10X Your SEO Income With Steven Khanna Transcript

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And we’re live. Hello. Hello, everybody. This is Yannis Dvramis from dvramis.com.

Dvramis SEO Agency. And, today, we have Steven Khanna, sales and business consultant. And, nice to have you, Steve. Thank you very much. Yeah.

Nice. Thank you very much for having me, mate. Good to see good seeing you again. Again and again. And, the topic today is how to 10X your SEO income or agency income with, Steven Khanna.

Who is Steven Khanna

The first question, Stephen, and I don’t want to say too much about you is, Who is Steven Khanna is a question that’s that I always do when someone comes here. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of my SEO folks called me 50 Shades of Steve. It depends what week and which conference I am in.

Yeah. I’m gonna spill it. But, like a professional’s, summarized answer, I’ve only been in SEO, like, probably five years. But what I currently do is help SEO or digital marketing agencies, increase their MRR within a three to six month period through careful productization of their packages, hitting the right ICP, how to generate leads, but how to close them effectively through a one goal or a two goal methodology.

I hope that gives a bit of a clever answer. Yes. Actually, before I invite you, I would like to say, that I made a small research in Chatgpt team and AI, and I asked who is Steven Khanna in Chatgpt five? Okay.

Do you want to learn to to know what Chatgpt said about you?

Or I think you you know already. It’s weird because every person gets different search results.

You know how LLMs work. Right? So I’m eager to know what did you find out.

Okay. At first, I asked in English and, gave me back an answer in Greek. So because I’m in Greece. Okay. So, so, but when I asked, Chatgpt to say it in English, then it turned it came out with a total different answer again.

So it made me, to ask for the third time, but I will keep, the third.

Steven Khanna is a sales growth specialist who works primarily with SEO agencies and digital marketing companies to help them build predictable predictable sales systems and increase revenue. Is it correct? It is very correct. Spot on one line.

Yeah. What he does, according to his official site, Steven Khanna, builds sales systems for SEO agencies, helps companies increase lead generation, conversion rates, and client retention, provides sales training, coaching, and consulting services, Industry reputation. Articles describing him note that he’s known as a strong closer and communicator in the industry with an approach focused on structural workflows, predictable sales pipelines, legacy growth, and has very, very many other things. So I mean, is it correct? It is correct.

It is correct. Yeah.

So how, how this thing started with you?

How because I’ve seen in an interview that you were in the restaurant business. Yeah.

Yeah. Twenty plus years, Michelin star restaurants, all of that. And, you know, with with restaurants, apart from customer satisfaction, sales is an important part. You know, your upsells, if someone’s ordering a main course, you need to, you know, move them towards a starter, make sure there’s an extra dessert, yada yada yada. Sales kind of becomes a part of that, mate.

I stumbled into SEO, as I said, four or five years ago. I live in Poland. I moved here because my my wife’s Polish, and I was busy selling wines at that time. Ran into my first employer, which is WhitePress, which is like a link marketplace. They’re based out of Poland.

They’re actually head offices in the same town where I live. And on a Friday evening, we were sitting and having drinks with bunch of friends. He happened to sit opposite to me. We started talking. Didn’t understand a word of what he was talking about.

I asked about the SEO, why this link building, guest posting LinkedIn.

So I was like, man, I have no idea what you’re talking about.

Six months down the line, took the risk, and it turned out that the industry needed the exact skills they need, which I’ve got in abundance, which is building trust, building rapport, after sales service, where a lot of agencies are shit at. That comes to communications, proactively solving problems, coming up with ideas just to give maximum benefits, like, basically, hand holding. Obviously, the biggest skill set was closing deals.

Right? And then it just didn’t happen because I never got into I only go into coaching, what, ten, eleven months ago. I’ve had my fair share of working with the people.

So at WhitePress, for example, when I took over the English markets, we were doing maybe £5,000, MRR, if we were lucky.

Within eighteen months, I bought it up to half $1,000,000, MRR, and that was simply called our partner and some some conferences.

