Interview with Jarod Spiewak from Blue Dog Media

Hi Jarod,

Thank you for taking the time to answer some questions from me to my readers.

I first saw you during a presentation in Chiang Mai during the time of the Chiang Mai SEO Conference. Seeing you younger guys fully immersed in SEO and scaling your businesses always makes me feel like an old dog!

And talking of dog, these most of your focus is on Blue Dog Media an agency you founded to provide SEO services to small and medium-sized businesses.

A good friend of yours and someone who I have previously interviewed Jonathan Kiekbusch from SEObutler, recommended I reached out to you and see what you’re up to in the world of SEO.

So, thanks again Jarod and let’s jump straight in with some questions.

Can you give us a little background information on you? For example, where you’re from and when you first started to work online.

Sure!

I’m not sure how familiar your audience is with me, so I’ll start at the beginning and give you the “quick” version. 🙂

I’ve lived in Manchester, New Hampshire (an hour north of Boston, MA) for most of my life.

I “started” working online in 2012, I was 14 at the time and a freshman in High School. To make part of this story short, I ended up attending college at 15 and graduating High School at 16, and whatever loans didn’t cover, I had to mostly come up with myself (with some help from my parents).

So, like a lot of people, I Googled “how to make money online”, which lead me to a site called HireWriters, where I wrote SEO content for less than $0.01/word. Hearing the terms “SEO” and “keywords” got me curious, but it wasn’t until I was hired to write a 500-word article on “the benefits of SEO” that I understand (to some extent) what SEO was.

It was foolish of me, but I actually didn’t pursue SEO for a couple of years after that. I ended up finishing college early (who would have guessed) and was working a corporate marketing job in 2015 when I started to look at SEO again, this time on a site called Upwork – where I started working for $5/hour.

That’s where I would officially say I “got my start online”.

I listened to one of your earlier podcasts and saw that at 20-years old you were making $20k per month from Upwork a few years ago. What sort of work were you doing, how did you attract clients, and how did you stand out from the hundreds of other freelancers on the platform?

I got my start on Upwork in 2015 and that interview took place in 2017, it was around mid-2017 that I decided to take Upwork seriously and try and grow using their platform.

At the start, I was taking on a lot of small, easy-to-do jobs. Working hourly most of the time time or on fixed-rate projects, no retainers.

Eventually, I noticed that there were a lot of agencies on Upwork looking to hire people for all sorts of things. Full time, part-time, white-label, specialists, generalists, etc. Naturally, I started to do a lot of agency work.

By doing this, I was able to keep my expenses to near $0 as they had all the tools and sometimes other, more experienced, SEOs. I also got to work on a number of websites for a single client so I didn’t have to worry about an acquisition.

This was sometimes hourly work for a couple of hours a week, small retainers per website, and larger hourly projects. This led to me mostly just having two projects I was working on, a 30-hour a week agency that I worked for, and another agency that paid me to work on each of their 5 clients.

I did this from early 2016 through most of 2017, with the odd additional project or two every once in a while.

Around mid-2017 I realized I wanted to do something on my own that didn’t have me working hourly, so that’s when I took Upwork seriously and was able to get to the point where it was generating me 100-200 leads a month and 3-4 phone calls a day.

The types of clients I was going after were link building only clients and “full SEO” clients. The link clients were 80% of the client base and maybe 40-50% of revenue.

I decided to reverse-engineer my competition by creating a client account and posting a job on Upwork looking to hire an SEO. I did this 2-3 times to see what kind of people applied and how they responded to cover letters, default questions, and custom questions.

It didn’t take long to realize that the competition was quite weak. Most of the “SEOs” were $3/hour with poor English comprehension and suggesting tactics like social bookmarks, almost none could answer the custom questions and either left them blank or copy and pasted their cover letter into every slot.

There weren't a lot of bids from people in English speaking countries, so it honestly wasn’t hard to stand out back then, and what I do now is pretty much the same as what I did back then. I force people to get on the phone with me.

Back in 2017, I was always told that no one would offer a phone call and now it’s still rare that people do, but it’s one of the first things I mention, is that they need to schedule a time with me on the phone, I’ve also improved my copywriting a lot and get a lot of compliments on it.

Depending on when I gave their URL, I also send a video audit either before the call or after the call. This is also really powerful for getting people to trust you.

When we’re on the phone, I focus on education. A lot of prospective clients using Upwork have little to no knowledge of SEO and I think a lot of people take advantage of that by trying to pass off things like that Google Ads certification as being “SEO certified”. I focus on answering all their questions and educating them on the technical side of things using a simple language as possible.

I know a lot of people are in the “keep it simple and don’t talk details” camp, but that’s why a lot of the people I talk to love talking to me, they didn’t feel confident in anyone else because they didn't talk details at all, so everyone sounded similar. I also get people asking me what others meant when they said certain things or even if I feel as though the other people they’re talking to know what they’re talking about!

Whilst working as a lead SEO strategist you discovered many SEO strategies applied by agencies whilst repeatable didn’t provide the best and optimum results. You took a different approach from the “templatized” strategies often used by implementing custom strategies. Can reveal a couple of ways in which you do this?

Of course, what you’re referencing is what I call the “Blueprint” (name change pending, as it’s not at all creative) and is what I worked on heavily for the first half of 2018.

I know what you mean in terms of naming stuff, look I have a Supplement Blueprint LOL – Adam

The theory behind this was that when I was freelancing, I only worked on a couple of websites at a time and knew each of them like the back of my hand, as I was the only one working on them. I also didn’t need to follow SOPs as I knew how to do everything the way I wanted it to be done.

I would also, typically, encounter at least one unique situation with every client, something I hadn’t had to do before – sometimes it was small like removing a hard-coded title tag from a WordPress theme or a large undertaking.

