Welcome back to the show, my fellow extradentary Americans. Today we have a special guest called Don Sevcik. Don is the creator and founder of Math Celeb, the fastest math tutor on the planet. Math celebrities helped 8.1 million people with 101 million math problems last year. In one year alone, the site got three and a half million unique visitors from 230 countries, he’s the bestselling author of five books that are on Amazon, including Free Traffic Frenzy. How to get 450,000 website visitors. He also consults on SEO and business automation. Don is a really unique and extraordinary American, and I’m honored to have him on the show. Don, are you there?

Hey, I’m here. I’m glad to be here.

Hey, Don, it’s an honor to have you on the show. I know that you are. I know that you are basically the founder of math celebrities. And can you tell me in the audience a little bit more about yourself, your story, and how you got to the point where Math Celebrity became the success that it is?

Yeah. Back in 2007, I Believe it was In June, June, or July of 2007, I was working a day job as a programmer. And my colleagues and I just started getting frustrated because when we get our annual reviews, we find out you’re raising bonuses. The feedback would be really good, but your raise and bonus would only be, say, 3 to 4%. And no matter what you do, it almost feels like a carrot being dragged in front of you, and you could never get promoted anyway. I want to branch out and maybe make some more money. I started tutoring people in math on the side because that was my major in college.

And so, one student turned into two, two turned into four, or four turned into six. Now the fun part was that the feedback was really good, but the trouble, as you can imagine, is that it’s hard to scale an in-person business. So, I went back home because I was married at the time, and I had a day job. So, I asked myself how I could scale this, and I was racking my brain for a week to figure it out. How to do it.

Anyway, I’m back at my day job. And we had to figure out that we were working with the team in Gurgaon, India, on how to build a program to calculate American pensions for American pensioners. And my boss has sent them this big 300-page document… just a dry book, and they just weren’t getting it. So anyway, my manager asked, is there a better way to do this?  

So, I said, Yeah, let me try something. I built an Excel spreadsheet. With all the formulas the team and Andy would ever need to know, the catch was next to the cells. Would that show the numbers? I had dynamically updated math so A* B to get this value, and when I sent that to the team in India, they instantly went, I got this. This makes so much sense, and when I saw that reaction, the light bulb went off in my head, and I said, If I can do that for pensions, why couldn’t I do that for Math tutoring. And so that’s kind of how I got started.

So, John, it’s very unique that not many people can actually succeed in SCO in getting millions of visitors onto their website. This is the one thing that businesses all across the world are earning in the 21st century. Everybody wants to know, how do you get unique visitors to your website? 

So, my question to you is: what is the process that you follow from start to finish to get it from 10 visitors to 100 visitors to 1000 visitors? Was there a secret formula or something? Or was it? Is it just something that happened organically?

Part of it was organic, but part of it was stumbling on some interesting discoveries. I forget which scientist that was. That said, you know you’re on the verge of discovering something incredible. Not when you say Eureka, but when you say that’s interesting. Something that doesn’t add up, but you’re seeing it in real time.

So, when I first got started, we had maybe 5 or 10 visitors a week, and I knew nothing about SEO and even less about developing websites. So, the first year or two users would trickle in, but then when I started doing as I asked myself, how can I scale attention? 

And so, what I did was find a couple math help form sites, and by sheer luck, I stumbled upon one that was already getting millions of visitors. I contacted one of the administrators of the site, and I said, look, I got a math tutoring site. I’m not selling anything. Do you mind when I answer questions, help people with math, and attach a link to a calculator? That’ll explain the math too, and the guy said, Yeah, as long as we’re not selling anything.  

So, I started answering questions, and I think I got to the point where 25 or 30 of my calculators were included in the math help. I think it was mathhelpforum.coms answer. And anyway, I went to bed one day, woke up, and then got an email about that. Said your traffic has spiked. 

