140 - Inside 90 Day Korean's Epic SEO Comeback - with Founder Joseph Armstrong

Speaker A: Welcome back to the SEO Leverage podcast. My name is Geert Melak and I'm very pleased to have one of my favorite clients here today, uh, Joe Armstrong. Joe, welcome to the show.

Speaker B: Thanks Gert. Happy to be on.

Speaker A: Uh, it's so good to have you. Uh, especially because I'm really looking forward to what you're going to be sharing here. Um, among all the clients we work with, it's usually 30, 40 clients we have at any given moment. Um, I think you and your team and the way you have set it up is a really good example how the collaboration with an agency works really, really well. Obviously when you have an agency you always have at least a point person or a team that works with the agency. Um, I think the collaboration has been going on, uh, for quite a few years actually and really, really well and has improved over time. So I'm really looking forward to what you're going to be sharing here. Um, just really, first of all, I would love to share to hear a little bit more about your background. So our audience knows, uh, about your brand, uh, and knows what you, what kind of industry you're in and yeah, get a little bit of idea where it all started for you.

Speaker B: Yep, sure thing. So, Yeah, I run 90 Day Korean. It's an online language course, platform and membership. And it's a series of online courses that helps you go from zero to having a three minute conversation in 90 days and then work towards conversational Korean fluency within a year in 12 months. And they're structured courses. We have coaching along with that to uh, help guide you. And it's practical Korean, it's not textbook Korean. It's not stuff that you would use to pass a test necessarily. It's more stuff that you use in everyday life. And a lot of this was based on my experience of having lived in Korea. I've been there for over 15 years and um, I know what has worked really well and what hasn't, what's more practical. So that's what we try to focus on in the program.

Speaker A: Uh, this is amazing. When you, when you started out the website, did you already have the idea that this is going to be a course?

Speaker B: Not really. It sort of. It all started with a free giveaway for how to learn the Alphabet because the Alphabet is actually pretty simple to learn if you use the uh, right tools and associations and like link them to pictures. So we offered a free PDF and then people seem to like it. So we uh, decided to create a course. And then the course, it all started out very Very basic. It was just uh, PDFs done through email with some audio and it was done on a structured basis. So every week you get a fresh set of lessons and people really seem to like that. So they asked afterwards if there's another course. So we created another one after that. That was the level two course and then a level three. And now we've got four levels and we like. As we got more requests we started to put in different components. Like we put it inside of a structured ah, um, program inside a members area so it's easy to access from mobile and from desktop and tablet. And we also um, added in the coaching and the community element and we've tested various things over the years and um, this is where we're at right now.

Speaker A: This is amazing. What did your team look like back then? Did you have a team? Was this only you? How did, what does it look like?

Speaker B: Yeah, there was just a few of us. We were very small at the beginning so it was um, me and a few co founders and we were doing everything. I mean we were the ones sending out the emails and creating the content and like collaborating and figuring out what um, works best. And over time we slowly built up a team, um, people to help us with uh, the coaching element, people to help us with customer um, support. And then eventually it grew where we were able to have a larger team to help us with different parts of the business.

Speaker A: Awesome. At which point did you, did you realize when we met you had tons of content on your website? Tons. I remember was really blown away as one of the, back then it was one of the bigger websites we were working on. And I was like, how is it possible that such a small team can be prolific and put out so much content and over a certain time it was obviously working for you, right? The more content the more traffic. Would that be correct?

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Um, when we had first gotten in touch, that was in, I think it was June of 2019. So the business had been around for about five years and we had been putting out content quite consistently. Um, especially blog posts. And yeah, I mean that was definitely a good way for people to find out about the program is for us to demonstrate our uh, method and put out lots of content out there. But yeah, when we realized, when we started talking to you, we realized we did have a lot of content and it wasn't as organized as it should have been.

Speaker A: I think this is definitely a theme we see today as well. Especially now with AI uh coming up. We have a lot of people that come to Us and say, look, it's so easy with AI to create a bunch of content and we actually get, uh, easy, even get the reward. The problem with AI content is that the reward is usually only coming in up to a certain extent. And then it drops because Google says, okay, this looks good, looks good, looks good. But then the user signals don't follow. So Google shows this content to users. Users don't engage with it as they would do with a, uh, with a high, uh, quality content. So Google just doesn't get this feedback that this content is actually good enough to actually deserve this ranking. It gets. And at some point it just drops. At least this is what we are observing here. And uh, this is definitely in your case. It was obviously not AI content back then. It was with blood and sweat, created Korean language guidance and tutorials, et cetera. But I do remember the organization. I also remember the layout, uh, and stuff like that. So I think we definitely had to do a little bit of cleanup. What was the moment, do you want to describe it? Where we started actually working together. What happened?