Comparing that perspective to the one I had whilst working at an agency and being a strategist, meaning I helped create and adjust strategies as well as audit accounts that needed extra love; I noticed just how many times things would be missed simply because an issue or situation was unique to that particular client and our SOPs missed it or even created a problem.

There were also other problems, such as clients coming on board with budgets too small to fix their problems in reasonable time-frames due to specific issues to their website that weren't initially noticed, and the priority for websites to have onsite, links, content, etc. wasn’t always the same.

At the time, I didn’t have a solution other than to point things out and have them taken care of by the SEOs or the developers. Once I left this position, I spent 3-months figuring out how to solve the problem (problem-solving is the only thing I’d say I’m actually good at) and my solution was the Blueprint.

My way of creating custom strategies at scale.

The Blueprint is a one-time engagement we have with clients that is a required step before we take on retainers and it serves a lot of purposes.

As of right now, only one client has ever decided to not move forward with a retainer after going through the Blueprint process, granted – we only allow certain prospects to move forward with the Blueprint in the first place.

For those wondering, the Blueprint could be done during the first month of a retainer and you could adjust your plans or create your plans after that initial month, and this is how it was initially done. But, there were just too many positives (mostly what I mentioned above) to do it as a separate engagement.

You set up Blue Dog Media an SEO agency and know from friends you’re doing very well. Can you describe your set up and what your USP is?

Our primary focus is SEO, but we also offer Google Ads management and marketing consulting services.

Right now, everything is done remotely with as few people, freelancers, and vendors as possible. My plan is to hire someone locally as I’ve found there to be more benefits to in-person than remote work and going forward we’ll probably be mainly in-house with a small off-shore team to help with things like data aggregation and data parsing.

I keep the person as small as possible by focusing on automation, without automation I would need at least 1-2 full-time virtual assistants and another SEO right now. This helps in both the long-term and the short-term.

There are a couple of things that we do that I think helps us attract the right clients.

No Sales People or Account Managers

I handle all sales and account management. This comes from my experience of being a customer, going through sales processes, and working with agencies that had salespeople and account managers.

These aren’t roles I’ll do forever, but these won’t be roles filled by salespeople or AMs when I’m not in them. Neither takes up a lot of my time, but for most companies when you’re going through the sales process or when you’re a customer, your point of contact has limited knowledge about the implementation, strategy, etc.

This creates a lot of frustration, back and forth internally, and makes it easier for things to get misinterpreted or fall between the cracks. In my opinion, these roles are best for someone who’s a Sr. level person or a strategist. You can teach people sales and account management a lot faster than you can teach a salesperson SEO.

Education

I make a lot of effort to educate clients & prospective clients as to what we’re doing and how things work. This solves a lot of problems, makes acquiring clients easier, and accounts management less time-consuming.

It’s not just a matter of explaining things in the moment, but doing things like attaching explanations to our work documents on what stuff means and why it matters goes a long way.

Custom Solutions

I talked about this at length above.

5. Do you work mostly on agency SEO work or are you into affiliate SEO too? What niches do you like, or tend to work in?

The agency is what takes up 90% of my time, I occasionally find some time on the weekends to work on my affiliate sites.

On the client-side of things, B2C service businesses. I have the most experience with law firms and contractors.

For me, niche doesn’t matter as much as the business acumen of the company does.

On the affiliate side of things, each of my sites is in a different niche.

I have been eagerly reading your case studies on your blog where you are doing case studies on flipping sites. What’s been your most profitable site you have flipped and what made this so successful?

My flip project is something I started a couple months ago to kind of document my “journey” with affiliate sites since I’ve just gotten into it recently.

As of right now, I haven’t sold any sites, I started one in 2018 and acquired four so far in 2019. The first sale probably won’t be until 2020. My goal is to grow each site until I get bored with it and then sell it off. I’m also looking into doing some short-sales (3-6 month turnarounds) to see if I prefer long-term growing and selling or quicker “fix it and ditch it” sites.

You’re getting a reputation for taking “automation to the next level”. Can you give us some examples of how you use automation in your business?

I like to think that I’m “efficiently lazy” in that I try to automate anything and everything. There’s not much you can’t automate. It’s just a matter of whether that automation is practical in time, money, and application.

For some of the things I’ve automated fully or partially:

We have a Google Sheet for disavowing links where we can input link files from Ahrefs, Search Console, Majestic, Moz, and OpenLinkProfiler. The data gets parsed and all duplicate links are removed. This leaves us all the unique links from each source.

Then, on another sheet, we indicate if we want to disavow this link and if so if we want to disavow the domain or the URL. This gets sent to another sheet that’s formatted so we can copy & paste into the text document for Google.

We have another sheet that can be used for many reasons, but we mainly use it for citations. Basically, when we get citation links back from a vendor, the report doesn’t always have all the information we need and we have to verify each link to see the anchor, what page it’s linking to, etc.

Instead, we crawl each citation URL and then export all external links. This export then gets imported to our sheet. Our sheet then removes all links not pointing to our client's website and for any citation website Screaming Frog couldn’t find a link to our client on, the URL gets added to a sheet for us to manually review.

Finally, we do everything in Google Drive and we have a template folder that contains templates to our Google sheets, onboarding files, notes documents, the folder structure for clients, etc.

Duplicating this for new clients is a massive pain, so we have a script that duplicates the folder, each files, and the folder structure within the parent folder. By the time I get up to make a cup of tea, we have all ~50 documents and folders duplicated for the new client.

I also have a Trello board with dozens of scripts, software, plugins, and tool ideas for us to automate way more than we do today.

What’s next for you and Blue Dog Media? You got your eyes on growing the agency or looking into a new venture?

To be completely honest, I’m terrible at knowing what I want long-term (me too – Adam). I’m a very go-with-the-flow person. Which has a lot of perks, but also a lot of pitfalls.