Wasn’t investing anything in paid ads. So the lead generation was fuck old, so to speak, from our marketing team. All your options. We’ll have some we’ll have some disruptions from the site. Hold on a second.

Julian Goldie and Fat Joe

Worked with a couple of other people, Julian Goldie being one of them. And then a lot of people started asking me that, do you offer consulting? We’ve got this sales team and all of that. So, like, Joe Davies from Fat Joe was the first person who asked me. I was like, yeah.

Why not? Never done it in the SEO space, but happy to do it because I used to train people back in the restaurants anyway. So it wasn’t something new to me. I did a, like, a three month sprint with him. The effect of that was his sales team was closing 29.8%.

By optimizing and a lot of mock training and SOPs, it increased to 39.7%. 10% jump close rate is humongous for someone who’s doing a million dollars MRR. That happened in space of three months. They average order value, because, you know, Factor is almost like a marketplace, almost. You can order as less as one link.

So the added order value jumped from £375 to £495. Right? And that then he did a testimony on a LinkedIn. More people started asking me, and almost every place I went, there was a positive impact left. So I was like, do you know what?

I’ll for now, I’ll make this into my full time job. So that’s what I do. I’ve got nine, ten clients I work with with a lot of people still asking me for help because you would know it, Yanis. One of the biggest problems in the SEO space is lead generation and lead conversion. In a lot of ways, they actually don’t have a problem with lead generation.

It’s mostly about how do we convert it. It just takes sometimes weeks and months for people to close, a discovery call. It’s because they don’t add the value. They don’t create FOMO. People just go around doing window shopping, and they never reach a decision.

So it’s asking the right questions, leading with value and authority in order to close the sale. Alright. You said so many things in just a little frame of time. And, but we’ll, we we can elaborate it in everything. How comes that someone that is, matter how can I say, sommelier in a restaurant became become the number one salesperson in a short distance?

Mate, I’ll I’ll be honest. I say that to a lot of people. I found my niche. Do I consider myself as one of the greatest salespeople in the world? No.

Because there are many more talented people when it comes to sales outside of SEO. So constant learning is part of that. You know, people like Cole Gordon, he runs a $100,000,000 company. Right? You look at Giulio Segantini, cold calling mastery.

You look at Benjamin Denley. His his title is the the world’s most hated, cold calling trainer. But it’s just funny aspects of it. Point I’m making is SEO need SEO still has a massive gap in the market, because all the SEOs do come across as tech nerds, you know, not very extroverted. And I just tapped into I spotted an opportunity, gave my best shot at it, and here I am probably sitting on my thirtieth podcast now in the last four years, having a chitchat with you.

So I would say, obviously, a lot of hard work, mate. You know, nothing comes without hard work and learning. You know? I can’t just talk sales lingo, and not know anything about the product, product being SEO, whether it’s link building, whether it’s on page, whether it’s digital PR, whatever.

So I’m still learning on the SEO side of things, but it’s a trick of how to combine that technology into value, revenue, leads, the ROI, which the client wants or lead wants, rather than selling the process rather than the outcome.

Did that make sense? So I became quite good at selling the outcome because end of the day, people lose sight that SEO is a marketing channel just like paid ads. Right? No one gives a fuck if you rank on page one for 20 keywords, which have fuck all value to it, and they don’t bring leads or high buying intent leads, which should convert. So, yeah, lots of sleepless nights, lots of learning, and lots of reps doing the same thing over and over again, and and systemizing it to a point where I can pretty much imprint a lot of myself onto other agencies and this is success.

Alright. I have too many questions, but I will try to stick in the basics. One basic question. Where are you working now? Are you still in WhitePress?

Or I don’t work I I don’t work for anyone. I work for myself. So I’m just a full time trainer and consultant. So any of SEO agencies who’s struggling with setting up a scalable system or it’s a founder led sales, and the founder is the bottleneck to go from $30 MRR to $100 MRR, that’s when people call me because they have no idea how to set up SOPs, how to set up systems, the tech stack, all of that. So I basically work for myself by helping other agencies.

