Lifetime SEO

Business Brain, episode 587 for Casual Friday, October 4, National Body Language Day 2024. Greetings folks and welcome to Business Brain, the show where we take an idea or three, we crunch it, we analyze it, we dissect it, we use it to help tune our business brains collectively, each of us, us. We're tuning our business brains. You're tuning your business brains. We do it together, each and every episode. Back here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And back here out in Lafayette, California, I'm Shannon Jean.

Yeah, we had some traveling, man.

We did, we did. It was good. I traveled with my, my lovely wife and my 96 year old mother.

Amazing.

So it was, yeah, she was a trooper and man. But it's, it's like traveling with a little kid. You know when you have someone that old, you got to manage everything. But yeah, it was, it was, it worked out much, much better. Or less. Let me say this. Less problematic.

Yeah.

Than I, than I thought.

Well, that's, that's the key. The mindset is everything, right?

It is, yeah. She was great. Like she, she handled. We finally got, just bought her one of these fancy three wheeled walkers to take to New York City.

Yeah.

And she wasn't very happy. She's like, no, I'm not, I'm not using that. And I said, well, if you want to come as we walk around the city, you should try this. And she fell in love with it. And she walked 2.3 miles in Central park. And I, I told her, yeah, I tracked her on her phone. I said, you know, you haven't walked 2.3 miles in a decade. So the walker, she felt so much more comfortable because from a balance standpoint, sure. That her breathing was much better. And I said, yeah, because when you're kind of stumbling around, you're so paranoid that you're, you're kind of breathing a little faster.

Yeah, there's, there's a stress reaction there. Yeah.

It was shocking. Shocking. It was wonderful.

That's amazing.

It was cool.

I love that. I love it. That's great. I traveled with members of our population at the other end of the age spectrum. I was down in Disney World for. Well, actually both ends. My father in law's 80th birthday, he decided he wanted to take the whole family to Disney World, which included three children, three of his grandchildren under the age of five. But going into this, we knew that we had to set like mindset. We knew that we couldn't expect it to be what Disney World would be if it Was just my wife and I. Or just my wife and my son and I, who my son is in his 20s. Like, you know, we were going to be not only coordinating with nine additional people on top of the three of us, but people with very different expectations and pacing and, and drive and all of that and.

Yeah, yeah. Do you just. I mean, I imagine when you're with that group you just kind of. Kind of go with the flow because you know you're not going to.

Correct.

Go. Okay, correct.

Yeah, exactly. We set our expectations much lower than we needed to. But again, like there's value in that.

Yes, I agree.

As you just pointed out and. But we did plan one additional day there where it was just the three of us. They wanted to make sure we made it to Galaxy's Edge. We're all Star wars fans and they have this whole Star wars dude, dude. If you are a Star wars fan or an Avatar fan, they have Avatar World at Animal Kingdom and Galaxy's Edge Star Wars World at Hollywood Studios. It's like you're there. I mean, yeah, it's amazing. Not just the rides, but just the whole environment. Really, really well done. But we knew. And one great part for me about this, that was sort of a silver lining, but an extremely valuable silver lining was that the family went down on Friday night. I did not fly down until early Sunday morning. Cause I had some gigs that had been scheduled before this somewhat last minute trip was kind of pulled together. So I made it down after they had had a full day in the park to sort of figure out what it was like doing this with the family and how they. There were. There were moments where everybody sort of split off. Like when the kids, the young kids, when it became their nap time and they were going back to the hotel. That's when my wife and son and maybe you know, two or three other people would like go off and do some like big kid rides and things like that, you know, which is fine. And they realized on the first day that waiting in line sucks.

Yes.

Yeah. I know this is self evident, but there is a thing now at Disney World they have changed it and it's called Lightning Lane now.

Oh, it used to be like FastPass or something.

Yeah, there was Fast Pass. There was. Yeah, FastPass was free. You just had to go up to the. You had to go to the ride and like get a ticket for a certain time or whatever. This Lightning Lane you pay for now we were paying about 15 bucks per person per day to get this what there was a Lightning Lane multi Pass that price changes depending on whether the park is really busy or not. At this time of year, it's far less busy than it is in, say, July and August. So I think it was probably 25 bucks per person per day to do. But the way it works is you get three. You can book three rides in advance at any given time, and you do it all on your phone. So you don't even have to be in the park to book the ride. Right. You can plan ahead. And if you're park hopping, you can do all of that. And once you. And you book time slots, right? So, you know, you get there and it's like, okay, this is the slot I was able to get. As soon as you check in for the ride, you've now. That pass is now freely available to you to book something else.

Something else.

Correct. And so manage. And again, this is the great part, and I say that this segment is the value of teaching others to use their business brains. The value to me of teaching others to use their business brains is by the time I got there, my wife and my son had sussed this all out. I was the passenger Prince, man. I just showed up and they're like, okay, here's what we've got. Here's what we're doing. And I was like, okay, I'm happy to be here.

Good to go. That's awesome.

And it's funny because. And so we were able to do every single ride that we wanted to do at least once, if not more than once. And on Tuesday, which was the day that we had by ourselves, we actually were able to do three parks in one day. It was a long day.

