The Business of Awakening with Stephan Spencer

In This Episode

• [01:51] – Stephan highlights the importance of intention in marketing and business, aiming to shed light on all aspects of his work.
• [03:09] – Stephan shares his experience of starting an internet agency in 1995, before SEO was widely known.
• [08:13] – Stephan emphasizes the importance of being willing to take risks and not fearing rejection.
• [29:19] – Stephan describes a powerful experience where a monk touched his head, leading to a psychedelic-like vision of Technicolor colors.
• [31:00] – Stephan accentuates his second awakening in 2021, where he was shown the nature of reality as a holographic simulation.
• [34:34] – Stephan talks about his spiritual awakening in 2012 during a Tony Robbins event in India.
• [44:36] – Stephan gives out the story of Vishen Lakhiani, who doubled his sales by following intuitive nudges and spiritual guidance.
• [49:08] – Stephan focuses on the importance of believing in one’s potential and being open to infinite possibilities.

Jump to Links and Resources

Stephan, welcome to the show. So good to have you. I was really excited to speak with you for multiple reasons. Not just because you’re an amazing marketer, you’re an incredible marketer. It would not be an exaggeration to say you’re one of the leading authorities on SEO in the world. You’re one of the coauthors of The Art of SEO, now in the fourth edition. 

It’s known everywhere as one of the most authoritative books on SEO, if not the most authoritative. But more than that, every time I speak to you, I feel a sense of inner calm. I know you’ve gone down a real spiritual path and found something there, and you are a very successful podcaster. That’s just me bragging about you for a little bit, but where am I on track? Where am I off track? How do you normally introduce yourself?

Oh, that’s all perfect and beautiful. Thank you so much. I want to reveal light in everything I do. And if it’s in a marketing, spiritual, personal development, or general business context, I’m happy to do that. That’s what I look to do. If that’s your intention, you will achieve much more of that than if you just don’t show up with an intention, or just try to build your business or whatever without a more overarching desire to serve. 

The Art of SEO is my claim to fame at this point — fourth edition, 750 pages — but it’s not who I am. It’s just something I’ve created with collaborators —my co-authors. And it continues over all these years since 2009, adding a lot of value to the world and educating many SEO practitioners. That’s pretty cool.

That is really cool. I’ve known you for a few years, but I don’t know your origin story or your background. Can you go into that a bit? How did you get started? What was your career early on? How did you get started in business and in marketing? And then I’d love to hear more about where you’ve gone beyond that?

The unseen world is more real than the seen. Crack that door open and you realize life isn’t merely material—magic is happening. Share on X

It actually started when I was a kid. I taught myself to program and wrote my own bulletin board system. This was before the World Wide Web. I coded the whole thing in BASIC, and I used my home telephone line, which isn’t cool if that’s your family’s only phone line. But it’s been intriguing and interesting to me for a long time. So I would stay up all night coding during the summer, and I was like 12 or 13 doing it. And then I decided I needed to get more healthy habits and just go cold turkey. I gave away all my software, sold my Commodore 64, and then joined the track team, cross-country team, and bicycle club.

And then I just went completely in the other direction. When I was studying biochemistry and in a PhD program years later, I decided I was going to play with this internet thing. That was a thing. It was 1994. I was building websites just for fun. I built one for my department, as well as one or two, just out of hobbies I was interested in while writing.

So I created WritersNet (writers.net) and Insit. Not even a year later, I dropped out of my PhD and started an internet agency. This was really early days, before SEO was a thing. So, in 1995, and pretty quickly, I figured that SEO was going to be a thing. I started playing around with Web Position Gold, and Google hadn’t even existed at that point. I was optimizing for search engines like InfoSeek, Lycos, Alta Vista, WebCrawler, etc. And it was cool. I don’t know if I could say this word, “b*llsy,” to do what I did, because I was up to my eyeballs in student loan debt.