Speaker B: Yeah, so that was around June of 2019 and we had experienced a, uh, core Google update. And overnight we lost 70% of the traffic and wasn't coming back. Like a few days had passed and there was no sign that this is just something temporarily, uh, temporary. And that was a really terrible feeling because, because we were so reliant on that as a traffic source that I really didn't know what to do because from my perspective, we were putting out good content, we were doing the right things, and suddenly this happened and I didn't know how to actually recover from that. I had talked to other people about this stuff and it was just unclear about what to do. And we had put out a lot of this material and we thought it was really good. So we're like, why would we not get rewarded for this? It just didn't make sense. And so I talked to a lot of people at that time, but there was no clear answer about what I should actually do. So I thought like, it might be the end of the business. I really considered that was going to be it. And um, luckily I had talked to a, um, mentor, James, uh, Schramko, and he had recommended talking to you. And I remember I got in touch and you said, okay, you'll take a look. And you gave us an audit. And it was really clear that you and your team knew what you were doing. Like, you gave us a really clear action plan, the steps to take. And we were very eager to get moving on this stuff. So we took care of all the items on the list as fast as we could and it was really amazing because I think within, like from the start to the end, I think it was about three weeks where we had totally recovered all of those rankings and then we continued working with you. And I don't remember the exact period of time, but I think our traffic doubled and our opt ins increased as well. Like just over the next few years we had just increased everything. So, um, it was a really amazing experience to go from one end to the other. And then also like the way that it happened because a lot of it was just about um, how we structured all the pages and getting rid of the content that we didn't need. Because from my perspective I thought, oh, we people really need this and this is really useful. But actually it wasn't the case. You had us take some pages out and restructure things and reorganize it. So it was a lot clearer what the site was about and it was very clear. Like I understood that conceptually and once we did that it really improved the rankings.

Speaker A: It's really interesting to hear. Like this is the first time we talk about it, like from your perspective, what this actually looked like. I do very well remember this. This was actually then the start of the Erika framework.

Speaker B: Yeah, right.

Speaker A: I remember you afterwards said look, uh, uh, propose something because I can't, I can't go through this again. So, so this was actually, for me it was a little bit of a turning point in the agency where I said, hey, it's not only about growth, it's also about maintenance. So it's about preserving. It's about not losing what you have achieved over so such a long period of time with so much hours, uh, so many hours of work and so many resources. Obviously, um, I do remember the first conversation as well because I was also, also pretty m pretty affected where I said, hey, this is a guy building this up over I don't know how many years before. I think seven years or something like this probably when we, when we spoke and I was like, is, there's no way we're going to let this go, right? So let's, let's just look into this. A couple of things I do remember from, from this period from your website, which was really like the biggest sign I had ever seen that use how much user experience matters. And from there it only went up in importance. So I remember you had like, there was like this, this was a big web design trend back then where you had like a big banner on top that would like look really good.

Speaker B: Hero.

Speaker A: Yeah, Hero banners. And what just happened? And this was just a theory, we were able to prove it. But I said like, I don't think this is user friendly because it pushes exactly what people want. It pushes it down. And this is really one of the first things we always look at websites and might be interesting for listeners as well. If there is anything that pushes relevant content down on your page, you really want to have the data to back up. This is a good idea. So we see very often designers go crazy with hero banners and opt ins, like first thing on top, so Everybody sees it, etc. But if you're not getting giving value before asking for something, it's not doing anything. And then a lot of the components uh, on the website are just there because we designed it. Right? It's not like, ah, there was one another client said is actually when I asked him to remove some images and he was like reflecting a little bit and thinking, okay, why is this actually there? It's just there because I felt like designing it at some point. So this is not a good reason. Let's remove it. So very often removing things from a website is definitely like the first step. One of the other critical things I remember from your project was this content organization and I think the keyword here is internal linking. So I remember you had like a bunch of content and we still see this today and it's been quite a while and a lot of SEO, uh, experience and SEO tools are out there right now. But we still see this where people like upload content and every single article stands on its own. And it's like if you go out in the street, want to sell something and you just put out individual statements and you don't connect your ideas, it's really hard to follow for a human being. And without internal linking, it's really hard for a machine to understand how different articles are related, which article should actually rank for which keyword. If they all talk a little bit about learning how to speak Korean, the machine needs to have a way to figure out how those articles are related, which article is more important than another one or more generic or general than another one. So I remember internal linking was a big one back then as well.

Speaker B: Yes, yes. I remember doing a lot of internal linking and really focusing on the page importance because I think at that time all of our pages seemed equally important. And you really stress, okay, which pages do we actually want to focus on? Which ones are we trying to um, get in front of the user. Which ones are the most relevant?