And so, I looked. And what happened was that math helped him, and he shot up on Google SEO to number one for the term synthetic division calculator. That was the exact term. When they searched for that, people would click into the math help forum, see me explain a problem, and then see a link to my calculator at the bottom. Well, the double whammy happened over two more weeks after that. What happened was that they Googled synthetic division calculators. In the math help form that they posted, it was guessed who was #2. My synthetic division calculator

And so, what? It only took probably three or four of those calculators to start getting attention, from 10 or 20 visitors a week to hundreds and then a couple thousand. But the real scaling happened when I opened Google Analytics, and I didn’t know this right away, but Google Analytics has this thing. I think it’s called site search. And you can turn it on and tell it the name of your search box on your site.

So, for WordPress, I think it uses a queue. I use the queue too, but the point here is that it will track every search run in your search box on your site. Well, why is that valuable? Because now you know exactly what people are asking for on your site, you may create a calculator that says algebra equations help, but 92% of the people that run a search on my site ask for it. One-step equation help or two-step equation help. Once I know how they ask for a problem, I can restructure my page to change my title. I can change it for Google, so now when people search for a one-step equation on Google, it’s in the exact language that they would have searched on my site.

So, the internal site search is basically a cheat code. It’s almost as if you could put your ear to the wall and hear the 3/4/5/6 million people who need your help. But you listen to the exact way they ask for a Google search, and then you just put that on your site.

Wow, this is incredible because, basically, this is what most companies are trying to understand. How do I increase my SEO, and how do I get more sites to attract visitors? Basically, it’s about Google and analytics. You have to know what people usually search for and then type it in.

Yeah, another big part of that too I would add it speeds up… another thing that every business needs. Has to be aware of. So, the average attention span according to, I think, a Harvard study for humans is 8.25 seconds, which is one second lower than a goldfish.

So, what that means is that if your page takes four or five seconds to load, it’s because it’s clunky. You now only have 3 1/2 seconds to get their attention before they click off, and Google is watching to see if you run a Google search and click into a site. If you click off within 30 seconds or come back to Google, they’re going to penalize you. They know your content wasn’t valuable, and one of the reasons people will leave is because of this. It Takes too long. So, if you can get them something simple, clean, and fast, you will move up fast on Google.

I see. So, can you elaborate on how you would go about doing that, where you create something clean, small and fast? 

The easiest way to start for free is to use Google’s page speed analyzer and just take your URL and paste it in there, and in about 7 to 10 seconds they’ll give you a readout. “We analyzed your page. This loaded quickly. This load is medium. This load is slow, and please fix these things right away.” That’s not just for your health, by the way. That’s what they’re saying. You can almost indirectly fix these things, and your rank will go up, so the Google Page Speed Analyzer is an incredibly useful and free tool, and a lot of it is just based on speed. 

So sometimes you may try to load a file in the background. But it’s just too bloated, so if you trim it down or change the way you load the file, you may see a big increase in speed plus, user validity. Meaning, when the user came to your site, did they get what they wanted, and sometimes did they get even more? And then, as your language is simple.

So, I don’t know if you’re familiar with the flesch Kincaid score, but it’s a score that was developed. It was started by the US Navy for readability, and I had met a company that does a billion dollars in sales. Named agora. I don’t know if you’ve heard of them, but they sell books and newsletters. Two of the most boring products on the planet but they do a billion dollars added together with all of their divisions.

And when I Flew out to Orlando for one of their conferences years ago, one of the big messages they talked about was that they don’t do SEO, but this applies to SEO as well. Whenever they send out a sales promo, after they’ve rewritten it 30 times and everybody’s looked at it, the key point is, is this written at a fifth-grade level or lower? Because you don’t want to confuse anybody? Because if you send it to a professor, maybe they can read it at a 9th grade level. But it still takes brain power to comprehend bigger words. And here’s also where the magic happens: If you dumb down the language to 5th grade, people will automatically trust you more because you’re not trying to use big words, you’re explaining things clearly, and you’re not trying to slide anything past them.