I talked my way into a conference as a volunteer because I had no speaking experience and no portfolio other than the couple of websites I designed for fun myself on the side. So when I went to this conference, it was several thousand dollars to learn how to market online. I was given the job of mic runner. Cause I wasn’t paying for the event. I was being put to work. So I was very cheeky, still a 24-year-old kid. And I decided to start chiming in and helping the panelists answer the questions. Cause I had the mic. By the end of day one, I had a big stack of business cards, and I was also de-invited from day two by the conference organizer.

That ‘who am I?’ thing is poison. It’s imposter syndrome.

I ticked off some of the panelists and speakers, who then complained to the organizer. But it ended up being a huge blessing because I got two big accounts from doing that. I was making nothing, and then, A month later, I had two huge accounts. Instead of having to take out a big loan or whatever, the accounts ended up being half a million dollars each in revenue, which is like getting an angel investor. And all it was was me just being really cheeky. Not knowing better that it’s bad etiquette to help answer some of the questions that are stumping the panelists.

There are a couple of lessons, and I see this on a recurring basis from people who’ve been incredibly successful, is they’re not afraid to just get themselves out there, but also offer their services for free initially, like a lot of people talk about— “How do I get started in X?” —they’re like, “Look, I’m really good at this.” And I need to get my first client, my second client. And often, some of the best ways to get noticed are to just provide a lot of value to someone in the space for free. And get noticed. And I’ve had several people who now work for me who got their jobs not by pitching me on their service or whatever, but by actually doing something valuable for me for free, without being prompted or asked.

And that naturally leads to, “Hey, how can I get more of this? How can I get more of you?” And I love that. I know Zig Ziglar often said, “Timid salespeople have skinny children.” So really, being a little bit bold and just getting yourself out there, and kind of taking that risk of looking foolish. Because as a year-old, you’re showing up to a conference, you’re answering questions, and a lot of people will be like, “What are my qualifications? Who am I?” All of this sort of stuff, I should just shut up. But you’re bold, and you put yourself

Well, that ‘who am I?’ thing is poison. It’s imposter syndrome. “Who am I to be so bold or so magnificent to deserve the attention and interest of a Fortune 500 company or whatever?” Marianne Williamson famously said, “Who are you not to be? That’s your nature. That’s who you are.” I don’t know if you do, but do you know who Marianne Williamson is?

No, I don’t.

Oh, she’s an amazing author and personal development expert. The quote is so beautiful. It’s from her book, A Return to Love. And it goes like this: 

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous,

talented and fabulous?

 

Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God.

Your playing small does not serve the world.

There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other

people won’t feel insecure around you.

 

We were born to make manifest the glory of

God that is within us.

 

It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine,

we unconsciously give other people

permission to do the same.

If you’re willing to suspend disbelief and stay open, you invite miracles. The moment you shut the door on possibility, you shut the miracles out too. Share on X

As we are liberated from our own fear,

Our presence automatically liberates others.”

I love that.

How beautiful is that? Just putting yourself out there, being bold, and not fearing rejection, or at least just pushing through the fear, is a way to just be in the world, not to fear rejection or worry that you’re taking up space in the world. For years, I would do other things that were bold like that.

Being bold and pushing through fear is a way to be in the world, not to fear rejection or worry that you’re taking up space.

Not necessarily poor etiquette, but things that would put me out there in a way that I took a big risk. For example, we did a full-blown, very expensive SEO audit for free for Target.com, a huge brand here in the States, which was a risk because we did it in the hopes of getting a testimonial and using their logo on our client list.

They said that it depends on the quality of the audit. “If you do a great job, then sure.” And we did. That turned into so much business. The testimonial quote was amazing. Having that logo targeted on our client list was a big deal.

Greg Merrilees has a great story, too, of doing something bold like that. In fact, you know him because of this bold move. He sent out t-shirts he had handmade with an incredible logo he made for James Schramko and Ezra Firestone. They had a podcast back then called Think Act Get.