Speaker A: Exactly. I think one thing we also implemented on your website was a chooser in the beginning and this is something we have been doing ever since because it worked just so well. So, so people. I think people don't really understand what the homepage is for. So very often the homepage we want to directly sell the product. Very often in a homepage we want to directly, um, I don't know, have like closed the sale. Almost E commerce sites, we already have the issue they want to close the sale when somebody just opens up their homepage. But for me, the homepage is always like a little bit of a dashboard where I say, hey, these are the ways where you can go explore what I have. And there you're going to find what I can sell. And this is where you can then actually purchase. It's going to be very, very rare for somebody to come to a homepage and actually directly click on a product and purchase it. It's going to be a very rare case and it might even be seen as overly aggressive, pushy or whatever. But the best user experience I think people get when they come to a website and they're easily able to figure out what are the different pathways they prepare for me, and this ideally is based on different situations I can be in. So I want to learn the Korean Alphabet. I want to, uh, improve my pronunciation, I want to visit Korea, I want to learn more about the Korean cuisine or things like those. So those entry points apparently have been working really, really well as well across the board. What did you do with your team with 70% traffic loss?

Speaker B: Oh, uh, do you mean, like, how did you recover?

Speaker A: How did you maintain the same team?

Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah, we were. I mean, luckily it was such a short period of time that it didn't really affect things much. I mean that it really like changed quite quickly. Um, so, yeah, luckily we were able to keep everybody and just continue growing after that.

Speaker A: That's amazing. That's amazing because a lot of people come in this situation and say, look, I just let go of my team and I'm going to try to fix this myself. As long as we're not getting the revenue in and then see if they're still available, hire them back or whatever. And this is a shame because it takes so long to have a team that works well and knows the business, understands the client. So it's great that you were able to keep them. Um, how did this evolve? So we helped you get back up. Um, I remember this curve where we say hey, now we are pretty much at the level where we are but this should be now the platform where we can jump off and really get going. And I want to mention at this stage 90 day Korean is definitely one of the leading, one of the three leading Korean language courses on the entire planet in English. So ah, definitely kudos to you for building what you have built and actually growing on a consistent basis. Um, how do you right now, what does your team look like right now? Let's start there.

Speaker B: Yeah. So our team, we have Korean, uh, learners and we have Korean coaches and we all work together to uh, improve the marketing the core product and then to come uh, up with new evolutions of the product and other uh, ways that we can help the members. And it's a membership, it's turned into a membership where it's all inclusive. So includes the coaching, it includes the community aspect. Um, we've tested different things like some forms of like live classes and tutoring and things like that. So we're always trying to do member um, interactions and like interviews and try to figure out how we can help everybody more so they can have like a one stop shop so they can come here, they can get everything they need. They can hit the um, get the skills that they want and you know, experience or have the experiences that they want and the skills that they want.

Speaker A: Awesome. Are the Korean coaches also involved in their website content?

Speaker B: They are, yeah. I mean we all work together because it's all, everyone has like different perspectives. Like a Korean native is going to have a different perspective um, than a Korean learner. And because they've been speaking it their whole life so they can explain it in one way. And then the Korean learner, they've learned it at a later stage in their life so they can talk about their experience and how it relates to English. And it's a really good collaboration between the two groups.

Speaker A: That's really interesting. Well I love leveraging the team as well here because everybody thinks like completely different. I think it wasn't until a few years back where at some point I look at it, I look at my zoom screen with all the people there and sometimes I figure like this is like I'm talking to. These are like a lot of different brains, right?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: This is my technical way of looking at it maybe. Right. It's a little bit creepy but I look at it, hey look, my brain works in a certain way. This person work, uh, Operations manager Christina very often comes up with ideas where I say I have no idea where she Gets this from. But this is really good, right? So I look at my team like, like, like a, uh, set of brains and I just put something out there and, and some of them are going to, going to challenge me, going to say, no, I don't think so. Or maybe look at this this way, or maybe, maybe try that, or look at this competitor. This is working really well for them. Do it this way. So I really like how you, once you have the team together and together and really have this confidence they need in order to speak up. I think this was a big one for us as well. I don't know everything. There's a lot I don't know and a lot of ways I don't think in where you think of a different way and we come together to a much better solution. So being able to leverage a team with those different points of experience, I think is really a great position to be in.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's one of our core values on the team. We try to have a set of core values every quarter that we focus on. And one of them is real talk and it's say what you mean. So if you have a reason why you think that something shouldn't be this way, like, just because I've suggested an idea, it doesn't mean that that's the best way. Because they're in it, uh, every day, right? I mean, if they're working on video or if they're working on content or they're working on something technical, they're seeing it way more than I am. So they're going to have some perspective that I'm not going to see. So we really encourage everyone on the team to speak up and say what they mean. And that works out really well since we've really focused on that. Everyone's been really good about saying what they actually mean. And I was going to say that I think this also, um, has been something very helpful that you and your team have done. Because for us, it's really hard to see everything from the outside perspective. Cause, like, we're in it, right? We're just creating this stuff and from our end, like, this makes sense. We're like, oh, this is the way it should be. Like, this is the way we should explain the course, or this is the way that we should explain the results or whatever it is. And then you and your team have, like, done a great job of saying, okay, well, from an outsider's perspective, this doesn't make sense. So there's like a disconnect here, or, why would I want. Why Would I be interested in that? And it really challenges us to think about it. It's like, okay, well, we just haven't thought of it that way. And there's been several examples of that, like with the homepage and with the blog content, just how we present it. Because we used to have things that were. It was, um. I think we explained things, but in a really detailed way. But instead, you've encouraged us to just get right to the point. And all of these things have been helpful in, like, giving people a better user experience.