So, what you can do is run your page through a flesh concave in the Hemingway app. I think it’s Hemingwayapp.com, and you’re shooting for 6th, 5th, or below, and that’s another helpful set.

Well, Don, this is amazing. What you basically did was crack the code that most businesses are trying to crack, which is how to get so many visitors in one year alone. And that’s just incredible.

So, my question to you, Don, is what is our motivating factor to get this to increase? As much as possible, I know. That you’re into teaching math, but is there a particular drive that makes you go past things even if things are not working? How does your mindset and thought process work when it comes to creating math celebrities?

I’m a big fan of automation and the 80/20 rule, and so by nature, as I learned from my day job years ago, I’m a very lazy person. What I mean by that is that if I’m assigned a task, I’m instantly going to ask myself, is there a faster, easier, or better way to do this?  

And so, when I first started tinkering around with math celebrities, that was my motivation. As you know, I’ve been in math classes with a lot of people. If you talk to her a lot as a student, you hear the same four or five things. The lecture is boring. I don’t understand the textbook. This is taking too long. These formulas are too difficult, so I asked myself, wouldn’t it be nice if you could just pop a problem in a search box? You press the button, and in a split second, you get a step-by-step explanation in a fifth-grade language level or lower, and not only do you understand it, but it also helps you get better at math. I was just playing around with this for the first few years.

But when I saw the traffic creeping up and up and up, and then, I think in the 6th or 7th year, it went from linear to exponential. It’s mind-blowing for me because you can pull little levers in your life and be it… Health, relationships, spirituality, business—any of that—when you can tweak little levers and you see those exponential gains, it’s so much fun for me.

That’s true. We’re all we all wanted to be. The path to overcoming resistance and finding a quicker way and this is usually because automation understands what the majority of people want to work hard; they think hard work will lead to success, but it’s usually smart work. 

There are so many people working hard that they’re not successful. It’s people who are using their brains to create shortcuts and all that. They say there are no shortcuts to success. But yeah, I don’t know. What do you think about that statement?

I think there’s a certain amount of mental work that needs to be done. I agree with you that people equate hard work with value and success, but if that were true, then post diggers, ditch diggers, construction workers, and roofers that sit out in 110 degrees should be paid the most. But that’s just not how the world works; it’s the value you create, and by the way, that’s not to take away from the value of roofers or post hole diggers. But if we look at value in terms of impact per person multiplied by the number of people,

So, you may have a solution that has a small impact on somebody’s life; maybe it saves them 10 minutes. A day or a headache. But if you multiply that by 10/100/ 1,000/ 1,000,000 people, that starts to add up really quick. And so, if you go back to the 80/20 rule, you just think about it in terms of value. What can I do first, just to create value, but then how can I scale the value that I’m giving? In the world. And when do you think in those terms? I think that’s how you unlock not just wealth but also success and enlightenment in general.

So basically, we have to think in terms of automation and scaling; it’s not just hard work. You have to use smart work to basically get to the goal in the fastest way possible.

So yeah, I mean, it doesn’t necessarily have to be automation. I default to automation, but there’s a lot of human-to-human interaction that you can do. Use 80/20. Here’s an example: Suppose you’re at a networking event. You’re an entrepreneur, and you want to make the right connections. Most entrepreneurs, especially introverts, will go to a networking event. Maybe take a drink or two to take the edge off, and then they’ll kind of edge their way around and look for people they know. The 80/20 of that would be to sit back, enter the room, pause, and look around for about 30 seconds. Just look around. I know it’s tough for introverts, and what you’re looking for is that there may be 250 people in that room, but three of them have a crowd around them, seven, eight, nine, or more people should instantly tell you and the next let’s say you have two hours. The 80/20 is, can you find 3 to 4 minutes to go to those three people that have a huge crowd around them… Introduce yourself and maybe strike up a 2-minute conversation. 

