My biggest mistake

The story of How the F*ck. My journey building this community. And some mistakes made along the way.

Where all this started

Most people won't know this, but when I started How the F*ck it was simply my creative outlet.

At the time, I worked in a tiny SaaS startup (just 3 people and I was there from day 1!).

But I wasn't empowered.

We were moving slowly. The product wasn't even ready yet.

My creative marketing wings were constantly being clipped by a boss who didn't believe in me (or marketing).

So...I started a podcast.

Finally, my own thing. Nobody can tell me what to do.

I can say "fuck" as much as I want. Even in the title. Because boring marketing is...well, boring.

I could have fun building a brand.

I could build a site in Webflow.

I could learn Adobe Illustrator.

I could practice writing.

And my side quest?

I suddenly had a reason to sit down each week for 1 hour with marketing industry legends and ask them anything I wanted...for free.

My first guest was the positioning expert April Dunford. Episode 3 was B2B marketing guru, Chris Walker.

Can u believe it?

My biggest lesson from this time: If I can do it? You can do it. And being a "doer" seriously opens doors.

How did this lead to freelancing (and the mistake)?

SEO is my passion area. And my "10,000 hours" area.

So, about 1.5 years ago, I niched down the podcast to focus exclusively on SEO.

It shifted from [crazy B2B marketing stories] to [crazy SEO case studies]. Both with the same philosophy:

cliffhanger stories
insider secrets
real experts

At the same time, I started to talk almost exclusively about SEO on LinkedIn.

When I did this, things started to shift.

My LinkedIn followers quickly climbed.

The podcast 3x'd listenership.

The newsletter (both free and premium) grew and grew.

When that happened:

→ Ahrefs sponsored the podcast.

→ Old bosses reached out to me for help.

→ I became the "SEO guy" in my network.

→ Listeners & followers booked paid consults with me (via SavvyCal).

→ People I'd never interacted with before wanted to hire me.

It was overwhelming.

So I did what every sensible person does:

Quit my full-time job immediately.

I am a podcaster now. And I'm seriously considering taking on some clients.

Mistakes were made

I'll preface this by saying that I don't really believe in mistakes.

Or, at least, who cares about them?

But, they're worth dwelling on for their lessons.

I'm sure I've made thousands of mistakes over the past year, but I want to tell you about the big one.

(I'll save the rest for another day).

→ I didn't diversify

Ahrefs was a cool sponsor, right?

'til they weren't.

After months of steady income via the long-term partnership we had, they pulled out in February.

This was totally, totally fair. We had no contracts or particular agreements in place. And it was unrelated to How the F*ck (in fact, they became a sponsor again 5 months later).

But the change in their sponsorship strategy had an enormous impact on me.

To be honest...I was completely stranded.

I had been chilling a tiiiiiiny bit too much.

I was super happy with one sponsor.

It meant I could focus all my energy on creating the best content I could (and growing my subscriber base).

However, at the time I had no clients.

So along with Ahrefs went 75% of my income.

I had no backup plan.

As you can imagine, this was probably the best kick up the arse I've ever had.

I had the worst anxiety that month. I couldn't sleep. Life got a little twisted.

But...

The fear led to some amazing things:

I took on three clients in 1 month (Luckily, I'd been avoiding all those inbound leads I'd been getting, so in that moment of panic I said yes to everything I could). The best thing? This forced me to take freelancing seriously. It was the start of professionalizing the processes, strategies, and philosophies that underpin all my client work. I've even grown one of the clients from this era from 0 to 75,000/clicks a month.
My network stepped in. The more I told people, the more I realized quite a lot of people would like to sponsor How the F*ck. The first of my saviors was my lovely friend Brad Smith, Founder at Codeless/uSERP (you'll remember him from this case study) and we've since been sponsored by Workello, thruuu, SEOMonitor, and a whole lot more. Consistency = key.