Ep 3: Brian Ta
Brian Ta is a Growth PM at Coinbase, one of the fastest-growing cryptocurrency platforms in the world. Brian leads top of funnel growth via SEO, landing pages, performance marketing and affiliates. Previously to Coinbase, Brian held several Growth PM roles at companies such as AngelList, Strava and Haven Money.
Previous to those roles, Brian was an SEO Lead at Airbnb, where he owned SEO and landing page strategy for the home rental and vacation rentals business. Brian also does talks on SEO at YCombinator, contributes to Lenny’s Newsletter, and occasionally does speaking gigs at events such as TechSEOBoost.
I met Brian during the pandemic when I stumbled upon his blog post on how to create a scalable SEO strategy and since then I’ve enjoyed getting to know him and have learned a lot from the way he thinks about growth. He’s a fascinating, humble, and hilarious human being.
Connect with Brian:
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Audio Transcription
Bill King 0:00
Check. Hey everyone. Welcome to episode number three of the growth theory optimal podcast. My name is Bill King. Welcome to the show. My guest today is Brian Todd Brian is a growth Product Manager at coin base one of the fastest growing companies in the world. He was previously a growth Product Manager at Angel list Strava in haven money, he was also an SEO lead at Airbnb. And so it's pretty fair to say that Brian has worked at some of the most amazing and fast growing companies in the world. On this episode, Brian drops so many knowledge bombs on product, lead growth, product lead SEO, how he approaches growth problems. My favorite thing about Brian is that he thinks very differently. He's wildly intelligent, and he thinks very, very strategic about how to apply growth frameworks to how you acquire customers. Before we get in the conversation. Can you please subscribe? Like Share do all the things that would help this podcast get some traction, it would mean the world to me. Let's get into episode number three with Brian Todd coin base. See, you know,
Bill King 1:24
story to crypto was back in the day. I used to play poker online. That was my first like career after during school. And crypto was like, the easiest way to transfer money like you were saying like when they are national. So it just became convenient. And then I had like hundreds of Bitcoin at one point like hundreds I kept some, but it's definitely not. We're definitely not as rich as we should be is what I'm saying. Which is we shouldn't be let's be real. Yeah, seriously working for the man. Alright. Anyways, I am here with Brian Todd, one of my favorite people that I've met through the pandemic and I'm really pumped. Why always like, what it's like, check, check. Okay, there we go. Alright, we'll start that over. Alright, I'm here with Brian ta at coin base, the man the myth, the legend. Now I pulled the mic close to me. People can actually hear me first of all, Brian, thank you for joining the the growth theory optimal podcast, which is I don't know if you would agree is one of the nerdier titles that I could have I could have possibly come up with but
Brian Ta 2:27
no. Yeah. Thanks for having me. I don't know why you want me on the show. But I'll take the compliment.
Bill King 2:33
Well, everybody else canceled so. So you know, we just we had to fly in an extra at the end. Yeah, that's that's no BS. I've had a few cool people on here. I'm really excited to talk to you. Because based on the conversations we've had, like, offline, I guess you could say, I think you have some some stuff you can bring, bring to the table that other people do not? Brian. So first things first, you have had so many different cool roles. So I was looking at your LinkedIn profile before, which was interesting. I was like, wow, he's done a lot of cool stuff. You started your career as a UI, UX specialist building apps. Then you did a bunch of different marketing internships. And so you went from stuff from like a skate shop to Intuit which had probably like drastically different experience as a person working in marketing. Imagine. And then we talked briefly before, but you worked a business online, which I had heard of, they're an agency out in California, you were doing up interesting roles, like marketing analyst and web developer, which I don't think I've ever heard anybody like doing both of those things.
Brian Ta 3:31
He was just hitting the code monkey. And I knew HTML and CSS and like JavaScript, and like, I don't know, PHP, but you can kind of like copy and paste, but around. Yeah, like they need to somebody to do they hired me to do SEO and said that I was just like, I was just being a code monkey for like, my year and a half. They're
Bill King 3:52
nice, nice. If there's one thing I know about code, it's that I know how to bring it. That's that's pretty much my job. Then you, then you went after it. I think like that was the that was an interesting time. So you, you went over to Macy's for a short time. And you were doing SEO and SEO for them. You went from there to to Airbnb to lead their, their SEO, or at least you're an SEO lead at Airbnb, and I'm sure that there was like multiple teams, right? Must have been a life changing experience, because I've heard all sorts of crazy things about you know, that the growth team and all the experiments that they ran. So we'll get into that a little bit more. Then you, you moved into product management. So you went to a company called haven amount money, which I don't know too much about. But I thought that is really cool, because usually, people either start in product and then they learn growth, or they're in growth and they stay in growth. And like there's not, you see it every so often. But I think the skills aren't necessarily always transferable. So I'm really excited about talking about that. And then you went on this run in terms of growth pm rolls from Strava angellist. And now coin base, and you do lectures at Y Combinator on SEO even though you hate SEO And we'll get into that more. Yeah, that's probably the thing I'm most excited to talk about. And so like you've done all these really cool things, I feel like you've been building this portfolio of like experiences and different teams and orgs. And this and that. So like, you've you've done kind of similar to where I have, like, you've touched different bunch of areas, and you're like, this is the one I like the most. And so let's, let's go double down on that. What about a pm role? Like did that find you? Or did you find it like, were you at like different brands, and you were working with PMS? And you're like, this sounds like a pretty cool job. How did that happen? Like, how did you go from like, SEO and digital and like growth to like a growth pm? That's really interesting.