What sounds good to me today sounds terrible tomorrow. I’ve spent a lot of time pacing around trying to figure out what my “long-term” goal is so I can work towards it effectively, but… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I have plenty of ventures that I’ve put some thought into, and would love to start, but right now my focus is the agency and figuring out what my focus should be for the agency.

Final Word

This was by far one of the most interesting and informative interviews I have done. It's hard not to be impressed by Jarod!

So, I wanted to thank Jarod again for awesome knowledge he has given here and look forward to catching up with him in Chiang Mai for the SEO conference.

Hi Mike,

First off thank you for taking the time to get involved in this interview for my readers.

We first met in Hong Kong a couple of years ago now and grabbed a quick bite to eat and a beer. You were about to kick start a transparent Amazon FBA follow along and looking for partners.

You have developed a lot of connections and specialize in cross-border commerce. From personal experience of creating my cross-border supplement business there is a lot of red tape and ever-changing rules.

To run the Global from Asia website giving information on the changing regulations and new services in cross border commerce. You also run Cross Border Summits and have a Cross Border Association for members, it would be great to discuss these along with your personal experiences of living in Asia for so many years now.

So, let’s jump straight into this with my first question.

You have lived in China for many years but recently moved. Can you outline why you decided to leave and where are you settling now?

Yes, that is right – I lived in China from the end of 2007 to about mid-2018 so a bit over 10 years. The reason was not an easy one, but I would say the fact that I am a family man now.

Priorities change, and it is about my children’s education and health – which my wife and I wanted to open up a bit outside of China. That combined with the rapidly rising costs of living there and the fact that most of my work can be done anywhere with a laptop and internet connection.

The great thing about having an online business is you’re a prolific blogger and podcaster, where do you get your inspiration and how much of your weekly time is spent writing and filming content?

Yes, I love creating content and sharing with those who enjoy consuming it. My motivation is thinking back when I was in the USA trying to figure out how to do business in China and Asia and how little information there was.

I remember trying to get some information and contacting a law firm that had decent search results and vague blog posts. They quoted me 100,000 USD to open a company in China without even knowing my situation.

Now, I know they only care about the “big fish” – but really do care about the “small fish”. And while I do not have the personal time to help everyone, investing some time in making content free and available is a one-time thing and the effects are huge. So many people thank us for the information we put out there, and I truly believe it is helping many people I will never know – not to sound morbid – but also hopefully long after I am dead as well.

Maybe you can say then it is legacy as the driving factor. Or the ability to help so many people at such a low cost in today’s online and connected world.

But the second part of your question is the stumbling block – creating content takes a lot of time! But like anything in life the more you do it, the better you get at it. Plus I am blessed with an amazing team spread around the world who helps keep the flow of content going on the site so I can focus on the interviews and creation part (which I love).

To put a weekly number on it, I’d say about 10 to 15 hours a week invested in content creation. This is down quite a bit from when I didn’t have the team to help with the post-production, which has saved the blog be honest – as burnout is real!

You have years of experience in cross-border commerce and specialize in particular with China business for export. How have you seen this change since first arriving in China?

So much has changed. I remember in 2007 factories had almost no idea what the internet was. A bit of an exaggeration, but seriously they just cared about the B2B sale and turnover. While that is still true, with eBay and then Amazon courting factories (and trading companies) in China to sell direct – my fear came true.

I moved to China as I had a feeling something like this would happen.

Outsourcing manufacturing to China was something I saw since a high school kid seeing the factories in my hometown of Hartford, Connecticut closing down. Listening to those machinists talk about the long term implications of outsourcing always resonated with me.

With all the infrastructure and knowledge on the other side of the globe, I knew it was only a matter of time before that side of the globe would learn how to build brands and distribution by themselves.

Since moving to China in 2007, I have seen the development first hand of factories moving from OEM and B2B to brand building and direct B2C distribution.

Attending Chinese Amazon Seller conferences about building up the Made in China brand and the patriotic chanting at the summits has made me realize that the future of M2C (Manufacturer to consumer) is real and I’d say close to fully being realized now in 2019.

To keep up to date with changing regulations and new services in cross border commerce, you run Global from Asia website that offers a number of services, many of which you provide for free.

Yes, as we have said in this interview – I’m a content creator first, business person second.

While I could try to squeeze more money out of visitors, I enjoy sharing as much knowledge as I can for free – and if people want our time or our services – they can use our CPA partner (we’re a joint venture equity owner) at Unipro Consulting Limited, or they can become our premium member for monthly private calls, members events, and time with our experts.

We see more commerce between countries and for the solopreneur or small e-commerce company it’s challenging to know the rules and methods to shipping and selling between borders. You have been addressing this with your Cross-Border Association. Can you explain more about this and how this can help members?

The Cross Border Association (CBA) is built to protect people in the industry as well as educate them. So many of our top experts in the community have limited time to keep up with the trends and news that they need an association to keep them abreast.

The core of the Cross Border Association is to help mediate when mediation is needed. Our experts in the community are on call to help other members when a trade issue or question arises. We also are planning more association members-only events for industry-changing issues as well as simple to get good people in the same room.

At the end of the day, we live for the community. We are here to make friends and do business together. While people can enjoy all the free blogs and podcasts at Global From Asia – what we have found people really want (and will pay for) in the community and the connections.

That is what the Cross Border Association is.

You also run regular Cross Border Summit events to help network with to learn tips and tricks of the trade. I have yet to attend but am keen to one day.

Cross Border Summit is our “crown jewel” from all this content and community building. We are gearing up for our fourth annual this Oct 22-23, 2019 in Guangzhou, China.

