'm obsessed with business now. Like, business for good is something that is super interesting to me. Like, I'll talk about theories on structure, I'll talk about theories on culture. I'll talk about all these different things till the cows come home. Right. It's just so fascinating, this dynamic. It's almost like a psychology of business.

But, yeah, the impact side, obviously, as well. Like, so I spend a lot of time working with the Lighthouse foundation, which are a youth homelessness organization I'm working with there.

My official role there is an ambassador, which means I do a lot of TV and radio when talking about the issue. I do a lot of conferences where I'll speak in an event and then donate that speaking fee to the charity. But also working with their team to kind of, you know, make them lean, make them tough, like, strengthen that talent to be the best that it could possibly be. Almost like in a. In a capacity, coming into that business and. And helping them there as well. So I think that that's. I really enjoy doing that. I really enjoy coming into different things, especially something like youth homelessness, where you can make a difference and make an impact. So, yeah, I would say my obsession now is around business and the impact that that causes, whether it's as. As an ambassador for people or specifically Lighthouse foundation, or whether it's coming in and just understanding and comparing notes on business. I just finished my second year at a MIT course in the States as well, and the more I learned about it, it's so exciting because it's. It's one thing it has in common with SEO is the answer is always it depends. Right. There's no one right way to structure your business. There's no one right SEO strategy. It depends. And that gray area to me is what is so exciting, right? How if Ben copied my business structure, if I copied his, it just wouldn't work. But the nuances and the differences are what are so cool to see. And you're changing real people's lives. You're creating real wealth, real opportunities, and hopefully a real legacy of a business that survives the test of time.

Isn't it fascinating how far businesses have come and what you can actually do with them? Because back in the day, it used to be, you know, it'd be your family. You create money for the creators of the business, the owners. Then it was for shareholder value, then it was stakeholder value, and now it's moving towards impact and having an impact in your community and other people's lives.

Absolutely.

Business is the vehicle for that.

Yeah. I think good business has always been around that. If you look at your big businesses and what they do, a lot of their focus is on community impact. It's not just a marketing gimmick. They do it intentionally because.

It drives a culture internally for their business that strives to make them do better at what they actually do.

So, yeah, that's. That's. I mean, coming back to Lighthouse, quickly, one thing we, you know, we don't look at donations, right? Like, when we work with corporates, we don't call it donations, we call them partnerships. And it's all about how do we, as Lighthouse, partner in with someone to deliver them value. Right. Because we can't just knock on your door and ask for 20 grand, 100 grand, and just be like, thanks so much for that. That was great, dude. You know, do you know how many charities there are? How many people are out there knocking for. Knocking on doors for money? Yeah, exactly. So you've got to find out how to make that partnership. Whether you inspire their staff, create resilience in their team, tie your ethos into their mission. That's what a partnership is. So all that kind of stuff is about. Yeah. Coming back to your point of impact, it is. Business is about, like, what impact are you having.

If you. I always say this, and again, it's a bit more controversial, but if you start a business to get rich, you're an idiot. And I'm not saying that, you know, no one's ever started a business to get rich and wasn't successful. But people that start good businesses are there to solve a problem or to solve a need. Like, if Studio Hawk had originally started and just focus on chasing money, we would still be just me at this size. The second we started realizing, dude, we can make an impact in this SEO space, we can make an impact on people, is when we grew and kept growing.

So, yeah, if you're sitting there being like, man, I can't wait to be rich, you know, I'm just gonna start this business and the money's just gonna flow in. Rethink your priorities, Rethink, like, you can work for someone and make a consistent salary, whereas if you have a business, I mean, I'm not even operationally that involved in the business, but on a Saturday, I'll get an email and I'll still have to do something. It might be a key decision, might be a TV show I need to appear on or something. But you are signing yourself up for indentured. I wouldn't say servitude. Slavitude, where you were a slave to that business. Even if you're just on the board or whatever. Like, this is now your baby. It's like having a kid. Your kid calls you Friday night, you're on date night with your wife and your kid calls. Need to. Need to pick up. Guess you're going to do pickup.

I think that's it.

The passion. Having.

Having a kid is. Yeah, yeah, having a kid is great. It's parenting that sucks.

Yeah, 100%.

You see all the great stuff around businesses and people having money and appearing on shows and doing whatever. That's at the end of, like 10.

Or 20 years, for sure.