Brian Ta 5:40
Yeah, I think I think it's just a function of being an Airbnb. I mean, like, I guess the big thing is that Airbnb SEO was a product function, which is, like, I think initially started off as a marketing function. But when I joined, they were like, it doesn't really make any sense as a marketing function or not, because you need to make changes to the actual product. It's not like SEO Moloch sem has some but like, it's a lot less than like SEO or like SEO, you have to make modern products up because the product with sem you're able to like you know, pick and choose the landing pages and hopefully design the ones that you want. But at Airbnb, it was like SEO was was a product function that's kind of work kind of got introduced to it. So I think from from there was it was like, it wasn't a smooth transition as smooth transition would have just been our SEO lead at Airbnb and I became a product manager at Airbnb, but like the leap to start moving on to product management is actually is a little bit difficult. And along the way, just like I say this a lot isn't like the product management, the fun part of product management is actually the execution, the roadmapping and alive and everything else like that just kind of comes with the job. Some people thrive on it, like I'm not one of those people. But like, like, the thing that I like the most is the growth aspect of it. Like if you worked out in these big companies, or these tech companies, or work with like a, like an extreme experiment framework. It's just addicting man, like, you go and you just like you run all these small tests, you run big tests, like no results surprise you some results don't surprise you some results surprising the wrong way or something you think is a home run is like massively negative, or like some small change you did, like, you know, made the company like $20 million. Like, that's the addicting part is just being able to like work with like an entire team to like, come together, come up with a bunch of ideas and just like, start iterating. And moving really, really quickly. girl does a lot of fun and wouldn't want to like, yeah, just the opportunity to go from SEO to General Growth isn't was an opportunity that I fully embraced. I mean, I think that I'm I was really lucky in April, in order to be able to actually move over, because there's nothing like it's not that easy. And I think that's one of the issues that have product management, just like Silicon Valley in general is that like product management is so revered in Silicon Valley, and it's very, it's like, it's very difficult for people to move in. I mean, like, everybody, like everybody wants good product management. Right? Like I live. Yep. It's like it's ridiculous, competitive. And like, you know, functionally, when I when me being an SEO lead to me being an SEO Product Manager, there wasn't that much of difference. Like, yes, there is some difference. And like there's like I've built a lot of like product management skills along the way. But like, my skill, written that fundamentally different from when I was like just doing pure SEO to doing an SEO Product Manager to being growth, Product Management. Yeah. And I like that sucks. Like, people want the opportunity. And it's a little it's very hard. There's like those classes on how to break into product management. in tech, or like, you know, like Lenny's newsletter, his most popular articles or like, are the ones around like, Product Management, how people can like, build up the skill, like he runs classes and things like that, like, what, it's great. I think it's fantastic. He's able to do it. But it's also like such a shame that it's that difficult for someone that's interested in being a product manager to actually do it. But I think you you kind of need, you get a little background first, because it's definitely not for everybody. Like, coin was on I'm sitting in like 1012 meetings a day. And like, okay, like day ends at 3:30pm after a giant block of meetings. And now I have to block off the next couple hours to actually like, execute right out dogs follow up with engineers and everything like that. So there's a little bit we can take.
Bill King 9:09
Yeah, it sounds like there's a lot more process. Whereas if you're in just like a growth exclusive role, you're probably just in like a pod, right? Where you're working on SEO or SEO or something like that. And we've had two different folks. Join the podcast before we had Alex Bearcat, one of my good buddies, who just does he's the All he does is experimentation at work out, which is really cool. And he was talking about some of the frameworks he uses there. And we had Andrew Caplan on who was the head of growth at Wistia and PostScript and actually we sat next to each other at HubSpot. And so we've known each other for a long time he talked about growth leadership. So we've got like an interesting mix. I'm really interested in like the pm stuff like what skills were transferable from SEO lead to growth pm and like, do you believe that you would have gotten into a product management role had you not been at Airbnb? Oh, I don't think I would have been able to I don't know how intelligent I got lucky. He downplays himself. But he's he's quite, he's quite intelligent. I will say. No, I mean, like, what skills? I mean, like, I mean, maybe research, like understanding, like, what the markets looking for? Or like, Is it more qualitative, quantitative or like, do you feel like that was helpful?
Brian Ta 10:25
I think the big thing was, I mean, like, I think the hardest thing to pick up was, I mean, like, I think there's a lot of like, I think the soft skills that I picked up on, like, how to talk to people how to approach. I mean, like, as an SEO for most, like a lot of times, you have to like, kind of win people over in order to get people to like, do work for you, because like, I think you should add this. And this is a great idea that he was relatable quote,
Bill King 10:49
I've heard the entire time we're doing this podcast, things people don't think about when you're an SEO until you get to a point that you're the person who owns SEO, is that not everybody believes in SEO? It turns out, so getting people to buy it on what you want to do is usually sometimes like lower on hierarchy, right? So if you're the PM, you're the person who owns that roadmap. So you get to determine what actually happens, right?
Brian Ta 11:10
Yeah, so like, I think, I think like being free because like, as a team, you have to coordinate with like a bunch of other teams, like other people, depending on product area. So for example, like a Congress, like I own like an entire log on the entire logout experience. It's like anybody needs to go make change. Log I've experienced, they like, they go they message like, Hey, we want to go and add something to the header, like, Is that fine, it's like almost been like, super chill, because whatever, PMS have to have very, very difficult conversations at times, like, oh, maybe you need to go and like work with like the payments team. Or like the onboarding or login team, or the authentication team, or, you know, trust or identity or legal, like you like, you have to go and get their approval and like being able to, like, kind of knowing how to talk to them lightning, like, for me, that was one of the biggest things that came up this year was that like, oh, like, I've had a lot of practice, like, being very nice and being like, knowing how to like phrase questions so that I don't like, I don't offend people and like, try to try to win them. So other than that, like, that's probably one of the few things but in terms like, like, I think the, I think that's about it, I mean, like, all the other things I've learned just from working on a growth team, I think like, that's kind of the biggest thing is that, like, if you work in a general growth team, you pick up a lot of the skills that I think you need in order to in order to just become a product manager, just because like the prioritization part, a goal setting, just like knowing how to manage time, like knowing that, like, there is a trade off how to run experiments, all these things, like you don't really build them up during SEO, it's definitely a little bit of a trial. But like, I also don't think it's very difficult for an SEO person to go and like come into it, because like, a lot of the things that you need to pick up a lot of SEO, so they want to do like, there's I don't think I've ever talked to an SEO that, like hasn't wanted to run an SEO experiment, right? Yeah, wants to run SEO experiment. They all have ideas. And like, they're like, Oh, yeah, like, like, we kind of did this thing where, like, we launched it. And then we we waited like three weeks, and we looked at the like, like nothing scientific. Like, there's always the one, there's always a need. And like, as long as you kind of keep that drive going, I think that like it'll, it takes you a long way. And I think like SEO is kind of in a special spot where like, you want to do a lot of things, but there's just there's never any resources that are put into it. The I guess, like it's the growth mindset that that you have, when you're an SEO where like, you want to do things you want to keep on learning. Like, that's probably the strongest skill set that you can go for outside of just being able to talk to people, and just like, clearly communicating your ideas. I mean, like, try, like, you know, how much pain the acid is to go and like, explain what a canonical is like, this is the real page like, dude, like, this is like the URL is a real? Like, it's like, it's not a fun conversation. Yeah, for sure.