It is an action-packed event happening during the Canton Fair trade show season to allow those coming from around the world for their product business to connect with each other and learn the newest trends in export B2C cross border e-commerce

The day is jam-packed with industry leaders speaking about Amazon FBA, brand building, Facebook advertising tips and tricks, and the latest industry trends. Every other second is hyper networking with a top-quality group of business executives and owners in the industry – from lunch to tea time, to happy hours.

It is the highlight of my year, as well as many in the community. Hope to see you at the next one 🙂

The recent trade war between China and the USA and effect on rising import taxes, it would be good to get your feedback on the impact of this on cross-border merchants. How has this affected business and trade?

It is still a bit early to see as I type this out as we are only hearing about it less than 2 weeks ago – but it will have long term implications. The idea is that – no matter what ends up happening with the trade war – e-commerce sellers will always be thinking about a Plan B, a non-China supplier.

Even if Trump and Xi shake hands and drop all of this and say no taxes, the damage is done and the “trust” of no trade war is gone. Already I am hearing from people looking to Southeast Asia, even trying to small manufacturing runs in the USA.

Expect to see Christmas presents costing more for Americans – as e-commerce sellers can’t go bankrupt, they have to pass those costs onwards. Maybe the current sellers will phase out if new sellers are able to source elsewhere, but the quick poll I have is people are entrenched in China supply chain and it will take years to get out.

Lastly, you have spent many years in Asia, do you ever foresee going back to the US?

Good question, and common question.

Does it sound weird that because I call my blog Global From Asia I feel like I can’t go back?

Ha! But I love Asia – since the first time in 2007 when I came into Hong Kong airport – the energy and the hustle has been like an addiction. On my US trips, I often get bored quite easily and count down the days until I fly back to Asia.

Yet, I can’t say I’ll never go back – as I said earlier in this interview, being a parent really changes your mindset and your priorities. We’re already thinking about high schools and college and I want to be near my children. I’ve met other parents in Asia who send their kids to boarding school in America, but I personally would just “suck it up” and go back for a few years to be with them.

My heart is in Asia, but to say “never go back to America” is something I can’t commit too.

Hi Kirsten,

First off thank you for taking the time to get involved in this interview for my readers.

We have known each other for over 20 years now as you married my good friend Chris from secondary school.

Although the last 10 years or so we have rarely met up when we do it’s truly like old times and it’s a lot of fun with many jokes normally at our own expense.

Your lifestyle has dramatically changed from the last time we met up 3 years ago.

Meeting up this week in Bournemouth and hearing your story first hand was truly shocking, and yet incredibly inspiring. Your story is one that I would really like my readers to know, so I thought I would interview you on my blog.

I know you’re one tough woman and so hope these questions are not too emotive for you. So, thanks again Kirsten – let’s jump straight into this with my first question.

One normal Friday afternoon around 3 years ago (when exactly?), your life was about to change literally overnight. Can you briefly describe what happened?

The morning started with me doing the wifey duties lol …and not that kind of wifey duty!!! …I'm not a morning girl 😉 !!!…

The walk to the loo felt a little odd and the walk into the kitchen was stranger still.

I cooked our slimming world style breakfast fry up …it was the way we started every day because we had managed to lose about 2 stones each and were (and I think Chris would agree) the best we had felt since our teens.

We were healthy active and (I will add) sexy…no love handles insight, firm arse and a constant, healthy happy glow !!!) [Who had the firm arse, Chris? – Adam]

On calling the family to the table to eat I decided I felt odd enough to share the strange sensations with Chris.

The rolling of the eyes and the flippant short response left me shrugging off the questioning thoughts it was Friday and we all had busy days ahead, but the drive to school didn’t really register, driving on autopilot, but with a slower reaction to brake. I was a little concerned, to be honest.

On my return, I called our doctor’s surgery and after a chat with the receptionist, I was to expect a call back from a doctor. Sure enough at 11 am the call came. I was perming at the time and wouldn’t let the doctor talk me into a blue light ride to our local hospital (apparently the pins and needles in my legs and arms and the dropping of all sorts of things and afoot that wouldn’t cooperate meant he suspected a stroke …

Well, I had no time for a stroke!!!

4 pm was the agreed time for me to attend a check-up with another doctor and that’s when my world began to crumble. By 5 pm I was walking through the doors to the acute admissions ward and I left in a wheelchair 10 days later with a semi paralysis down my entire right side.

My saving grace was that initially it was a suspected brain tumor and that would have left me fighting for my life.

I must admit I didn’t know much about Multiple Sclerosis (MS) before we recently met, I had to do a little bit of online searching. Can you briefly describe what it’s like living with MS each day?

Well, that’s a tough question to answer because every day can be different … for me MS is challenging and frightening. It's consuming and painful and very confusing. It is also upsetting, degrading, embarrassing, and damn right ugly.

I guess without listing my personal ailments MS is undoubtedly the life-changer I didn’t see coming. I live in fear as MS bites at me heals bringing with it when it strikes, destruction, pain, and a bucket full of sadness.

You used to be a popular hairstylist in Bournemouth, with a loyal customer base. I know it was hard, but unfortunately, you had to stop the business. So, how do you spend your time now?

I remember those days so fondly and I really miss my clients and the friendships I had made. The hugs, crazy laughter, and wise words we continuously shared made my working days incredibly rewarding and very enjoyable.

I spent many happy hours in my cabin ….but now …well I flit from craft to craft because I think what I attempt looks easy but what I achieve is a pile of utter c**p and I am trying my hand at blogging, something that I started after writing a book about my life’s journey so far….( not published btw if you think you might be interested in supporting me !!)

I swim with my auntie at our local pool and often in warmer months out in the sea we have even been seen in the rivers a few times, something my auntie tells me is very good for us, and she’s very right!! It’s good for the soul as well as my body.