Yes. I I hear that you have joined Julian Goldie, the SEO agency or not. It was just I I was there for a brief period, but because my sales training aspect was blowing up, you know, I can’t do everything. You know, I can’t be head of growth at Julien Goldie and have nine to 10 clients, for a ninety day sprint. So I had to pick and choose.

So for now, I’m focusing on my freelancing aspect. Okay. So let’s recap. You are a freelancer. Mhmm.

Helps that helps the small, the medium, or the startups, the big ones, which is a target group of SEO agencies. I would probably say SMBs to start with, but then I’ve I’ve also, like, consulted some of the big ones.

Like, Factual is one of the biggest names. Right? They had some systems and processes in place, but it wasn’t the finished product.

So I very quickly realized, obviously, by networking as well. And some of the top people are my friends. You know, your James Dooley’s, your Kashra Dashe, your Kyle Roof, your Julian Goldie’s, that a lot of them lack systems and processes with a with a spray and pray mentality. We’ll generate 60 leads. Fingers crossed.

We’ll hope we’ll hope to convert five at the end of the month, which is shambolic. If you don’t have a close rate of thirty five to 40%, you should be struggling as an agency. Okay. So, your target main focus is on small and medium as, agencies, like 10 k to 100 k per month. Correct.

Correct. That’s my usual go to, or in fact, that’s my usual leads which come my way because they have no idea how to generate leads in a creative manner, which is called outbound. Or they have some cash flow, but they don’t know how to invest in, Google Ads or Facebook Ads.

Right? I can’t set up campaigns, but I know how to lead with creativity in order to encourage calendar bookings or email opt ins or newsletter opt ins.

And when people have a brand touch point, that’s when the sales process kicks in. You know, something like an appointment setup. Speak too late. You know? If I was, I don’t know, setting up processes for yourself, you get five leads coming in every day.

It’s an email opt in. Someone shown interest to know something about your brand. As long as the qualification form has the right questions and the appointment setter has the right training, within five minutes, that person should be calling, the lead and having a healthy conversation. What is the need? What are the pain points?

Create FOMO

Create FOMO. Bring the services which you’re offering as the bridge, and then try and book in a calendar meeting and discovery call or a free strategy session with you. And on the other end, if the closer or the founder has been trained the way they’re supposed to be trained, then you can go for a one call or a two call close. That’s how the sales process or sales cycle should look like. Nice.

Wonderful. And you told before that you were in, how can I say, intensive course of learning SEO, reading, studying? What, was exactly what, the path you started with, No. The methodology Yeah. Of learning.

Yeah. Signed up It was YouTube. It was yep. Yeah. Obviously, followed all of these people.

Your Stewart Vickers, your Julian Goldies, your Cashra Dashes, online, on YouTube. But I also signed up to IMG courses, you know, Kyle Roof and Andrew Stevens. You know, it’s like it’s like the Netflix of SEOs. Right? Did that, Ahrefs, Moz, Semrush, they’ve got a ton of things, which they give out.

But I never ever, on purpose, decided I’m not gonna become an SEO. I would need to know enough in order to be able to sell it. Because if I start sounding like any other SEO on the call, then I’m not selling outcomes, I’m selling a process. You know? Exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. By the way, I have another book here that I read. Just finished reading. It’s iGame SEO.

I know. I know. Yeah. Yeah. But you know who’s missing?

You? No. You. I I’m not here. I know.

I know. Your friends. James Dooley is here. Cashra Dash is here. And you’re not here.

Because I wrote a different book with James Dooley. Really? Yep. Well, what’s the name? It’s oh, yeah.

It’s about pricing methodology

It’s about pricing methodology. How to price anchor a really expensive product, which is like a smoke screen, but with the idea to sell your most expensive package, which then looks cheaper compared to the most expensive one. So I’m sorry I’m gonna use the word, but that’s how we titled the book. It’s called the fuck you price method. Yeah.