Being a slave to that business, working 24, 7 for sure.

Like, it's so rewarding to see the kid grow up and, you know, start walking and start running and do stuff. And, man, there's no better feeling than when your kid bring something home like, you know, and goes, look what I created. And you're like, wow, I had nothing to do with this. And it created this amazing thing. But, yeah, then there's the parenting side of it, which is not.

And it's relentless.

It's relentless.

There's no days off.

There's no days off. And, yeah, even when you do look successful, like, you could easily look at me and go, okay, you know, you. We've made it. We're Forbes 30 under 30. We've got a $10 million business. Yada, yada, yada. We've got all these different things. No, man, there's still like days you're just like, oh my God, like I, I gonna be exhausted. Like, I'm wrecked. I'm still having to deal with certain things. It just becomes different issues. I'm not dealing with client issues. I'm not dealing with necessarily staff issues so much. It's more industry issues. It's more, you know, opportunities that you miss because you've got an opportunity cost doing something else. All these things still happen. So, you know, you've got to be continuously growing and learning.

I think back to your point about entrepreneurship and starting a business, like having that passion. Like you were so obsessed with SEO. Like, if you hated SEO, oh, we would have been the first client issue. You would have been like, dude, we.

Would have been screwed, man.

Yeah, 100.

We would have been like creek instantly.

Because that's the problem. You go, it's like, it's like if I started a business about something I didn't care about, like, if I did.

SEO and you did crypto, mate, it'll.

Be a lot of problems. Like if we swap roles, there's going to be problems. So it is, it's exactly that.

It's like passion, right? Like, I like crypto. I'm not driven the same way you are about crypto. You know, I would, I just wouldn't. You know, I could talk about SEO. I can talk about business and you can hear the passion because I am passionate about it. But I can talk about crypto and I can talk about it. But you're certainly not going to hear me and go, like, yeah, that I'm.

Going to listen to that guy.

Like.

What would your tips be for, like, you know, the people that are listening to the podcast that are starting their own business, Maybe founders, maybe entrepreneurs looking to start their own thing. Like, what's the, what's the really key takeaway there for them?

Find something you're passionate about and that has a gap in the market.

Like, how do you find out there's a gap in the market?

Oh, I mean, that's literally a million dollar question. Like, you have to make them do something.

Finding a gap in the market can be simple. Like.

There'S currently a gap in the market in like this whole loneliness epidemic that's going on. Like, people feel more lonely than ever, even though they're more connected than ever. What's the gap in the market there? Could you create an events business? Could you create like, you know, obviously escape rooms were a massive thing, but what's the next iteration of that. I've seen some cool ideas coming out of places like China and stuff. You know one great thing I would do if I had time was I'd look at a business like that in China and totally copy it and bring it to Australia and that would be pretty successful. Again, if you're passionate about that, if you couldn't care less about that business, don't do that business because you're going to copy it in all the wrong ways and it's just going to suck. But you know, that's, that's what I'm talking about. Gaps in the market where you identify these different needs for things. You might have a need or you might realize that everyone else has this need. It's better if you have the need.

I'm sure something similar. When you start a collective shift you're like, dude, there's a massive gap in the market around like non, like non biased information about this.

So find that, find something that you're passionate about. Find something that you're willing to sacrifice for. Like imagine you just get a call from your best mate and he's like hey mate, dude, we're going out Friday night. It's going to be amazing. There's going to be a bunch of girls, guys there and now imagine you're saying no because you're working on this idea instead that has made you $0. If you can't see yourself saying no to work on this idea that's made you $0 that you've already worked 80 hours this week on. That ain't it, that ain't the idea. Keep going till you got the one that you go, nah mate, sorry, I'm working on this thing, I'm super interested in it. Like if, yeah, you have to be.

Irrationally obsessed and they're the things that are going to get you through those hard nights where you've done an all nighter, you've got no money in the bank, you might have to fire someone, you have to keep going. Or even those nights where you're working super hard and you have to keep pushing for a client and there's, there's a payday at the end but you're like I've already got money but I still have to keep going. Like the passion is what drives you because you want to see that change in the world.

For sure there's not the scope to cover now. But Apple use this example in Apple has an education academy that they use for their top 500 leaders in Apple and.

I'm just Thinking about how much of this is public.

