Cre8tive Flow

I can’t remember when I first came across “Sugarrae” but I do remember meeting her and having an insanely embarrassing dialog about hair color. Canadian-based Internet Consultant, Rae Hoffman, has been helping web sites and businesses with search engine marketing for over 10 years. Her articles and popular blog have made her a top industry favorite. When she investigates a web site or application, she leaves no stone unturned.

She’s faced personal hardships and used them to motivate her to work hard and build good businesses. While some folks may find her toughness hard to take, I’ve long admired her wit, drive and personal courage.

Rae, known for her famous tagline, “Never Mess With a Woman Who Can Pull Rank”, has an uncanny ability to flush out logic in chaos and get to the point. There’s no pretense. When you come upon Rae, you get the real deal, cuss words and all. She’s one of those Internet workers who works hard as hell and parties hard as hell. It’s a work environment I once thrived in myself, before I went out on my own. She was my first choice for Cre8asiteforums’ 6th Anniversary Industry Professionals Interview series this month.

Please welcome, Rae Hoffman:

1. Most everyone who knows you is aware that you worked your way up and are likely an “over achiever” type, meaning that no job is done unless it’s 200% perfect and meets your standards for excellence. You often praise your staff. Can you tell us a little about them, how you chose them, what they do…a day in the life of?

I really do have a fantastic and very loyal staff. They work as hard on our sites as I do and give the company 200% every single day. I just try my best to be a good boss in spite of my admitted perfectionism and control freakishness. You know, it’s funny, because when I did a post about things I’ve learned as a CEO, some people automatically assumed that because I demand the best from my employees, that I must be hell to work for, but I think my employees would tell you that’s not the case. I’m demanding for sure, but I also don’t micromanage, allow for a lot of freedom and experimentation, try to put them in a position where they can constantly expand their skill set and we have an extremely relaxed working environment. They actually tell me on a regular basis how much they enjoy working here. I’ve had bad bosses… my goal is not to be like them. I have several quotes hanging on the bulletin board in my office and one of them in specific is:

“Leadership: the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.” - Dwight D. Eisenhower

I’ve tried very hard to be that type of leader. I want my guys to work hard because they want us to succeed and not just show up because they need to pay their mortgage. And they do. I don’t have any “jobbers” working for me. I’m pretty grateful for that.

As for what they do, we have a pretty laid back office as can be seen in a recent video we took of it.

We work a lot – be it creating content, marketing that content or our sites, developing affiliate deals, monetizing the websites, catering to our various audiences, SEO – the usual. Mix in that work with a few trips to the bar (if we have to have meetings, that’s the place we’d most like to do it), lots of office pranks (if you go on vacation, your office might be filled with balloons when you return – one of which contains your mouse or one of the wheels on your chair might be missing on a random morning), lots of Photoshop creations (having two designers working in the office means some pretty realistic concoctions) hanging around and a ton of Guitar Hero smack talk (someone in my office has yet to learn how to use the blue button… but we won’t publicly out him for his inadequacies).

Oh, and I have a habit of “firing” people. They actually have kept a list of ways to get fired by me, which include things like taking the last beer from the fridge or by splitting tens in Vegas on your ten dollar hand and taking the dealers bust card which causes me to lose my fifty dollar hand. They’re actually working on a blog post to highlight what they consider the top ways to get fired by me.

2. I haven’t been paying attention to affiliate marketing the last few years. It’s part of your services and expertise. Can you please bring us to date on affiliate marketing as an industry? For example, is it growing or not? Where would beginners go to learn more about it? Are there popular products and tracking software? How or why does a company decide to market a product this way?

Wow, that is sure one tall stack of questions. I haven’t been quiet in the least about believing that affiliate marketing is an industry that will get harder and harder to survive in over the next few years. You either have to evolve to new levels with affiliate marketing or you’ll probably be forced to go corporate within the next few years.

I see those who “get” the challenges coming up getting pretty damn sophisticated at what they do, myself included. I see those who refuse to evolve watching their checks get smaller and smaller as more time passes. I definitely see the opportunities for people who understand affiliate marketing in addition to audience development and SEO growing, even if I don’t see the number of people taking them (or who have the skills to take them) doing so.

