James Dooley:
Hi, so today I’m joined with OYS mentor Rob Nitel. I’ve probably said it slightly wrong there, I’m going with that one. How you doing, you okay?

Rob Nitel:
It’s not bad for my surname, so it’s proper international pronunciation.
So, Robert internationally. In Polish it’s Robert N… a bit harder, because Polish language is a bit, you know, harder one.

James Dooley:
Sounds good, sounds good.
So today’s video is about mentorship and obviously you are an OYS mentor.
My first question to you is, when did you first realise the importance of having a mentor and mentorship?

Rob Nitel:
To be honest, I’m, let’s say, fresh in the topic. Everything changed in my company when I had to move from typical engineering or specialist work to more management and CTO perspective.
Then I realised that I’m very good in technology and SEO, and it is my bread and butter, but I need to know much more about management, about scaling, about operation systems, about HR, about people. There are plenty of perspectives you need to have from C level management.
I had a few options. I could go and read all existing books in the topic in the world and go to all existing conferences to get this knowledge, or simply buy it from someone who already digested the knowledge and has like 10 years’ experience in some sort of field.
Let me give an example of Mads Singers, who is great in people management and building companies. Then I realised I cannot be good in everything, but I need to have each perspective or each point of view as a C level manager. So I decided I need to buy the knowledge and get mentors in specific fields I need to manage my company.
That was the moment, to be honest, one year ago.

James Dooley:
Sounds good.
So what key lessons have you learned then from, let’s say, Mads Singers or from mentorship? Because obviously you’re very, very high level at technology, AI, augmented retrieval, all that type of stuff.
What lessons have you had to learn from mentors? Is it more like you said, the management side and the culture of staff and stuff like that, for you to scale your business out?

Rob Nitel:
I’m thinking differently about the topic. I’m just getting pinpoints or key takeaways from my mentors or consultants, and then I know how to push the button in my organisation. I know how to allocate or delegate the operation, what people I need to hire to my company, or what responsibilities I need to give to my head of SEO, head of customer service, head of sales, head of whatever you name it.
It is more like a helicopter view and a list of key takeaways and buttons to push to make it work down in my organisation. Then I’m giving responsibilities to execute it or even get more knowledge to my heads of department. They develop this specific field.
But me as a C level manager, I need to know what is going on and how to manage the whole organisation from the big picture, and how big boys are doing it in different companies.
So I’m thinking this way. I cannot put everything in my memory, but I know I just need to know the key takeaways and golden nuggets, and then allocate it in my company.

James Dooley:
Yeah.
So away from obviously how you have maybe got one or two mentors and you’ve learned, I always say the term “if you don’t innovate, you’re going to evaporate”.
Now, with regards to artificial intelligence, ops and stuff like that, why do you feel for other people, who are not at your level, why it’s important they get some sort of mentor in their life to systemise or automate things?
You’re very advanced and top of the game when it comes to prompting the AIs and tech and programmatic SEO and stuff like that. Why do you think it’s important for others that might not have your knowledge with regards to AI to look at getting a mentor for this?

Rob Nitel:
To be honest, there is one principle. You need to move fast in such a fast environment. You have a few options. You can learn it on your own or get the knowledge already digested by someone and move faster than doing all the R&D inside of your company.
Because the circle is already developed on the market. At the beginning you can think it is quite expensive to go for a mentor or to buy the knowledge from the market. But at the end of the day it will be much cheaper and faster to develop and build your product or scale your operation or whatever you are facing right now, because of the failures your mentors or consultants have already had.
You can learn based on somebody else’s failures or pay your money for your own failures and ask yourself what is cheaper at the end of the day.

James Dooley:
Yeah, for sure.
So moving on to the next question then. How do you choose the right mentor?
You spoke about management and you automatically presume Mads is the best person for that, and I completely agree. But if someone wanted to learn about programmatic SEO or AI, I would be coming to somebody like yourself who is at the head of the game.
How would you choose, if you knew your weaknesses, how would you go about choosing the best mentor for yourself? Is it just literally who has failed the most? I think you have already answered it a bit. Is it who has failed the most in that industry, where you go “Hang on a minute, I could be running directly into this brick wall and this person’s got knowledge on it and might be able to help me”?
How do you choose the best mentor?