Yeah, sure.

But we managed the transportation the right way. So we were never kind of driving ourselves nuts waiting for buses. We never waited in a single line for a ride. I mean, we put on 27,000 steps or something. Like, you know, obviously, you gotta hustle, you gotta hustle. But we never were running anywhere. We were never rushed. It was all a very relaxed thing. And it was because of this lightning lane allowing us to really plan things. Well, I say us. It was the royal us, allowing them to really plan things for the three of us. And we were doing it the whole time. They didn't do them the first day. By the time I got there, like I said, they had just given up. And I say given up because they didn't. The initial thought was, well, we don't need to pay for the lightning lane. We can just kind of do this on our own. And the reality was well, if you look at the price that you are, the all in price that you are paying to be there. So the time away from, you know, your work, your life, whatever that is. So that. That's one the flights down, the hotels, the passes for the parks that you're paying for each day. 15 bucks per person is a rounding error.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it. You're going to get so much more value if you broke it down. Like, let's say you're going for attractions, whether it's a ride or a world or whatever.

Events.

Whatever events, yeah. You know, I would say you measure the value in the number. So if that extra 15 bucks gets you into 10 more things that you otherwise wouldn't do. And you're absolutely right, man. Waiting in line is just such a waste of time. There's always a price worth paying to get out of that line.

Oh, I agree. Yeah. Well, and we learned this as a family when we planned. And this was 10 years ago, maybe more, when we. We planned a trip to Europe. And as with every trip, your time in whatever place you are is limited.

Yes.

Like, that is usually predefined, but regardless, it's a fixed amount of time, and it costs you money to be there and waiting in line. Unless you. Unless your vacation experience is such that you want to be waiting in line. Skip the line. Pay to skip. And we did that. Lisa, when we were trying to get into the Eiffel Tower, she was planning it ahead, and she's like, you know, there's. People say the lines are three or four hours long. I'm like, oh, man, I don't know. And she's like, wait, I found this thing. And it's. It'll cost us like $75 for the family to do this. Skip the line tour of the Eiffel Tower. She's like. And it was, you know, it was like, okay, that, like, maybe it was a hundred dollars for the family or something. I mean, it was. It was enough money that it was like, okay, well, 100 bucks can be spent on lots of different things. But I'm like, think about those four hours.

We get the line.

We get to maximize our time there. We pay either in time, waiting in line, downtime, or we pay in cash.

Yeah, exactly.

And I knew if I were there, I would have lobbied for the lightning lane passes right away. But the best part was that my family was using their business brains before they ever even talked with me. And it was like, oh, this is a huge win. You've already solved these problems. Yeah, it was wonderful.

That business brain is this concept of always solving problems. That's just the way it is falling. I just posted this on Fall in love with problem solving, and you're unstoppable.

Right.

It's just don't complain about it. That is your job. No problems, no business. So it's constantly looking at it like, okay, today we're gonna get up. What problems are we solving today? We're solving for waiting in line because there's just. Doesn't make any sense. And Dave's coming down for one day or whatever it is. Yeah.

Less time.

We want to back less time. How do we maximize it?

You know, and the whole family loved it. Like, you know, they were all in it. Like, I mean, this. There was nothing about this trip that was economically sound. I mean, we bring in 12 people to Disney World. Reality, we bring 12 people to Disney World with 45 days notice. So we didn't know, like, we overpaid for everything. Everything. Right.

That's okay. Correct. That's what you're getting. You're, you know, you had somebody, an older person that wanted to go with everybody. That's just the way it works.

That's the way it was. He was like, I want to bring the family to Disney world. For my 80th birthday, when I took.

My kids and a friend, we took our kids to the NFL Experience when Super bowl was out here.

Yeah.

And I didn't want to spend the crazy, outrageous, you know, five, six, seven thousand dollars for a Super bowl ticket. My kid is crazy 49er fan, and he was. They were little at that time, but I said, hey, let's do this NFL Experience. It's all this great stuff and a lot of fun. It was amazing. During checkout, I saw this just small little line that said, VIP experience. 20 bucks. And I said, well, I'm a VIP.

For 20 bucks, I can be a VIP too.

Yeah. So I clicked this $20 thing saying, oh, whatever, we'll get some little, know, package or something for the kids and everything's great. It was amazing. They got we. Every event we went to when there was a very long line, autographs, catch with players, all this stuff, they would see your VIP pass and walk you up to the exit where this people were leaving this event and walk you right on. Yep. And everybody was looking at me like, what the heck? And I. I can't. I was just like, hey, it was 20 bucks. Why didn't you do it?

What? You can do this.

Why didn't you do it?

Yeah, that's the thing, these lightning lane passes. I'm curious to see how it evolves at Disney World because they just rolled this out, I think July, maybe June. So it's not very old. And prior to this, there. Well, there's always been pay for a concierge to a tune of about 5k a day, but. But otherwise it was all free. You know, you just had to manage it on your own and now it's for pay. And so a lot of Disney regulars, I'll say, are upset about this. And there's an emotional distancing from. Oh, I'm not gonna buy into that. Forget that.