Bill King 13:42
Yeah. Yeah. So I'm curious, like, and then we can move on to the next next topic. But if you could, if you could go back to the beginning of your career, would you have started in product first or in growth first, and then got, if you would gone back to like, just being a growth pm today? And why like you're very successful, what you do, you've had some awesome roles, like, do you believe that the role of growth previously helped you exceed in the pm side of things? Or would you have rather started in product and then learned growth afterwards?
Brian Ta 14:11
Like, I would talk to my manager at Strava, like, actually pose this question to him. And I think this is kind of weird. I was like, five years from now, if you could be if you could only do growth, you can only do product management, what would you do? He's like, yeah, Product Management all the way I was like, I'm the complete opposite. I don't really care about product management. But the growth part is fun. But like, growth, Product Management is just like the easiest analogue to doing growth. Like on my own, who's like, I think diving straight into growth. And just like doing that has been fantastic. The Product Management part, it's a skill set that kind of expands outside of growth. I mean, like it's, it's a generic skill set you can take and you should be able to plop into any team and then be able to go and like run a blog. So like, if you learn product management, and I took a picture of him that dropped you on on let's say, let's say a few months other growth, what payments Yeah. Right, it's like, now you need to go and like leave the payments team like, are you able to do that? Yes, I might be able to, but like, I also wouldn't enjoy it. Like, I wouldn't enjoy it nearly as much as I enjoy working on like, on any of the growth teams, referrals, virality activation engagement, like for me like, like, That part is fun. But that's kind of where I would want. Like, if I could redo my career over just like, I think, I think where I started, where I ended up is kind of has been perfect. For me. That's cool. Like not much about like, I think with with other areas, Product Management, if I had to deal with a client with a decent job, but I know that I wouldn't enjoy it nearly as much. And like the product management skills, you kind of pick up along the way. But the growth sucks. Like I think being in the right environment of being an Airbnb has really helped me grow to be like, as good as I am at my job.
Bill King 15:44
Yeah, that's gonna actually ask you that. That's one of the things I had on my list of questions for you. Do you take any extra training? Or like, did you pick up the skip? Because I mean, having worked at some of the, the more like, you know, crazy growth companies, you learn stuff faster than you do other places? Did you do any external study? Or like, Did you take a product management course? Or like, were you just asking the product managers like tons of questions and just picked it up over time?
Brian Ta 16:09
I'm just gonna pick it up over time. I'm like, I'm not I'm not saying that is the way you should do it. Like, I like I like I don't know if that's the best way to do it. But like, I just kind of like I was lucky enough. And then like, I'm surrounded like, I'm surrounded by very intelligent people that were able to like read, I see that I got lucky because like my like, I don't know if I ever told you but like, the reason why I even got this job at Airbnb was because my manager posted on Hacker News on the who's hiring thread, every music from an SEO specialist, like I was really on Airbnb, and I responded to him and like I had applied to the job, like three or four days before they never got back to me, you know, my background is Macy's, they weren't going to reach out to me. And like that, like that's how I got my like, that's how I got the role at Airbnb was like, I got very, very lucky. And like, I was like, like, I had the opportunity to do it. And like, like being an Airbnb, I think like, talking to all of the, like, digital marketers, they're talking to the girl team, like talk to my manager, who's now a partner at Y Combinator, there was a lot of things that I picked up, I learned from that, I don't know that I would have gone anywhere else. So like, I would say that I'm like, I've been extremely lucky in that I've been I've had the opportunity in order to learn from people. And if you have the opportunity, you should 100% do that. Find a mentor. But like if you think that things can be accelerated by class, like, by no means am I saying don't do it, because I think there's a lot of things that it took me a while in order to pick up.
Bill King 17:30
Yeah, that's actually similar experience with me. I was when I started at HubSpot, I was in like customer success and like account management just want to get a foot in the door. At the time, they actually didn't have an SEO team at HubSpot, which is crazy to think because they just built it up from content and links and like basically dominated then they hired map RV who is the you know, was the head of SEO and now is you know, VP of Marketing. And as soon as I heard that he got hired, I'd like heard about him on the streets. I was like, I'm gonna just like learn as much as humanly as I possibly can from this guy, because he comes in he writes all these Wiki pages, I followed every single one, and was like, anything you need, like you let me know, like, I just want to learn from you. And I'm not saying like that was part of my like career, it was more like getting exposure to someone who thinks three levels above where you do. Like, I'll never forget the first time I met somebody who told me like what a pbn was, I had, like, was totally brand new to SEO and like, literally was just like title tags and like, like all the standard stuff you learn in like your first v1 of SEO, you know, and I was like, Wait a second, you're telling me that people buy hundreds of websites. And then I just like, couldn't believe that that was like actually happening. So that shows you how naive I was just knowing that that was a strategy that somebody took from their brain and was like, how do I design a system for that same thing with that he like did a 20% increase in HubSpot traffic, just from doing some technical changes, but the more important thing wasn't that he did it. It was he explained it in the wiki, the internal wiki systems and I was like, Oh my god, like those are things would have took me 10 years to learn on my own, just through experimentation, you know,
Brian Ta 19:03
I would actually go and like push for you to like lean on people that you know, personally rather than like, dude, like, we've had this conversation. We're just like, stop hold on SEO Twitter, man, like, fish has a ton of passion, like, like people say obvious things like oh, yeah, like, you should always experiment. It's tough. It's like, yeah, I fucking know to always experiment. Go do that. But like, that's a thing that people talk about. Like, they like using big words no to explain, like very simple offers. Like, that's it. Like, that's not what you want. Like, you want to learn something that's like been through it executed. And if you're like, making connections, like randomize people on Twitter, or just like, following them, like, you don't know what the quality of the work is. I've relied heavily on my own network in order to make sure that like, hey, like, I might be an idiot here. These people have so much more experience than me. They've been through so much more like, you know, I've like, again very lucky that I've worked with every me because I know people that have been there for like 10 plus years. I can go and ask them like, hey, I need you to double check my like my thought process. Is this the right way to be thinking about like, how organizing the SEM team here at coin base. Yep. Yeah. Like the SEM product, whatever our product roadmap.