Speaker A: No, that's awesome. But it also definitely takes your side of it, being flexible to accept this, because we always. I always say what I think about a website. Not. It doesn't always land well. I remember a site, I, uh, think it was last year. They came to us and I was like, the first thing you need is a complete redesign. And they had to spend, I think, $50,000 on a new website design. But I didn't know that. Right. I just saw a design that was. Was a complete disconnect from their brand and what they actually wanted to achieve. It was, like, very artistic, abstract, etc. And I was like, your people come here for a particular service, and this website doesn't look anything like this service. Yeah, it is minimalistic. Yes. But it's just so abstract. It has nothing to do with what you're trying to sell. So I remember that one didn't land well. I didn't make friends that day. Um, but I think it's for us as consultants. My role as a consultant, I always think, okay, I need to get in, try to make things better, and at some point, get out. Yeah, getting out doesn't have to be. Can be. After six months, I have a client. I've been doing this for 16 years. Right. So it doesn't mean. But it's like this outside perspective definitely helps because we work on, like, a huge variety of sites and we have a little bit of an intuitive feeling. I can't even pinpoint it at times. Right. I can't say why I think this is not working. Uh, I just know I have never seen it working. Right. So I would just try to tweak it into a way where we say, okay, this call to action placement, or the call to action text, or this catches my attention. This is completely invisible for a user when they go through your website very quickly. We're just working with, uh, Christina here on a Spanish website as well, that has been with us for a long, long time. And we're probably just going to going to redo half of the navigation because they pretty much build it for their internal team, not for somebody who doesn't know them. So somebody. And this is very often an interesting experience to have. Have a complete outsider come to your website and ask him to perform a task. And is there. I don't know in your case, come to your website and figure out what the pricing of our courses is.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Or how. Or learn how we structure our courses and how we deliver them. And you see them on a screencast. And there are platforms out there. We had someone on a podcast episode here as well. Uh, doing this. There are platforms out there where you can actually find people in your target group. And I want to have people between 20 and 40 years coming to my website and performing this particular task and recording their thoughts. And they would just hit record and go through their website and say, okay, this is interesting. I uh, did this on my own website and I was blown away by one guy who was really distracted by one of our background images. I probably hadn't spent more than half a second deciding what the background image was going to be. But I was really blown away by the fact that he was always going back. I don't understand this background. I don't understand. This is what I can. A graphic going up like a positive, um, traffic evolution or something like this in the background. And he always would go back. I really don't know what they want to say with this. And things like those. And then you listen to this and get a really interesting perspective. Or things that distract with click studies we do. It's okay. Where do people click on this page? How far do they scroll? All those kinds of things are really interesting. And when you're all. Every day in IT and also on a desktop and your clients might be on a mobile phone. A lot of things change.

Speaker B: Yeah. For sure.

Speaker A: So from that end I think it's really important to get this outside perspective but also be able to accept it. Not everybody. Everything we say is going to be what you want to do and that's fine. So I always try to make sure our clients understand we are going to say what we think is a good idea. And you pick and choose whatever makes sense for you, obviously. And what's in line with where you want to brand to go and what you think your audience is going to accept. But I do think it's interesting to just ask around, even if you're not with an agency, but ask an outsider and send it to a friend who has no idea about your product. Or your service. And so just try to do this and record your session on the phone or watch them do it. Don't say a word, go to my website, find this, and you watch them do it. It's a really enlightening experience.