There'S a great story that they share that Harvard actually teach about the discovery of the South Pole and the Norwegians versus the British. And to keep a long story short, the British have got infinite resources to get to this island. They send dogs, ponies, snowmobiles. Before there were snowmobiles. Like, everything. They throw everything at this thing. The Norwegian guy. But they could only go there if they said that they would do science there as well. So they said they'll do science and they'll discover this place. The Norwegian guy lied to the Norwegian king, who sent him on an expedition to the North Pole, got to the point where he had to decide, and told the guys that he recruited, by the way, we're taking a quick detour to the South Pole, did no science research that just bought dogs. And they got there way before the English, who landed there first and made it back where the English died, because they had this focus on balanced leadership and trying to hedge their bets across all these different things that they were doing. Norwegian guys like, dude, if these dogs don't make it, I am making it. Yeah. So you can read the history about that. It is. I'm not a big history guy, but that is so fascinating, that story around this idea of balanced leadership, which I'm not saying is bad by any way. Like, sometimes you want to hedge your bets, but if you're starting out and you're bringing ponies and dogs and snow machines and all these, like, they had, like, I don't know, 128 people versus Norwegians, like, 32. Like, you have to go, okay, what's my dog like? What's the dog that's going to get me there and back?

And I think even you don't have the ponies or the ponies.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. One dog, for sure. So, like, that's how you can beat a lot of these big organizations, because they go and they say, hey, we're doing this new project. What are we going to do? And Apple's very smart. There's a reason why they're one of the biggest companies, if not the biggest. I don't actually know the facts on that, but they are very focused on what they do. They know, hey, we're not going to bring the sled. We're not going to do all these things. Like, again, coming back, you know, I don't want to make this the Apple podcast, but, you know, when they. Before they had the iPhone, they had. They created the iPad. And when Steve looked at it, he's like, dude, this is awesome but this needs to be a phone, not a tablet. So they shelved the whole tablet. They didn't like working in the background, they shelved the whole thing and they picked their dogs and that's how they went to market on that. So with your business you've got a. Yeah, I meet a lot of people that tell me they're working like three or four different ideas and immediately I not going to be, I'm going to be rude, but I'm going to be honest. I discount them. Yeah, I immediately discount them. Unless they're at a stage in life where they can do that or they're non exec in a few different roles or they've found companies before. Dude, you're bringing way too many things to the South Pole. Dude, where's your dogs? Like I need to see the guy that picked the dogs is the expert at picking the dogs and he's the guy that's going to do it.

I think, I think one of my favorite sayings is like on that topic is like are you playing to win or you're playing not to lose?

Yeah, that's a great one. Yeah. Yeah.

Because you're playing not to lose. You're playing, you know, you're playing the soft game. Like he's half, like he's sort of in but like if it doesn't work.

Out, you're gonna be okay. That's, that is a brilliant point. Like what, what's the end goal? Like also in this story, tying back to this poll submission, the British guy, there was a previous guy, made it 200 miles like to the South Pole, but then had to come back and this guy celebrated when he beat that 200 mile mark was like, that was a moment of celebration for him. But then you ask yourself what was the objective? Was it to beat the last guy or was it to get to the South Pole? He just copied what the last guy did. The last guy bought all everything too and he didn't make it. He just copied that and did more of it thinking that that's gonna, you know, that was, I just need to beat this guy. But if you really want to pioneer something, you really want to do something, you're going to be the first one doing it. And you have to think of something crazy. Yeah.

Because you don't know the destination. That's the other thing about that story. Like they didn't know where they were going.

Yeah.

They didn't know the terrain. Right. It was all new. So. And that's business you don't know the terrain. You don't know if there's another covert around the corner. You don't know what inflation rate to do.

Rule book.

Yeah, there's no rulebook. And if you know, there's no manual to it, so. And again, it comes down to it. It depends, right? It's like, oh, I'm just gonna do everything that Harry said and you can follow all the advice. I was like, well, the pet.

You know, like, it's frustrating but exhilarating.

Because there's, There is no, like, that's why anyone's like, get rich quick, all that kind of stuff. Such a scam, dude. Such a scam. Yeah, the business blueprint. Yeah, exactly. The only course you should do is around a specific topic. Like hear from experts around the topic and ask questions. Yeah, exactly. But, like, I could sit down with you one on one for a week telling you everything I know about business and you can still fall over because, you know, it just wasn't the right timing, wasn't the right whatever. So it's tricky.

