Candour

How to build a digital marketing agency as a BIPOC individual with Jamar Ramos

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Show notes

In this week's episode, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by digital marketing extraordinaire Jamar Ramos. Jamar joins Jack to discuss:

  • Why you should be watching All Elite Wrestling (yes, they talk about professional wrestling for a few minutes...)
  • Jamar's transition from creative writing to digital marketing
  • How much does representation matter in digital marketing?
  • What is it like being a BIPOC founder of a marketing agency?
  • What can people in positions of management do better to support POC?

Links:

Transcript:

Jack: Welcome to Episode 43 of The Search with Candour Podcast. My name is Jack Chambers-Ward, and this week, I am joined by the most quotable man alive, Black Shakespeare himself, the one, the only Jamar Ramos. Jamar is going to be joining me this week to talk about his journey as a person of colour all across the digital marketing industry in various different ways and specifically focusing on about how he built a digital marketing agency as a person of colour himself. And we'll get into a lot of detail about Jamar's experiences as he developed in the industry and basically his experiences running an agency as a person of colour in the US as well and basically what we can do better in the industry to help build, grow and highlight people of colour and give them the opportunities that perhaps they've not experienced in the past. But I'll let Jamar talk about that.

Before I get onto the interview, you may hear a slight difference in my voice. I currently have COVID-19. You can probably hear the croakiness in my voice right now. My throat is pretty sore, so apologies for this. My voice is not like this for the rest of the episode. We recorded this a few weeks ago and I was much healthier, so you will only hear this croaky voice for the first couple minutes of the podcast, I promised.

SISTRIX:

As I said before we get onto my conversation with the one and only Jamar Ramos, give a little shout out to the fantastic sponsor of this podcast and that is, of course, the one and only SISTRIX and SISTRIX have supported us all year. We're coming up on one year of me joining the show and SISTRIX supporting us as well all throughout season two.

So thank you for your incredible support, SISTRIX. I know Steve and the data journalism team there have been fantastic to work with and we'll be working with them a lot closer in the New Year as well. We've got some big, big plans to do some more team up stuff and basically expand a lot of what we've been doing already and build out some new shows and basically collaborate with them a lot more and hopefully bring you some really, really interesting data and some really interesting content in the process as well. And if you'd like to go and check out some of SISTRIX's fantastic free tools, you can go to sistrix.com/swc. There, you can check out your site's visibility index. That is their patented and pretty fantastic way to gauge your site's visibility as a whole. It brings in a lot of different factors. There is a full explanation of the calculation that goes into the visibility index and I found it really useful for some of my clients recently since we've been working with SISTRIX and since I've been using the tool myself to really dive into competitor analysis and all that kind of stuff. And SISTRIX are bringing out some fantastic new features. We have a brilliant compare domain which is a really interesting little kind of snapshot you can get where you are against your competitors that has just been released recently and they're constantly adding new features.

But like I said, if you go to sistrix.com/swc, you can check your visibility index for free. You get a free page speed analysis. You can create rich snippets for videos. You can generate and validate your hreflangs and there is the Google update radar which will basically lay out the recent Google updates over the last 12 months and you can get an idea of how that has affected your visibility for your sites that you are working on. You can also go to sistrix.com/trends for TrendWatch. That is their monthly newsletter, talking about the latest trends both what has been happening and what is coming up in digital marketing. A lot of really interesting ecommerce stuff going on there that I think can be really helpful for people in those industries and in those niches, getting an idea of what is going to be trending in the not too distant future.

And speaking of glimpses into industries and things, SectorWatch and IndexWatch, which you can get on the SISTRIX blog by going to sistrix.com/blog are really, really interesting as well and something I've covered a couple times. I know the most recent IndexWatch was written by Luce Rawlings who we had on the show before. We did a big deep dive into the UK visibility winners and losers for essentially the entire year and talked about a big ecommerce analysis, this amazing analysis of all this huge data essentially from SISTRIX. And Luce was a fantastic guest and it was really interesting to get to pick her brain and discuss that. So if you hadn't listened to that episode, the link for that will be in the show notes. So go and listen to my episode with Luce Rawlings from a few months ago and Luce has got an update for the visibility winners and losers for Q3 of 2022. So the most recent update essentially from the latest quarter, Luce dives into that, both winners and losers, some interesting spam stuff. My heart broke when I saw that Miniclip is now not a thing and dying because I remember playing lots of stupid flash games on that back in the 2000s.

And another piece that I really, really like is Charlie Williams' SectorWatch, another one of the data journalists over at SISTRIX. Charlie takes a snapshot and basically dives into really high-performing content and examples from both a transactional or a do intent and an informational which is a no intent. And what Charlie does is really interesting. If you do have a client or a website that is in one of these niches that Charlie is analyzing, this is a perfect way to get an idea of those really, really high-performing content examples. And it's brilliant to kind of dive into that without having to dig around all the data. Charlie has essentially done the work for you. And I always really appreciate where Charlie dives into essentially what works and what doesn't work and what has worked for big, big people that are essentially the leading 25 domains for this particular thing.

And for the most recent SectorWatch at the end of October, Charlie is diving into coats. It's getting colder, right? So diving into a bit of coats and winter jackets and all that kind of stuff and Charlie breaks down basically what the top three domains for transactional stuff. So places like Next and Amazon and Asos here in the UK and then the informational intent, places like Outdoor Gear Lab, Cosmopolitan and Esquire. And then Charlie basically breaks down, like I said, the top 25 domains for both of those intents and does a deep dive into the content and why some of it is working so well. So if you do have any interest in selling coats or winter jackets or you have a client that is in that niche, I highly recommend you go and check out SectorWatch, the latest one on the SISTRIX blog written by Charlie Williams. As always, all the links for this will be in the show notes at search.withcandour.co.uk.

Interview with Jamar Ramos

Jack: Without any further ado, welcome to the show, Jamar Ramos. How are you?

Jamar: I am doing well, my man. How are you?

Jack: I'm good. Thank you, man. Thank you very much for asking. I appreciate that as the guest asking the host back again and asking how I am. It's always a sign of a good-

Jamar: I'm actually genuinely caring and wanting to hear how you're doing.

Jack: There you go. I couldn't ask for anything better from a podcast guest right there. You're off to a good start, mate.

Jamar: Pew-pew.

Jack: So if the listeners aren't familiar with you and your work in the SEO world, please do give a little intro of where they might know you from and what you've been up to for the last what, 13, 14 years, something like that in your career.

