SEO entrepreneur Joe Davies is sharing nuggets of wisdom about how to become a millionaire — now that he’s lovin’ his career path.
After years of working dead-end jobs, including at McDonald’s, Davies longed to make a name for himself — an aspiration he shared with his childhood friend, Joe Taylor.
“I didn’t go to university like I had originally planned as I got fed up with learning and I only wanted to make money,” Davies, 36, explained to Jam Press.
“[After leaving school], I worked mostly on building sites, delivering from factories to shops and flipping burgers in McDonald’s,” he continued. “I hated it, as I felt like I wasn’t doing anything important.”
Noticing that e-commerce was booming at the time, the UK native took a $125-per-week job as an IT apprentice, swiftly learning the ropes — including how to use search engine optimization to make money.
“At the company I was working for, I was asked to build a website and learned SEO on the job. This was the first time I had heard that word,” Davies shared. “I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it had elements of engineering, coupled with creativity and marketing, which really fed into my creative personality.”
Davies said he quickly figured out the business side at his next job, at an SEO agency.
When his employer sought a salesperson, Davies suggested Taylor.
“And the rest is history,” Davies said.
The two Joes would eventually earn millions.
Sitting across from each other at their desks, the pair decided to launch FATJOE.com in 2012, developing a system to score top client SEO results — which they say had not been done by another agency before.
They reportedly made their first million within two years.
“As kids, we dreamed of being rich and famous, with our own rock band,” recalled Davies, who still enjoys playing the guitar. “One out of two isn’t too bad.”
After realizing they made a great business team, the Joes quit their jobs in 2013 to give the business their all.
“We rented an office from Day 1 to make it ‘real,’ and at the start, we did everything ourselves. Me and Joe would be working up to 13 hours a day just to get everything done,” said Davies, who noted they built a large team of specialists and writers over time.
“We accidentally created this great solution, a service platform for agencies to outsource SEO services, that even our old agency uses today,” he added.
The $12.6 million company employs 100 people across the globe, and the client roster features 1,000 agencies, Jam Press reports.
Davies, who is an only child, was inspired by his entrepreneur dad, Mick, 60, who owns a first aid training company.
Davies says aspiring entrepreneurs need these three key traits — personal drive, curiosity, and a burning desire to make money.
“It’s cliche, but just starting something — do and build,” Davies advised. “A lot of the problem for me was procrastinating and thinking about the right time to start, in which there never is one.”
Don’t think too far ahead because plans can change, Davies also recommends, and there’s no such thing as “destiny.”
“It’s all about working hard and seeing where this takes you,” he declared.