The worst boss I've ever had

In December 2019, I dropped out of grad school.

I was on track to get a PhD in Marine Science from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.

3 months in, I decided that I didn’t want to stare down a microscope for the rest of my life.

I booked a 4 day trip to Melbourne, then rented a car and spent the next few days surfing Bell’s Beach, one of the most iconic waves in the world and a stop on the WSL tour.

I wasn’t sure if I’d ever visit Australia again, and I wanted a final send off in what I had perceived to be a bad experience.

I dropped out of college — I was a failure.

A few days after I landed back in the US, the first few cases of COVID-19 were detected in Australia.

I dropped out because I didn’t want to study that anymore, but COVID would’ve forced me back to the US anyways, where I likely would’ve dropped out anyways.

With no idea what to do, I picked up SEO as a hobby again. I started applying to jobs and eventually landed one in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

My first day on the job, my manager, the Head of SEO, told me to do keyword research for these new clients we had just brought on.

Our company only worked with local service businesses, so it was pretty plug & play between each company.

For service pages, we’d target something like “{location} + {service}.”

Very standard stuff for local SEO.

But while I very badly needed a job, I was honestly looking forward to learning from my boss.

As it turns out, she hired me so that she could take another job with a somewhat clear conscience.

She put in her 2 weeks notice just 10 days after I was hired. The President of the agency felt so disrespected that she was fired immediately.

Now, all of that learning that I hoped would take place under her guidance was entirely on me. I was practically being paid to learn — kinda cool honestly.

And the first thing I learned was how to do keyword research.

I of course already knew what it was and the purpose of it, but I had previously just sporadically searched for keywords with no framework in mind.

Over the years I’ve developed & refined my process. But as I’ve told you before, there’s no perfect system for it — it changes with the circumstances.

But unlike me, who took far too long to develop systems for it, you can watch this video. It’s a shortcut to learning the most effective keyword research methods that I use to 1) find winning keywords for money pages and 2) build content maps for each of those pages.

Watch it here:

See you on Friday.

Kai