Bill King 20:06
Yep. I mean that that's, that's super important because you get into these like echo chambers I like to call them where like everybody's repeating the same thing and nobody has receipts. Like there's a there's a term in poker called, like, show me the receipt. And it's like, did you actually do that? Or like, can you have some proof as to what you did, but the easiest way to get around that is to just go like, find the companies that are absolutely smashing it, and then go talk to the people who are behind that, that, that that growth and talk to them, not the people who are the loudest in the room, like, yeah, go find the people that are doing that are in the weeds, right? I mean, that's how we got connected. I was like, Oh, looks like he's doing some really cool stuff. Probably smarter than me. Now I know for sure now that we've met, and I'm like, I want to talk to that person and like, get to know them. And like, even if we don't like get in the weeds on SEO, it's just it's nice to be in the general vicinity of people that like are doing something that you're interested in and like, think differently, you know what I mean? So yeah,
Brian Ta 21:00
yeah, I like yeah, like, we're always, we're always gonna learn, and I think as long as you can keep them you have that, like, you know, people noted that you don't, then you're probably better off on the other issues. I was just talking to NCS like, it's like, it's always just like, everybody wants to go show off about how much they know. Like, everybody's like, well, like, you're technically not correct. It's like, dude, like, your education accounts for like, 5% of the things that we're talking about. But like, sure, if you want me to go and like, prove to the room how smart you are, then you can go ahead, but like, I'm not, I'm not going to go participate in this conversation. Fair enough.
Bill King 21:31
Yeah. I mean, you know, you have to have a BS filter. Right? And so, one of the questions I had on here, we kind of touched into it, but like, what exactly does a growth pm that coin base do? Like when you when you got hired? Or you're like interviewing for the job? They were like, here's the problems? Or were they like, how do you gold? Like, how's your team set up? Like, what is the day in the life for for Brian at coin base? And like, what are the types of problems that you're approaching? Oh, man, oh,
Brian Ta 22:03
man. We're in Vegas. So they initially, only only reason coming on talking to us is for the SEO part, the my other good stuff I'm going to give it I'm going to give an outline video. That's interesting.
Bill King 22:15
So they had a problem that they already like knew was that they were aware of and they can do.
Brian Ta 22:19
Yeah, they're like, Oh, we want to rank. Like we want to focus on SEO. So like, for that, like, for them a very obvious thing when somebody Google's like bitcoin price or Dogecoin price like can be shallow, like okay, so like are so you want to go and beat coin market cap. Like that's like, like, that is a very obvious use case. So like, that's what they can like, well, like we're building on the Go team, we want to we want to focus on SEO? Like, do you want to join our team? And I was like, I mean, think about it, and like someone made it through the interview process? And they said, Yes, like, I don't want to do just SEO, I want to like no growth. Like I really enjoy topical, topical, my growth and like, Yeah, that makes sense. Like, we want to make sure that you go to grill scales, like we have this international thing that is going to be coming up in like, the next couple of months, you know, within like six to eight months, you should be doing like SEO stuff on top of life international growth. I was like, Okay, yeah, sounds fine. And then like one weekend, like, hey, do you want to, you want to be in charge of like SEO, landing pages, fonts, marketing, and affiliate sales? Like, you're like, I don't really have like, I feel like this is like, this is a Do you want to but just like, Hey, you you own this now. That's that's the purview of the product, product teams that I'm overseeing. Currently, the SEO part is like, it's still in its very nascent stages, a lot of is just like sitting down to find the strategy writing out the content strategy, like what should we be doing on like, like the Bitcoin part, like, we're calling our price pages, but on top of just like, how does quite a nice thing about SEO in general, because like, I never had anybody thinking about that. So that it's like, it's like, it's like, I'm a growth pm by like, like, when I'm thinking about SEO, it's like, I'm like, it feels like I'm like a director of SEO, like I am literally dictating what the entire journey for SEO is, like the landing page side is like, oh, the okrs like, we want to increase assignments by like, X X percent, right? So then then just sitting down and like thinking about like, working with a team in order to figure out like, what are the experience experiments we want to run? What is the What does it say? What are the most impactful experiences we can run? which pages we should go and run the experiments on. Like, whenever we run the passes work whenever we run, like when we were running currently, that's not working. And I'm basically like working on the team. Because I think like the really nice thing about the growth team and I'm just telling mechanic this the other day, like I think with SEO is you you really get in your head that like you know everything right? Just like I know the entire SEO strategy, like I never knew would work internal linking title type image description, you're not wrong, like, like, let like, let's be like you're not you're not wrong. Like there's, there's a bunch of stuff that you need to do. And like there's always a list and you just need to go ahead and do it. But like on the growth side, we don't really know what's working. And what doesn't. The really nice thing is that then you get your entire team involved in so just like stuff coming from your brain, but I have stuff coming up from everybody's brain, right? It's just like all the engineers have ideas. All the designers have ideas. Everybody has ideas on what experiments they want to run like then it's something then you I'm working with a team working with a team in order to come up with a bunch of ideas. And then really my, my, the only the way that they've been my job on this is just like, I just helped them prioritize all their ideas. And then go ahead and like then we just start running it from then on. Once we have the top nightcliff ideas, it's just this machine, you go you run experiments, I go in there, right? Like whatever docs we need to support it on I am blocked them, we run it we get we get the results, we learn we iterate, we just keep on going. Like that's the really fun part about growth is once you get this machine rolling, it's like you start feeling unstoppable, just like oh, like you go, you start picking up more and more learnings more and more wins, and you start trying to figure out exactly like what the next thing is going to be. So on that. And that's, that's the really fun part on the landing page, such as, like, how do you go and come with experiments and like, let's go and just run as many experiments as possible. See
Bill King 25:48
that that right there? What you just said, is exactly what separates your mindset from the PM, like the experimentation, the high speed processes, that's the stuff that like, unless you've been in a high speed, like Uber, like hyper growth company, that you don't get exposure to. So you sort of like cap your, like learning at like the individual page to individual like, you know, campaign level. And that's kind of like where you stopped. So can you You said something really interesting that I that I think is probably coming from your like pm mentality, which is like raising up all the ideas, sifting through the crap and making sure that you get to the right ones. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? Like, how do you get your team to be like fired up about SEO, the designers, the engineers, like the content, like whatever the team like roles are like, how do you get them like, pumped? Like you have your goals? Obviously, you have, you know, you want to grow organic? And it's got to convert a certain percent because you need this many signups that's the model, but like, how do you like go about the idea of getting the team rallied around specific, like goals that you have on SEO.