And why do I say Yeah because networking is networking. Think of networking as … It’s a link. If you go on LinkedIn, you may see 1000 different people, but maybe the top 10 or 15 of them have 30,000 connections or 20,000 really valuable connections. It would serve you so much better to at least spend a little time with them than try to scatter your attention everywhere, because chances are, the person with the highest network can get you where you want to go or steer you in the right direction faster than random connections can.

I mean, this actually reminds me of this one book that I read. I don’t know if you’ve read this book, but I read this book called The Square and The Tower. It was a book by this guy, and it talks about networks and hierarchies, right?

And how’s it’s net, its networks, and you know these clusters? Some people have clusters around them, and then when you go and interact with those people, you get access to the other connections, and then you can basically go and spread your ideas, and all of your things will really work. There’s one person at the top, and then everybody else is down beneath it. It was a very interesting book because it basically talked about how you can create if you have a revolutionary idea.

You found the fastest way to do that is through networking. And it also talked about social media and networking. But sometimes you get certain people, certain groups, and certain combinations that help your ideas spread like wildfire. So yeah, it’s an interesting thing that I thought about when you were Talking about that.

Yeah, Albert-László Barabási… I think his name is. He has a couple of books about network science and clustering and knows, and he talks about the same thing as if you start. If you dedicate a certain amount of time to the high-volume networks and nodes, you’ll see way more progress than you would if you just scattered your attention.

So, Don, I’m actually really curious because you make it sound so simple on how to get millions of visitors to your site. But why do most companies not do what you’re doing? It sounds relatively simple: Google Analytics, typing the right words, and understanding what they’re saying, but it seems companies pay a lot of money to a lot of these people, and then they still don’t get the results that they’re seeking. Why do you think they don’t do this? 

I don’t want to make it easy. I just figured it out, and everything took off. I mean, some of this took years. And the real traction started happening at year six or seven of the 16 or so years that I’ve been doing this. But I agree that there are a lot of companies out there selling SEO that are not producing the results that they’re promising.

So that’s difficult to deal with, but I think the big thing is, can you be in it for the long game? I’ll be honest with you: if I could go back in time and do this again, I would not do SEO because it is a lot of work. I would do paid ads, and I would do a minimum viable product because I could have tested a lot earlier and seen what my Fans wanted what they didn’t, but to answer your original question, a lot of this is AB testing, so I’m a huge fan of AB testing everything in my life, from the clothes I wear to the introductions I make to the business decisions I make. If you can AB-test things,

Do you tell the audience what AB testing is? Because I don’t think we would know what it is.

Yeah, so AB testing is if you hold a networking event. Let’s talk about that because that’s something everybody understands. Suppose every time you go to a networking event, you wear a man’s clothes. You wear the standard business casual outfit, right? The dress shoes maybe some chinos on a dress shirt or The Polo is right, and you and we’ll keep everything else the same, but AB testing is called A the control. That’s what you usually do. B is called the variance, but B means you only change one thing for your test. Everything else, you keep the same.

So, for the AB test, the networking event for our traditional mail would be, why not wear a Sport coat? When you go to the meeting, you go in, and you talk the same. You’re the same guy, same weight, same job, same everything. But now you have a sports coat. Test the response you get from people, and I found that You dress up a Little more, you will. See a different response, especially from people who are at a higher level than you. Whether you think clothes affect people’s judgment or not, they do. And so, my favorite quote is “Society will accept the value you put on yourself.”

And so, for an AB test, if you wear the Sport coat, you automatically put more value on yourself because you’re dressing better. Another AB test would be when I go meet new people. What I usually do is go on and start blabbing about my business instead of saying hi, my name is Don. I’d like to learn more about you, and when you AB test that over time, maybe you find out that instead of the average conversation at a network event lasting 90 seconds because you’re boring people, now you’re getting into 10/12/15 minute conversations.

Donna, I love the way your brain thinks because mine is kind of similar because I graduated as an electrical engineer. 

A lot of people when they’re just interacting, they will say oh, just be yourself. It’s just organic: this, this, and that. But if you study the science of human interactions and how people interact with each other, usually the favorite thing that people love to talk about is themselves; the favorite subject of anybody is themselves.