Jamar: Yeah, so I am Jamar Ramos. You might recognise me from such podcasts as Dreading Sundays with Daniel K. Cheung.

Jack: Shout out to Daniel.

Jamar: Shout out to Daniel. The man. SEO Rant with Mordy Oberstein.

Jack: Shout out to Mordy as well.

Jamar: He is-

Jack: He's the best.

Jamar: He is a trip. He's a unique individual and I'd love him for all of his uniqueness and I hope he never changes unless it's to get weirder and more uniquer. It's not a word. I made it up. You can't take it.

Jack: I know Mordy listens to the show. So Mordy, get weirder. That's the message coming from me & Jamar.

Jamar: And if you don't get weirder, we're coming after you, brother.

Jack: We'll see you at a con, force you to get weirder.

Jamar: Also recognise me if you follow me on Twitter @JamRam33 from all of my non-SEO digital marketing tweets. I figure there's enough people like the wonderful Lily Ray, Amanda Jordan, Kim Doughty who tweet about amazing SEO things. I'd like to tweet about other things that I feel that my other expertise and life experience can help out with.

Jack: I know you and I cross over with the interest in wrestling, so I always appreciate your inputs on wrestling and stuff. I'm wearing my spinoff CM Punk shirt as we speak, so-

Jamar: I was looking at it and I'm loving it so much, man. I tell people, if it wasn't for wrestling, I would not have become a writer. I would not be because of that in digital marketing. So wrestling, just because it's scripted doesn't mean it doesn't affect and change lives. It doesn't mean that it doesn't impact people in a very, very heavy way. So anyone listening, if you're not into wrestling or you made fun of people who like wrestling, you never know who those nerds out there whose lives is changing.

Jack: So before we get onto, you tease the little start of your career that we'll get onto that in a second, but first of all, who's your favorite wrestler? Let's get into some wrestling chat. I never get to do this on either of my podcasts. I used to do a wrestling show, but it didn't last very long. So what's the kind of wrestling we should be watching right now? What you into? What should the listeners be watching if they want to get into wrestling in 2022?

Jamar: I really, really love AEW because I love the fact that the storytelling is so wide open. I love the fact that different styles of wrestling, whether you like your lucha libre, whether you like your stardom-style joshi wrestling, whether you like good midcard wrestling, whether you like top-tier high-card wrestling, like all wrestlers. The fact that Danhausen, Orange Cassidy and Chris Jericho can all be housed within the same company, I love that. I'm not a huge Danhausen fan. I don't get it, but I love it for the people who do get it and enjoy it. It should be big tent. This is for entertainment. So why do we, Jim Cornett, want one style of wrestling? Why do we want it to just be FTR-style wrestling? That's good. That's fun. If everyone did that, I would be bored out of my mind.

Jack: I agree. I agree. I'm worried we are going to just spin off into a half-hour chat about wrestling, so I don't want to hold on that for too long because I know probably 99% of the listeners couldn't care less, but-

Jamar: Oh, they've turned off already.

Jack: Exactly, yeah. I couldn't help but ask. It's such a rare opportunity I get to talk to a fellow AEW fan, so yeah, I had to take the opportunity there. Sorry, listeners who don't care about wrestling.

Jamar: Well, see, now, you've got to have me on and we can have a DLC episode where we just nerd out about wrestling.

Jack: Oh yes. Oh, we should do, if we had bonus content and stuff like that, that would be amazing.

Jamar: Oh my god, did we just become best friends? Yup.

Jack: SEO Wrestling, bam, we've done it. But you mentioned how wrestling influenced the start of your career and you started off in writing. What, you have a degree in writing, is that I'm correct in thinking that?

Jamar: Degree in creative writing, yes, sir, from San Francisco State University.

Jack: Awesome. So how does a guy with a creative writing degree from San Francisco University end up going to work in digital marketing? What's the journey you went on that? I think that's quite common for a lot of people to start off in the content side of things, but knowing the little bit of information I do know about your journey founding a company and all that kind of stuff, how was that journey for you over the last decade or so transitioning from writer to director and head of SEO and all that kind of thing?

Jamar: Well, I graduated in 2012 with my degree and I went there because I wanted to be the next Shakespeare. I wanted to write. I wanted to make my money off of my passion.

Jack: I nearly introed you as Black Shakespeare because that's how you introduced yourself on Dan's show.

Jamar: Black Shakespeare, baby, but I-

Jack: When I record the intro, that's what I'm going to-

Jamar: Yes, yes, the synergies. So I did that and then I realised, because that was really when people were starting to do the whole vanity press stuff where they were producing their own thing, selling it through Amazon, selling it through small bookstores, even selling it online through their own websites and that's a great thing in my mind. But also it dilutes where you have a lot of people out there writing their own stuff. And so just like the streaming wars where we have content galore now and there's so much good content out there, but the thing about it is there's also a lot of bad content out there because you have so much that needs to fill the airways, fill our screens, fill our small screens, our computers, our laptops and everything.

So you've got all this stuff out there and I realised, "Oh well, it's going to make it much harder for me to find fulfillment and a steady paycheck with this, so I better find an actual real big boy job." And so I started looking around and I found this company where they said they wanted people who had editing and writing skills and also SEO. I didn't know what SEO was. So a little quick Google search which find out that I accidentally SEO'd while learning about SEO and I started reading up about it. I'm like, "Okay, I can do high-level stuff. I can go in there and tell them the truth, 'I researched this, I don't know anything about it, but I can learn. But I've got all of these writing and editing skills, so if you'll be willing to take that on and teach me this other thing, we can make this happen.'"

And they bought it, hook, line and sinker, got the job and that's where my journey started. And I realised, "Wow, while it's not writing, there's components of writing that I can add." There's communication that needs to be done, which isn't necessarily written, but verbal communication is writing, is telling the story is being able to say, "Okay, I've got all this data that I pulled from Adobe Analytics, from Google Search Console, from your website data. What's the story here?" And because I know how to tell a story, that made it much easier to have someone teach me how to read the data, how to understand what's going on, what two, three, four things could be impacting the data, making it go up, making it go down and then learning how to turn that into stories and actionable items while also teaching clients because not every client is going to have all of the marketing expertise.

Even if you're talking to the CMO of a company, they may not have been a marketer, they might have been something else and moved on to that. So they just want high-level stuff, "How do I translate all of these learnings, these findings as data into the KPIs they need to make quick actions to understand, to then roll that up to the next person they have to report to?" All of that for me is writing. And if you do it creatively, that's when you get the clients who want to stay with you because they're like, "Okay, not only does this person understand the data, they tell it to me and give it to me in a way that I can quickly understand it and just take that snapshot they gave me and give it to everyone else to quickly understand what's going with this.