Speaker B: Yeah, and I was going to comment too. It's been really helpful having you and your team give us, uh, suggestions like that. Because the thing is, it's really hard to think of all these things on our own, but the fact that you have all these other clients that you have as reference points, and you can say, oh, well, I have this client doing this, or this is working well, or I've seen this working and this not working. It's good to have that feedback because sometimes we have some ideas and maybe some of them are worth testing and maybe some of them weren't. So just more like more reference points.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think, uh, definitely appreciate this feedback. What we try to do as well is, um, to prioritize. And I think we did this especially at the beginning when we tried to figure out, okay, from everything you can be doing, what are the things that have a realistic chance to get you a sale. I remember m. In your case, I think we talked about the culture posts and, and things that are definitely interesting for your target audience but might not lead to a specific sale of a course. And I remember we did some work and this is what we do a lot, where people, where I just ask people, what does the current process look like to create content? And then we try to disassemble it and look at the individual parts and say, how do we come up with the topic? How do we come up with what we write, how do we come up with how we format it, how we structure it, how we link it, what we do after the publishing, etc. And try to tweak all those processes, those parts of the process, and then put it back together. Um, but then really very often it's about priority. You could be doing a lot of things. You probably have time for five things in this week. Deciding which things those are, I think has, uh, been making a lot of difference for a lot of people as well.

Speaker B: Definitely. Yeah. Because it's so easy to get pulled in all these different directions and figuring out which ones are the ones actually move the needle. Yeah. Massively helpful.

Speaker A: Yeah. Ah. Um, in terms of, um, AI, how did AI chatgpt coming up, et cetera, impact the way you work?

Speaker B: Yeah, we were quite, um, cautious to put it into use right away, but we definitely started testing it and it's been helpful in a lot of ways. Like it's been helpful for us to so like some examples. One is just understanding where our content is missing like areas. So just being able to like look at either a course content or the blog or just anything we put out and it's like where are we missing pieces or where the things that don't make sense. So it's been great for checking that over and helping us fill in the gaps. Um, it's been great for idea generation for us to do research, um, for us to put, organize our thoughts and very helpful for that. Um, and then just day to day tasks, um, just everyone on the team being able to um, put out better messages. It could be for customer support or in the coaching program or just anything to make the messaging more clear. Because sometimes you're like, you're putting together things coming out of your mind but they're not quite organized and it's been massively helpful in that way.

Speaker A: Mhm. No, definitely, yeah, definitely makes sense. Did your team adopt ChatGPT right away?

Speaker B: Not right away. We weren't big into it from the start, but we've really started to use it a lot lately. We're trying to adopt an AI first mindset where we're thinking, okay, how can we use these tools to give people a better experience and to be able to do our jobs, um, better and faster. So we're constantly trying to think about how we can leverage the tools and just make things better for everyone. And you know, the, it's also like, it's interesting because you see this stuff and you're like, oh wow, this, this could do all these amazing things. But there has to be like a practical application for it because some of this stuff is actually not that useful. Like it looks, it looks interesting. And then when you actually try to use it you're like, okay, well this is not really going to work. Or it's like 70% there, but we really need it to be 100% of the way for it to work. So you know, sometimes it's a timing thing and sometimes it's just like, okay, well it's not actually the thing we're going to use.

Speaker A: I think that's a really, really important point because especially then like the first 18 months after ChatGPT came out, I think you saw people every day coming up with additional work they can be doing now with A.I. uh, rather than trying to be more efficient with what they already are doing. Okay, now I can generate videos. Yeah, you don't do videos. Why is this now a thing, right? I can generate images. Okay. It's not like the big thing. I can generate articles, the other articles that are crap, right? Nobody reads them. Uh, just because you can do something doesn't mean it's a good idea to do it. Um, so applying this, we actually tried to work backwards and it took us a while to actually get into a rhythm where we now can really make individual processes more efficient. We had been doing a lot of work in standard operating procedures. So what we essentially tried to do now is pick up an SOP and say, okay, based on this sop, how can I make this particular SOP with AI tools or custom programming in our case, very often, um, more m efficient and then tweak the SOP and okay, this sop, instead of half a day, now takes half an hour and we are much just more efficient. But applying this to a particular use case because the other way around, it's just creating a lot more work and you might not even be doing it because it doesn't fit into the workflow you have into the team you have, the offer you have. So I think it's very easy to get sidetracked here.

Speaker B: Oh yeah, totally. And one of the rules that we have too on the team is that you can't just put something in GPT and then tell the other person to read it because you know it's just going to put out like pages of stuff. So you need to actually like curate the material, right? Like, even if it's just something internal, like to really, you know, you can ask it to generate an sop, but you need to go through there and you need to make sure it's like concise and it's something that flows someone could read through easily and they can actually use it. Like, they shouldn't have to sort through that information. So, um, use it for idea generation. But it's up to you to like, make sure the finished product is like what you would produce without it, or, you know, at least that good.