But the best thing I do is cuddle with a cutie pie by the name of Cody. For every cloud, there is a silver lining and Cody sure is that silver lining.

On my daughter's 22nd birthday I was honored to witness the birth to our first grandchild. I am known as Nanna K and Cody along with his mummy fills my days with purpose, smiles, and oodles of giggles. I love that I can give my time freely to them both, MS was a blessing in disguise because the constraints of our mortgage payments and the living costs rising I would never have been able to have afforded to cut back my working hours to spend time with them both.

Do you follow a recommended diet or health routine; does it help?

Goodness …well what haven’t I tried!!

My friends and FB followers will have witnessed me wild foraging recently (my latest trend !!) But joking aside researching what is good and bad for us MS warriors (note that I said warriors, not sufferers) is by no means an easy feat.

So many do’s and don’ts and a wonderfully hefty price tag on eating healthy (which isn’t helpful when you have lost one entire wage packet due to ill health), but I do eat a lot of liver because of Iron is good for me. I also eat a lot of salmon and a huge portion of fruit and veg.

My diet isn’t so carb-heavy either these days because I have problems with my swallowing and my bowels and I try hard to stay clear of all things comfortable.

Oh, how I miss sharing bags of sweeties all to myself!!

I have to think carefully … eating the wrong foods whether we are well or poorly is not what we should be doing to ourselves. It’s a bit like putting the wrong fuel into your car … guaranteed we will find you spluttering along quickly becoming sluggish and eventually stopping completely … healthy is the way forward.

I just wish I had realized how precious life actually is and how complex our bodies are. Heaven knows I had witnessed illness and loss at a very young age so I should have known better. You see It wouldn’t ever happen to me.

Hmmmmm I wish I hadn’t abused myself in the way I did. But hindsight is a wonderful thing…

When personal circumstances change so much, sometimes not everyone is around for the ride. Have you noticed changes in family and friends?

This has been interesting … on the whole I have been hugely supported and loved by many with numerous avenues of communication used … face to face visits … trips out for cake phone calls, emails, and good old Facebook.

Facebook was my window out into the world and a place where I could share my story with those who wanted to follow my progress.

Some people did what they thought they should, but the attention towards me dwindled away very quickly, and that is fine.

Some people fought for my attention but soon got bored because I wasn’t the girl I used to be and couldn’t offer them what I used to give back to them.

I mean no malice or hurt with these words it is just what it is .. Circumstances and passing time change many things.

There have been people who I would have put up there at the top of the list of very much needed supporters especially at the beginning as my needs were complex, yet they never showed. We had to create a tag team of people that could see to my needs for every passing hour for the first 2 weeks followed by a further 8 weeks where I was unsafe to leave unattended.

I was blessed to have people prepping meals, running Tom (our son) backward and forwards to school, covering housework, washing, shopping, and on top of that tending to my personal care needs and chaperoning me to numerous hospitals appointments.

Those people who for their own reasons steered well clear of the unfolding drama that my family and I entailed have taught me over time not to take things personally … I didn’t have the energy (and still do not) to pick apart or hold onto the feelings of being responsible for whatever drove their chosen behaviors.

Since I have known you and Chris you have been fans of traveling. I often see posts on Facebook of you traveling around the UK. What are your next travel plans? Where do you want to go next?

It is my job (A distraction technique last year I believe) to plan our annual holiday and this year it will be the NC 500.

We are both very excited. Last year we had our first taste of Scotland and we fell in love with the scenery and freedom the Highlands have to offer we ended up in Scotland instead of a safari in Africa. We were celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary and a safari had been on our ‘when the kids are older and we can leave them behind’ list.

I am afraid to travel abroad now due to my symptoms and complications and to be honest, it is too expensive.

[This a shame as I was hoping you guys would visit us in Malaysia!]

We have many beautiful places to visit here in the UK and I am lucky that owning a camper van with all the comforts I need to manage my MS is a positive game changer while we can we will and when I can’t we will have many wonderful memories to draw upon.

You have set up a blog and regularly update with very frank and brutally honest posts about your life. Can you explain why you decided to write so openly and how this has affected your life?

Writing has been what has kept me sane, to be honest. We all keep a stiff upper lip us British folk. On the outside, we have everything in order, a happy family, stable finances, a great job, nice house but on the inside, many of us have tortured souls. But goodness knows why we keep a stiff upper lip it doesn’t bode well for our own peace.

Prior to my diagnosis, I had spent a lot of time and energy trying to work out, or perhaps heal is a better word to use because I was desperate to remove deep-rooted trauma from the death of my mother aged 10 years old. I had experienced grief in a way no child should and had never been given the chance to grieve properly. This caused me years of anguish, heartache, and confusion.

Writing has helped me sort out the mess in my head I guess …and I had nearly put a full stop at the end of my story when MS happened to me … I wasn’t able to close my book!!!

Typical hey… Guess we can never stop learning whilst we are living, and I guess that is what life is all about right???

You’re an incredibly upbeat person, a real inspiration to anyone with MS, actually to anyone. With your change in lifestyle, what are your goals for the next few years?

Well, I put on that 2 stone I spoke about earlier in this interview so I’m currently working on shifting that. I am now holding a monthly group called Mindful Souls (do you like the play on MS) where coffee and cake around my kitchen table, a mindful moment, and a simple craft is bringing people together to raise money for our local MS center so hopefully, that will continue to grow and for as long as I find inspiration to share with others.

I will keep going and I will be watching the seasons change…I am blessed to have been given the chance to slow down and watch the world turn.

I will keep my weird kinda all rolled into one faith and that knowledge with confidence that my path has already been made for me and that all I am meant to learn pleasant or cruel is for me to absorb.

I choose to now keep my eyes and ears open to everything for life is not meant to be torture but more time to learn about yourself others and our beautiful universe it's a time to grow.