Jack: I think that's such a huge thing and we've talked about it a couple of times on the show, I touched on it with Chloe Smith, I touched on it with Tom Critchlow, having those, somebody call them like soft skills, those communication skills in SEO could be so key, especially if you're client facing or if you're inhouse and you are, like you said, reporting to the marketing manager or the director, whoever it is and they don't necessarily have that technical knowledge or the SEO knowledge or whatever it is. Being able to convey that in a way that basically anybody can understand is such a key factor in communicating what we do to other people outside of the industry. And I think you're totally right, having that story-driven theory behind it can be such a huge factor and taking numbers and meaning like, "Oh, this number actually means this thing. Where this has gone here, this actually means this thing," is telling a story. It's a weird way of thinking about it. Like you read, like you said, a search console report or an analytics report and it's just a bunch of graphs and numbers, but it tells a story of the work or lack thereof in some cases that's been going on on the site or the terrible work you have to try and fix that other people have done in some cases. But yeah, I think that that's really interesting. I have a similar approach that came from ... I originally have an astrophysics degree.

Jamar: Oh wow.

Jack: I know, right?

Jamar: A literal rocket scientist I'm talking to.

Jack: Yeah, exactly. And then I became more of like pop culture journalist, ended up writing comic books and stuff like that. So ...

Jamar: It's awesome.

Jack: ... not quite the same level as you but a similar kind of thing there. And then-

Jamar: Comic books are my friend, Don't degrade them. Don't degrade your experience. Comic books are lovely. Watchmen is one of the greatest books out there, still to this day. It is always on the top 100. It is a piece and work of art. If I can go ... I was just at SFMOMA a couple of weeks ago with my girlfriend and we saw a triptych. It was three white panels, nothing drawn. If that can be up in SFMOMA, so can a comic book.

Jack: I totally agree. I totally agree. But yes, we should probably get onto the topic ...

Jamar: We should.

Jack: ... because we could talk about wrestling and comics all day long and I'd love every second of it, but that's not what the listeners are here for. So you brought a topic to me and it was a pretty instantaneous, I was like, "Oh hey, Jamar, thanks for reaching out. I'd love you to come on the show. What's the topic you want to tackle?" And you instantly went, "How to build a digital marketing agency as a BIPOC individual." Straight away, I'm like, "Okay, cool." And me, as I've talked about on the show before, I am a straight white dude, like middleclass British guy. I'm fascinated to talk to individuals like yourself who have this experience that I don't have, so you can educate me and the listeners and we can understand a different perspective in the industry.

It's something I touched on a lot with when I talked about intersectionality with Chloe and we're talking about how companies can do a better job of representing so many different sides, whether that's people of colour, whether it's different genders, different sexualities, all this kind of stuff. So correct me if I'm wrong here, Jamar, you are a person of colour. That's safe to say, right?

Jamar: It's safe to say, I don't know if there's a video component to this, but if you guys can't see me, I'm blackity black y'all.

Jack: Jamar is as black as I am white, so-

Jamar: Exactly.

Jack: So I guess I want to start off with, why was this the topic you wanted to bring to the show? Why is it something you're passionate about and why you want to bring it to the table? Jamar: I think that a lot of things get conflated when people like me talk about their experiences. When I tell stories, a lot of people tune out or they think that I'm just playing the victim and it's like, "No, while I have been a victim of these microaggressions, I'm not telling you because I want something back. I don't want reparations from these people from these experience. I want people to hear, learn and understand what I've gone through just living my life as me." These, like I didn't before I was born, go to God and say, "Hey, I want to go ahead and check off these boxes of things that I want that are going to put me behind the eight ball of society." This is just who I am and how I was born. The way people then look at me and then decide to treat me is a problem and an experience. And I want people to start seeing these things because other people might hesitate and say, "Oh my god, I've never seen that. I've never heard that. Let me start watching out for that and become allies," or other people like me who's experienced that can say they're not alone and they can hear my experiences, how I've dealt with it, how I've both internalised it, how I've been able to talk about it and use it to fuel other things that I've done. So in the article we're probably going to talk about, I have a line in there where I talk about paraphrasing, there's a line from a Jay-Z song, "Hov did that. So hopefully you won't have to go through that."

Hearing my experiences, maybe it will stop you from letting these things go by as I've had to in the past or because you hear one of the things that I talk about say, "Hey, if I ever run into this, this is how I will be able to handle it," or people who want to be allies can say, "Hey, if I see this at work, this is how I can step in." Because not all people want to or need to or desire to or have that ability to defend themselves. They are shy or they don't want to speak up or they have a fear of, "Well, if I speak up as a person of colour, as a woman, as a gay individual in this company, it's easier for someone to single me out and push me to the side."

So if we have allies who have a bigger voice, who have broader shoulders, who want to step up, that's also where I want to be able to provide a voice to say, "Hey, no matter who you are, here's things to look out for. Here's ways that you can help," whether it be you're a hiring manager, you want to hire more people of colour, more BIPOC and all that stuff or you're someone within the company who says, "Hey, I have a friend. I always see them getting passed over for promotions even though they're one of the smartest people in the company. How can I help that friend out because no matter what they're doing, they can't seem to help themselves out?"

All of these experiences, we can all be better with everyone as long as we're willing to listen and learn. And I hope that appearances like this, being able to talk to individuals like yourself, people who hear this, they're just willing to sit down, and for however long we talk, listen and learn from these experiences.

Jack: Yeah, that's exactly my intent. And when I originally put out that tweet and made sure I wanted to bring a highlight and shine a light on people in the LGBTQ community, people of colour, people who have been underrepresented on SEO podcasts and I know, again, we mentioned with Mordy, we've mentioned Daniel Cheung, people like that are also doing fantastic work in the SEO podcast community to highlight voices that often go underrepresented. And I'm trying to do my little bit and pull my weight in there as well and try and do something. Because as much as I hate to admit it, this is a platform. I am a guy with a platform, so why not use it to do some good, right? So yeah, I think you're totally right that hopefully this will influence some listeners who maybe have, I'm thinking about starting their own company or starting their own agency and can learn from your experiences. And I know I'm certainly going to learn a lot from this episode, having never started an agency and not being a person of colour, I'm going to learn a lot, so I'm learning both sides. And you mentioned the article, I picked out an article you wrote, I think it was about 18 months ago now on Search Engine Land, talking about basically that whole process of starting your own company and feeling like you're ready to go out and start your own business, right? So what was that process for you going out, like you said, working in agencies previously and that leap going towards doing it yourself and how do you think your experience as a person of colour affected that process as well?

