Business
Why Everyone Is Calling Kristian D’an The SEO Wizard That Makes You Millions
What’s your backstory?
I am originally born and raised in Miami. There I was raised by my mother and grandmother after my father passed away at a young age. Saw my mom growing up and her story was a huge inspiration to my success. I always had some kind of entrepreneurial spirit in my since a young age. I remember crossing the street from my house growing up to buy bubble gum and candy by the 6 pack at K-Mart and sell it at school the next day for a 100% markup. Were talking making a $1 or so on each bar. Not a lot but when you are in 6th grade it felt good! I saved up a couple hundred and started a various amount of businesses. Never really succeeded at a younger age in these ventures however each one taught me something different where later in life I was able to tie it all in. Losses are not a bad thing. Losses are lessons if you treat them as such. Others let them become a barricade.
In addition to this entrepreneur spirit I really had a passion for marketing too. One of my mentors in life worked as the president of marketing for Bacardi and I got to see the creativity behind making a concept a reality. I fell in love with it and knew that is what I wanted to do. I applied to the Naval Academy where I got a congressional nomination by Debbie Wasserman Shultz to go and lost 90 pounds for the physical tests. Long story short, I did not get accepted so I moved to St Petersburg, FL to study marketing at USF. Everything happens for a reason! At USF I met another mentor who soon became my boss. At this agency is where I ended up learning SEO and servicing clients for a few years. One thing I couldn’t deal with was the lack of freedom. That Monday through Friday 9-5pm in an office with rush hour traffic there and back to build someone else’s dream. It was not aligned with my goals in life. I wasn’t sure what to do so I went to sales where I sold travel memberships for a while as an independent contractor giving me the freedom I wanted. However this was not my passion. I was still in love with SEO and found it very rewarding to get my clients to the top of Google.
This is when Lux Digital Marketing was born. I had applied my SEO skills I learned at the agency and the sales skill to create Lux. We are an SEO focused agency helping businesses increase revenue by getting them positioned on the top of Google for the product/services that they sell. In a year and a half I scaled Lux to six figures and have been expanding since. The money is definitely rewarding however I find it more rewarding to see my clients win. Yes SEO focuses on getting a business on the top of Google and that is what everyone sees. However, I see a business that was able to increase their revenue to where they opened a second location. Now that is rewarding! Over the last 7 years I have helped dozens of businesses generate millions in revenue by getting them on the top of Google for their products/services. I have successfully optimized in several different industries and every time we break into a new one, we reach the same result.
From Lux Digital Marketing stemmed my consulting where I not only consult on SEO but also sales, business development, scaling, etc. I was able to do this for my business successfully and have helped others do the same.
Beyond scaling Lux to a seven figure business and helping all of my clients hit their goals along the way, one of my missions is to teach the proper white hat SEO techniques. Several SEO service providers still use tactics that are frowned upon by Google. Example, 10 years ago you could spam keywords everywhere on your site and rank high for them. Google now considers this black hat SEO and will remove a website off of Google for using tactics such as these.
I wrote “The Fundamentals of Getting #1 on Google” to teach the proper techniques moving forward. With these techniques I have successfully achieved the #1 position on Google for several clients and have held that position. More people need to know the right way. In addition to my book, I also launched the Lux Growth Academy where I provide a ton of free knowledge through youtube videos, podcasts, blogs and more. This content is not just SEO related but also sales, business development, etc. I want to get as much proper knowledge in the hands of SEO providers and business owners so everyone can feel confident about SEO services moving forward.
What made you decide to choose this career path?
I think what originally steered me in the direction of marketing was watching a father figure in my life. He was the president of marketing for Bacardi and would come home from work with 5 different bottles of Bacardi. They were all the same “Bacardi Limon” except some had a different size cap, different label or the bottle was shaped differently. They were all design tests. He would always ask me which one I liked more. I found it super cool growing up to see him create these concepts and turn them into a reality. He worked on commercials with Pitbull for Bacardi Limon, the brand, the taste, etc. That creativity sparked my interest. I studied marketing at USF and ended up getting an internet marketing job doing SEO. Slightly different than what he did at Bacardi however I enjoyed it a lot. We live in a digital world today and I really saw an opportunity to learn a skill set that will only become more valuable.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
I will tell you one funny mistake about another business venture of mine. So I have a CBD company that specializes in CBD for dogs. We also carry other pet products such as stylish clothes and what not. My main marketing strategy going into this business was that I was going to get the product set up and start running Facebook/Instagram ads to the products to drive revenue. This was the only marketing channel I had planned on using. Well, I got everything set up and then guess what? You can’t run ads to a website that had a CBD product on it. I tried to even run ads just to the clothing products, but we have the CBD products on the site so the ads would not approve. So what did I learn? Do your due diligence! This was not a mistake to make us fail however it was definitely funny! We ended up having to take an influencer marketing route.
What do you think makes your company/personal brand stand out?
I think one of the main things that makes my company stand out is that we are in the niche of SEO. I see most agencies today offer everything under the sun and don’t specialize in anything. We do. We specialize in SEO, but we also offer web design. We do this for start up companies who want SEO, but do not have a website to be optimized yet. We do not offer social media, and every single thing that these agencies today do.
What’s a quote that you live by?
“Don’t wish things were easier, wish you were better.” – Jim Rohn
I am a firm believer in being a victor not a victim. So much energy is wasted complaining and being a victim to circumstances when that same energy can be transformed into something progressive. Something that will actually help you advance. I believe everyone is the artist of their life. They paint the canvas. You can chose to change the circumstance or you can live with it. The choice is 100% yours.