I’ve heard about the books. I think that, James Dooley starting in, his career as a writer apart from Mate, Dooley Dooley is a man of ideas, is a man of action. You know? With him and Mads Singers, these two people are gonna take them as my mentors as well. Every time I need advice, I go to them.

Dooley in particular, you know him. He can party till, like, three in the morning, do absolute silly stuff. But then at 5AM, two hours later, he would be the most professional guy ever at talking creative ideas. And he was like, you were doing something completely different two hours ago. And he was like, yeah.

But that was fun. Now it’s back to work. You know? So that’s another thing with Dooley. He’s been writing books.

And why shouldn’t he? You know, he’s given so much back to the community. And he has this thing of taking people who are, have got lots of knowledge, and he just wants to bring it back to the community. So it’s his initiative, once again, of writing a series of books with a lot of people. Hence, that iGaming SEO came in.

Hence, he wrote a book with me. Plus, he got plenty of other books which are lot. Mine, I think He doesn’t he doesn’t read the book with Craig Campbell yet. With Craig Campbell, I don’t know. He he might be.

Also, Craig Campbell is missing from the book. No. Interesting. Interesting. It could I mean, I don’t know if they can write a book together because all you’ll have is swear words in the book.

That’s Greg Campbell. Also, it will be in Scottish instead of Queen Sengling. Correct. Okay. Here, some people, are, watching us from the Greek market, you know.

Also, we’ll have some shorts in with Greek subtitles, some of them. Are are your services how can I say? Are your service relative to the Greek market? For instance, we talked about the international markets, most English speaking.

How about the Greek market or Chinese market that is huge?

Yep. Or Yep. You know, Thailand market. Of course. Or whatever.

Of course. Yes. Cultural nuances would have to be taken into consideration when setting up the sales process. However, holistically, the sales approach and methodology, no matter you’re selling to someone in Greece, in China, in Estonia, in The US, or UK. This it everything remains the same.

You bring up a pinpoint, tie it back to a business outcome. Right? Provide the value. And then then try and close them. So, yes, in short, the answer is yes.

It’s relative to any nation and any market, including Greek or Greece. But, yes, I’ll have to take into consideration outreach standards or cultural nuances. I’ll give you an example. One of my current clients, we’ve just hired an SDR who will be doing cold outbound only to the Chinese market, but we figured out LinkedIn cold calling there almost doesn’t work there. There are other apps there.

Like, there’s WeChat, there’s MaiMai. MaiMai is like the twin brother of LinkedIn, apparently, in China. I had no idea there. Right? So I had to kinda build a sales funnel or an SOP relevant to the Chinese market, but 80% of the sales process of what we wanna achieve laid with value, consultative style of selling, remain exactly the same.

Exactly. Very interesting. And, I’m very curious to ask you this question. Let’s say that I’m an SEO agency owner that I am. And I come to you for the first time, and I said, I think most of, SEO agency owners have the same problems with me scaling.

Come to you and say, hi, Steve. I’m Yannis from Greece. Blah blah blah blah blah. And I can take only 10 clients per month or 20 clients per month. I cannot scale.

Both in sales, both in our technical department. Yeah. How do we how do we solve that problem is what you’re asking. Right? Yeah.

Yeah. It’s like a new prospect is coming to you. Of course. So it’s something where you just said hit the nail on the head. A lot of owners don’t realize that.

You not only mentioned the front end, you also mentioned the back end. So we’ll first have to fix and train and set systems in your back end tied to your revenue plan. So my first question to you would be, what’s your current MRR? Right? And Let let’s say let’s elaborate what is MRR because there are many people that doesn’t know these words.

Monthly recurring revenue. Right? So you might be at $20,000 right now. Right? I would say, okay.

How long have you had the agency? You might say five five years. Okay? What’s been your growth trajectory for the last five years? Give me numbers, a one, a two, a three, a four, a five.