I, I love that story about the South Pole. It's just a few sentences and already you're touching on things like where scarcity is your friend and strategy, resource management, stakeholder management. Do you have the right tooling for the job? And how larger businesses are more vulnerable when they're at the top. They could be knocked off by the smaller guy. Which is exactly what happened in that instance.

Yeah.

Such a great, such a great story with so many lessons in it.

Exactly. And that was, I mean, again, you can look at history for these stories. I think we do discount history a lot, especially. I mean, I honestly always think history is pretty fricking boring. Like, but then you hear stories about this and you're like, wow, there are so many lessons in leadership and stuff. And that's not even a business. But it's the same principles as a business, 100%.

Yeah.

That was one thing I liked the most when I studied business was going through Harvard cases. And you have real life businesses that happened maybe five, 10 years ago, what they thought, how they set it up, you get a chance to solve it, and then you find out what actually happened and how you would solve it for. To be successful.

Yeah, that's probably the best part. And there's a lot of case studies like that available online. Like, you know, you just need to remember when you're reading them.

You'Re not a great business person just because you've read a case study and be like, oh, they should have Done this. It's like hindsight's 20 20, dude.

Like, you weren't sitting there in the.

Boardroom making these calls. Like, if you look at it and you, yeah, you read these case studies and you see what organizations do and which ones are successful, which ones aren't. There's so much publicly available information on it. But yeah, to your point, like, the case studies are the best way to learn. If you do a degree from a serious university like Harvard, like, or MIT. You know, I remember Harvard. I'm doing a three week course with them in two years time. And there's 42 case studies I need to read for that. Either it's a week or three weeks and you need to know them, you need to highlight them back to front. And that's how you learn business in the real world because you look at real case studies of what really happened, not from what business leaders. And like, you know, one of the lecturers said, if you like reading fiction, read people's biographies and I'll talk about the a million times that they were right and the one time that they were wrong, that turned out to be the right thing to do anyway. Like, what you really want to read is independent case studies on companies.

You know, like, what really happened, what bad call did Harry really make and.

How did that either work for the company or not work for the company?

Oh, that's, that's actually one of the courses I want to do, the God course. It's bloody expensive to do, but you learn so much in such a short period of time.

Yeah, for sure.

Now, mate, to wrap things up here because it's been really good, we have to talk about bitcoin.

Yeah, let's talk to me about bitcoin.

I think you own some.

I do own some bitcoin. I do own some bitcoin.

Okay.

My GM actually bought some bitcoin. He's a big fan of, you know, he owns some gold as well in an undisclosed location. I don't know. And he owned some bitcoin and he, you know, to be honest, when he first bought it, I was like, this is years back, by the way. This is when bitcoin is quite new. And I was, I was wondering like, what is this man? Like, what are you buying? And he's like, no, no, no, I was talking about crypto. And I'm like, I don't know, man. He bought this bitcoin and I was talking to him like, you know, what about these other coins?

He's like.

You don't want any of These Bitcoin.

Bitcoin. Bitcoin. He's a funny guy. And so he bought this bitcoin and I gotta say, for someone that was.

Against the decision, he did pretty damn well off it.

Like he's hold it, held it for a long time, but he's got that bitcoin safe and it's appreciated quite a lot. So it's on the P and L there somewhere.

Okay, how do you think about your investing, like in general personally or business wise? Like cash flow that you're making?

Yeah, so investing in Australia, it's a little bit different. Like we have a lot of money in property. Like I own a couple properties.

One that I bought for mum to help her and one that I bought for me, which you know all about. And that's been a project. Anyway, the other vehicles I have, I have a lot of liquidity and I think it's important to have liquidity because sometimes businesses need capital. And dude, the most expensive thing you can sell is equity. So if you're there, you need a loan or you need cash or something, you have to give up equity to support the business. I mean, that is, that would suck because I know the business will be worth three times as much in five years. And I've given up equity now.

So I also put money in index funds. Very safe, very conservative. Yes, you can laugh at me. The 25 year old that has.

The 25 year old index fund guy that's getting 10%. Yeah, 7%.

And then I've got some more money in private loans. Private loans for like business tied. Tied against property. So the biggest risky investment I have is my business. And yes, you do need to think about your business as a risky investment. I effectively have property, very safe private loans and.

