Seven years ago, I started offering SEO services to businesses and professionals. Like many people, after a long process of retraining, without finding my place.
Training myself in a self-taught manner, with online courses, and above all practicing whenever I could, with every website that came my way.
Specialization came naturally. From my beginnings, I had heard a lot about personal branding, especially in marketing environments.
However, I believed back then that it was necessary to create a solid brand to support my work.
It was as if I needed a logo to be able to offer my professional services to the world.
Life is a continuum process of change and evolution. Our current version is an improved version of who we were yesterday.
Today I honestly ask myself: What does a solid brand mean?
I believe that insecurities, inexperience, and fear of exposure led me to create a brand as if it were a company selling candy on the street, or the fruit shop next to my house.
The professional world has changed tremendously in recent decades. Independent professionals (self-employed in Spain, freelance in the rest of the world) proliferate, generating a benefit for companies: Adaptability and flexibility in changing times.
Relationships change and it’s neither better nor worse—like everything, it has a range of gray nuances.
The process is unique for each person. There are no magic formulas, nor a single way to achieve it.
As Mago Moore says:
“Life removes prejudices from your head through blows of reality”
Superpowers of Success for Normal People – Mago Moore
You go through different stages; it’s not a simple process—sometimes saturation makes you want to abandon everything and find a single job that “takes away your headaches.”
But reality is always more complex.
Be that as it may, seven years ago, I was starting my thirties, and I felt it was necessary to create a brand as if it were an SEO agency. I called it Ku-SEO due to a series of Asian influences from the Soto Zen school.
I went through different logos, of course, “homemade” ones that surely, from a design standpoint, are full of errors, but they filled me with pride at the time.
They accompanied my invoices, my website, my social media. I wrote a blog for years under that umbrella that was born on WordPress.com and gradually migrated my content to my own hosting.
I went through a default WordPress theme I don’t even remember, Divi, and in its latest version for years now: Customizr.
I continued launching other “sub-products.”
Once you’re in the digital world, you have the “temptation” to launch websites more and more frequently and often without rhyme or reason, but at that moment, it makes sense to you.
It’s part of your journey. You make mistakes in many of them, but it’s rarely said out loud. I feel that in the digital world (as in the physical one), there’s still a need to highlight achievements and hide blunders.
From a blog in React in English to a podcast I’ve had abandoned since December 2020.
What did I learn?
What I’ve learned so far is don’t stop.
Keep going, evolving—someday we’ll connect the dots and the path will make more sense. For now, don’t stop; you never know what you’re doing and where its results will take you.
After years of losing money, making mistakes, getting it wrong a lot, I ask clients who have been with me for years:
— What’s my company called?
— You have a company? — I hire you, Wajari; I don’t even notice the rest.
And those who seek me out don’t do so because of Ku-SEO, or because of any kind of agency.
They seek me out for that “personal brand” I was hiding at the beginning under a logo and a striking red, because I had read something about colors and how stimulating red was, which I liked at the time.
So the personal brand is that omnipresent “entity” I’ve created over the years that accompanies me.
In my case, the differentiating factor came from birth through my name, a way of speaking quickly, and giving out candy at talks.
What motivates me? Seeking to be my best version every day.
Doing a “marketing analysis” of my trajectory, I’ve probably made many mistakes, but I’m still here, and years later I believe I deserve to have my own blog, to write honestly, without strategies.
Just publishing what I feel like, when I feel like it, sharing the things I’m learning in my projects.
Talking about books, crawls, technology, companies, WordPress, open source, people. About all these topics that motivate me so much and recharge my energy.
Me, without logos or brands, simply Wajari.
And today I can confirm that this personal brand is what matters most when you offer services. Just think about being honest, transparent, and professional.
Clients couldn’t care less about a logo or a brand; they want a person who is there, who accompanies them, who explains things to them, who helps them improve their businesses.
It was never about technical perfection, being the best in the world, or showing the greatest confidence.
It was simply and plainly about being a person, empathizing, and adding value. About communicating well.
And there are clients for everything—there will be some who prefer the “power” that an agency can offer them in terms of speed of results or resources; those wouldn’t seek me out.
When they seek me out, they do so because they want that artisanal and close service that we independent professionals can offer (which doesn’t mean alone).
So continuing the tradition of website changes, I’m abandoning my CSS and HTML website that served me for years as a contact page and launching a new website and blog, without pretensions, just being myself.
I take this opportunity to thank infinitely Celso Paz, a great colleague and creative photographer I met while teaching SEO classes at the University of Vigo and who gave me these incredible studio photos under the pretext of his master’s final project.
And of course Ana Maffer, his partner and canine advisor who helped us (and cheered us up) a lot throughout the entire process.
As I said, you never know what will come your way, so, as Ángel Martín says: “Do things.”