Greg made a beautiful logo for that podcast, put it on two t-shirts, and sent a t-shirt to James and Ezra. They were just gobsmacked. They loved it. They didn’t know who Greg was. They didn’t know Studio1 Design, but they just contacted him, and James ended up inviting Greg to SuperFastBusiness event. 

He started sending business to Greg and Studio1, and the rest is history. It all started because of Greg’s willingness to put himself out there, and it wasn’t a ploy; it was him genuinely being generous, wanting to serve, and wanting to appreciate what James and Ezra were doing because that podcast was life-changing for Greg. How cool is that? And you know Greg because of James.

I do. I see one commonality among people who’ve just kicked butt in life: they provide value in advance, and they’re bold. I read almost anybody’s biography. I read or hear nearly anybody’s story, and they did bold things. And in fact, every year, I come up with a word for the year for myself.

And this year it’s ask. I’m going to ask more than I’ve ever asked before. A lot of people feel like asking is like you’re begging or you’re lowering your status. But when I look at the highest-status people, including Steve Jobs, they were really good askers. Asking begins the receiving process. That’s the word I’ve got for the year. I write that down literally every single day when I’m writing out my goals.

Expect miracles.

Well, a nice corollary to that, I think, is to expect miracles.

I love that.

I was on the sign behind Joe Vitale, and I interviewed him. He was an incredible guest on my podcast on Get Yourself Optimized. He’s famous for the Law of Attraction and Ho’oponopono, a Hawaiian prayer of forgiveness. He’s got all these books published, but probably the thing he’s most famous for is being very prominently positioned in the movie The Secret, which went hugely viral. 

Joe is a beautiful human. And when I saw that sign behind him, on the video, I just thought, ‘This is a sign for me that I need to remember this.’ Just like you need to remember to ask, and not expect, as in entitlement, it’s positive expectancy. It’s believing that the universe has your back, that everything is divinely orchestrated, that this is a game rigged in your favor.

I love that. I actually use that phrase all the time. “Life is rigged in my favor.” I love that. There was a guy in Australia who was famous for—I’m not sure if he’s still alive. He was pretty old at the time—giving out little business cards that just said, ‘Expect a miracle.’ He’d be at a coffee shop, giving it to someone, or whatever. He had some incredible stories, which made him an amazing speaker. 

I want to come back to some of your sort of spiritual insights in a moment, but getting back to your work as a marketer, as an SEO person, if you looked in the marketing space and there was anything that you would consider, I guess, a commodity, it would be SEO services. Literally everybody’s spam inbox is littered with people saying, “Hey, I’ll get you on page one of Google.” An SEO person and all of that sort of stuff. In terms of positioning and in terms of fees, they are at the highest level, I think, in the space of anybody, like you command enormous fees deservedly.

How do you compete in a market that is so saturated that it has everybody making the same kind of claims? How are you standing out? How are you positioning yourself differently? What effect has the book had in that space for you, if any? And yes, I’d love to hear your thoughts around, because a lot of people feel like, “Hey, my industry or my market is super saturated or there’s a lot of competition, but I couldn’t think of any market that is probably more saturated, more competitive than SEO services.”

Think of it this way. I learned this from Bob Allen, who wrote many huge bestselling books—Cash in a Flash, Multiple Streams of Income, The One Minute Millionaire. He’s sold tens of millions of books. And the way he describes this is that you need to be the only one in your field. The only thing is to insert in the blank. So how does that manifest for me? Because I have the book, which is a university textbook on SEO. It is the go-to reference book. It has all the big names in the SEO, marketing, and business industries who have provided blurbs and testimonial quotes in the front matter of the book.