Jamar: It was, again, another happy accident. I worked at an agency with a friend of mine and we were just supremely unhappy. And so in order to get through the unhappiness, we had what we called our bible where every time we had an idea and we said, "Hey, this is how if we ever start an agency, we would run it. This is the things that would be important to us. Here's the bill of rights. Here's all these changes we would want to make to make the agency that we would want to work in." And he ended up leaving the agency and a couple months later, I did and he started his own thing. It was like, "Hey, I want you to come in. I want you to do a little bit of work and help me out." And I was like, "Cool." And then it became our own thing. And this whole bible that we had been filling up with these hopes and dreams and, "Oh, down the line in five, 10, 15 years when we're ready," it helped us be ready in a couple of months from when we had started it. So for me, it's always do the research, always in the beginning, just like your keyword research, your competitive set. You're looking at what you want to do when it comes to paid ads. All that stuff, there's always, "Before you launch, you do your research. Before you launch a company, you got to do your research, what niches you're going to go into, who you're going to work with, if you're going to have partners, how you're going to fund it. Are you going to go out and try and get a loan? Are you going to go to VCs or are you going to self-fund and do a friends and family, 'Hey, can you give me 5, 10, 15 bucks and put it in the swear jar to get me starting everything?'"

And also to research on yourself, is this something you want? Because starting your own company is not for everyone and I don't mean that in a demeaning way. It's a lot of work. As we were joking before we started this, I'm no longer with my agency and this is the first real vacation I've been able to take in three plus years without having to work on it, without having to do something, without having to answer emails or send an updated invoice or answer questions from an upset client. This is the first time. So that's not something everyone should do because some people like to have that quiet time. They don't want to participate in the hustle or be a part of hustle culture and starting your own company is nothing if not being a part of hustle culture.

Jack: Yeah, absolutely. I think I definitely fall into the other category of, "I need time to chill out and play video games and watch wrestling."

Jamar: Yeah, and that's good to know about yourself because a lot of people will tell you like, "Oh well, if you want to have real freedom and real income, you got to start your own thing." No, you can make your own path. If starting something is what you want to do, go forth and prosper. But if you want to work for people, be a good second in command, be the person that person counts on, that's also a viable option for you. And people shouldn't have to do either/or. They should really know what they want and then strive for that and figure out, "Okay, a little bit down the line, have I changed? Do I want to do this now? Do I have the experience I feel? Am I more comfortable with this idea?" because you can always start your own thing later, but if you start something now and it crashes and burns, that could have a supremely deleterious effect on you, your financials and even your drive to want to be in digital marketing. So I don't want anyone to think I'm proselytizing, "This is the thing for everyone." It's like, "No. Again, listen and learn from my experience. If it sounds cool, go forth and do it. If not, please back away from it and do what makes you happy."

Jack: Yeah, absolutely. And something you briefly touched on there, we're talking about niches and understanding where you want to go with that, that initial jumping, the jumping on point, the startup point of your agency. Do you think that's essential for an agency in this day and age? Now, we're in ... Obviously, you started a few years ago, but if somebody was thinking of starting an agency in 2022, do you think starting it with a particular niche or a particular industry in mind is essential?

Jamar: I think it's good because it allows you to have what I call a fishing net. You cast it out there, you see what comes in because you know, "Okay, I'm going to go to this fishing hole." When you wake up in the morning to go fish, it goes like, "Now, I'm going to drive around until I find a lake." It's, "I'm going to go to this place because they've got the kind of fish I like and I've had success there before." So when we were leaving our agency, we had worked at an agency that 80% of their clients were in hospitality, so we had that fresh experience. So leaving there, we were like, "Okay, we're going to focus first on getting hospitality clients because that's where we know, that's where we have connections. Then we'll build from there."

But accidentally, we found that we were getting more FinTech and MedTech clients, so we made a complete shift over to that and said, "Okay, well, we thought we were going to go after X, but in going after X, we found that we really got Y and Z clients. Let's shift over to focus on getting those clients now because we see that these are not going to be viable for us." So it always helps to start off with an idea where you want to start your starting point and then go from there. Just like if you're working with a startup, you want to do persona exercises. You want to figure out, "Okay, who are their ideal clients? Where are they going?" And then you collect that data and say, "Okay, we thought we were going after people who were homemakers, but all of a sudden, we figure out like, 'Oh, our ideal client are weekend sports warriors. So now we have to shift our marketing over to that because that's who wants our products.'" So always have a starting point, but again, shift according to the data and what story the people who are interested in your products, your services, your expertise are telling you.

Jack: And do you think being a person of colour can affect that if you want to specifically target black-led communities or black-led companies and stuff like that? Do you think that's a viable option in 2022?

Jamar: I think it gets you in the door. There's a difference between if my former co-founders who are both white men were trying to say, "Hey, underserved communities, I'm here to help you," where there might be a little bit of sideways looking from those communities to say, "Okay, two white men, is"-

Jack: It's a bit white saviour, right?

Jamar: Yeah.

Jack: You come in there like, "I can help you guys because I can save the day."

Jamar: It's Rudyard Kipling's The White Man's Burden. And we know that's not necessarily. Yes, maybe you might really be there to help, but maybe not. You might be wanting to take advantage. So there's certain doors that open for me, but there's a lot more that are closed because of, again, who I am, what I look like and how I speak. If I don't have perfect king's English, people think that that is indicative of my intelligence when it's, "No, I have a college degree. I can speak like this because I can speak this." Going back to Shakespeare, Shakespeare decided how he was going to write. Shakespeare invented 6,000 new words. Shakespeare invented the, "I'm going to take this letter out. I'm going to put an apostrophe here because I want this to fit into iambic pentameter and that's the only way that I know how." So if it was good enough for The Bard, it's good enough for me.

Jack: You bust out the word deleterious earlier. Don't you think people would be questioning your vocabulary at this point?

Jamar: You see, sometimes you got to pepper it in to be like, "Hey, hey, hey." It's just like, "I'm as smart as you think."

Jack: Just letting you know I'm here, just letting them know at this level.

Jamar: Yeah.

Jack: So you mentioned you think some doors are closed to you because you are how you look and how you speak and how you act and all that kind of stuff. Have you ever experienced that kind of directly from clients at all when you were in that kind of process running your own agency and you would have that, I don't know, the initial call or the initial email and they have this reaction to you as a person of colour?

