The deets:
Name: Matthew Silverman
Business Name: Silverman Consulting LLC
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Describe your business:
I make digital marketing happen for small and mid-size businesses.
Tell us about your self-employment journey.
My digital marketing journey has been a winding path with lots of ups and downs and excitement.
I started doing digital marketing back in 2003 and I was “the marketing and computer guy” for a large family-owned roofing company. I pitched this new marketing thing called Google AdWords to the CEO. Due to the cost per click concept, it wasn’t approved, so I went back to doing their Yellow Page ads.
Fast forward a bunch of years, I got my first (of many) jobs with a variety of agencies and companies. I learned that sometimes agencies are as stable as consulting gigs, but with less ability to be “in the know” and lack of power. Over the years, I have built up a referral network and have been blessed with many consulting engagements.
What area of your business are you most passionate about?
I love to help businesses achieve their digital marketing goals, with a smile. I love to take the complexity of marketing and “just handle it.” I’m passionate about SEO, Google Ads, Bing Ads, social ads, e-commerce strategy and other facets of digital marketing.
What’s the most valuable thing you learned early in your career that has contributed to your success?
The word “no”. Don’t take no for an answer (from someone else). And always smile.
Learn how to say “no” to a client. Yes, not all things are right for all clients. And always smile.
How are you pivoting your business during the COVID-19 pandemic?
I’ve had a hybrid setup for a few years now – remote and in person. For me, it was completing an office and making it “my space” (which was done just in the nick of time!). COVID was more of a shift in being creative (thinking differently), working around the clock and reaching people on all channels.
What’s a recent project that you’ve worked on that you’re really excited about?
Right now I am doing a lot of website optimization in order to get better SEO performance. The problem with most websites is that they look great, but are slower than molasses. This negatively impacts the SEO (the site does not rank well) and also creates a poor user experience (you go elsewhere because it is so slow).
One of the largest pieces of work I was part of was Orkin.com. I was the SEO lead for the engagement. Two key areas where we achieved success was reducing the broken links down to a handful and speeding up the site by around 2-3 seconds (overall). Combined with some other optimizations, we saw an uptick in the number of indexed pages in Google. It was pure digital magic.
Are you a part of any freelancer communities? Which ones and how do they support you?
I’m part of many freelancer communities. I try to be active on Linkedin and also some Facebook groups. I’m part of We Are Rosie, UnCompany and Advisable. I’m always open to helping out people and providing advice. Most of the time I get called on for client pitches. When I get a client engagement, I check with my freelancer networks to see if the gig is something that they’re interested in.
What advice would you give other self-employed people?
Focus on your “one thing” and outsource everything else. For me, I’m not an expert in taxes and have outsourced that to the experts. That’s why I went with Collective.
How has forming an S Corp helped you level up your business?
The complexity of the back end business stuff always prevented me from doing it in the past. Working with Collective has enabled me to fly without worrying about things like this. To me, an S-Corp is just a tax vehicle to enable my business to do its thing.
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