Benjamin Dell built Missinglettr to promote blog posts over months instead of days, which dramatically increases traffic. He left home at 16, accelerated through computer science, and now advises that it's never the perfect time to start. He credits Andrew Carnegie's biography and owning your daily routine as keys to success.
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Welcome to the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. This episode is brought to you by Authors Unite. Authors Unite provides you with all the resources you need to become a successful author. You can learn more about Authors Unite and join the free community at authorsunite.com. Now let's jump into the episode.
Alright everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. Today I have Benjamin Dell with us. He's the founder and CEO at Missing Letters. So welcome to the show, Benjamin.
Thank you very much, pleasure to be here.
Awesome to have you here, man, and we'll dive in. The first question I have for you, Benjamin, is what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
So I was racking my brains here, but the thing that really stands out— I rarely achieved anything greater than a B grade back at school. And then something happened when I was 16. I was doing my A-levels and I decided that the course wasn't working out for me, and I quit, left home, and then started a computer science course over that same 2-year period. But I then suddenly had to squeeze it into 1 year, and Because it was me doing it for me and my own reasons and having to jump off and leave home and do everything for myself, the difference it made— I suddenly got the highest grade possible and I won an award at the end of that, and it became the springboard that took me through to university and into business and everything else. So the difference between making your own decision versus, you know, mediocrity up until that point, it was like night and day. And that's carried me through from that day.
And what is the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?
So one of the things— so Missing Letter sits in the content marketing space, so we help people who are blogging and all that sort of stuff promote their posts. And one thing that most people fail to realize is that when you publish a blog post, if you're just tweeting it or Facebook posting it to promote it on the day that you're that you publish the post, you're gonna get pretty much the majority of your traffic for that blog post in the first day, and pretty much after that it entirely drops off. On the flip side, if you start promoting it over a longer period of time across your social channels, so say a year, you're actually gonna massively, I mean really quite considerably increase that traffic over that longer period of time.
And what's your best piece of overall business advice, so not necessarily industry-specific?
Sure. So I, I think it's all about doing in business. It's great to pontificate and think about stuff, but what it comes down to is can you actually deliver? So I always say you don't need to be expert at everything. You just need to become an expert at knowing how to deliver something because improvements can always be made afterwards.
And if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?
It's never the perfect time.
And in your opinion, what is the key to happiness?
I wanted to say a nice glass of red wine. That could work sometimes. But I think, if I'm being semi-serious about it, I'd say, get rid— you know, start owning your daily routine rather than have it own you. Even if you are working for someone else or if you're chained to your desk because it's a client-based business, you can still tweak your daily schedule and where you work, how you work, so that you start owning that whole routine. And that can be quite transformative.
And what is the best book that you've read and what was the number one thing you learned from that?
Okay, so I love this. This is Carnegie by Peter Crass. Carnegie, Andrew Carnegie, back from the rubber baron era. He was a Scottish guy and emigrated to the States and became the richest man in the world, essentially, with U.S. Steel. And I love that because it shows that opportunity can be found in pretty pretty much any situation. If you read how he came up and made himself and made that sort of business empire from nothing, it's quite awe-inspiring.
And what is your favorite quote and why?
I've got a bad memory, so I very rarely remember quotes. So I had to go digging before this interview, and I came across one from Andrew Carnegie that I do actually remember reading, quite funnily enough, and I quite like it. It's, "As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say I just watch what they do. And that's Andrew Carnegie.
Yes, man.
I love that.
Thank you so much for coming on. The last question I have for you before we let you go is where's the best place for people to find you online?
Sure. My pleasure, man. Thanks for having me. So I can be found @bendell, B-E-N-D-E-L-L on Twitter. And you can check out Missing Letter at missingletter.com. Yes, it has a missing letter in it.
Awesome. Thanks again, man.
We're trying to be trendy. I love it, dude. It makes sense.
Thank you so much for coming on again. We appreciate it.
My pleasure. Cheers.
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