Travis Bliffen is the founder of Stellar SEO, a top-rated U.S. link building agency. As an Army veteran, Travis took a leap of faith after reading a magazine article about the future of SEO. He dove deep and spent a year perfecting his craft. When he opened his firm in 2012, they quickly gained a reputation for being a cost-effective, honest and leading SEO agency. He has written many published works on SEO and link building, as well as being a featured speaker at SEMPO Cities among other industry events.
Entrepreneurial Role Models:
When business started difficulties overcame:
“I didn’t really have too many difficulties other than the fact that I was pretty broke, I had no experience with business and I had absolutely no experience with the field I was getting in to. So some small setbacks there. But in reality though there is a lot of difficulties that you are going to face upfront because you don’t know what you don’t know until you learn something. So the first several years is a steep learning curve. You learn a bunch of stuff, you think you’ve got it figured out and then you realise you have to learn a lot more stuff now because you figured out there’s another handful of things you don’t know”…[Listen for More]
Favourite Books:
The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It Book by Michael E. GerberFavourite Quote:
- “If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first four hours sharpening the axe Abraham Lincoln”
- “In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.” Theodore Roosevelt
Recommended Online Resources:
Harvard Business Review – Find new ideas and classic advice on strategy, innovation and leadership, for global leaders from the world’s best business and management experts
Best Advice to Other Entrepreneurs:
“you have to go for it. Everybody says you have to go for it and then people say okay I am going to go for it. But going for it means different things for different people. So when I say go for it I mean that if you decide you are going to start a business, you are going to be your own boss, you are going to build a brand, whatever it is that you are going to do to kind of take charge of life. You have to be willing to push back obstacles, you have to overcome hardships potentially but you have to be all in. Don’t have one foot out of the door the whole time, don’t say I am going to do this but… Insert the laundry list of excuses everybody might have about why they won’t do anything. You can’t do that”…[Listen for More]
More About Travis Bliffen:
Neil’s Quote at the Beginning:
“In a lot of ways, success is much harder than I thought it would be. I figured that you’d get here and then everything would be happily ever after. But, it’s hard work, almost harder once you’re successful because you’ve got to maintain it.” Steven Wright
Other Quotes From the Chat with Travis Bliffen:
- “beware of over idolising particular people because you have got to be aware that you are seeing a very almost fictionalised or storyfied version of reality. So when you are doing things yourself and it’s not going exactly like that I have seen a lot of people get discouraged because they say I see X Y and Z and they’ve had all of this success. So that’s what I keep in mind to I’m looking at entrepreneur role models”
- “there’s a lot of stuff I know now that I didn’t know then. I am not so sure that I would change anything because a lot of the mishaps and micro-failures and issues and difficulties those all helped to shape and change and refine the way that we do things. So I like the question and it really is a great question and it does make me wonder like what would I go back and change and what would I not change. But I guess ultimately I would probably just go through the process very similar to how I did because I know that it’s had a huge impact on the way that we do everything as a business now and some of those things might have got lost if I didn’t have to go through that learning curve myself in the beginning ”
- “don’t be afraid to go out and challenge the way something is done. And don’t take it is the gospel of somebody says you have to do it this way, this is the only way that will work or everybody else does it this way so we are going to do it this way. Some of the most successful businesses and products of all time have been made by people who pivoted, they changed, the said you know what I’m going to do something different. I am going to change the way this is done. So I think that very important is don’t make artificial limitations on how things can be done or could be done but go and figure out”
- “I some things can definitely be systematised but there is a few areas that if you don’t you can maintain a much higher level of quality and that can be your true differentiator”
- “before you go into any business you should be asking yourself who wants what I am offering and how will I get in front of those people”
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