It’s super legit. It’s super credible. And having that makes me the only —or me and my two coauthors the only —and that is something you can’t buy. And there are ways to create lower-quality books with AI hiring out to a firm that produces books for you and so forth, but it won’t be the caliber that will make you the only one. Each edition took two years to produce, and it is a huge project, a labor of love, because it’s probably minimum wage, given the amount of work involved and the royalties I’ve gotten. 

My co-authors have gotten one, but it is an incredible, huge business card. If I’m speaking at a conference and I give away some books, I will get people who say, “Wow, this is a huge book.”

And it was even bigger. The third edition was a thousand pages. So they would say, “I’m not going to be able to read this. Can I just hire you?” And that’s, of course, music to my ears. I know that is going to happen time and time again. So I end up buying a bunch of books and then giving them away. Author discount, it’s still much more cost-effective to do that penny-wise, pound-foolish with the books. When you have a publisher, like O’Reilly, my publisher, I don’t have the rights to give away digital copies, to create an audiobook, nothing. 

I have to buy copies from the publisher or from Amazon, and then I can give those away, but that might cost me 25 bucks a piece, which is not cheap if you’re going to give away 50 copies at a conference, for example, but it pays for itself time and time again. That’s one way to be the only guy with a one-page marketing plan blueprint on how to do it. Talk about simplifying and providing a memorable, impactful framework. It’s a game-changer. So, you’re the only one in that space. No one else can come after you and say, “Hey, I’ve got a one-page marketing plan. Look at me.” 

And they’re like, “Wait a second. No. Allan Dib already has dibs on that.” And that’s what our listener needs to do: find that slot where they can be the only. It’s pretty simple, but it’s not easy. It’s straightforward, but it’s a lot of work. It might take two years. It might take just creating that 35,000-SEO-audit you give away for free, which takes you a month to produce, in the hopes that you get a great testimonial—and then you do, and that changes the whole trajectory of your business, which is what happened for us. 

Find the slot where you can be the only one.

We were known as a web agency building websites and e-commerce sites with good SEO for the first seven years we were in business. It wasn’t until about 2002 that we did that SEO audit for Target, which put us on the map as an SEO firm, where you could be a huge brand and hire out SEO services to this agency. Ours, Netconcepts, and then you can outsource your SEO department. That was not how we were known up until that point. We were known as a web development shop that knew SEO.

I love the book strategy. I’ve seen that be a huge moat in my business. It’s a huge competitive advantage because so few people will actually do it. I’m about to release my new book, Lean Marketing. I’ve sent you an advanced copy. But so much effort is front-loaded. That book was two years of work. That’s not even including thinking about it beforehand, and all of that was just like the work of writing it, getting it out, editing it, doing all of that. So much of the work is front-loaded, and so few people are willing to do that.

So it is a massive competitive advantage, especially when you’ve come up with a unique concept. However, having said that, the answer is more than just, “Hey, I wrote a book because there are tons of people who wrote a book.” And there are tons of people who’ve written SEO books, and they don’t have anywhere near your level of success. So something more to what you’re doing than, “Okay, yes, you wrote an incredible book,” one that’s super comprehensive, but something more than just, “Hey, I’m an author on a book.”

You think about this as it’s predestined. That the bigger the dream, the more likely you’re going to hit it, and if you aim for the stars, you may only hit the moon, but you’re certainly not going to hit the moon if your sights are set on, I don’t know, three stories up. Suppose you want to really make a big impact in this world —help humanity and so forth. Dream big and make it a moonshot. What I did in the early years of building my business didn’t make me a moonshot. It was just building a business. I wasn’t a really successful entrepreneur in the first few years.

I was just an entrepreneur. There are entrepreneurs who grow businesses into hundreds of millions of dollars and so forth. It needs to be something along the lines of the more people you impact, the more your success will be, so if you want to be a millionaire, help a million people; if you want to be a billionaire, help a billion people, and I didn’t get that for a number of years. 

The bigger you dream, the more likely you’re going to hit it.