The sad part is that there is no real resource at the moment that I’d be comfortable sending a person new to the scene to and saying “here is the guide to learn affiliate marketing from”. Aaron’s SEOBook.com – a monthly fee based private community – is probably one of the places at the moment with a higher signal to noise ratio. And Aaron gets affiliate marketing and has the patience to teach it – and is very active on his own forums. I don’t have the patience to teach others. I’ve had the offer and suggestion several times to create a guide to being an affiliate – and been repeatedly told I would have a lot of success in regards to generating revenue through sales of said guide, but I don’t have the patience to be involved in that type of project.

I wouldn’t be much help in regards to popular products or tracking programs… we build everything in house and don’t use any off the shelf programs. However, I would easily know a good resource/program/product if I saw it. I welcome the ability to review something when a company approaches me and the product seems valuable of checking out.

I think companies go to affiliates for a variety of reasons. Some are just using affiliates in an attempt to develop links or obtain free branding – but most are looking to increase their sales numbers – especially from the Internet and affiliates basically act as marketing representatives for a company who only gets paid when they deliver results. That’s pretty sexy to a company, especially those who don’t understand how to market online and those in highly competitive industries where large online ad budgets and highly competitive and crowded organic SERPs are the norm.

3. I think you’re one of the most detailed and eloquent writers in the search engine marketing space. Are you a natural writer or did you study writing at some point?

Thanks. I don’t really think of myself as a natural writer, but definitely never studied writing at any point. I think a lot of it has to do with being passionate about the subject I’m writing about. I could never be a “writer” as in someone who had to write on demand and about various topics. I envy those who have the ability to be that versatile and captivating with language on command. I write when I want to and about things that interest me or in many cases, fire me up. And I’ve simply been good at explaining things from my point of view since I was a kid. For a long time my mom thought I was going to grow up to be a lawyer. I think I definitely would have done well on a debate team had my school had one.

4. Where did “Sugarrae” come from?

Ha. Most people think it is due to the band. It’s not. It’s actually a hat tip to Sugar Ray Leonard, one of the greatest boxers who’s ever lived. I’m a fight fan, as evidenced by my well known love of MMA. Also, I have to point out as part of my perfectionism disorder that it’s Sugarrae – only the S is capitalized. And my incessant need to correct people’s casing of it is something I am made fun of for often by my friends.

5. What’s on tap for you and/or your companies? You’re in a new office, still thriving…what would you like for us to know about your work, business plans, services…any new ventures planned we should keep any eye out for?

Well, I own a few different companies – most notably are Sugarrae and MFE Interactive. All are doing well at the moment. Sugarrae will continue to be my voice and my brand. I’m working with a few talented marketers now to be able to refer out requests for SEO and SEM consulting instead of simply turning people away as I had been for a long while prior and I’ve offered to personally work with local small businesses located in Guelph at special rates as a way of giving back to my adopted home. On a lighter note, you’ll also see me posting about some of the items I’ve completed from my list of 25 things in the next month or so.

MFE’s plans aren’t as open, but the basics are that we have new sites coming out on a regular basis and continue to market all of the sites we currently have in our portfolio.

As for me as an individual on a professional level, I’ll be speaking at SMX East in October and at PubCon in November as well.

6. And finally, other than being online and working your butt off, what else trips Sugarrae’s trigger?

You mean on a personal level? Well, I am a known BlackBerry fanatic, so in total geek fashion, I am absolutely drooling to get a hold of the new BlackBerry Bold the second it is released on Rogers (which hopefully will be this month). I’ve been going to a lot of UFC events (please, please, please let the rumors of a return to Montreal before the end of the year be true), have been playing a lot of Xbox (I am beyond pumped for Rock Band 2 and am playing a lot of Guitar Hero Aerosmith and Soul Caliber these days) and am glad to be at the start of another football season (and yes, I am aware that I’m a girl). I also spend a lot of time enjoying myself and spending time with my kids, my friends and my boyfriend.

Thanks for your time Rae. You’re admired by so many people (I hear this all the time). It’s a pleasure to get to know you more.

You can find Rae active in Twitter. Subscribe to her blog here. Professional connections and inquiries are also taken at Linkedin.