Rob Nitel:
To be honest, I think somebody who can confirm his failures and be honest could be a good person, because he is honest at the end of the day.
I will go and check some sort of case studies, ongoing operations in his company, his social media, his way of communication with positive or negative results. It is a sort of vetting. I am not sure if the word “vetting” is properly used in English, but I mean checking.
Check a few points. Is the person honest enough and does he have any positive history, like case studies, conference speeches? You can go to YouTube and check his or her speeches, case studies, podcasts and the way they communicate. It is still important if they are open minded and happy to help in an honest way. That is a good person.
Otherwise it will be just generic advice. Let me give you an example of generic advice. “If you want to rank higher, you need to write perfect content and buy links.” Perfect, but everybody knows it. It is not a value. You need to find the specific value, like “if you do this, it will happen like this” or “I did it 10 times and I failed seven times, it is no go”.
That is the way I think about it. Also, I am here for the last 20 years, so I can recognise someone after two sentences.

James Dooley:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
As for the best advice I got at university, I was studying at Krakow University of Technology and we had a professor from a technical university. He had a specific way of scoring us. He scored us not based on our knowledge, but on our questions we asked him.
If you switch the direction and listen to the questions he asked you, the questions will give you an overview about his way of thinking. That is a great answer.

So why did you decide to join the OYS mentorship programme?

Rob Nitel:
To be honest, I like Otis. I like Alex, I like Vladimir. That was my first thought about the Odis mentorship.
Then, I like to help people. I speak a lot around the world at many conferences.
It is a two way win win, because if I help someone I will see his kitchen, his back end, his overall business. I will learn myself because of his cases, and then I am able to give my input based on my experience and my cases.
I think about it like a win win situation. It is also good for networking and meeting new people, helping people, even expanding my operation and my company. At the end of the day we can do something good together.

James Dooley:
Yeah.
So what would you say your main strengths are?
If someone was to go, “Okay, there are 20 different OYS mentors on the platform, why should someone use you?” Obviously I know what you are great at, but what do you think would be a good fit?
Who is the type of person who should want to know X, Y and Z from you? Why would they choose you? Is it programmatic SEO, high tech? What would you say your main attributes are?

Rob Nitel:
I am a CTO in my organisation, so I live with technology all of my life. I have been in the industry for the last 20 years, but I built my first website when I was 12 years old and started coding when I was 14 years old.
I am good in engineering, programming, programmatic SEO. Now my bread and butter is AI and I am trying to stay on the edge of AI, updating daily.
So I am the geeky one. I am the geeky one. But as I already mentioned, I am in C level management now, so I also have a big picture for business operation, IT development. I know where you can face bottlenecks with implementation of your solutions or what sort of bottlenecks in the IT department you can face.
I do not know any other, or maybe I know, but it is hard to ask me any question about technology I cannot answer, or that typical developers or coders know and I do not.
Any IT department in the world cannot ask me a bad question or trick me. It is not possible.

James Dooley:
Yeah, you are someone I would 100% come to for technology, AI prompts, programmatic SEO and anything high level tech.
But you are still running the SEO operation, so you are trying to connect everything. The world of AI, the world of technology, the world of whatever you name it, with SEO and making money, or getting traction with Google and visibility.

So what advice would you give someone that has never yet had a mentor or done a mentorship call? What advice would you give to that person?

Rob Nitel:
It is a hard one, but to be honest, I would ask about your main goal in the long run, like one year, two years, three years in the future.
Then ask yourself about the costs you are paying right now to get the answers to your struggles. What sort of technology? How to use AI for it? How to make automations? How to scrape data? How to organise the structure of your technology stack? How to go global with your operation?
Ask yourself what is cheaper or what is more effective for you. Hiring people is quite hard, and especially hiring A players is quite hard for your organisation. From the market perspective, big boys are hiring guys for moving stuff and pushing stuff in their organisation and buying knowledge. They are buying knowledge on the market from guys like me or you, or guys in the Odis mentors programme.
In the long run it is cheaper and more effective.