Brian Ta 26:54
I mean, like, honestly, it's, it's a lot of just like framing what the opportunity is, and like, you just like being really fucking excited about the work that you're doing. You have to love the work, and you have to believe in yourself. And then like your team, just gonna follow because like, I'm gonna like, and that's just it, I'm just like, I'll just like framing the opportunities that are there, just like this is where we stop. This is where we select, this is where we select, this is where we start. This is where we can end, like everywhere we suck, we can get a lot better, just by going ahead and fixing just this a small amount of things, right. Like, I think that's the hard part for like a lot of people to wrap their heads around just like on some level, you just have to embrace like, you just have to embrace the suck, just like I was at angellist. And like, it was like my favorite, like, not fair thing. But like one of the nice things about the culture was that it was like a 40 person, company, everybody, everybody knew exactly what features were built into who built them. And like, if you wouldn't features like, Dude, what the hell did you build? Like, yeah, it sucks. Like, we should fix itself, like, Okay, cool. So like, let's go ahead and fix it. But like, it's like, it was just like, okay, we know where it's wrong. And like, nobody's gonna get up, and let's just go like, outline exactly what we need to do in order to fix it and make it better. That's kind of the mentality that I think that that a lot of SEOs need to take is just that, like, you can run around saying things suck, and like, that's fine. That's a lot of fun. But like, you also need to make sure that like, you have a clear guide, clear set of things that you need to work on. And exactly like what process that you need, that you want to do. And like the biggest thing is just the prioritize prioritization part, because there's a lot of difference between like, marketing and like product. And I've run this into this a lot. And I'm not going to call anybody I'm just like, I've read like, people will want to do things just because it looks natural, just like it's a small thing that annoys lords, right. Yeah, like, I was just like, dude, like, that's gonna have no impact on the business. Like, I'm not gonna like we're not going to waste engineering to design design resources arm to go pursue this. I think that's one of the hardest things in order to get over because like, I fall into this trap, too. I don't know if you follow my Twitter thing. But like, for the longest time, if you google angellist, the first result was a paid ad from Angie's List, and like it became my personal even after I left was my personal mission to get Angeles to stop bidding on and like, obviously, this takes no engineering time. But like it like the analog is there, right? You're just like, like, Oh, this is like a small thing that has literally no effect on the business. I know, it doesn't get anybody who only angellist isn't going to click on Angie's List, leave Spotify or CDM. But like, you have to know when something is worth pursuing. And when you could just drop it or like just and just like, hey, like this is not going to have an effect on the business. Like it's not worth your time, once like if you can do that and you can do it and welcome your team just gonna get hyped up. And like one of the nice things is always having an experimentation framework because nothing gets people more hype than being like I made this like tiny code change and then maybe company X amount of money, or like, I increase the amount of people that were able to log into use the website 25% The other thing just like are like, Are you well equipped enough in order to track your changes because there's nothing there's nothing better on a growth team on an SEO team or like any like any hefty, like a steady drumbeat of just like wins after wins after wins after wins, you know that you know 80% are gonna fail but like one out of every 10 whenever you can like be state like these experiments are going to go like you're going to get These wins, and being able to just like, have a constant stream of like your engineers feeling really, really fantastic. What assumes your desire to some of that everything, everything they're designing is working? Well, once you've figured out that machine, it's like, there's literally nothing like it because you feel unstoppable.
Bill King 30:14
What I'm hearing from this conversation is that mentality is probably a big thing for your team. like making sure people are enthusiastic about what they're doing, pushing through, like obvious failure, right? Because not every experiment works. But you have to keep enthusiastic when you're doing a high volume of experiments, because you will just deal with a certain amount of failure. This is something that I'm really excited about. I have Dylan Wiseman, who's a very high stakes poker player, he used to be at coin desk, and like this, and that, so he's coming on soon. And I'm really pumped to talk about that. Because like, just the fact of being comfortable with failure, not in the sense that like you just saying, screw it, like we'll do whatever, and there's no consequences. It's more like keeping a certain level of enthusiasm about the objective that you're doing. And when things go wrong, figuring out how to fix it, and when things go, right, like being humble enough to go, what was what should I do better next time, right?
Brian Ta 31:03
Yeah, things go wrong. If you're working with you working as CEO, like shit, dude, like, you're gonna fuck up, embrace it, just like and when you do a reticle, go think to yourself and work with your team? Like, what did we do wrong? What can we do better, like, every single failure is just as another learning opportunities that you have for another experiment. So just like, Don't get too down if things aren't working out. Because, you know, if you like, it'll work at some point, just like you just have, you just have to keep the faith. And if it's really, really not working out, you should rethink your thought process.
Bill King 31:31
Yeah, for sure. That's awesome. I think you just dropped the knowledge bomb right there that it'll be a good quote for the podcast. Alright, so out of all the questions that I have listed for you, Brian, this is the one that I'm most excited about. Oh, God, you ready for this? So. So you have you have deep experience and SEO, you've worked at a bunch of different consumer brands, we have talked many times off the off the record in the in the in the dark messages, you just went through, I think a framework and a mentality that I only hear at high growth, large sample quick moving companies that is more of about a like a PM, and like more of a quote unquote, like growth. Now people say that word all the time, but like, the way I think about growth is it's the scientific method applied to KPIs. And the people who do the most experiments that have the biggest impact and the least amount of risk? Well, I don't know, maybe that's not true. But those are the teams that win and like, tell me, tell me what you think that the average SEO gets wrong, that the teams that you've worked on get right, because I feel like you have a unique experience where you've worked at now, you know, several companies that are well known for not only just SEO, but they're known for growth. They're known for the culture. They're known for doing stuff that gets them to the enth percent that other companies don't achieve. And so what is it if you were to approach the SEO world and make like, Hey, this is what we're doing? Like, here's what's wrong with traditional approach of SEO. Brian, you have the microphone. Let's hear. Let's hear what Brian's state of the world of SEO because I would love to hear just like you kind of tiptoed into it, but like, what are the things people need to be doing in SEO that they're spending too much time to get out? Or they should be thinking about these things more time? Like spending more time in these problems? Like what are those some of those things you say?