Jamar: Oh goodness, yes. The number of times I've been asked, "And what do you do for the company?" as if I'm the secretary or the help. It's, "Well, it's in my email signature. I'm also pictured on the website and you didn't ask the two white men on the call what they do for the company. You just assume that they were important. So why is it that I need to explain myself?" or again, having to tell the story of people and, "Why should we believe you?" "Well, because I have the expertise and knowledge backed up by these pretty graphs that I've just given you in this PowerPoint presentation," but go off I guess about who I am. At first, it was annoying and I didn't want to join sales calls, but then I realised, "No, this is a great chance for me to make these people uncomfortable and for them to change their minds." We were on a call with another vendor who was working with the client and she had this beautiful chocolate Labrador, beautiful brown fur and everything and she made an off-colour joke about how she was worried when she would leave home and the windows would be open that her neighbors would see her brown-haired dog and call the cops. And there was just silence on the call. Ma'am, that's not funny ..."

Jack: Oh god.

Jamar: "... at all." And even if you thought it was funny, read the room and understand that this guy is not going to find that funny at all because that's a serious problem for people who look like me.

Jack: I know we're not on video for this podcast, but my toes just curled up. Just you saying that sentence like, "Oh, I got passive cringe just from that." Oh Jesus Christ.

Jamar: Yeah, and it's these moments, again, going back to microaggression, these little things where someone like you may not experience them, but again, I'm not talking about my experience to say, "Oh, woe is me," and everything, but it's these moments that have shaped my attitude about things, that have shaped the things that I'm doing, that are the reasons why I come on podcasts like this and I talk about the topics I do. It's not because I think BIPOC people are more important. I think our experiences need to be heard, just so we can get to the level of equality, so we no longer have to answer the, "Well, what do you do for the company?" or, "How important are you?" "If I'm on this call, I'm very important, so just take my expertise right off the bat as you would other people who look like you."

Jack: Yeah, absolutely. I think that's that kind of the misconstrued message, a lot of terrible, horrible people that understood from the Black Lives Matter Movement where they were like, "Oh, that means that only black lives matter and you're trying to elevate yourselves above us." "No, it's about equality you idiots." It's like, "It's about we are not afforded the same things that so many other people are who are the majority and who do get all the voices and all the representation and all that kind of stuff are basically as default in our society. And that was about just, 'Give us a little opportunity to build that quality,' right?" And I think there was such a huge horrible political message from so many Republicans in the US and conservatives here in the UK. A nd we won't go hugely into politics, we're going to touch on it obviously because of the topic, but yeah, I can totally see what you mean that that kind of people just assume, "Oh yeah, you must be the manager or the junior person or whatever." You can't possibly ... I can't imagine that happening to, as you said, your two cofounders being white guys sat next to you. Nobody asks a question, nobody says anything. What are other kind of common hurdles, I guess, that people of colour experience that someone like me would just take for granted in that case?

Jamar: Well, going back to how you start funding like, "How are you going to fund? Because if I had gone this alone, how am I going to get the money to start this? How am I going to be able to pay for myself as I'm finding clients to eventually pay for me?" So luckily, when we started this, we were self-funded. When Jack and I both left our agency, we had saved up enough where for the first couple months we could not be paid. So the first three months, when we started Crunchy Links, I didn't take any pay. I just lived off my savings until we had enough where it's like, "Okay, we have enough paying clients that can start paying us a living wage."

So it's hard for, again, people of colour, women, to go to venture capitalists and get some funding. It's hard to go get bank loans because we don't look like a stable investment. But we don't look like a stable investment because we just don't look like other people who have been stable investments. "If WeWork homie can crash WeWork and then go out and get another 300 million for his next thing after defrauding people, why is that a better bet than someone who looks like me who has good credit, never defrauded anyone because I would be underneath the jail if I did? I'm a good investment, but I can't go out and get that same funding."

And then again, going back to hustle culture, those people will tell you, "Oh, just go talk to your friends and family. Get them to loan you money." I don't know who your friends and family are, but the people I grew ... I'm the first person in my family with the college degree. How many of my family do you think I'm going to go and again get more than $5or $10 to get a bag of chips from the coroner store? I can't get that sort of funding. So anything I do is probably going to be bootstrapped. So that means I've got to work at a full-time job, save or work a full-time job and make my agency that I'm building up a part-time thing until I can make that transition. So I've got 40-plus-hour week job and another 20, 25, 30-hour week job that I'm trying to build up. Then I have no rest. I'm not good for either job and I crash and burn at both trying to fund one thing to get away from another."

Again, these are just stories of the things, the obstacles there that a lot of people wouldn't see it. Again, not victimizing, not saying, "Oh, woe is me," but it's like, "These are the hurdles I've had to leap over and I'm not a very good jumper."

Jack: You and I share that. I'm not the most athletic dude. That's for sure.

Jamar: Gravity, I feel is on 2x for me rather than 1x for others.

Jack: I think that's a really interesting point. And for the listeners who can't see Jamar, you also have tattoos and stuff as well?

Jamar: Yes, I do.

Jack: I'm hoping to get my first tattoo very soon.

Jamar: Yes.

Jack: I tried to book it in for my birthday the other day, but I missed the opportunity unfortunately. But my wife is covered in tattoos and I've been waiting a long time to do it, but even little things like that, I can see here, you've got hand tattoos and a lot of people ... I've heard so many things and stories from our friends, even not people of colour, just people with tattoos like, "Oh, make sure you get stuff you can cover up. Make sure it's on your forearm or your shoulder so you can wear a long sleeve shirt. You're not going to be able to work in a bank ever again if you get hand tattoos," all that kind of stuff. And it's little stories like that that have resonated with me over the years, again being basically as privileged as I can possibly be. Granted I'm working class, but my parents gave me every opportunity essentially growing up. So I can't argue there really.

And something, a friend of mine whose parents are from Jamaica, he's born here in England, but he's of Jamaican heritage and he talked about how his dad specifically gave him an English-sounding name rather than a Jamaican-sounding name, so he wouldn't get judged instantly for things on your resume, on your CV and stuff like that. The fact that my name is Jack Chambers, that is about as white as a name as you can possibly get. That's like white bread. Now I'm married, obviously double-barreled, Chambers-Ward, slightly more interesting, but still nothing interesting there. But yeah, my friend, that was something that hadn't even occurred to me. And even his surname comes from slave owners. He has a Scottish surname beginning with like Mac something. And I was like, "Oh my god."