Let’s assume you had growth of about 15% without doing anything, as in no real sales processes. Right? You then temperate with a market trend, and you then try and hit, fifty, sixty, 80%, growth number for 2026. So we’ll prepare a revenue plan quarterly with the idea that by by 2020, six end, you should be on $100,000 MRR. We then look at, in the past, what’s been your average deal size, how many touch points it took, but most importantly, where is your skill set?

Are you good at on-site? Are you good at off-site? When it comes to off-site, which specific productized packages we can sell? Right? Which verticals have you got fantastic case studies or success stories?

So we can double down on that. If you have nothing that I’m sure you would have if someone have an agency for five years. Right? So you pick that one or two verticals. You add some of the new emerging trendy ones.

We then polish up your deck, presuming you have a deck. If you don’t have a deck, we prepare a deck from a scratch. You know, the story line, like, set a story. But your packages is where all the difference is made. You don’t take 400, $500 clients anymore, unless you simply just wanna do local SEO.

That’s a separate story. You know, you start you price your package around 1,800 to $2,000. Have four options. But in order to get that cash flow in, you obviously show on one slide month on month packages, but then bring in the second slide, and I’m going to give a bit away now as a knowledge. Okay?

To which I normally charge for. You then not a retainer, but almost like a commitment package. So your all of your packages, if you’ve absolutely blown them away in your discovery goal, led with value, three month, six month, nine month packages paid upfront, but they get something back in return, like a three three three is to one package, or you get 15% extra links or three pieces of content for free. But it’s not paid by month. It’s paid upfront because it’s a discounted package, if I can call it discounted.

I don’t like the word discount. And then once you have that back of house stuff ready, you put in the SOPs, the KPIs in place, You try and identify who within the team can lead the charge when it comes to lead acquisition. If you don’t have someone, we hire people from outside. I train them, get them culturally fit for your agency and for your ICP. And then we hit the ground running with the idea by end of month two, mid month three, you start seeing the uplift.

Okay. We were on $20.000 MRR. We’ve got up to 35,000 MRR. Right. Lead flow has improved because we constantly tweak the messaging, whether it’s call email automation, whether it’s cold calling, whether it’s meta ads, whatever.

So lots of moving parts, mate. I wish I could give you a one line answer, but it’s not a one line answer. So these are the most important pillars I would have to look at in order to make a difference in someone’s business, which is why I kind of when I do when I consult and I train, I do, like, a ninety day sprint. That’s like, a three month sprint in order to set up the foundation, have some success, and then it’s upon you to make sure the QC and the quality control is there. The SOP compliance is happening, whether it’s you or your SDRs.

Like yeah. It did did I kind of answer the question? Yeah. Yeah. It answers the question, but I have another question because you said before, we if there is nobody to handle the leads, handle the leads, then we hire someone.

Who is through the hiring?

Yep. Who is through the hiring? Is it me, the owner, or Steve? Yep. So I’ve obviously got people in my network who I can bring in.

We try and get someone in who has some SEO experience. Some. Because non SEOs, mate, I’ve seen plenty of talented salespeople fail in the SEO space because they just fucking couldn’t get it. The penny did not drop. Right?

Someone was talking about digital PR, and they were fucking offering PBMs to them, for example. Right? They just didn’t understand the question. So the concept of style of selling goes out of the window because the product knowledge is poor. So, yes, I can provide, but then we also run like my you know, there are growth countries people can target, which does not have a, high cost, high wage cost.

I’m talking about South Africa. Massive talent pool coming out of South Africa. North Macedonia, fantastic SEO people, great English. Serbia. We recently hired a lot of people from Serbia.

One of the newest markets, and I’m giving an again, a golden nugget away now because I’m actually tapping into it now, is the country of Georgia. There are lots of talented people there and, you know, with, obviously, their economy, how it works, you’re not gonna pay them $100,000 or $60,000 or $80,000 annual salary. They’re coming on a freelance b to b contract, $1,516,118 $800 base salary, but very aggressive commission and bonus targets. So their OTE contract earning can be $4.000, $6,700, which ties back to the deck I was talking about and the productized packages. Everybody wins because the more they sell, the more commissions they earn in the pocket.