And you know, it’s something really simple, but most people don’t realize it, and they just talk about themselves. And you realize that if you do an AB test or you do a person It happens a lot of the time. Unless the other person is really empathetic and curious about you, they really wouldn’t care; you know, it wouldn’t even register unless it had something to do with them. So, it’s just a thought that I had.

Yeah, it’s fascinating, and there’s nothing wrong with being yourself, but it’s almost evaluating. I don’t know. I’m a big fan of inversion, which is a mental model that Charlie Munger talked about in Warren Buffet, and basically, inversion says that when you’re trying to get better at something, instead of thinking about how you do it well, better, or right, think about how you do it wrong and eliminate those things.

So, for our networking event, if we’re not sure how the best social butterflies work, we can ask ourselves, when we’ve been in conversations before, what behaviors have we seen from people that have turned us on? And then write all those down and just stop doing them. We could still be ourselves. We’ll just eliminate the bad behaviors, and I find this to be a fascinating experiment in life. If you can use inversion in your life and cut out the bad behaviors or the bad traits without even trying to learn how to do anything better, it’s almost like the good shines through. 

For instance, if we go to a networking event, let’s apply inversion to our behaviors. How would we turn people off and shorten the conversation? I would have bad breath, right? Because I don’t care how good I am at business. Maybe I could be Brad Pitt. But if my breath stinks, those people are going to be out of there quickly. I’d have bad breath. I’d have yellow teeth. I’d like to talk about myself. I’d talk too fast. I wouldn’t make eye contact.

And so, when you piece all these together, you start to tell yourself, If I just stop doing these things, I will get so much better and so much faster than I would if I was trying to mimic the social butterflies. 

No, I love it, Don. It’s, you know, the extroverts who just think it’s all natural. But then there’s introverts, like myself, and I’m an introvert. For me, of course, when I first came to America, the culture here was so radically different. I just studied human interactions here for almost a year. I had to know how people interact with each other. 

For instance, I notice a pattern in, let’s say, the Middle East or in India. The connections tend to be more emotional and harder, base and over here, but they have an exterior shell, but once you crack that shell, you become friends for life in the western world. In America, it’s really easy to spark a conversation, but it’s on a superficial level. When you’re trying to go deeper, people think that’s weird or awkward and everything, and so there’s a process to it. 

And I had to study how social dynamics work. And it’s a fascinating subject because you have these different places. Let’s say you go to a bar, the entire dynamic is different, right? Because let’s say you have a girl who’s really attractive. She’s got 10 guys hitting on her. And then if you try to go and talk to her, she’ll, let’s say, reject you. 

But the same person could be in a bookstore. And you approach them, and then they’ll be completely nice to you. And it’s just understanding that ultimately, you’ve got to go with the flow. But when you understand the dynamics, it helps you—it helps to a large extent, you know.

Yeah, that’s great insight.

On a different note, Don, I was actually wondering what is the greatest lesson you learned during your years making Math Celebrity into what it is now, where it’s getting millions of visitors, when it comes to automation, SEO, or the entire process of making a website a hit? Not just in one country but in multiple countries. More than 200 countries.

Wow, that’s a good question. Probably the biggest lesson I’ve learned is intention. So, we’re going to get a little bit spiritual. I hope that doesn’t happen to turn your audience off. But no, no, they Yeah, I mean, you have to set an intention, and I’m big into metaphysics. So, I’m a huge fan of Neville Goddard’s think and grow rich, but I noticed probably in year eight, so about halfway through the journey from start to now, I started getting more into metaphysics, and I think that was the biggest lesson. For entrepreneurs or people who want to build a business and scale it, you have to set an intention, but you also have to have the energy behind it.