I choose to see light in the darkness and I choose to keep going until the time for me to part arrives ……

Hi Sonya,

First off, thank you for taking the time to get involved in this interview for my readers.

We were introduced to each other last year by our mutual friend Toby, aka Zen Mind Coach. He thought we would be a good match as you work with entrepreneurs running their own businesses looking for performance improvement.

When we first started chatting, I was struggling with motivation and productivity after earning money online for the last 20 years and having over a year break. A few sessions with you and I was back on track. So, thank you for that!

This blog is all about productivity and improving my and hopefully other people's lives, and so I thought it would be great to interview. So, let’s jump straight into this with my first question.

Your background is really fascinating, and you have done a lot in your career, can you give us a brief outline of your background.

My career started in the City – I was a high flyer sales Exec living in a man’s world, the Finance Industry. I traveled all around Europe and the US, Miami / NY and California – sounds like a boring job, right? Not to toot my own horn but I was the best – won sales award after-sales award and was recognized globally.

I had everything or, so I thought.

I was successful but not fulfilled.

After 16 years in sales, I decided to jump ship. I was way too feisty to put up with the corporate bollocks and wanted to figure out my purpose – there was more to life.

My passion was health and fitness, so I qualified as a Personal Trainer (PT) but always knew it was a business I wanted to run, a few months and Entrepreneur’s courses later I met my business partner and we launched a brand of fashionable gym clothes for woman.

It was hard work … 24/7 a lot of stress and money… all my savings. I learned a lot about business – cash flows, managing staff, sales and marketing, everything about the fashion industry.

2.5 years later and I sold my shares in the business.

I went on to help other Entrepreneurs and set up an Entrepreneurs club, there was no money in it. Start-ups have nothing and although I wanted to help I needed to help myself first.

I was tempted back into the City and did a further 2 years whilst building my property portfolio – which was to be my escape. I had a plan for everything.

I’m a bit of a Maverick and like to do things out of the ordinary. I’d said that health and fitness was my passion. I’d been a runner and obsessed with the endorphins and the challenge of a race but that was nothing compared to this… I decided at the age of 44 to start bodybuilding and enter my first competition – (it’s a way of life now for me and I’ve done a couple of competitions).

It takes a lot of dedication and determination to do enter a bodybuilding competition – it's not just the training, the most difficult part is the discipline and the nutrition, no social life for months.

Then comes the hard part!!!

Getting on stage in front of a huge crowd at the 02 in London in a skimpy bikini to be judged.

I know from speaking with you, that like me being financially independent has been a big driver for you. Can you outline how you have managed to achieve this?

My Dad taught me the importance of being financially independent, and, in his words, never depending on anybody. He advised me to buy bricks and mortar at a relatively early age…and I did, just at the right time.

This risk paid off, despite all my friends thinking I was crazy at the time to tie myself down to a mortgage.

Now I have a multi-million-pound property portfolio that has given me financial freedom.

It’s meant a lot of sacrifices, but I always believe in investing in assets rather than material throw away things.

I’d advise anyone to invest in assets and let your money grow for you. Otherwise, you’ll be a slave to the man all your life.

You’re based in London, what makes you stay in the City considering you could live anyway in the World?

I love London!! I moved to Richmond, after being in Clapham for 20 years and I’m loving it – being so close to the Richmond Park, the stunning nature and the river has brought a great deal to me, and I’m no country bumpkin I assure you.

I was born to travel, and I spent much of my corporate life on a plane.

I was very close to living in New York in 2008. The banking crisis hit, and we were in the center of it, so my move was withdrawn literally 2 weeks before I was due to leave. Sliding doors and all that…

In the future, I’m going to be living in California, possibly a 2nd home, and traveling between London and the States.

I love the sunshine and healthy lifestyle and my dream home overlooks the water.

I’ve loads of traveling to do though and lots of places I want to visit. My brother lives in Singapore and I’ve spent a lot of time in that part of the world.

Spain has a special place in my heart as studied Spanish at Uni and lived and worked there when I was 18.

You have recently started working as a mentor and performance coach. Can you outline how you help entrepreneurs to transform their lives and improve performance?

And give away my secrets 😊!!

I take a holistic approach to coaching.

Everyone is different, and one size certainly does not fit all. I take each individual and tailor my coaching to them. We look at all aspects of their life and what areas they would like to work on.

Drawing on my 20 years of sales and business experience I combine my knowledge with a holistic approach to mentoring and coaching.

I have mastered many areas in life and believe that success in business is about mindset, and values being aligned. Failure rates for businesses are high which is why adopting high-performance habits early on give strong foundations for a rewarding business.

I encourage my clients to think big and think outside the box.

What tips could you offer business owners who are stagnating and struggling to reach the next level?

Get a coach!… I know a good one 😉

Seriously though you have to step back, resistance comes and that’s a normal part of business, it’s not going to be plain sailing.

It depends on the situation, a lot of the time the business owner could be coming across a limiting self-belief that is stopping them from going further.

It could be that the business is not aligned with its values.

Or simply that they are burnt out.

I delve deeper to find the real reason and together we work through a plan to get the business owner “unstuck” and move forward.

How do you see your business growing in the next 6, 12, and 24 months?

Rapidly!!! Watch this space.

I have just launched my new website and putting out free video content across social media – would love to get your reader's thoughts.

In my Coaching business in terms of personal 1-1 coaching I’m keeping to a small number of high-level clients. I want to dedicate quality time to my clients, coaching shouldn’t be a numbers game.

I’m also launching the Sonya Morton-Firth show in the Summer. It’s going out on YouTube so please subscribe.

I will be interviewing Mavericks, Game changers, Leaders that are challenging the norms of society and helping us think outside the box.

Lastly, do you have any personal achievements you’re working on or yet to achieve?