And that’s something I bring from outside the SEO industry in order to maximize someone’s potential. Exactly. All this notice, is it free of charge or you’re gonna charge us? I think we plan before before we leave. It’s like, Adrian has free exit for grants.

You know? On a podcast, it’s all free. But, obviously, you know, talking about it and implementing are two separate things. Obviously, if someone wants to, get my services in, clearly, that’s my bread and butter, mate. You know?

I obviously charge for that, but I don’t charge stupid money as well. Otherwise, I’m gonna price myself out because, you know, any SMB coming to me, I can’t ask for $1,520,000 dollars for a three month sprint. Even though the value is three times that, and that’s the feedback and the testimonials people have given me. They’re like, Steve, if I can charge too less but I know I do it on purpose because if I charge too much, then I’m I’m basically cutting away half of the industry. Then I don’t have enough industry or enough agencies to pitch to, if that makes sense.

Yeah. You can pitch to another part of the industry from this like, sex ops. You know? I won’t I won’t charge for that. Yes.

And, yes, what is your MVP? You know, the entry product, let’s say

My entry product. Yeah. My entry product, because I offer three packages.

The first one is a thirty day sprint, which is what Joe Davies asked me to do the first time, but then he asked me to stay back. Someone’s got an existing sales team. They’ve got enough lead flow. They just struggle with improving the conversion percentage and the average deal size. So I then come in.

I audit their past discovery calls, build up a new discovery called script and framework with, like, top 20 cheat sheet questions to ask on a discovery call, do mock training online so they’re well trained, and then slowly, you start seeing the effect on the calls. That can be done within thirty days. That’s my entry level offer. Okay. How much does it cost?

Current prices, because they go up every two months, I’ll be honest. Really? Yeah. It just may it depends on the lead flow. If, you know, I set up I thought Poland doesn’t have so much inflation like the rest part of Europe.

Mate, I just live in Poland, you know. Oh, okay. You know? I thought it has to do with inflation, you know, every two months. It it depends on, the more value I drive to every agency when I finish my consulting.

There’s a ceiling. You know? This was sort of it a long time earlier. I’m gonna start at this mark, but I know I can’t go above this pricing ceiling. So I’m somewhere in the middle right now.

But to answer your question, the thirty day sprint is $4,200. $4,200 for a thirty day sprint. Correct. Is it enough from someone to start? Or Mate.

It’s just to meet each other, you know, you know, each other. No. I mean, there are several examples there. Joe Davies, I gave you one example. Right?

Then, Charlie Clark from Minty Digital. I did exactly the same. He’s closing more. Then Roman Syslo from, WRM Links. He’s based in Ukraine.

Based on my methodology and my training, he’s already closing more deals. So it does work. But as I said, that’s why I’ve got those three packages. It depends at which stage your agency is in. Some people, if you have nothing, no systems, no processes, right, you have, like, a 20,000 MRR agency struggling to even generate leads, then my thirty day sprint is waste of money.

You need my ninety day sprint, if not more. Because I have to basically kick start an entire sales department. Yeah. Exactly. I I think that thirty days is not enough from someone to start doing all this stuff because I think it’s many, many new things.

Correct. As I said, you know, it depends. If you have an existing system but not the finished product, then a thirty day sprint because that’s a top up. Someone’s on, like, 70 or a 100. I’ll get them to a 100 or a 100.

And how about the three months? The ninety day sprint? Yeah. Ninety day sprint is How much does it cost for someone to start with that? Yeah.

$7,900. Mhmm. And 9 It’s cheaper. It’s cheaper. Right.

You you see the pricing methodology there? Yeah. I see the the marketing genius behind the pricing methodology. Which is, to be honest, in in a lot of verticals and sectors outside of SEO, this is just my common sense. You go to a you go to a street seller.

Five bananas for us oh, six bananas for $10. Right? 12 bananas for $16. Exactly. It’s it’s it’s simple.

Yeah. Okay. But, with all that power or firepower in your hand, don’t you feel tempted to start an SEO agency by your own? Yeah. Great question.