We had this conversation a few years ago. Knowing the guy for a decade at that point, I was like, "Oh yeah, that's such a small thing that would never occur to me. My name is my name, whatever." And it was like, no, there were conscious decisions that families have to make to, like you said, give them that opportunity, get their foot in the door so you can have that conversation with the bank who's going to loan you money to start your company or the client that's going to be your next big break or whatever it is. The fact that so little things like that, something that should not define you at all, your name is such a small part of your personality.

Jamar: Yeah, and my first name is five letters, easy to pronounce, and the number of people who cannot pronounce it, but they can pronounce former Duke College coach Mike Krzyzewski's last name. If you can pronounce Kryzzewski as crazy as it is spelled, you can pronounce Jamar. It's not that hard. It's just that my name looks, sounds exotic and you can't be bothered with it. It doesn't fit into your ... That's why when people tell black people, "Oh, you shouldn't name your child such weird names." Well, white actor, Jason Lee, named his child Pilot Inspektor. So if Pilot Inspektor is cool or what is it, Gwyneth Paltrow named her child Apple?

Jack: Apple, yeah, yeah.

Jamar: If Apple is good, Jamar is lovely.

Jack: I'd pick Jamar over Apple any day of the week, just for the record.

Jamar: Now that we're talking about apples, I'm getting hungry.

Jack: So I guess thinking about you as a company founder and as a director of the company and as part of senior management, what was that process like for you as part of growing that company? Were there conscious decisions there to bring representation into the other parts of the company as well? And how do you think that affects people who are then getting hired themselves? So maybe I go for an interview and you own the agency and I'm a person of colour and I see myself represented as the director or the owner of the company or whatever the title is, how important that is, do you think, for people wanting to start their careers and seeing that representation in senior management?

Jamar: It's supremely important. Part of the reason I never have thought that starting an agency was for me is because I didn't see me in other agency founders. I didn't see me in senior leadership. Everywhere I went, it was always white men, occasionally a white woman but mostly white men. So if that's all I see, then I see that there's a ceiling and a level that I get to go to. And even when there was a person of coluor or a minority in a leadership, you could see that because they were the one and only. They made themselves smaller. They could never be bigger ...

Jack: Right.

Jamar: ... than anyone else on the leadership exec team. They were there as a token. They were there just to say, "Hey, look how open minded we are about who we put on our exec staff." "Well, are you really that open minded or did you just get a token to put there so you could say that you're open minded?" So I, as much as it may have cost us people on our Twitter account, on our website, I leaned into being black. I leaned into it. Every article I wrote is exactly the same way that I would talk to someone because it's important for people to see, hear people who look like them, people who look like their friends, their family to say, "Hey, this person did it," and also for me to come on podcasts like this and tell this story, so people can hear.

It wasn't all cakes and ice cream for me to build this and it still isn't. I've got 10 years in digital marketing, three plus as an agency owner. It still isn't going to be easy for me to find my next thing, for me to get hired in a company because again, who I am, my experiences and these things I put out there in the Twitter sphere, on the blog, but I don't care because I'd rather be rejected for who I am than be accepted for someone I'm not. And I spent years doing that and it led to supreme imposter syndrome like, "You don't like who I am. You don't like the person you told me you wanted me to be. You just don't like me. I'm unlikable. I'm doing something wrong."

The pathway to imposter syndrome is people making you feel as if the problem is you when the problem is the way that they want to interact with you. It's when women speak up, "Oh, she's a B word. Oh, she's pushy. Oh, she just wants her way," except I've seen men talk over interrupt, throw temper tantrums in meetings and it's-

Jack: So have I.

Jamar: "That's leader man. That's leadership." Like, "No, no. Why is it that when we'll see two different sports players act the same way, a black one is a diva, the white one is leader in just trying to fire their team up?" "No, he's just mother-bleeping his teammates, just the same way this other guy is." It's the same thing. It's gross behavior, but we're willing to either accept it from certain people and not accept it from others, and to me, that is acceptable. If the behavior is unacceptable, it's unacceptable from everyone. If it's leadership qualities, then it's leadership qualities from everyone. That woman is not bossy. That woman is a boss. She sees something wrong and she wants it fixed and she has a solution for it. Maybe stop flapping your gums, open your ears and listen because that could be a million dollar idea. You just shut down because she doesn't look like the people who you want to listen to. That's disgusting behavior and we should not do that. We should make everyone with good ideas feel welcome. So again, putting myself out there because I've got broadened up shoulders. I'll take all the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Black Shakespeare, everyone, to make sure that other people can stand behind me, can stand on my shoulders, can be better than me because I cleared that pathway. It's not a martyr thing. It's, "I can do this, so I should do this, so other people don't have to."

Jack: Yeah, absolutely. And I think you touched on tokenism there and I think that's such a key thing when we talk about representation. Like I said, I talked about it a lot when I talked to Chloe and I referenced an episode of the SEO Rant, already shouted out Mordy, but when he had Azeem from Azeem Digital, the last, that podcast on there as well, Azeem, as a guy of colour, he was talking about his experiences as well and being like he would often represent the entirety of non-white people being the only guy speaking at a conference. And you'll often get these old guard kind of setups where it's like, "Ah, it's all the old-school SEO dudes and they have one person of colour who's their friend," and "Oh, that person was sick or busy that year," and suddenly the entire lineup of the conference is white dudes. You're like, "Huh? Interesting. What a coincidence."

Jamar: Yeah, yeah. I get people who will reach out and say, "Oh," or I'll say like, "Hey, your conference is all white." "Oh, well we'd love for you to share names." "No, I'd love for you to do the damn work. It's not on me to do your work. If you want me to do your work, how much are you paying? If you're not paying anything, I'm not going to do that work." And speaking of tokenism, I worked at a company where they were getting ready to take pictures to put them on about page to show all the people having fun at a happy hour. I'm sitting at my desk working. The CEO of the company calls my name and I'm like, "Yes, sir?" He's like, "Hey, we need you in the picture. We need to show off our diversity."

Jack: Oh god. Wow.

Jamar: Opened his mouth and said the word...

Jack: Said out loud.

Jamar: ... out loud. And I'm just looking at everyone, You all, you all heard this too, right? I didn't have a stroke and just make up words coming out of his mouth." And people think that's okay like, "Oh, he was just joking." A joke is only funny if the person being joked at laughs too and not just laughs at an uncomfortable, "I don't want to get fired if I don't laugh at this way," it's, "This is supremely uncomfortable and supremely disrespectful. I'm not diversity for you. I am your senior SEO. Don't treat me like that. I'm not a poster boy for, 'Look, we like black people. We have one front and center in our photo.' That's gross and I don't want to do that."