I think emotional distancing from Disney is probably a good idea for those people.

Yeah, right.

In general. Just in general.

But like the people that are going there are a lot of the sort of. Again, the Disney regulars are not buying these lightning lanes yet because they're against it in principle. And it's like, you gotta get over that. Or don't. I'm fine if you don't want to, but if you're a listener to this show, I am telling you, I had no issues with the principal going in. Cause I don't go to Disney often. It had been 10 years or something. And so it made perfect sense to us to pay for these lightning passes. We had already paid for the lightning passes for the final day because we knew we wanted. Wanted to pack everything in. And then we just wound up paying for them for every other day too, which was fine.

Yeah, that's great. I'm glad you had a great time. It worked out.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's really cool. So I like a few days. Many before you left. Yeah, I think it was before we left on your trip. I uploaded a. There was a new. I don't know how new it is, but Google has an AI called Notebook lm.

Yes.

And I uploaded. So I was curious of what it does. Basically one of the things it does, you could upload a text to it and it creates, you know, a Q and A so you can ask questions to your text or it'll do all this kind of stuff, which is cool. Yep. But the other thing that it does is it will create a kind of. In a podcast format, a couple of AI voices talking about the text that you upload. So I was like, this is interesting. So I uploaded my book, eBay Unlocked, just to see. I was like, you know, it's been out for a few years. I'll donate it to the AI gods. And it came.

They already have it. Shannon.

I'm sure you're right. And it came back with this, what I thought was an incredible conversation. I posted it on X. I learned I had to turn it. I used audiogram to make it into an MP4.

Okay.

From. From a WAV file. But Dave rightly so had some critique on it and this kind of stuff. But the point is, what was interesting is it pulled out highlights from my book that some things I had forgot and terms that I had used. I was very interesting. And one of those terms was this thing I call lifetime SEO.

Okay.

And so let me, in the context of the book about ebay, the way I was using it is even when an item sells, or when you. And a listing, let's say it sells on another platform, all of the data that's there stays there forever or until you pay, purges, whatever. But I don't think they do. Okay, but your listings are there, let's just say for years, but we'll call it lifetime.

Okay.

And that continues to help drive traffic to your business and your other listings. Because ebay is constantly. And these other marketplaces, Poshmark, they're spending millions of dollars on SEO to get your listings to come up in search results off platform. So the concept in the book is that don't delete anything. Don't ever delete a listing. Just end it. Okay. End it. End this thing. And so you build up over time this big library that helps your search engine optimization for the rest of your business. And it doesn't matter what marketplace you're on. Yeah, Poshmark does the same thing. Everything. But as I listened to this, I also started thinking this term, lifetime SEO. SEO, it really is, can be much broader in that everything we create, whether it's listings I create on ebay, this podcast, posts on social media. We are creating this lifetime SEO for ourselves.

Yes.

For our brand. Whether it's your company responding to negative, a negative review on Yelp or Google and how you respond, everything you put online is part of your lifetime SEO package. So you need to think of, in this context of whatever I write is going to be there forever.

I've always said the Internet's like Las Vegas. Whatever happens there stays there forever.

Yeah. So the comments you make on a podcast, the interview you do, a blog post that you upload, something you post on X or Facebook or whatever, just think about that narrative that you're creating. I mean, you want to be authentic and natural. I think you're more successful if you're that way.

Sure.

But you also need to think about what you're sharing and maybe more importantly, how you share it. We just did that. An episode on how you present something is just as important on what you present.

Yes.

So how you present and the framework. Like, Dave could have easily posted a big negative diatribe about the nightmare lines at Disney. And now he had to. They had to squeeze him for another 15 bucks. But instead he uses a framework of, man, this was so great because my family was using their business brain to realize that 15 bucks was an incredible investment in buying back our time and making the money.

The sunk cost that we had already done. We gave more value. Way more valuable. Way more valuable. Yeah.

Yeah. So I just thought, you know, I've started to think more, you know, the books I've published, all these shows. We got 587 episodes. We've got all this stuff. And maybe it's because I'm getting older and start thinking about, I don't know, your legacy or what you're, you know, all this stuff that you do. But I just think it's. It's something to think about. It's something to make a note of that you're constantly building your lifetime SEO. And what do you want that to say? What do you want people to search for that you're going to come up and be the search result? What terms do you want to be associated with? You know, optimism, quality, value, or complaints and negativity and, you know, whatever. It's your choice.

Yeah.

You get to decide and build out your lifetime SEO.

I like this. I mean, it's something we're all doing anyway. It's good to be intentional about it. I love it, man.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I find that when I attach these terms to it, like whether you're talking about mistakes or tuition.

Yes.

Did list lifetime SEO. It helps me keeping them front of mind and being conscious about it to remember it.

Yeah, I like it. That's great. Thanks for hanging out with us, everybody. One episode this week, as we said. So we will see you next week for two episodes.

Back to our regularly scheduled.

That's right. Let us know how you're using your business brain or how you need help using your business brain at feedbackusinessbrain show. We'd love to hear from you and have a good weekend.

Have a great weekend.

Have fun. Keep on living that charmed life. Beat the system and we'll see you next week.