I didn’t have my spiritual awakening to see this bigger picture of how this is all like a game, until, in my business life, so I went a good two decade and a half without having any spiritual connection at all. I was agnostic, and it felt like I was swimming upstream. Things didn’t really turn for me until I had this awakening, and then everything started happening for me instead of feeling like it was happening to me.

I can’t resist now. Talk me through some of your awakenings. Because I feel like I’m sort of at the stage where you were initially, that sort of agnostic stage. You definitely feel there’s something else other than what we see every day. But you don’t know what you don’t know. You and I, we were talking about certainty. Definitely, I don’t have that certainty that you do. So I’d love to hear about your spiritual awakening and how you get to that level of certainty.

Yeah, so first, I’ll give you a very practical, quick example of how these synchronicities and seemingly chance occurrences happen in my everyday life. This just happened yesterday, so it’s fresh in my mind. I was interviewing with a guy who had nothing to do with business or spirituality, even. I didn’t know what I was supposed to talk about with him. I showed, hoping that it would, more knowing that it would just present itself. And we had a great conversation. I had interviewed him just on an intuition that he’d be a great guest.

His name is Daniel Brown, and I know him through Genius Network. Turns out this was only his second podcast interview ever. It was a leap of faith for me to have him on the show without all the experience, accolades, and all that. But here’s where the magic came in. We were talking about all these books that have made a difference in his life. And he had a whole bunch that we went through. I’ve read a lot of books, too, but I shared a couple that just popped into my head. One of them I haven’t looked at in well over a year, it’s called Mind to Matter, and I didn’t even remember the name of the author, so I was Googling it while I was talking to Daniel. 

It’s Dawson Church. I just never go into my, like, all the podcast pitches. I stay out of there. I stay out of my inbox altogether. I have an executive assistant to manage that stuff for me. She puts things in my action folder. That’s where I look at the read review folder secondarily. I try to stay out of there, and she archives everything else. Who was pitching to be on my podcast? Just four hours after I mentioned him.

Wow.

It was a staff person for Dawson.

Synchronicity is something that I have definitely experienced in my life, and it is a thing. It’s like, I’ll be thinking about something, or I’ve been talking, or I’ve been working on something, and then five other instances pop up. And I know a lot of people will say, “Hey, you know, if you think of a red Volkswagen, you’ll see red Volkswagens everywhere,” but it’s not; it goes far beyond coincidence. 

I was looking to call someone or whatever, then their name pops up somewhere else, and then it pops up again. There is no way that this is a coincidence. So synchronicity is something that I’ve definitely started paying a lot more attention to lately. I read a book called The Human Mind Owner’s Manual.

I really liked it by Sean Webb. He basically talks about how essentially our brain is like a transceiver into consciousness. Consciousness exists outside of us, where we say we’re consciousness having a human experience. So that works. And look, I don’t know if I agree with everything that he says and things like that, but for a hundred percent certainty, I’ve experienced synchronicity in my life. The other thing I’ve experienced several times—and I know a lot of people who come up with big ideas—is that the idea they didn’t come up with themselves.

They just essentially liked it. Caught it or it came from somewhere else, and they were just the conduit. And some of my biggest ideas have come about that way as well, where it’s not something that I’ve actually, you know, invented. It’s something that I’ve just suddenly picked up, and I’ve had that experience as well. Other than those things, I don’t have much clarity about the spiritual life. I was raised in Christian fundamentalism, so that put me off a lot of organized religion. That’s why it repelled me for a long time, but I’ve started tapping back into a spiritual idea or thought lately.

There’s a great quote. It might be from Wayne Dyer, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

Treat it like an experiment: get into a high-vibration and ask for guidance. As you look over your prospects and past clients, notice who you’re nudged to serve. When you sincerely ask for a sign, the right people light up. Share on X

Yes.