Share ETFs which are quite safe, both of those categories. And a business which is incredibly risky. And then we've got bitcoin. Like would I buy. Yeah, I probably would buy more bitcoin. Like, you know, I talked to you about these different cycles and I'm not even gonna, I'm talking way off my.

Area of expertise here, man. I'm like, I'm way out now.

But you know, learning about those cycles and stuff like, and getting involved in that process. Absolutely. The only other crypto that I've ever bought was coin called. This is a bit of a meme story. I bought a. I bought a coin called Ultra Safe. Just the stupidest purchase ever. I went on Reddit, you know, which.

Is where all good stuff, all good stories start on Reddit. Guys.

And I went, best financial advice on Reddit, mate.

Yeah, that's it.

This is just after.

What was that?

Moon coin or something?

Yeah, it's safe Moon.

Safe Moon or something. That's how that happened.

And everyone's like, oh my God, dude.

Like, that's when it went up, not when it crashed. Sorry.

Okay.

And when it went up and I was like, ah, dude, this crypto stuff, man, maybe I'm wrong. Like, because I'm, I'm living life and I'm thinking there's no such thing as easy money. There's no such thing.

You're saying, like.

And I'm seeing these people just put.

Money in and I'm like, I knew it was gambling, but I was like, well, it's better odds than I get at a casino. So this next coin came around, ultra safe. I'm like, yeah, yeah, sounds good. I think I put a, put a grand in or something. And dude, this thing took off. All of a sudden I had five grand in that account, right? And I'm just like, my God, I've.

Been doing this whole money making thing completely wrong.

Like, what am I doing? I'm busting ass. I'm trying to like, you know, like, do all these different structures and stuff, like. And the next day that coin was worth $1.

But you bet, I went around the office being like, guys, I have this crypto thing figured out. I haven't figured out. All right, come view bet, mate, I'll give you, give you some advice. Anyway, so I lost a grand.

I think I put like another grand in the next day and it all went to zero.

I think I hold it somewhere still.

I don't know where.

But if you look at the coin gecko of that or whatever it is.

These days, like, it's grim.

It's not coming back, it's not coming back up. But if anyone wants to buy a.

Billion ultra safe coins off me, you.

Know, my details are there. My details are there.

But yeah, I do think there's definitely merit to crypto. Like, just because I'm not heavily involved in it doesn't mean I don't see the merit to it. I just, yeah, I don't have the time and again, pick those battles. I see it as a, you know, I see it as a great asset class that's probably underutilized, that has got a long way to go. But unfortunately, with crypto, you really need to understand what you're doing. You need to understand what it is. You need to understand where it's going what you're doing with it, how to hold it, all these different things. Whereas an ETF fund, you just put money in. So I'm sensible enough, I think, to go, okay, I don't know enough about this to play with this. When I have some more time, I'll do some more digging in that space.

It's a right frame of mind. I think Berg's going to love you for your investment strategy.

Oh, my good idea. It's so sensible. Love it.

And it's good because you can, you.

Can automate it, you don't have to think about it, and you can focus on the things that matter to you for sure.

And that's. And it's a safe, you know, diverse portfolio. Yeah, probably, probably. When I do look at crypto, I'll probably look at putting 5% in is the general rule of thumb I've heard from, like, I'm not talking like you put $5 in if you're worth a hundred bucks or something, but, like, if you've got a big portfolio, like 5% seems to be a good rule. The only tricky part I've heard with the 5% rule is oftentimes you put 5% in, you wait a year, and that now asset class is worth 20%.

Of your portfolio because crypto's gone up so much.

So it's like you keep that as 20% of your portfolio and risk the dip of crypto or what do you do? And so that's where I think that that strategy is more risky. And also just the whole, you know, not so much volatility of crypto, but holding on to it and making sure. I mean, we've all seen these. Yeah. People get hacked and you gotta be smart about it. I know you know something about like, hardware wallets and stuff, but I don't trust myself enough. Ben knows me, mate. I'll be like, ben, mate, I've done it. I'm up. And then I'm like, dude, how do I recover my kid?

With the same day, three words left.

I've lost the other nine.

Yeah.

I've got three.

You know, you, man, you'll be like, yeah, bro, I just lost nine words. That can be a problem.

Do you know a guy?

Yeah, that'll be exactly what happened. And that's why, like, you know, when.

The time comes for sure, even like.

When I think for you, even sticking your money in like a, in a crypto fund could be like, yeah, could be, you know, yeah, option.