So, what I mean is, if you just read The Secret, which is a great book, but that cuts to it on a superficial level, which is, if I just have an intention and I just believe, everything will come to me in the millions of dollars. Adoring fans. But Neville Goddard cuts deeper into it, and when I applied that, I started seeing this. It’s Can You Have the Feeling … so, one of his biggest books is The Feeling is the Secret and the General Just.” And when I set an intention, let’s say I want to make $5,000,000, that’s my goal. I want to build a business. I want to make $5,000,000 because that’s a tangible goal. We have to ask ourselves when we make $5 million. So Fast forward to whenever that is. What exactly is the emotional state I will be in. And then, how will my life change?

So, I’ll give you an example. Suppose I had $5,000,000. I would move a lot slower than I do now. I wouldn’t be rushing in the morning to go out to a day job or getting up to run around and do tasks that would be much more focused. And discerning about the things I’m going to do. Secondly, if I had $5 million, I’d be even more relaxed because I have nothing to prove. I don’t need the money anymore. I mean, if I make money, great. But I don’t need the money anymore.

And so, if you start to think about the person, you’re going to be at whatever future moment that is, but you rewind that, those behaviors, and that mindset to now, and you also write down that vision, you can have a vision board. I have a Google doc. You’ll start to see incredible things happen in your life. Might not be right away. But you will start to see the change within a few weeks to a few months. You’ll see behavior change. You’ll see how you organize your day. I mean, I’ve seen my diet change, my sleep habits change, all kinds of stuff, and it all starts with the intention plus the feeling. If you combine those two, I think that’s the biggest lesson I’ve learned out of all this.

You bring an interesting point down, but here’s the thing: Most people don’t know what they want. They’re just going through life as robots. They’re living without meaning, path, or purpose. So, what would you advise somebody who wants to get something but doesn’t know about how to go about it, because you know, as you said in the secret, they talk to you about thoughts and manifesting.

But you have to take action as well to get to that point, right? When people kept talking about the secret, they just thought that by sitting here and manifesting, I will get things done, but that’s not usually the case. You have to take appropriate actions as well, right?

Yeah, actions are part of it, but you bring up a good point. People are kind of meandering through life, and they’re always thinking about what they don’t want. So, there are two types of people. They’re towards people, and they’re the way people. 

I don’t know if you’ve ever heard this. This is an NLP principle, but the gist of It is. Some people are towards people, meaning if you ask them to tell you about what they want, they’ll tell you what they want. I want $5,000,000. I want to weigh 190 pounds. But the people you described are away people; instead of telling you what they want, they tell you what they do not want. But the way for them to manage that or for coaches that deal with that type of person is to write down everything you don’t want and then just think about the opposite.

So, a perfect example is that I used to work with Guy, who was really shy, and he said I don’t want to be. When I go to social interactions, I say OK, so write down all those things I say. What would it look like if you had a good interaction instead of saying, why don’t you want it? Why don’t you work toward a good interaction? I said, how would it look? or What stops you? That’s a powerful question, by the way. What stops you from having a good intro? If you talk in terms of away language to an away person, you’ll start to get to the towards piece.

So, for people like that, if you have a negative mindset or are timing, and you think a lot about what they don’t want, start with that. But then think. What stops me from getting to that other paradigm? So maybe I’m shy. What stops me from becoming an extrovert? And as you write this down and think about behaviors, you’ll start to shift your daily routine.

No, I totally, totally agree. It’s interesting that you bring up NLP because I read a few books about it, and it was a really fascinating subject. Right, but ultimately, we have to, as you mentioned, have tension and feelings, and go about doing that. Ron, I want to ask you whatever you’re talking about right now. It’s so practical. Basically, SEO Automation gets website traction.

So, the only thing that I know about American colleges all across America is that you’ve taught math in college, right? Was it college or high school?

I was a math major, but I did. I did. Not teach math in college.

OK, so when you realize that your math major in college, you realize that instead of that, people should be teaching the professors in the colleges what you’re describing right now: how to get more visitors, how to get more traction, how to succeed in your business, and all that if this is taught? In colleges, there would be a revolution in the way people do business. Well, what are your thoughts on that?