You will have all the systems, the processes. Yeah. You have almost everything. Great question. I don’t wanna do it.

I’ve even had offers where people are just like, Steve, what forget SEO agency. Why don’t I start a plug and play sales agency for SEO agencies? So someone pays me a retainer every month. Don’t know. 2 and a half thousand dollars, for example.

I generate the leads. I close them. And every closed lead, I get a further commission on it. You don’t have to invest in SOP structures, which cost nothing. Everything’s on me.

Your only cost is almost, like, 2 and a half thousand dollars base, plus the commissions if I bring in. I don’t wanna do it because for that, I need a large team to fulfill all of that. So if I hire if I onboard 20 agencies, I have to give a revenue plan. Basically, me and my team are running after 20 targets. It’s hard enough in sales to hit one target, let alone 20 targets.

That’s one. And b, why I don’t wanna do an SEO agency, because I’ll never be an SEO. Right? That means my success would depend on some SEO consultants. And let’s be honest, SEO can sometimes be the wild west.

Who the fuck knows what works or what doesn’t work? And if I want the top people coming in, that’ll cost me a lot of money. But most importantly, I’m I’m not a spring chicken anymore. I’m 50. Right?

Uh-huh. I If you’re in if you’re in the best states to retire in Thailand, you know, because it changed the laws and you can retire from 50. There you go. Yeah. Yeah.

I had that recently. What I wanna do is my long term plan is see what else can I get from the SEO industry in general in the next four, five, six years? Have enough money in the bank and then early retirement. So Thailand again. So Could could be Thailand.

Could be could be anywhere, mate. So why the fuck would I go through the entire pain of starting an agency? Then I’m saying just just too much stress, mate. That’s the reason. If I was 35, I’ll do it.

Not at this age. Not at 50. Not at this age. Forty forty seven. 47.

No, mate. I think yeah. I’ve I’ve I’ve gone past it. I could, mate, I’ll be honest. I’m happy now, like, people approach me.

They offer me equity in their existing agency. Steve come in as a part owner, grow it up to a certain point. I’m happy doing that because I can still add value without burning myself out. And I still have enough money to take back home month on month, quarter on quarter with enough dividends. That I am open to.

And I have that, you know, the couple of business business partnerships I’ve got already, which would be launching in 2026. But starting now You’re overbooked now. You you don’t have any. Well, my plan, I’ll be honest, for 2026 is to probably reduce my sales training and consulting and just have equity in few businesses, four to six businesses, for me to basically look after the sales aspect to grow the agency. That would give me a enough satisfaction.

This is right down my alley and my skill set, and I’ll still go home with the number in the bank, which I feel is a fair reflection of my time, effort, skill set, and experience. Exactly. So, will we see you in four agencies next year in one month, for instance? For instance, you will be you will be almost everywhere because four agencies are four agencies. You know?

I know. I know. Obviously, I’ll pick and choose, mate. You know? I’ve currently signed contracts with two.

You’ll hear about them. I can’t disclose it because the end day is still there, so I can’t really disclose it publicly, but you’ll hear it next year. And, yeah, it could be four, could be six, mate, end of the day. You know? But I’ll be careful who I decide to partner with because it’s not sometimes only about money.

It’s the people who you work with. You know that, you know, we should be able to get along. I shouldn’t be able to know them for a while for me to go in and do business with them. Yes. Exact excellent.

One thing I would like to add, now is, when I first met you, we met in South Airport on the road to Chiang Mai SEO 2025, and you were wearing, IMG T shirt and said so is is dead or something like that. And I I I’m wearing also the white press socks that gave us increase. Oh, really? Yeah. I cannot, present them to you because they’re on my legs.

So Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. I thought you were working in white press, and I thought it was a good idea to wear the white press socks. Not anymore.

Not anymore. Not anymore. And, I I came to you and ask you how about the t shirt, and you just told me there is another oh, it wasn’t AMG. It’s a link building seminar, a link building, event that took place before the, Chiang Mai SEO. And, the first thing, you don’t try.