You’re getting a taste of that through these synchronicities, these chance occurrences that don’t really make sense. Other than that, there’s a bigger picture: the unseen world is more real than the seen world. And then, all the other questions around. The existence of God or a grand design, infinite intelligence, consciousness, all that sort of stuff. Does it survive the body? That sort of stuff. We’ll get to it later, but this has cracked the door open for you so you can see there’s more to life than a materialistic viewpoint. Magic is going on.

How did you make that shift? Because, as an entrepreneur—and as a human being—I read a quote the other day that said, “Every living thing wants to live beyond its means.” And so as an entrepreneur, you’re always chasing the next revenue goal, the next profit goal, the next project, the next whatever. 

Dream big and make it a moonshot.

That’s something that I’ve been thinking about lately: what’s that Goldilocks zone? Having too little. That’s bad. Having too much can be a pain in the ass, too. That finding the Goldilocks zone is not just business, but in every area of life. I think it applies to physical fitness. It applies to money. It applies to relationships. There’s a zone where there’s too little, there’s a zone where there’s too much and finding that Real Goldilocks zone—I hate it when they say balance—but finding the right zone. In economics, they call it the efficient frontier when there’s a perfect correlation of utility. So, how did you find it?

I stumbled into it, but it was all by divine orchestration. I just didn’t realize it at the time. I had an experience in India. I got touched on the head by a monk, given a blessing. This was part of a Tony Robbins Platinum Partnership. So I was in his highest-level program. And this particular event was a spirituality-themed intensive for his upper-echelon folks, who are spending upwards of $100,000 a year to be in his kind of inner circle. This was back in 2012, and it was one monk in particular—I can’t even remember his name—and when he touched my head, it was like a psychedelic experience. I had never done drugs before, but everything was in technicolor as if I had done LSD. I don’t know what LSD is like. I’ve never even done marijuana.

And I know that this was like a supernatural experience. Everything was in the brightest Technicolor, like a cartoon I’ve ever seen. I felt this deep sense of peace and connection to the Creator and to all that is, to the fabric of creation. And remember, I was agnostic. I didn’t believe in anything. I didn’t even think that the universe was friendly.

Everything is an illusion other than love and God.

It was a malevolent, dark, dystopian place. And of course, when that’s your expectation, that’s what you attract into your reality, and that’s no fun. But this was a powerful turning point in my life. Now, it wasn’t until January 22nd of 2021 that I had my second awakening, and that one changed everything, like even more.

It was an even bigger shift because I was shown, at that point, the nature of reality: this is a holographic kind of matrix—a simulation of sorts, an illusion. And this is not a new concept that physical reality is an illusion. This is found in many major religions, including Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism. In Buddhism, it’s called Samsara; in Hinduism, it’s called Maya. It’s not real. Space and time. Motion is all illusion. That’s a fundamental precept in Kabbalah and mystical Judaism, that this is all illusion. Nothing like loss is an illusion. Evil is an illusion. Everything is illusion other than love, other than God.

God is everything and everywhere. There’s nothing that doesn’t have consciousness, including the table my computer sits on and the toys my little son plays with. There’s nothing that doesn’t have consciousness. There’s nothing independent of God. Once you start experiencing God, then you can’t unsee it. It’s like you are Neo in The Matrix, and you see the green code. And now reality is malleable.

What happened in 2021 that made you see all of this?

It started because of a prayer. The prayer came about because a few months earlier, I did a podcast interview with this pretty famous psychic, Sheila Gillette, whom I met through Genius Network, Joe Polish’s mastermind and connection network, and who has been channeling 12 archangels for 50 years.

She had a near-death experience when she was bearing a child, and she had a pulmonary embolism, and she was not going to make it. Her baby was fine, but she was not going to make it. And then she started a fever. She was praying to God, “Please let me stay on this planet. Let me raise my kids. Give me a job. Please give me a job. I’ll do anything.”

There’s nothing that doesn’t have consciousness. There’s nothing independent of God. Once you start experiencing God, then you can’t unsee it.