I know I'm never going to be the guy picking after Ultra safe, mate. It's like picking individual stocks. It's like, yeah, totally. Unless you know and you've got advice and you really are aware. Like, I mean, that's. I guess, yeah. What you need to do.

The answer depends.

It depends.

It depends.

Yeah. But certainly if you're like me and you just go off what Reddit says.

My God, don't do that.

Doesn't depend.

That's just that the logic. I see. The logic. I see, like, oh, my God, the logic. It just makes me look at my investment and be like, I looked at this logic and I was like, yeah, this checks out. Like, none of this logic made any sense.

There was no investment deck.

There was no understanding of any of the basic principles.

It was just like, oh, this guy's like, you know, this guy looks cool and they've got a cto.

So this coin's going to work. Yeah, he's got a few followers.

How could this get a website? A website. A discord.

Legit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

And actually, I like the way that you've talked about your investing as well, where a lot of people, they'll spend a lot of time making money and then managing it, and it requires more management. And you put all this time into your company or your work or whatever you've done, you grow your investments, but then you become a slave to them. And it sounds like you've got a lot of heavy automation. You don't have to think too much and it's just there working for you rather than heavily active things that you need to think about, like, you know, what specific crypto you're in, or whether it's VC investments or other companies.

Yeah.

Like, pick again. Pick your battles. Like, look at the opportunity cost, dude. You just can't feasibly. I can't feasibly be across what's happening in crypto. What's happening with individual stock prices, what's happening with individual private loans that's going on. And then SEO and then the SEO business. It's like, which one of these are going to make me the most money? Am I now a crypto guy? Am I now a, you know, like, understanding that stock market guy? What am I? It's like, no, the one thing I know, I play and I pretend at all those things, but the one thing I know is business and SEO. So that opportunity cost makes sense to go. I'm going to focus on that where I know I've made money and created great impact and growing a business rather than play in ETFs where A. Like I've made a little bit of money, but certainly nowhere near like what I have in the business. And I certainly haven't created any impact with my ETF investment. So I'd have to figure out, even if I was amazing at ETFs, how do I then create impact from this? So back to your goals. Yeah, back to my goals. Right. So for me it's kind of makes sense. It's like run these things on, you know, autopilot though you still check in with these things. Like what does Graham always say? Like, fingers on, hands off. Which is like, you know, you don't want to be involved, you don't be muddling with it, but just keep a temperature check because yeah, you know, all that kind of stuff. The advice you get, it's not their money.

At the end of the day, mate, that's been. That's been sensational. Did you have anything else?

Oh yeah, mate. I want to know, mate, you're a gamer. What games are you getting into? You've had a hard day, you head home, you crank. What are you? Are you PC console? What are you? And what games do you play?

PC Guy? Depends on the day. Like if I've had a pretty cruisy day, we're firing up a bit of Dota 2. I don't want to hear it for any League players. Don't even add me, don't even tell me to play league. I'm not interested.

Or what. I've been playing lately a bit of Rocket League, which is a bit more low stress. I've been doing the media circuit at the moment with. It's like Homeless Awareness Week at the moment. So I've been doing like a lot of TV and radio. So I come home and play some Rocket League.

But mostly like. And Baldur's Gate 3 just came out as well. So it's a pretty like nerdy rpg. Single player. You come home, you just play that. But usually pretty like uninvolved games, like outside of Runescape. I mean Runescape, is that that game I've been playing for like, I don't know, 10 years, 15 years. It's the most. I don't even know Runescape. It's got the worst graphics, the best game ever made.

Oh man, so good. Yeah, I'm an Apex Legends guy. Oh yeah, all the time. First person shooter and also play a demio in VR with the guys from work, which is like a tabletop dungeon crawler.

Oh yeah, yeah. No, I've got a. I've got A couple of those headsets, I get the vive and the other one.

I'm not a big gamer, actually. I'm not a gamer.

Oh, dude, you should play some games.

Yeah, mate, get into it.

You'll be better if you play games.

Yeah, just get good, mate.

Try.

Yeah.

It'S fantastic. And mate, I'd like to go back to the Lighthouse Foundation. So we touched on it a few times. You're involved with those, with the Lighthouse foundation as an ambassador. Did you want to tell us maybe a couple of their programs and things that they're trying to do and achieve and also anyone that's listening how they could potentially get involved and help out?