James Dooley:
Yeah, for sure.
So if you could go back in time and you could tell your 16 year old self something, what advice would you give your 16 year old self?

Rob Nitel:
I love the question. Even one month ago one book author in Poland asked me the same question for his book and I was thinking for long about it.
It is one sentence I will give myself. “Robert, do not be afraid, just do it.”
Because in the past I was thinking, “I am not able to rank for payday loans in the United States. I am too weak to do it.” I was thinking like this for two years. Then I did it, so probably I lost two years of revenue because I was afraid.
So for sure, do not be afraid. Proceed. If you fail, it is fine. The name of the game is not about failures, but about how many times you will stand up and proceed. Do not be afraid, just do it.

James Dooley:
For sure. I always say within the office, you win or you learn. There is no such thing as failing or losing. You learn from your failures, you get up and go again and then you learn from those mistakes.
Especially in such a fast environment where the industry is moving and shaking on a daily basis with all technology, which is moving and shaking and developing on a daily basis. It is about proceeding and doing stuff instead of thinking and overthinking.

So with regards to mentorship calls, there is a bit of a divide that starts to happen. When people have not had the mentorship call, they think it is expensive. The people that have had the mentorship call say it is the best return on investment that they have ever done, because it has saved them so much time in learning from that 30 minute or one hour call.
What are your thoughts to people that are saying it is expensive but never done the call, versus the people that are saying, “Wow, that is the best money that I have ever spent”?

Rob Nitel:
It is based on the mindset of the second part, not my part, but the person who wants to book this sort of call or mentorship.
In the first thought it could be quite expensive for one hour. But if you have a big business, let us say 1,000 dollars per hour, it is not big if you operate a company whose revenue is like 100 million.
So in the first round you can think it is expensive, but in the long run it is not. Let me give you an example. I had a company I consulted and they are selling garden furniture. It is one of the biggest companies in Poland. The owner told me that the entry level for the consultancy was 1,000 zloty per hour, which is let us say 300 euro per hour. Normally, the hourly rate in Poland is like 75 euro per hour, so there is a difference.
But he told me that the impact for his business was much higher than he expected. He told me it was the best investment of money for this sort of operation. Of course it was for SEO. He is also playing with pay per click and other methods. But overall, at the end of the day, he told me that it was cheap compared to the company size.
I also think it should be expensive because it is my time, your time. If you want to pick my brain and allocate the resources and memory and the focus to give you the correct answer and deep dive into your problem, it has to be expensive. It is not a factory. I have few hours monthly, you probably have the same, so it has to be expensive to allocate your time, your calendar, your resources, and full focus on the topic. It is how it is. It should be like this.

James Dooley:
Yeah, for sure.
I think, like you said, the return on investment that you can get, even something so minor, those marginal wins that can start compounding and persistently improving. Instead of going down that path, they might be sent down this path and it could save them millions from literally a simple 30 minute consult.
So the return on investment, in my opinion, is huge if you choose the right mentor to guide you down the right path.

Rob, how can people look to book you for the OYS mentorship call?

Rob Nitel:
I think the easiest one is they have this specific mentors platform and there is a calendar. I am not sure if it is up to date, but still they are confirming the date.
So go to oys.global, I guess, and there is a section with mentors. I am there. It is the best way.

James Dooley:
Sounds good.
It has been an absolute pleasure, Rob. Good to have you on.
If anyone is looking for a mentor in the tech space, Rob has done it all. He is actually, like you said, on the C suite. He is an absolute legend in the industry. He has ranked for some competitive terms.
I highly recommend you go and book yourself a 30 minute or a one hour call with him if you are struggling in areas that he excels in.

Rob, it has been an absolute pleasure and I will see you again soon.

Rob Nitel:
Thank you very much.

James Dooley:
Cheers, mate. Thank you.