Speaker A: Absolutely. I think the most dangerous thing these days is to, to think that just because it sounds correct, it is actually doing what you think it's doing.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: I'll give you an example. I had a client the other day tell me how his custom GPT was crawling URLs. And I said, I don't think so. And we were just trying and we figured out that if you type in a URL and you say, summarize this URL, it might just create a text without ever looking at the page. Just Based on the keywords in the URL, it's going to draft an entire article based on the domain. It's going to know what this probably is about, and it's going to give you a summary and it might cite competing websites.

Speaker B: Right, Right.

Speaker A: As a citation. So you say, hey, this is not doing this right. Or it might be, um, kind enough that day to say, hey, I can't crawl up pages. But sometimes it might just do it, right? It might just make it up and say, I've got enough information about this URL. I don't need to crawl it. I can just make something up. This probably sounds good. Um, so very often it just sounds so good that you're inclined to just copy this into an article and get it published. Um, we had an example, um, with a saxophone teacher here, and it was in the initials with ChatGPT. And we were really, really happy to finally be able to help him with content. Nobody in my team plays the saxophone, but finally we had like a content generator. I remember it was one of the first articles we pretty much generated and slightly edited and sent it over. And he came back to me and said, it sounds actually really good. Just the saxophone doesn't work this way.

Speaker B: Very convincing. It's just not right.

Speaker A: It was really, really convincing for somebody not playing the saxophone, but it might not be accurate for our saxophone course. So this was a big lesson back then, I remember, uh, and then we just switched the program and said, okay, let's first get some input and get like a lot of context. And this is something where we also see the entire SEO part go to. And I think AI mode Google is preparing goes to a, to a position where Google just has so much context through personalization. So they are going to personalize your entire experience. And they're going to know who I am and what I'm interested in and what I usually search for, and that I have two kids who are interested in particular things. So if I even give them just a phrase, the prompt isn't just going to be this phrase, the prompt is going to be this phrase and everything they know about me. As if you put all this together and put it into a chat. Tpd with my experience, with my podcast, with my, my articles, with my contributions to search engine land, with my books, etc. This all is going to be part of the prompt. So the output is going to be much, much better. And maybe we even talk about those things with, uh, uh, Google rather than speak it. So we're going to give even more context because it's easier to explain what you want when you talk about it rather than write it. So you might just say, hey, uh, Google, let's create an article on how to learn Korean. Look, a lot of our clients have this issue. Our students have these issues, or it's extremely challenging once they know the Alphabet, how to then make some further progress, etc. And you just give them a lot of context. So what you get out of it is pretty much not only going to be like a long tail result, it's a, uh, huge tail result. Right. Like something that has so much context that the output I think is going to be really good, but definitely future think of search and SEO is definitely going to be AI driven.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: I want to ask you a question. So now you've been doing this course for what, like 15 years?

Speaker B: So you said, ah, it's been about 11 years.

Speaker A: Okay. Um, question I always like to ask you. Go back today or you start a new course today with what you know today. Right?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, couple of questions. What was, what was something you didn't expect when you started the course? And how would you really start a new course today from what you know, today?

Speaker B: Yeah, great questions. Um, the first thing that I noticed that was like quite different was the people that are actually signing up for the program. Because for me, I thought it was going to be people like me, which are people that move to Korea and that live in Korea and need to use on a daily basis. But that was only, you know, that's only like a small percentage of the people that are in the program. It's very small. The vast majority of them are outside of Korea and they don't have access to like, Korean speakers or people to practice with. So it's definitely slightly different in that way. And we tried to update the program for that because a lot of the, like, challenges and exercises or some of them were about doing it in Korea. So we've tried to change that over and we've done updates on that. So that way anyone could do them no matter where they are. So that was one thing that I didn't expect. Um, then the second question is how would I do things over again with what I did?

Speaker A: Imagine you started a new course, right?

Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, good question. One thing that I would do differently if I was going to, um, start again is to test MVPs quicker, like minimal viable products and get user feedback faster and just iterate in that direction. Because I think that in the past we spent too much time on like coming up with improvements without actually having like, enough data to know if that's what we should be doing. So to like, come up with small tests and have ways of validating them and then move forward with that. So, like, you know, if I was creating a new course, like, it might be about the direction of the course. Like, what should we include in it? And maybe I would make like a. For example, maybe I would make a small test course and see if people were interested in that and if they were, like, get lots of feedback. I'll, uh, do lots of customer interviews. I think that's really important. And we didn't do that until later. Like, we should have done more customer interviews, talked to more people all along the way. Um, we are doing that these days and it's extremely helpful. And, um, definitely just do a lot more of that and iterate on the products that way.

Speaker A: How do you go about. I think this is really interesting. How do you go about a customer interview? How do you set it up? Or how do you find customers who are ready to do this with you? What kind of questions do you ask?