I want to challenge society and the norms we live by.

Society in my mind has to change so the big thing I’m working on is The Sonya Morton-Firth Show and giving value to people, helping them be the best versions of themselves to do good.

Other goals I’m working on:

• Continue building my property portfolio, aim is 10 beautiful properties
• Keeping fit and healthy and building more muscle to place in the top 3 of my next body building competition.
• Speaking on stage – there is a TED talk in me and a book!

Hi Teng, thank you for spending the time today answering my questions.

I first came across you and your business partner Brian Jimerson in Johnny and Sam’s Invest Like A Boss podcast. As you guys are based just up the road from me in Bangkok, I arranged to meet up with you as I was looking to invest some money.

We had a good informal catch up over some Dim Sum in Sukhumvit Road for 3-4 hours discussing everything from ex-pat life to finance.

Recent experience with FX trading left me a little dubious where I wanted to invest in what appeared to be a very risky investment vehicle. I have put some money into your managed fund though and have seen solid profitable months (see my monthly investment updates), so thank you for that!

I know we’re looking to catch up in Bangkok on my next trip in December 2018, hopefully with Brian too. Looking forward to enjoying some drinks with you guys.

So, thank you in advance for answering my questions, and let’s jump into some questions for you, we look forward to your answers.

Can you give us a quick bit of background of yourself, where you’re from, and where you live today?

My name is Teng Su, I was born in China and grew up in New Zealand and Australia. I’ve been living in Bangkok, Thailand for the past 5 years.

Academically, I have a Sports Science/Medicine background (interestingly similar to my background), but since a chance meeting with a retired central bank Governor that evolved into a mentorship over a decade ago, I’ve been a full-time Currency Trader and Fund Manager.

Living in Bangkok is awesome, I personally love spending time there, but a few days is normally enough for me. How do you stay focused living in such a vibrant, exciting, and distracting city?

Bangkok is one of our favorite cities in the world. We’ve had so many people who’ve come to visit us both personally and professionally that have absolutely fallen in love with the place. Quite a few have actually even either ended up moving to Bangkok or spending the majority of their year here.

To be fair I’ve seen my fair share of people who’ve become swallowed by it all with the crazy selection of great restaurants and amazing nightlife, but I’d have to say that we’re fortunate enough that a combination of our work, personalities, and tastes have kept us away from falling off of the deep end.

We love what we do, and with our work, in particular, the sometimes-extreme highs and lows that we experience day-in-day-out, keeps us grounded and forces us to focus enough to prevent us from becoming too distracted by the charms of the city.

I first heard about Art of FX listening to the Invest Like a Boss Podcast. Can you outline to my readers what you do?

Art of FX is an asset management company that specializes in trading Currency Pairs, Commodities, CFDs, and Indices on the retail spot market.

Our work is similar to a stock trading firm, but our expertise is profiting from the movements of instruments such as Euros, Yen, Gold, and Oil.

Depending on a client’s investment goals, risk appetite, and capital available, we can either add investors to our large Managed Fund or individually manage their capital account with a custom strategy to suit their needs.

How does the strategy followed by you and Brian differ from your competitors?

As a small firm, we prefer to keep our heads down and work, so I can’t really speak much for our competitors. However, through our broker, we’ve learned that we're relatively different from their other larger management partners in that we focus on volume over scale.

The thing with the markets that we’re involved in, in comparison to say stocks and bonds, is that instruments such as FX and Commodities have so many more variables influencing price action.

With this in mind, our execution strategy boils down to a high number of trades per session with a relatively small scale of exposure per trade and exiting those positions as quickly as we can, as opposed to making an analysis, entering a single trade, and letting it run to either a profit or a loss over the long period of time.

Minimising time exposure also reduces the chance of outside variables from entering the equation and potentially counteracting our analysis. The FX and Commodities markets have so much volume (over $5 trillion USD per day) that liquidity is never an issue, and with the volume that we do (around $1-2 billion USD in transactions per month), our per-transaction costs are very low, which allows us to work in this way.

However, this strategy has the major downside that it requires a pretty intensive work schedule. The only thing that makes it work is that we truly enjoy it and have pretty much gotten accustomed to working 10-15 or more hours per day for almost 10 years. Doing all-nighters due to major market events doesn’t really bother us as much as it used to. Luckily for us, the markets are closed on the weekend so we do get time to enjoy life when we get the chance.

How much do you guys currently have under management?

As of Q4 2018 we have in the region of $25 million USD and around 200 clients.

You have a somewhat unique structure. Can you go into why you went for this structure and location?

Originally when Brian and I met, he was working alone in Texas while I was working out of my apartment in Australia and we were both managing our own separate Funds. We’d have a Skype voice channel open for up to 20 hours a day just chatting and working, and after a very profitable 6-month period we decided to fly somewhere so we could work face to face.

For anyone that’s self-employed, working alone and at home for an extended period of time (and I imagine that includes a lot if not most of your Life Hacker Guy visitors), the chance to not only get a change of scenery but to work together with a successful well-respected peer is something you don’t pass up.

We chose Bangkok as it was a city that I was familiar with thanks to previous holidays with friends and family, and the Indochina time zone is perfect for trading the most active times of the day (late Asia, Europe, and the EU/NY market overlaps).

Do you attract institutional-level investors or are you aiming at the retail sector? Is there a typical type of person who invests with you guys?

Through our broker we have been referred a number of institutional-level investors thanks to our performance record, but we don’t market to those types of clients directly, and we prefer to work with retail-level investors. We prefer not to over-complicate our lives, and while we very well could go after the Tier 1 accounts, evolving ourselves from a small shop into a more corporate-style operation doesn’t really interest us.