You ask me if you if I come and you make me discount, you know, for 25%. Yeah. 2020% of and I was I was not in the mood to buy something because I was already tired. And then I didn’t know that it was another seminar. Okay.

But, it was the first time that I met someone in the SEO industry that was a salesperson or friendly person, an extrovert. Because, you know, when you talk to someone that is in the SEO industry, they hide, you know, of any way. Don’t say anything. Don’t reveal the secrets. Yeah.

Yeah. There you go. There you go. No. This guy.

I I remember the meeting. It was funny because we were looking for a place to sit down in that crazy airport, just to eat our food, and then you come up and you made that remark. And I think I might have even asked you the first question. Are you an into SEO, mate? And then I you said, of course I am.

That’s why I asked you that question. How can someone ask this question if you’re he’s not in the business? Yeah. He can understand what it’s all about. Yeah.

It was it was funny. I didn’t expect that. Also, I I I recalled because it made me a big good first impression that, finally, I found someone that is open. Yeah. An SEO expert.

I didn’t know your job. That is open to the people, not trying to hide his techniques from the competition, not to reveal anything because they’re always like, who’s this guy? He’s better from us. He’s gonna smell us and find out what we’re doing. Yeah.

It’s crazy. There are a lot of people there, mate. I mean, if copying and pasting was so easy, then everyone’s going to be a millionaire. You know? Knowing one thing is just half of the battle.

How do you implement them? How do you relate that information back to your client? Right? Testing methodologies which have got you success last year might not work next year. So there’s no success blueprint here you can implement year on year and not change.

Do you know what I’m saying? So I don’t know why people hide stuff. But I think it’s also of their personality, mate. You know, a lot of SEOs are introverted. They just sit in front of their laptop and all of that.

For me, mate, I love this journey. Never been in SEO. I’m loving it. I don’t know how many years I’m gonna last in SEO, but as long as I’m there, I’ll try and enjoy it. I’ll have my successes.

I’ll have my failures. Normal. You know, it happens. But I’m just trying to make the most of it. Exactly.

Like, introverts like Matt Biggie there when you say when I met him, hello. Can we make an interview? And the answer was yes. But he said, we’re trying to save batteries now, you know. We’re trying to save to save energy.

Okay. Not now. Not in in Chiang Mai. No. After the event.

Okay. So one final question. Will it be which will be the next event you’re gonna to attend now? Matt Singer’s event in Vietnam. The In three months.

In three months time. There’s your mastery. I see your mastery. Summit. Correct.

January, February, I’m sure there’s something going on. I have some invites. I don’t know if I’ll go there, but definitely not seeing this event. K. Will you be a speaker?

I might be an emcee. There is a charter going on to do a sales workshop. I’ll see, mate. Really. I’ve I’ve been a speaker a few times as well.

I’ll see. If they want me to do it, I’ll do it because it’s Matt Singers. I’ll do it. But don’t lose sleep. For me, it’s big conferences like this.

It’s meeting friends, going off for drinks, or meeting new people like yourselves at at the at the airport. Nobody’s going to is going to lose sleep. Sorry. But I will be in that event too as well. Okay.

I already booked everything for the Vietnam. So we’ll meet again there. But, how can someone find you Yeah. And book you for consulting services? Yeah.

So very active on LinkedIn. Send me a message. If not, go on to my website, which is steven kana dot com. It’s got my calendar link there. Book it in.

Happy to have a chat. Okay. Thank you, Steve, for having you. Steven Cana, SaaS business consultant, stevencana.com, and LinkedIn, Steven Cana. It also have other results with, many people that have the same name with you.

Yeah. But you will recognize him with, from the face. Okay. There you go. There you go.

Thank you for, coming to our podcast, and, don’t forget to subscribe. Yanis Deepgram’s international SEO or divrams.com in my YouTube channel, or any other social media channels. Thank you, Steve. Cheers, Dan. Good afternoon.

Cheers, man. Bye bye.