Jack: So how can people do the work essentially? Like you're saying, you, as a senior member of a team, what is the process like for you looking for a new member and looking to shine a light on people who are underrepresented?

Jamar: For me, it's looking in places that I haven't looked before. As we just discussed, doing the work. I always have a short list of people that I want to work with and most of them are women, people of colour. And I know a lot of our audience members who aren't women or people of colour going to say, "Hey, that's unfair." No, it's very fair because every time I go into something, I know that my list of experiences is going to pale in comparison if there's some white dude who talks a better game. That's it. All he has to do is talk a better game and my experiences don't matter. I was speaking to my girlfriend about the interview I have today and was telling her how I'm preparing because it's a panel interview.

So just in case one person doesn't like anything, "How many bullets in my chamber I can get to deflect anything, any experiences or any holes in my resume to get back from negative to positive?" These are things I have to think about prior to an interview, not just talking up my experience but deflecting any negative energies that people might throw out there to say, "Oh, you don't have this, you don't have that." And she just kept saying, "Oh, well, you have all this experience." It's like, "Well, the experience doesn't necessarily matter if someone wants to denigrate what I've done." So making sure that you look just past what's on the paper to the person and also sometimes looking past the person to what's on the paper. Just because someone ... We have a tendency to grab people we've worked with in the past or people who look like us because we say, "Oh, their experiences are going to be just like ours," and that is, again, when people in power, people in hiring positions are always white men and women, they're going to hire white men and women. They're not going to think about that. They're going back to the example of conferences and talks and everything. They oftentimes think that diversity is sprinkling in white women and that's good. White women deserve representation too, but a white woman is not a black woman. It's not an Asian woman, not a Filipino woman. We have to start getting people from different backgrounds to talk about this like, "Why is it that only certain people can talk about eat content? Why is it certain people can only talk about schema, certain people can talk about taxonomy?"

If people have the experience, we should allow them to talk about it as well. We're always wanting, "Oh, where are the new voices? People aren't applying." "Well, if you show them that you're only going to accept the same 10 people, why is someone going to apply to be the 11th? You're never going to accept them." So it's not that we don't want these experiences, we don't want to give talks, it's that we already know the barrier to entry is so high that basically everyone in your conference would have to get sick and then the next set of people would have to get sick before you would even think about having us. So why even waste that time and energy to apply if the answer's always going to be no.

Jack: Yeah, I think you've put it really well there. The fact that you essentially start off from a negative is what we're talking about with equality, right? That whole Black Lives Matter message is so we're all starting from a level playing field. It's fine for me to walk into an interview, I can put on a suit and a tie and do whatever and maybe trim my beard a little bit, I'm a bit scruffy at the moment and all that kind of stuff and there's such small changes for me that can make an impact. But the fact that, as you say, you coming in as a tattooed black guy, you are already there in the negative compared to so many other candidates who could be less qualified than you or less experienced than you or both in that case. But as you said, the white guy talks a big game and he might get the job and it's a realistic thing that more people need to talk about. And hopefully, that's the purpose of this conversation, is to highlight that kind of stuff.

Jamar: It was really driven home. I was having a personal discussion with the friend and, again, just talking about my experiences as a black man and just the ways that I'll go into a store and a store employee or a security guard will follow me around and everything. And I had a friend, a white guy say, "Oh they do that too because of my long hair and my beard." And I was just like, "Well, you can cut your hair and you can trim your beard. I can't do anything about my black skin. So no, our experiences are not the same. You can change the thing that makes you look like a burnout hippie. I can't change this. It has nothing to do with that. It has to do with them personally." So I get where he was trying to empathise with me, but it's also like that's wildly disrespectful that you can't see that your hairstyle and facial hairstyle are choices. This thing is not a choice in me. I can pull a Michael Jackson and bleach my skin, but that sounds wildly uncomfortable. And also I don't want to do that.

Jack: Maybe don't want comparisons to Michael Jackson these days, maybe not on the best person to be compared to.

Jamar: No, no, no, no.

Jack: And something else you touched on there, again, that was the whole conversation I had with Chloe was that intersectional representation, right? You'll get, "Okay, we've got a woman and a black guy. There we go, that's all basis covered. We've got another gender. We've got another ethnicity. Problem solved." It's like, "Well, there's Asian people and there's Middle Eastern people and Indian people and nonbinary people and people of different genders and all this kind of stuff." And it's like, "You need to understand that it is not such a closed spectrum of just white and non-white," which is essentially ... I know that was kind of the message, and funny enough, I got some, not some hate, that's maybe the wrong word, but some flak for using the term BIPOC in my tweet when I saying like, "Oh I'm looking to highlight underrepresented people on the podcast. People like ..." Should you be using that term? It's lumping all the non-white people into the same thing and I'm like, "I'm trying to represent as many people as I can in the space of a tweet, so I don't know how else I would do that kind of thing." And a lot of those terms I think get thrown around in the wrong context and the wrong intent a lot of the times and you then get lumped into and representing an entire silo of people that is entirely unfair. You, as a black man, then represent all of the black people around the world and you make one mistake and it's, "Oh, all the black people in the world are terrible people because this one person did this thing," except if white people do that, we suddenly don't represent all the white people, "Oh, what a coincidence."

I know there's a weird comic book tangent here. When Miles Morales was announced as the new Spider-Man and obviously half-Latino, half-black Spider-Man. For those of you who don't know, he debuted 15 years ago or so now and took over from Peter Parker in some of the comics. And of course, people lost their absolute minds because we can't have non-white people be superheroes apparently. And I was doing a podcast about Miles Morales at the time with two of my friends and my aforementioned friend who's a person of colour and the other guy was a person of colour as well. So I was the token white guy in this situation, funny enough, which was quite nice of me to be like, "Oh, I'm the minority here," except one of them is Indian, one of them is black, so they represent two different cultures. So I'm not in the minority here. It's three different representations.

Me even thinking that, granted this was five, 10 years ago, whatever it was, but having that thought of like, "Oh yeah, I'm representing white people on this podcast," that's a weird experience. Usually, the joke is, "What do you call three white guys in a room? A podcast! ba dum tsh

Jamar: I'm stealing that one.