Brian Ta 33:26
I think the biggest I mean, like biggest but like I think people just work on the wrong fucking thing all the time. Just like people want like, Oh, I mean, like, this just goes back to like, just like being able to differentiate between marketing and actual impact. People don't ever work on the actual effort, because it's really fucking hard. Like, that's, that's, that's the problem is that like, with SEO, because it's like, because it's long earned her I'm not gonna say it's long term, it's really hard to go and measure impact because like, I was like, oh, we're gonna work on like, a bunch of long form blog articles in order to increase traffic will like fuck, who gives a shit? Have you drive a bunch of traffic? Is any of that traffic converting? And if it's not, like, you need to rethink your strategy. I think the hard part is figuring out like, what your actual strategy is, that's actually going to go ahead and like lead to a conversion if you're keeping Okay, or just like you're an advertising site is to get eyes and yeah, like, everything I just said was like, completely wrong, but like, if it's not like, you need like, usually to figure out like, how do you achieve business and impact and then go after it? And like not all SEO is long term. I mean, like, we run multiple experiments at Airbnb, like hundreds for SEO experience we're just like, you can see changes in SEO within like two weeks or like for more capital stuff within like a week. So like, it's not like oh, that seems like a six month investment, not dude like SEO like you should be able to see it in like a month a shovel. We ended up five bucks in traffic in like a quarter and like, and in that quarter. We were working on like a bunch of other things. All the SEO work was like I loaded it up upfront, in order like views of the SEO technical things that we need to get done and like as possible. Like maybe three weeks of work at most, like one engineer, everything else is like how do we make this product better? How do we, like, provide value to the customer when they're visiting their pages? I think the hard part with with SEO is like being able to figure out exactly what problem you're trying to solve. And like trying not to think too long term because like, I think the problem with SEO is just like, everybody thinks big picture, I want to like, I want to, like if you're in finance, I want to be the next nerd wallet or like, I want to be next investopedia. Or like, you know, if you're in trouble, like, I want to be Airbnb or on TripAdvisor, and just like, you have to figure out exactly like, where your niches and like find out where you can win. And if you don't do that, you're gonna have a hard time just like, just winning because like, yeah, you might be a fine SEO, you might have good ideas, but like, at the end of the day, what sets you apart is like, were you successful? And did you have impact? I have a proven this I Coinbase. To be fair, like, it's like, I have, like, I have a bunch of ideas. And I talked a bunch, but I haven't proven anything, which is why like, I like the thing is like, I don't have a high like we've talked I don't have a super high p myself because like, I met so many more people that have had so much impact doing things and like when I compare myself to them, like I haven't done much sure I record these big companies, I like increased traffic. I go and I look at them. And like, you know, my friend of mine Hunter, he established the entire Airbnb referral program, which was like a huge thing, like, everybody's referral program is fucking amazing. Like, I felt like, Oh, yeah, I increased traffic. And at Airbnb, like, cool. What does that do that doesn't do anything? Obviously, part of the time SEO isn't the answer. Like, a lot of companies come up to me like, Hey, we want to invest in SEO. And like, I would say, 90% I'm like, dude, like, go invest in some other acquisition channel, like, This isn't like this, isn't it? You have to know when it works. And when it does, and just being able to admit that like, hey, this isn't the thing, because SEO is not a silver bullet. You can theoretically use it for anything, but like, you know, like for most of the time, if you really care about organic or just care about search, like for the short term for a for a startup, investing in your in your sem program is probably going to be it's probably in the yield better for term learnings, maybe not results, but at least learnings and like being able to juggle between like, Oh, am I working on the right thing? And should I be working on it? Like, those are the two things that like, I think most SEOs need to come into kind of grips with is that like, hey, this strategy might not be it or like you go and you run an agency, I guess like if you're an agency, you just kind of take everything, which also
Bill King 37:24
you're an SEO agency, and somebody comes to you and says, Hey, can you help me with SEO? You're like, yes, yes, I can't. In fact,
Brian Ta 37:31
I was like, No, I'm like, don't do it. And don't worry, don't pay them money. Because like, This isn't like, this isn't a thing for you. Yeah, let me hand a friend who's like, hey, like, we were thinking about SEO for this product. I say NDS I can't talk when I was like, Dude, don't do it. Within like, five minutes, I was like, yeah, this isn't worth your time, dude, like, like, go, you should like if you're going to invest in content, like you should think of your content as like a conversion play, not an SEO play, just like people are gonna look into content in order to get affirmation that your product is decent. But like for an SEO play, like that's like, like three or four years down the line, it doesn't make sense for everybody being able to recognize, like, should I work on an effort? Or if SEO is a viable means of acquisition. And if it is, knowing that, like, you're going after the right thing, because, you know, like traffic, for the sake of traffic is just a waste of time. And I think that that specific thing gets lost all the fucking time is everybody just wants to go just like, Oh, yeah, I increase shopping habits. And like I said, the exact same thing, right? Like, increase traffic a shop by 5x. But like, what does that actually mean? Did that lead to people converting? Like, if it didn't lead to people converting? What was the what was the thought process in order for you to go ahead and do that? And if there is no thought process, and you just like, got a bunch of traffic and leads to a dead end? Like, why like, is that actually the owner of the company? If it's not, then why did you spend time doing it? And like, that's the hardest thing to figure out?
Bill King 38:52
Do you think that the success you've had in your careers because you've, you've put a lot more thought into the industry, the niche, the business, the problem, what impact you can directly have as that like growth person right out of the gate? Or like, because it sounds like you, you have a very specific idea of where there's a good fit for your skills and how you can help previous to just taking a job then going all figured out later on? Like, do you think that that's, that's part of the recipe or like, do you? Do you think that most try to make SEO work no matter what, when it really shouldn't be the right approach for certain companies? And like, do you think it's where SEOs get wrong? Like they come in and they're like, I'm the SEO manager at this, you know, SAS company, and my job is to do SEO. So I'm gonna go build these, what is posts, I'm gonna go do these other things, because that's the playbook. Are you more thinking? think more deeply about like, Where's the opportunity, like, how much impact could you possibly have with SEO and then apply a different like lens on how you would solve that problem? I'm really curious because that some people might be hearing this and not have any idea what you're talking about. Because Like, wait a second, SEO is just creating content that like our target customers are looking for? Because Could you go a little bit deeper on how you think about that?