Speaker B: Yeah, so we tried it a few different ways. Um, one of the ways we do is inside the. When people first become members, we have an email that goes out and says, hey, we'd love to hear your feedback if you can. Like, if you'd like to hop on a call for a few minutes, like, here's the link and they can schedule a call with us. So that's one way. Um, I think we occasionally send it out in our newsletters too. I have to check, but I think we send that out every once in a while. Sometimes we'll just send out an email to people, um, that have been past members or current members. And we'll say, hey, we're thinking about doing this. We'd like to get your feedback. What do you think? And they can either reply to the email or they can book a call. So we've done those replay for the past few years and they've gotten a good amount of responses because a lot of times we're asking them, we're like, hey, what do you, like, what should we do more of? And what's missing? Like, where are you having to go to other places? And people will tell you. Cause they want, like, if they like your product, they want it to be better, right? Like, they want you to improve it. So they're telling you what they want. And if you hear that enough times, you'll start to get a clue. I mean, sometimes you'll get really obscure. Um, Suggestions because it's for a specific case. Right. Um, in that case, like it's just for that one person that makes sense. But um, sometimes you'll get, you'll just see general trends.

Speaker A: Mhm. I think this is really, really interesting. Ah, we very much. Do you remember the first, the first version of our, of our Erica framework, like how we delivered it?

Speaker B: Was that through, was uh, that through the calls?

Speaker A: It was, it was first of all we did calls, not videos.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And at some point I did like 12 or 14 calls a day. I couldn't do it anymore. And I was like, I talked to Tim Schramko actually and he was, he was like, you're actually forcing your clients to sit with you through an hour long session with their team. You're wasting their time. I was like, yeah, you probably have a point. Um, but we actually started out with the Google Docs, so we didn't have an app back then. And we came up with this Erica framework where it's just like, just go through a few things on a regular basis to make sure that we take care of everything. Uh, we started out delivering, uh, as a Google Docs. I think you were the first client we used this Google Docs on. And I think there were then others, like the seminar, I think it was very quickly afterwards as well and a couple of others. Um, and then we iterated from there based on actually your feedback, your team's feedback. We switched to a glue spreadsheet and when I had the spreadsheet ready, I talked to the developer and said, look, start implementing the spreadsheet as an app. And it was like the first version of the app and then we just asked for customer feedback or we send individual emails and say, hey, does this make sense for you? Or also to the team. And the team was, I can't see this. Uh, I want to see that. I have a client say, hey, we really need a CSV export of. Because we import this into Asana. So we had a CSV export of our action steps at some point. So I think probably 80% of what the app is today is pretty much based on customer feedback. So I definitely relate to those iterations and I think a lot of people are scared to put out like something that doesn't look good and they say, think I'm not going to put out anything for six months just because I need like to have super, uh, beautiful version. You don't even know anything. Yeah, well, I was, I was a member in a SaaS mastermind at some point and I Said the first thing you put out is going to be crap. So the earlier you put it out, the earlier you can make it better, right?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Whatever you put out, the first one is going to be crappy.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And you need feedback in order to make it better. This can be the first webinar. The earlier you do it, the earlier you're going to have a better webinar. And the earlier you put out this first article, the earlier you're going to have a better article. And this just stuck with me where I said, hey, it really can be, uh, like a really very, very basic version. And you see this very often, like the marketing gurus putting out a Google Docs and this is the entire course. They don't bother with a membership, they just want to get confirmation. This is actually going to sell and get feedback and improve it and improve the Google Docs until this is ready to actually turn it into membership. But like you said, you actually did it with the PDFs, right. When you started out with the course and delivered PDFs. Um, it's actually, actually a very quick way to see, does this have value? How can I improve it? What do people want before I build out the entire thing?

Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. And I could kind um, of bring up like a counterpoint for not doing this. So one of the things that we did recently is we improved our dashboard for the membership because it was, it was, it was, it's been around for a while and we didn't know exactly the direction to take it in. But so what we did is we did some member interviews and we got a lot of great feedback and one of them was to simplify the dashboard. And so it's hard to know what that should exactly look like. But we did our best and we put it out there and I think it looks great. Like, so far we've only gotten positive feedback about it. And I was reluctant to do that for a while because I thought, okay, well, what if it's worse? Like, what if we do it and we take away features that people like? And in the end, like, I realized it's not that big of a deal. Cause a lot of this stuff, especially if you can change it back, it's pretty straightforward. So what we did is we did a pretty simple solution. We just made the new dashboard simplified and then we just put a link to the old dashboard. So that way if anyone really was like upset about it, they could just go to the. With one click they could go to the old dashboard. And I'm trying to Think about that more in those terms as, like, like iterate faster, like, test, put things out there, get feedback and just keep going. Because people like this stuff. Like when I've been on those, like on the customer interviews, like, they. People said they really appreciated that we were listening to them. Like, we're listening to them, we're actually improving the product. And then we email them, we let them know, like, hey, we like, implemented what you, what you said. And I know on your end, like with, um, you know, you've asked us over the years, um, a lot of times like, oh, what can we do better? But most of the time we're just like, yeah, actually, everything's great. Just keep doing this, the same stuff. And usually when you give us some idea, you're like, well, what if we did this? I'm like, sounds good too. So I think you have a pretty good idea of what to do. But it's good to get that confirmation from the client to the customers.