Jack: Feel free to steal that one. As a guy who hosts a podcast with two other white guys, I can confirm. But there's this line ... So it was all about the representation and it was Luke Cage who is an African American superhero talking to Miles and Miles' suit gets ripped and people realise, "Oh, under the Spider-Man suit, he's a person of colour." And everybody starts freaking out, of course, in real life and in the comics. And Luke Cage has this moment where he talks and was like, "I'm winding down my career. It's basically up to you now, kid. You've got a power on forward." And I think it was written with good intent to be like he is the next generation of superheroes. Miles Morales does such an amazing thing of representing, like I said, the Latin community and the black community simultaneously because he is a mixed heritage.

But there was also this, "Well, I guess you represent all the people of colour now. Good luck, kid." Anyway, what? He's like 15. I don't think that's very fair to just lump two entire heritages on this one kid to be like, "There you go. You are the black superhero now. So yeah, it's all up to you. You represent us all." And he essentially had to like, "Don't mess anything up because you're representing us now." That's not fair pressure to put on a kid or an adult for that matter. It's not fair to pressure to put on anyone. No one represents their entire gender or sexuality or ethnicity or anything like that just by themselves.

And I want to ... Let's kind of wrap up with this because I'm aware, as I said at the beginning of the show, we're going to go for an hour. I warned Jamar and I warn you every time, listeners, since I've started doing this podcast, it gets very, very long, so I apologize, but it's good talk. So talking about the kind of hurdles you've experienced, what would be the kind of thing you would say to younger Jamar, I guess to say, what would you do differently or what would you change or would you keep it all the same?

Jamar: Honestly, I'd keep it all the same because all of those experiences have led to the person that I am to this moment. Again, personal experiences, talking to my girlfriend about personal things, things I've experienced in my past trauma and everything. And she's always like, "Oh well, I wish you didn't have to experience this." And I'm like, "Babe, if I didn't experience that, I might not be this person. I might not have been on the trajectory to where I could have met you and we would be together." So I wouldn't change one thing because all of those experiences have led me to this. And while again talking about things I've gone through, it doesn't sound like I love my life, but I love my life. I wouldn't do it any other way. I have been able to pay off student loans thanks to being in digital marketing.

I have been able to start a company. I've been able to employ people. I have been able to put a little C next to my title. All things that because of my experiences, because of my upbringing, because of the things that I've gone through have forced me into this. I now feel like I'm my best self and I am able to advocate for people who again may not want to advocate for themselves because they just don't have that within them and they should be able to be advocated for by people and I want to be that advocate. Always I tell people my thing is like, "Everyone deserves a number one fan." I'm trying to be the number one fan for as many people as I can be because you never know what someone's going through.

My first thing when I wake up in the morning, I know people say it's bad, but I always go on Twitter first thing and my first-

Jack: Me too, man. Me too.

Jamar: But my first 15 to 30 minutes on Twitter is not doomscrolling. It's going through to see posts that I've missed from friends who live in different time zones, like their stuff, give them applaud and say congratulations for things, get in their comments, share their stuff, so that I'm not doing this whole woe-is-me doomscrolling. I'm using my time on social media to big up other people, to be their number one fan, to give them the opportunity, and as we talked about before, my platform, to share stuff that they're doing, that they're interested in, that I think other people would love to see. And again, it's a small thing, but the number of people I get in my DMs just saying, "Thank you. Thank you for this. Thank you for always sharing. Thank you for using your platform to get this out in front of people. Thank you for saying that," it's worth it to be able to take that time to share with people. Just being advocates for people. It's real simple. It costs nothing for people to just say, "Hey, I've got a friend. Hey, I know someone. Hey, I know someone who knows someone. Let me get you in front of the people." The number of times I've had people say, "Hey, Jamar, would you like to speak at this conference?" "No, I wouldn't, but I've got five names I'd love to get you of people who you've never heard of who should be people know my name. I've got enough. I've got a big enough footprint. I don't want anymore, but I know some people who should have a bigger footprint than even me and I like to get those people in front of others because if I don't, who will?" And also going to Miles Morales, I've got his Spider-Man logo on my upper back.

Jack: Hell yeah, dude. Hell yeah. I'm glad you were picking up what I was throwing down there. I appreciate that.

Jamar: Oh yeah.

Jack: Again, we just had another, "We just become best friends," right?

Jamar: Yeah.

Jack: Awesome. Well, I think that about wraps us up for this episode. So Jamar, how can people follow you and your adventures across Twitter and the rest of the internet?

Jamar: I would say follow me on Twitter. That's the best place to get me @JamRam33. That's J-A-M-R-A-M and the numbers 3 and 3.

Jack: Nice. We'll talk about Miles Morales, we'll talk about comic books, we'll talk about wrestling, maybe some SEO in there as well, but let's talk about the more fun stuff.

Jamar: Just wait until we get that DLC podcast, y'all. It's going to happen. It's going to happen.

Jack: Exactly.

Jamar: Get in Jack's mentions. Let them know you want this, you need this, you deserve it.

Jack: We'll get the hardcore SEO wrestling community just suddenly bombarding us with requests.

Jamar: Oh, there's tens of us.

Jack: I know. Well, there's no better place to finish off on that. Thank you so much for joining, Jamar. I really, really appreciate your time.

Jamar: Thank you for the time and the opportunity, sir. Much appreciated.

Jack: And that about wraps us up for this week. Thank you once again to the fantastic Jamar Ramos for joining me. It was a really, really interesting conversation. Again as me coming from as a white British person trying to understand where people of colour are in the digital marketing industry and how we can help and highlight those people and allow them to have better experiences as juniors and growing through to actually owning and starting their own digital marketing agencies as well. Really, really interesting conversation. I hope you very much enjoyed it. If you couldn't already tell, Jamar is one of my favorite people in digital marketing. We had a couple of like, "Did we just become best friend?" kind of moments. So highly recommend you go and follow Jamar and what he's been up to.

I know he's been starting getting back into blogging and stuff through The Ramos Collective. So I will put links for all that stuff, and of course, all of Jamar's social media in the show notes at search.withcandour.co.uk. For me, I'll be back next week. As you can imagine, I've got a couple more guests lined up for the rest of the month and Mark and I will be getting round two, doing a more regular catch up with some of the SEO news. I know we haven't really covered SEO news recently on the show apart from the livestream episode we did at the end of September. We're going to try and get back into more of a rhythm of having me and Mark recapping and discussing the latest SEO and PPC news and all that kind of stuff, as well as all the fantastic guests I interview on the show as well. So I hope you've enjoyed this episode. Thank you very much for listening. And until then, have a lovely week.