Brian Ta 40:08
Every single job that I've taken? I think post haven has been, I think that's this one big thing is learn work work as a growth product management haven was when I come in, how much is that going to have? And like, is there what like, is there space for me to succeed? And like, I think a lot of people come in, like, what I am most nervous about is people hiring hired me just hire me because they know that know how to do SEO? Like, is there actually space for me to actually go do something? Alright, if you want to hire me as Seo? Like, what is the actual opportunity that I can see that like, that you have already invested towards in order for me to actually build upon because otherwise, like, then I'm sorry, from scratch, I have to go convince a bunch of people people might not be bought in with with Coinbase is the exact same thing, just like people want to look up your small price people on the bitcoin price they want to compare down now. Like they're using, like, Is there an actual active use case where I can have an actual impact? Whereas like, you know, if I worked at stripe, like, I don't know what I would do it like the day that we're gonna acquisition lean, lean, I was like, well, Stripes, really cool company. And like, I talked to them, I'm pretty sure they would have said, but like, I know what my skill set as I'm like, I'm like, I'm good at doing product, I'm gonna think about SEO at scale, you know, is there actually a fit for me, and is there a fit for them on the SEO side, and like being able to recognize how SEO leads into the business, and like, how it contributes to revenue with their successes is a big thing. And if you have to work in my opinion, if you have to work too hard, in order to twist, it is not worth it. If you have to go to like three different prop stock prices, like oh, well, like, you know, if I go in and write this blog post, and somebody reads it, and then they go, and they like, the like, they're, they're more open to it. And then they go, they do more research into it, and then they come back, and then they have to go talk about it like that funnels too long. SEO is not like a main acquisition channel, or not a potential main acquisition channel. And like, I want to work with companies where I know that I can have an actual impact my success, like is also just predicting the fact that like, I'm only going to work on companies that I know that I actually have an impact on same thing with, like, whatever clients that I have just like, I'm only going to take you on if if like, if I think I can actually help. Because if I don't think I can actually help them, like it's a waste of both of our time. So like, I don't want to waste my time putting into SEO strategy that I have no confidence, and like, there's a real reason why I don't take on clients that like need constant help, because I know that I'm not, like I know not as good at it as probably you are like, it's like, it's not in my wheelhouse. Whereas like, you know, anybody that needs like programmatic or product lead SEO like like, okay, yeah, like I have a decent amount of experience with that, and I can help out. And I think it's just like being able to know where your strengths are, and where the company's opportunities lie is probably the big thing that separates it.
Bill King 42:39
That's, that's pretty, that's pretty cool. So you, you came into Coinbase, you were like, Okay, I know that there's an explicit need here, when people are looking for things that are very, very close to them becoming a customer of Coinbase. And so I can scale that infinitely. And we can take, we can make a lot of impact quickly with just some smart strategic product planning and making sure that the front end apps are all aligned to search demand. Now, you said something really interesting, which I want to kind of dig into, which is like, when you're looking at that opportunity, right? Let's say like the, you know, the founder of stripe is like, Brian, we need SEO, and I want to hire you and I want to pay you all the money. And you're like, Oh, cool. What are you looking for? Whether Is it like Do you know the persona and you're like, I don't see a clear connection between what's going on in search and like them becoming a customer or maybe there's like, what I call it conversion fat. There's like too much distance between learning about what it is and then becoming a customer. Tell me exactly how you think about that, because that's really fascinating to me.
Brian Ta 43:40
I think like, you know, Patrick calls on camera, Tim is like I want you to do and I'm like you need to explain exactly what your customer journey is and how you think SEO can help. You know, if it's mostly me, because I'm like, dude, I can't help like, if somebody's looking at like, I don't know, if people Google for stripe, I mean, like stripe, stripe is such a good company is Seo low enough in the funnel known of driving a tenfold action on the page. And if it's not, then I'm not interested. Or like, not not not interested in me, like we're gonna shop. pretty fucking cool. But like, I wouldn't be good at that. I mean, like, if I have to go and like, you know, figure out, like, do a bunch of keyword research and I'm like, that's like, fine, like I like I like, that's not like, that's not a challenge that I'm interested in. I think it's just like being able to know exactly what you're good at and how it ties up with like, the company's business goals. And whether or not sem like we're so kind of fits in the funnel, right? Like, struck camping is all they cared, I was like, I want a bunch of eyes on the stripe website, that's a completely different thing than saying, I want SEO to drive 20% of Australia's revenue by 2023 those are two very, very different goals and like, weather and then like, you know, Shopkins like we need SEO to drive, you know, 20% of revenue in 2023. And like, I'm like, Well, I can't do that. Like I'm not like, I don't have confidence that I'd be able to do that because like for me to get the confidence you need to go out on the opportunity, or at least the process in which the cup that you're acquiring customers and like being in we'll identify exactly where customers are coming in, where they're coming out how they're doing and where the conversion is last, and wait and where it's succeeding. Like, that's the important part. And if founders or companies aren't able to go ahead and do that, like, then I don't have as much like confidence in it, right? It's like, if I'm working with like, a, like a, like MongoDB, or like, you know, cockroach DB or something, I just like, well, I don't know what I would do. Like, it's like, I'm like, you're like, you want to hire an SEO person in order to help I can help you with like, your docs. But like, Is that what you want me to focus my time on? You want more people to build? Find your dogs easier? Like, what is the actual business use case? Now? If there isn't one, then like, you know, I don't think it's worth my time. But like, some people like yeah, like, I want to work at stripe, and I don't really care. But I'm like, all hats off to you. Like, that's fine. I get really nervous about like, you know, people want you to people gonna want me to perform if I don't have full composition, I want that I'm not going to go and place a bet on myself in order to do that. That's really smart. Brian, as usual, oh, that's smart. It might just be like, Oh, man, like you're giving a bunch of good opportunities, just like, well, I'm trying to make myself not look like an idiot, which is like most?
Bill King 46:03
Well, that's a challenge for me, Brian. So that's maybe maybe that's why I'm excited to hear about this. But you said a few things that I think like subtly, some people might be thinking, Oh, that's really smart. I hadn't really thought about it that way. You know, like the stripe example. Like they, they get a lot of traffic from their technical docks. And they're like support systems. I've gone through like their site a little bit. And I think you said something really interesting, which is like, okay, you can get traffic, if by doing these things, it's not like you can't anybody can do SEO, the question is, like, how much opportunity is there? How close to the buying slash conversion process is that and how much competition right? Because, you know, we used to do SEO at a FinTech startup I was at and some of the the transactional, like, close to revenue, there were impossible. Like, there was just, you know, huge players have been there for years. And, you know, you could do it, but you burn a lot of political capital, when you come into a company as the, like, the growth person, they're all excited to like work with the guy who's gonna do SEO, and then six, seven months, eight months goes by and like, not like much is moving and you're like, wow, that sucks. Like, that is not good. Like, it's a we I'm like laughing about it. But like, honestly, like, you have to think deeply about, like about this stuff before you join, especially big companies where, you know, they're putting a lot of investment in capital and resources behind you to do things. That's, that's really smart. I think that's really cool.