Yeah, for sure. So the problem is we've got about every day in Victoria alone. In Australia, we've got about 22 homeless kids, new homeless kids, new homeless kids. This is a big problem. Like, this isn't like, I'm not talking one or two people a night. Like, these are people sitting at train station wondering what the hell they're going to do tonight. It's severe. So we need foster carers to look after these kids. We need carers, social workers and we need donations. Right. Because the government only supports about half of the organization. The rest is privately funded. Because the government, you know, they don't care about the user analysis as much as they should, is bluntly what I'll say. So the biggest way to get involved is. Yeah, just kind of sharing the support. You know, we're trying to push like our marketing a bit more because people don't know about it, which means that, you know, while people don't know about it, it also means that kids don't know about us, so they don't get the support that they need. And the biggest thing, like just if you're out and about, maybe not even in Australia, when you see someone that's homeless, don't look away and discuss. Don't look at it like a, you know.

A disease or something. Like being homeless is a phase that a lot of people go through. Unfortunately, it's very shameful to a lot of people. I don't mean that it is shameful. I mean, I was homeless, but, you know, there's a lot of shame associated with it. So even just saying, hey, how are you giving them a smile, you know, I remember just my time on the streets when people would instantly look away from you was when you felt most dirty, like you were a burden or a, you know, just a burden on everything. And so I would say, listen to this. Go away and Just give them a smile, say hi, but don't just turn away in disgust.

That's tough, man.

That's.

Yeah, you don't really think about it. Like you just kind of walk past people on the street and you don't think about how you can affect them and what they're actually going through and how many people there actually are. Yeah, that's really eye opening, man. And anyone listening, get amongst it and get involved.

Yeah, awesome.

We'll let the links below. Man, that's been amazing. Where can people follow your stuff? Maybe drop your. Your business details, your newsletter throw.

Yeah, I do.

I do read from time to time.

Oh, good, you're on my newsletter. That's good.

Tea time with Harry.

Tea time. Yeah, we've got a LinkedIn newsletter about. More about SEO stuff. My LinkedIn's where you want to go or my Instagram is where you want to go to learn more about business stuff. To be honest, I don't talk about that much about business concepts, but I do talk about what's happening in the business. Updates on things. But yeah, if you need to reach me, that's your. They're your best bets. I didn't know you were on Instagram. Yeah, yeah, not. Not massive on it, like, but I've got it. And we post updates on. On different things that are like, you know, TVs or different stuff. Stuff like that.

Yeah.

Is this where you came up with coffee with Ben? You stole tea time with Harry? Is that where you nicked it from, mate?

Yeah, that'll be all right.

I saw Harry.

That'd be right.

Crushing it. I'm like. As you spoke to the side. When you. When you want to win, you just copy. So yeah, copied and change it to coffee.

Yeah. Genius. Dude. I'm pretty sure I stole tea time from someone. Why?

It's not at least the most unique concept.

You Cordial updates.

Cordial updates. I was like, yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

Really gonna be bourbon or coffee for me. I thought maybe bourbon.

Good artist copy. Great artist Steel.

Dude, that's been fantastic. Thank you so much for your time. I know you're super busy. You're on Media Week. Also search Harry Sanders on. On Google. Because you're on that project last week.

I was. Yes.

Yeah, that's on that, man. That's pre.

Yeah. And I'm doing. Geez, I gotta remember what I'm doing tonight. 7News. I'm doing something with 7News tonight. Doing the news. Yeah, I'm doing. You know what?

I'm doing something tonight. Stay tuned. I'LL pretend it's a secret project.

You sound so much like Ben. What are you doing? Where you going? He's like something can't remember their name but I'm going.

It's in the calendar.

Thank you so much, man. That's been fantastic. Thank you everyone for listening. We hope you got something out of that. That's Harry Sanders, our founder of Studio Hawk. If you're needing SEO or just want to. Yeah, check out the Lighthouse Foundation. We'll keep the links in the description below. We'd also love for you to share this with a friend if you've got anyone that you think would find value in this, any part of it. Sharing this helps us grow the podcast where we're growing numbers burgs we're getting increasing month over month.

Compounding, mate. I love to see the results. Great.

Love to see a compound love love compound growth. But thanks everyone for tuning in and as always, we'll see you next time. Thank you, Bugs.

Thanks, mate. Thanks champions. And thank you, Harry.

Thanks, guys.