I agree. I think some of the curriculum needs to be focused more on practical things like balancing your chequebook, how to make better investments, how to choose your career, and how to build a business. And unfortunately, it’s not. So, you bring up a good point.

But to Answer your original question on why more people don’t do this, I think. I think it was Jeff Bezos who asked Warren Buffett, and he said, you’re investing; your investing mindset is so simple; why don’t more people follow it? And he said because it’s boring, right? A lot of people want the sexy, glamorous solution to stuff when a lot of it is just for working out. Maybe it’s just sweat equity, or maybe for business, it’s just taking an hour a week, sitting down, being real with yourself, and saying, where am I weak? What is holding me back from being the person I want to be? And that’s a tough pill to swallow for a lot of people.

I mean, I had to do it years ago when I was looking at, I think my wife took a photo of me when I turned 35 and I was. That’s not the 25-year-old me, and I could have just said, oh, it’s the camera angle, but I have to make changes. I’ve got to ingest less caffeine. I’ve got to be less stressed. I got to eat less bread.

And as soon as you have those honest conversations with yourself, they’re not easy. But as soon as you have those conversations with yourself, the healing and progress can begin. It’s just that it’s tough for people to sit down and look in the mirror and admit I’m lacking in this because they almost look at it as a failure, but to go back to NLP, one of the majors, The principle of NLP is that there is no failure. It’s only feedback, so if you treat it as feedback, right. I tried something, it didn’t work, or I tried something that sort of worked. It’s almost a heat-seeking missile, right? You’re never directly on course, but it’s constantly guiding you closer and closer to the goal you want.

That’s pretty true. I do think that we need to, especially when it comes to what we’re talking about. Terms of college education. I do believe that the financial education that you just mentioned is more pertinent, right? It’s more about thoughts and actions and how to basically go about that and go about starting a business, because ultimately, the only thing that’s going to get you free is building value and giving value.

And I mean, in college, one thing that I’m surprised more colleges don’t do or even people don’t do is suppose you’re a junior in college, right? And next year, you’re going to be a senior. It’s mind-boggling why more juniors don’t find somebody who just graduated and say hey You’ve been out of college for a year. You’re now in the workforce. If you could rewind time as a senior, what are the things you would do, and what would you stop doing and get a mentor for?

Because now, when the junior graduates or goes into senior year and they’ve seen someone successful, they can avoid the bad behaviors and take on more good behaviors. And the same thing works in high school. Right. Right. Before you go to college, go find somebody like that who went to college and is having a good Year and say, hey, what would you have done, senior? Year differently, and what would you have kept doing?

No, totally, but I think the thing is, John, a lot of people in college are there to just be there, to make friends, and all that stuff. The first half of college is party time, making friends, networking, and all of that. I feel they became serious sometime after it. You know. So that’s true. Yeah. 

So, when it comes to financial education in terms of American universities having a revolution, what is the one thing you would advise a student who’s going to go in to get, let’s say, an arts degree or some other degree that’s not stem-related? And then they rack up $100,000 in debt. And then they have to pay it off. For the next, I don’t know, how many of your years, let’s say you had to advise somebody that’s just going into college, and from what you know now about just business, SEO, and automation, how would you go about advising such a person.

I would pace their lives after college, so I’d say, OK, after four years, you’re going to have $105,000 in debt. You have an art degree. Here are the potential jobs you can get, and even if you get a job at a top-tier firm, here’s how much you’re going to get after taxes. It will cost you, and you just lay that out on paper. Very simply, it will cost you 18 years, assuming you keep the job at the top tier and don’t get fired, to even make a dent in the debt you have to pay off the interest and start paying the principal. Are you sure this is something you want to do?

And again, some people are not money-driven, so even if you show them that practical example, it just will not sink. But it helps to paint the picture that if you continue down this path, this is where you’ll be financially, and I don’t think people look out that far, as you said in college, but you can even zoom in on the lens. Saying in the next year or two here’s how much debt you’re going to rack up versus the income you’re going to have, and you’ll only have enough money leftover for maybe ramen noodles. And then one night out to eat.