Brian Ta 47:21
I think going back to like, the, to the strapping as dogs things I like, is SEO is Seo gonna be driving a lot of incremental revenue for your company, just like dogs. And just like, yes, you can increase the amount of people that come in, right? But like, is the people that you're, you're getting in, gonna end up converting? Like, it's like, is it actually incremental? Like, sure. Like, I can definitely see the thing like, Oh, you know, like, somebody goes a strike. They go, they go, the NFL adopts, and they go on the end of converting, because like, you know, they're like, oh, is the API, right? This is what the needs that to have blah, blah, blah. But like, isn't that incremental? If you go and like, you increase the amount of traffic on there, like, I think that's hard to tell, just like in SEO, the questions on what just went incrementality right. And like, it's actually really hard to tease apart the the bigger company that you work at, because it's gets harder and harder mission incrementality because, like, people googling strife more, so like, Okay, are you running
Bill King 48:13
Marshall's run brand commercials and increase that branded search? I mean, that might be the
Brian Ta 48:19
Yeah, exactly. Just like it like every man the issue. We're just like, you know, people would use Google's navigational query, like people want to get a San Francisco page, but they don't they don't want to go to airbnb.com type in San Francisco hit the search button to just type in Airbnb, San Francisco, and they go they convert, but is that actually incremental? Like if I've increased traffic with that specific keyword? Does it actually count? No, it doesn't. Like I haven't done anything, just like more people are aware of it more people using Google's navigational queries, you're not really doing much with it. So I think, I think the hard part is figuring out like, are you able to drive incremental traffic, like incremental revenue to the company? And if you're not then like, man, maybe you should rethink, like, you should probably rethink the strategy that you're going on. And, or if you're trying to decide the role, whether or not the role is gonna be right for you.
Bill King 49:02
Yeah, I mean, that's, that's, that's, that's a really great point. I mean, like, you know, with paid it's like, you get there quicker, but like the margin stink, and then if you're doing SEO, that's like, really far away from revenue. You know, your payback period takes forever to get that
Brian Ta 49:16
Yeah. This sucks for you too. Because just like I did a little bit cool work and I can't see what I actually did. Like, I can't prove to like leadership like, Oh, yeah, like I have to charge 20% and that increased revenue by 5%. Like, that's, that's awesome. That's great. But like, if you're going to make your own life difficult, you know that it's gonna be an uphill battle like maybe like changes your adger maybe? Or maybe this doesn't work. Like that's the hard part right? It's just hard this is 100 proven you're making life very difficult but like me I'm like, like another recycling maybe I've just self maybe I just seemed so successful because I've self selected all like all companies look easy wins and like, oh, Brad, slick. Marlin, go dump any other fucking like half decent SEO and this shit. They would have been able to execute as well. Like, that's also part of the equation. We're just like, Oh, I'm struggling. I talk to you instead. Like, I'm sure that you would have seen the exact opportunity that I did you have done closely, exactly the same thing I did. And maybe maybe you would have driven more traffic or even if you drove slightly less traffic, it's still like, you know, 4x instead of five, maybe the, when I'm doing this thing, just make it seem as if I'm really smart, because I'm just like, Oh, yeah, like, that seems like a really easy thing that I want to go ahead and do. You know,
Bill King 50:17
this is a perfect poker analogy. Because over the years, I didn't think that I was ever the best player in the world, or anywhere close to it. But I knew people that were 10 times as talented as me, that went broke playing poker against the best people in the world. In here, I played only against people that I knew were not very good. And maybe my like ego or like, I wasn't up like as like known as like a great player. But I was good at game selecting and knowing that I cannot beat these players who are way more talented than I am. And just saying, let's just go to the other game that's a little bit lower stakes. And like, find the opportunity like that is that is, if we're going to walk away from this this conversation, it should just be like, be very intentional about what it is that you're trying to achieve whatever it is that you want, whether it's SEO, or whatever some type of growth role, it's like, if you're not clear on what the hypothesis is that you're like, trying to solve for, and you need to understand that business. It's not like when you're the head of growth, somewhere, there's a million things you've good, you could go spend money on paid, you could go do referrals, you could go do banner ads, like you do whatever you want. And so when it comes down to SEO, or like promoting Brian, or like, I mean investing more in SEO next year, they're just gonna look at the numbers, they don't care about what the story is, they've got a model that is like, okay, the ROI of SEO is this, we've increased this much like that's, that's how they're thinking about it. So I think whether or not use, like, intentionally do that, I think it's like a really cool mental model is like, Where's the path of least resistance and the biggest opportunity for me to have an impact?
Brian Ta 51:44
Yeah, that doesn't shy away from like, you know, big opportunities, like, you know, everybody listen to this, and like, you know, you get the strip. That's not to say, don't work on strike. Like, if you think that you have a way forward, then go ahead and do it. Like, for the record, I'd never even, I don't know any anything about them. So like, from like, my very limited nose, I'm like, I'm not going to be able to have that big of an impact. So like, I'm like, it's fine. But like, if you go when you're talking to stripe, and like you're like, Okay, it's challenging, but I see a way forward. And I think I can do like, you're only going to grow if you go and you challenge yourself. But like, the thing, the thing is just like don't force it just like don't try to jam SEO, wherever the hell that you can just because like you think it's a good idea. Make sure that you yourself have to have conviction that like you were able to achieve it. Yeah. Me I was like, Oh my god, like for my living oh my god seems really hard. I don't really know where restriped is, but like, you know, for like, you can say the same thing about square but like, you know, squares, where it's integrated with like, a bunch of like marketplaces, and like restaurants in which case like, all those all those restaurants have micro sites and you can go ahead and and like, optimize a lot of those micro sites. And like that is a that is a very sensible path forward that you can make. Sure.
Bill King 52:52
Yeah, I think like the other thing, too, is that we both come from in house side of things. And like, I've always had a number, a revenue number tied to anything that I've done, whether it's paid or SEO or any of the experiments we've done. So you need to have like a very close, like connection to the keypad or influencing, like, when you're outside of the internal team. You never really like have that, you know, close impact to the numbers. Alright, let's wrap it up. So Brian, where can we find you on the internet? And do you have any like things you need to tell the SEO world that maybe we should edit out because it might be a little too strong or like like, what what is what can we take away from this, Brian? You're at fan favorite underscored BTA on Twitter, Brian, t a.io. On on the internet, anything you're working on or anything that you want that you want? Especially call out anything that you think the world should know about? No, I mean, like forget about me. Well, Brian, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for joining the podcast guys. We will see you soon. Peace.