Our average client is an accredited investor (although we do accept non-accredited) from Europe or Asia with an existing portfolio of between $500k-$2m, looking to diversify and put their money into something that’s different and maybe more aggressive than their usual 5-10% per annum holdings.

How do you see the business going in the next 12-24 months? Are you looking to grow your money under management or add other services?

We’re quite happy with the level of growth both in terms of the number of clients and funds under management that we’ve been seeing over the past few years, and our current setup can easily handle the current rate and more for a few more, without having to expand our operations too extensively. With that said, we’ve also streamlined our workflow enough to be able to accommodate time for adding more services as well.

We're currently working on launching a client-side Trade Copier service which is designed for people to get involved with us who maybe can’t afford our managed account deposit minimums, or who are learning to trade themselves and want to follow a professional in real-time.

We also run a Trading Room social space, with a chat room, trade calls, and screen sharing, that we’re considering expanding the features of in the next few quarters.

For more information you can visit the Art of FX website here.

Hi Toby, thank you for spending the time today answering my questions.

We have known each other for over 14 years now and have become good friends. Having first met back in 2004 in Chiang Mai, Thailand during a Tai Chi Chuan course, we regularly bump into each other in London, Malaysia, and Thailand.

You have spent many years “on the road” traveling to amazing 5-star resorts in some of the most stunning places in the World. All the time providing a range of amazing treatments mostly having their origins in Asia.

Let’s jump into some questions for you, we look forward to your answers.

Can you give some background of where you’re from and what made you move from the UK all those years ago?

I am originally from West London but left the UK about 20 years ago. I decided to leave because it dawned on me one day that this life is not forever and I wanted to just enjoy it as much as possible.

I wanted it to become an adventure, an exciting experience and so with a newly acquired English teaching certificate and just $1,500 in my back pocket, I bought a one-way ticket to Thailand and my adventure began.

You spend a fair amount of time in SE Asia, what’s the appeal, and do you see yourself settling here again?

I have always been drawn to South East Asia, mainly because of the spirituality I associate with it. I originally chose Thailand because I wanted to learn more about Buddhism. I had been practicing meditation for about 7 years and Thailand has many Buddhist temples where you can go on retreats and live as a monk.

Living and working in Thailand gave me a far deeper insight and understanding of Buddhism than I think I would have experienced living in the UK.

I left Thailand in 2010 due to political instability in the country making it difficult for me to work there. I was sad to leave and didn’t think I would live there again.

But over the last few years, circumstances and work have drawn me back to South East Asia and I am spending about 6 months of the year there again. It has made me realize how much I love it and I could definitely see myself settling there again in the future.

You spend most of your time working in exotic locations (I am quite jealous!) where have you been the last 12 months? Where will you be next?

As a freelance Visiting Specialist to Hotels and Spas, I usually work at a resort for one month, so I do travel often. In the last 12 months, I have worked in Thailand, Greece, Portugal, Spain and Vietnam.

The next 12 months will take me back to some of the same resorts in the same countries in addition new resorts in the Maldives, India, Switzerland, and Turkey where new opportunities have arisen.

You offer a number of treatments to clients in resorts all over the World, what treatments do you currently offer?

I work as a Mind and Body specialist. For the body, I tend to use a combination of massage and acupuncture which is all based around the principles of Chinese medicine. For the mind, I use a combination of hypnotherapy, meditation, and life coaching.

What’s the appeal with Eastern Medicine and alternative treatments you have learned in Asia?

I think that in the west, many people are beginning to realize that western medicine cannot cure everything and that there are alternative cures out there that can help when western medicine fails. One of these alternatives is Chinese medicine.

Also, people are waking up to the idea that our health is in fact our responsibility and not the responsibility of our GP. Eastern medicine perpetuates that prevention is better than cure and works on strengthening the immune system so that our bodies can fend for themselves against illness and disease rather than relying on medication that may only suppress symptoms and possibly cause bigger health problems further down the line.

Also, research has now proven that our psychological state of mind also affects our physical health and this is something Eastern medicine has been addressing for thousands of years.

You have treated a number of executive clients for stress. What common characteristics do you find and the best form of treatment? (you don’t have to reveal any secrets here!)

Every person is different, but most of my clients are usually aged between 35-50 and are experiencing a bit of a mid-life crisis.

The underlying theme is that most people by this time of their lives have achieved or are on the path to achieving everything that they thought would make them happy in life, such as marriage, family, house, car, financial security, good career, etc. However, they often find that in fact, these things have not brought them the peace of mind they were looking for but exactly the opposite.

There are various reasons for this; stress, overworking, dissatisfaction with their choice of career, recognizing there is not enough time for their friends or family, divorce, or sometimes even a health issue that has caused them to re-assess their priorities in life.

Although many people believe a mid-life crisis is a bad thing to go through, if they approach it with the right attitude, they will realize it is an extremely positive thing. It is a time for new beginnings, a change, an opportunity to stop, reflect on what is most important to them in life, and start to make new, positive decisions in life.

Pain, whether it is physical or psychological, is a warning that something is wrong and that you need to do something about it. Stress, anxiety, or depression are all warning signs and you must listen to what your mind is telling you, discover the root cause, and make life changes accordingly.

I help people understand their minds and what the root cause of their problems is. Once this is established, we then work together to help them find solutions and move forward in life more positively.

So, we put together your current website. What are your plans for this in the near future?

Future plans include adding some online courses that people can access whenever and wherever they are. The aim of the courses is to help anyone achieve greater peace of mind and that can mean anything from relieving a bit of work stress, helping them gain greater clarity of their goals in life, or even a deep spiritual understanding of themselves.

Whatever people are looking for in life, my aim is to provide them with the correct knowledge and tools to find it.

We will also be providing plenty of articles and blogs to help readers improve their physical and psychological health in addition to promoting any products that we know will support people in attaining better health and greater peace of mind.