That’s pretty true. I myself went into a STEM major, right? But ultimately, a lot of people around me were having party time and having fun. But then they come out of college, and now they have all this debt to pay off. But they go. But the means of getting out of debt is through business and financial education, or basically learning something. How to do SEO when you have a lot of people because we are in the 21st century right now. Websites are everything.

This is the most important. One of the reasons I was honored to have you on the show is because, in the 21st century, website traffic is one of the most important things when buying a product. If you don’t buy, if you cannot get people to draw attention to your website, you’re not going to be able to sell anything. In the first place. I deeply believe that this should be taught. And universities and colleges all across

Yeah, it’d be nice if there was an SEO course. That’d be great, especially for college students who are going to be entrepreneurs, right? If they learn that in college, they can have a jump ahead of the market when they graduate, that’s great.

I mean, maybe you should start a course in college about it, you know? Because, yeah, it would probably change a lot of things. But Don, I wanted to ask you about speaking on this. I wanted to ask you about your book. I know you wrote this book called Free Traffic Frenzy about how to get 450 thousand website visitors. Can you tell me in the audience a little bit more about the premise of this book. How did you start… What’s the book about?

I was probably in my 10th or 11th year of math celebrity. I wrote my First book, just explaining how I got started, and then the math equations and shortcuts, and I started getting more questions from people on how you got 5678 million visitors in a year without spending any money on traffic, and after having that conversation over and over again, I thought to myself why not just write a book and help people out, because I have your mindset. I want to help younger people out and not have them go through the struggles I went through. It was basically just the how-to manual of what I did, and it’s some of the things we’ve already talked about. Google Analytics. Flesh Kincaid scored internal search, things like that. But it’s just how I did not only what I did right but, more importantly, what I did wrong. And so, we go back to inversions and what not to do.

So, it’s almost a Dear John letter from the future, but for entrepreneurs that are, they’re starting a business that wants to grow. Yeah, so I’ve written; it took probably a couple months to write, but one of the things I’m most proud of is that if you go to the Amazon reviews, one of the biggest pieces of nice feedback I got was, this is so simple to read and it’s jargon-free, because a couple people hired an SEO agency and they said all they got was jargon and little results. But in some of the reviews this was the easiest thing in the world to read. It wasn’t talking above my head, and it actually got me results, so I was really proud.

Wow. I mean, I’m definitely going to advise my audience to take a look at that and apply it to their own websites and businesses, because this is the 21st century with everything being automated on websites. This is probably the most important thing you can learn about. So yeah, so Don, is there any project or work that you’re doing, right now that you want the audience to get a glimpse of?

Yeah, I mean, probably the biggest thing is that I’m working on two things. So first, I’m working on my second or fifth book, which has to do with mental health. models, and this goes back to what I talked about in version 80/20, things that and then the second big project I’m working on is a mobile app for my math celebrity site because more than a few fans have asked for that. So those are my two biggest projects in the next six months.

That is awesome, Don. So, Don, how can my audience get to know more about you and Math celebrity, and all the work that you’re doing?

Besides, Yeah, probably the easiest way is through LinkedIn. I mean, I’m on TikTok Instagram, but LinkedIn is the best way, so it’s linkedin.com/in/DONSEVCIK   

So, Don, I’m really, really glad you took the time to come to this podcast and share your insights on SEO, automation, and how you got to where you’re going. I mean, you’re definitely an extra American, and, basically, I think a lot of people can gain value from what you just talked about over here. I would definitely want to come back at a later time of the show.

I had a blast. I really appreciate the invitation, and I’d love to come back and help out your audience more.

And I want to conclude this show by telling my fellow extraordinary Americans, look, there’s a history with each and every one of us. It’s our duty to awaken it and unleash it until next time. Bye for now.