Speaker A: I definitely try not to overcomplicate things. So we are not doing formal customer interviews. But I do remember a few emails I send you and say, does this make sense? Do you get value from this? I think the last one was about the regular videos because that. I'm not sure if people watch the videos, if they're helpful, if they share them in the team, etc. So I remember just reaching out and say, hey, Joe, does this actually make sense for you? And you say, yeah, yeah, we really, like, this is a good summary. Okay, let's keep it. I just might send out four emails to four different clients, get feedback. It's really that easy. Especially when you have a good relationship over a longer time with a client and you have this confidence where you say, heyday, they understand we're just trying to make this better and trying to do things that actually matter.

Speaker B: Ah.

Speaker A: And sometimes you might just take things away and nothing happens. So not sure if you, your team noticed. We pretty much took half of the tools we built over the years away from the app. Nobody ever noticed, Right?

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Well, at least nobody told us. Right? So we had like, individual, like, reports and tools you could use and monitoring, et cetera. Um, you take things away and nobody notices and you really, like, put a lot of effort into it, but nobody says, hey, where did this tool go? I'm using this all the time. But then we also started tracking and there's, I think, for course, it's also interesting to see which models are getting seen, which models are getting finished, which models never get opened or what additional extra model you're selling essentially as added value never gets actually opened. Um, so these kinds of things. But I think it's really. Sometimes we just overestimate how important certain things are where somebody's just coming for a particular kind of value. The value in our case very often is either access to me and be able to have a chat once in a while. We have a client from Germany who pretty much just chats with me. He's a marketer. He knows what he's doing, but he just wants a second opinion and wants to be challenged and make sure he doesn't omit certain things. And I might just point out whatever I think in this call and he takes some notes and say, hey, this is actually, I didn't think about it this way, this way. And this is the value. He's getting another one. Another person gets value because we just keep their team occupied with useful things. Right? So they have got a couple of team members and don't want to be able to, uh, want to manage their SEO work. So they just get us in and we pretty much make sure that their resources are used in the best possible way to grow their SEO. And then there are other people who want a call every month to check in and brainstorm ideas, which is fine as well. So we really saw it's just very, very individual. Like you said, the expectations you have about what value means for a client or where they come from or where they are located and what they're going through might not be the same for all of them. I, uh, always love when I hear this strategy of finding your ideal client and replicating them. Uh, I've got 40 ideal clients. Nobody looks like the other one. They are all in very. I can go through a list of 40 clients. Nobody has anything to do with another one, but they all seem to be getting value because they renew every month.

Speaker B: Huh.

Speaker A: But nobody has anything to do with another one. And not because they are in different industries, but just because their expectations of what they want, what they need, what kind of support they're looking for just is completely different.

Speaker B: Yeah, right.

Speaker A: So I really like that you're doing those customer interviews and tweaking, tweaking the courses, etc. What was the worst mistake you made in 15 years with your course?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think it was probably not doing enough customer interviews. I think that really was it just not being, like, not communicating enough with the customers and I thinking about the things that should be done and not just talking to them on a regular basis. I really think that making a huge difference. So I think if we just stick to that, um, it's. It's a good plan, and we should have been doing it earlier and more of it.

Speaker A: Awesome. Awesome. I love it. Uh, we're going to wrap this up. Joseph, thank, uh, you so much for sharing your story, sharing how you built 90 Day Korean up. Somebody who would want to reach out to you, maybe leverage your experience in a consulting fashion or something like this. Not sure if you're open to this. How could they get in touch with you?

Speaker B: They can reach me at, uh, Joseph, uh, 0daykorean.com.

Speaker A: Awesome. Perfect. We're going to make sure that we, uh, note this down as well. Thank you so much, Joseph, for doing this. Thank you so much for taking the time. I really appreciate it.

Speaker B: Yeah, sure thing. Yeah. Thanks a lot for having me on here and for all the great support you've given, like, us and the team. It's been really just great experience and, um, highly recommend you and your team, anyone that's thinking about, anyone for, like, SEO help. Um, Gert and his team. Just amazing. So if you're thinking about it, definitely get in touch.

Speaker A: I appreciate it. Definitely appreciate this one. Um, we are going to host a recording over@seoleverage.com podcast, 90 Day Korean. Joseph Armstrong, thank you so much.

Speaker B: Thanks, Gertrude.