Spontaneously, in the middle of the night, three months later, I started praying to God for a job, and I had no idea what I was asking for. On the surface, it makes sense because I’m a successful entrepreneur. What do I need a job for?

I didn’t know what I was praying for. I was shown The Matrix, I was shown the simulation, and it was as if terabytes of data were jammed into a one-gigabyte thumb drive. I was not able to retain any of it, or very little of it, but it changed everything for me. People who tell you they had a plant medicine journey and saw the nature of reality, God, angels, or whatever. In that kind of scenario, you might say that’s the medicine. But I just prayed. Every prayer is heard.

But what made you spontaneously just pray in the middle of the night? You know, like you’re agnostic or whatever.

No, I was not agnostic at that point. I had the awakening in 2012. Nine years later. I don’t know exactly. It was like my higher self; something deep in my soul just said, “Pray for this,” like nudge, nudge, nudge, poke, poke. “Pray for this.” I just started praying. I just started really praying for this. What it turned out to be—and this might really turn off some listeners who don’t believe in things like psychic abilities. So Sheila Gillette, who’s been channeling these 12 archangels, had her psychic abilities at that point when she was on her deathbed. She had that near-death experience and everything, and she was granted a second chance, and part of the assignment for her was having psychic abilities and then starting to channel and stuff.

Every prayer is heard.

You talked earlier about sometimes a book title or something just pops into your head, and you feel like it didn’t come from you. She can receive stuff psychically and distinguish that it’s not coming from her consciousness, but it’s coming from infinite intelligence. That’s what awakened in me, too. That’s where you might lose some of your listeners here at this point in the episode.

Clairvoyance, clairaudience, psychometry, medical intuition, animal communication, all that sort of nonsense. You’re telling me that this guy can do that. Yeah, I can. And it’s tricky to talk to somebody who is, let’s say, completely atheistic, and I have to calibrate. I have to rely on my intuition and my guidance on what to say and how much to say. Some people—like relatives—I’ll never speak to about this. Maybe in my memoir or whatever, they’ll find out, but until then, they just think of me as an SEO geek, and that’s okay because they’re not ready to hear this. And that’s okay. There’s no judgment. 

“We’re all just walking each other home.” – Ram Dass

I love this quote from Ram Dass. “We’re all just walking each other home.” If you know someone who is two steps behind me or two steps ahead of me, it doesn’t matter. We’re all heading to the same place. It’s just, are we going to take detours? Are we going to help each other on the way? That’s all our choice. If you’re in a place of service instead of self-service, then you’re gonna attract more miracles, more synchronicities, more of those chance occurrences that aren’t chance, and it becomes just part of how the universe works.

I love it. I’m successful beyond my dreams in business and in life; every day of my life is incredible for me, but I’m at a spiritual crossroads. Where does someone like me go?

That’s the trap. It is known as ‘The Drift.’ I learned about it from a book called Outwitting the Devil, which wasn’t even published during Napoleon Hill’s lifetime. He wrote this —channeled it, and it’s conversations with the devil. The devil is sharing his secrets, like, “Yeah, this is how I get people to do the bad stuff.” I just allow them to drift. I invite them to drift. You sit in front of the TV, just veg out. I’m going to have a lazy day today. That sort of stuff is just spiritual death. 

If you allow yourself to drift, that’s where he’s got you. He’s taking you off the path. On the other hand, you’re in a place of service and surrender, and you know that you’re an instrument for the creator, however you want to refer to him or her, but that you are in a place of service, then these sorts of synchronicities and so forth will accelerate.

But the question that you posed is, do I crack open that door even more so that you can see that, “Oh, just saw the black cat go twice in front of my doorway.” This is a sign I need to do something. 

I’m like, “Mr. Anderson, I’m having a good life as a computer programmer.” Actually, in the movie, he wasn’t having a very good life. You know, it would look fairly successful. He’s making enough money. But there is so much more to this game that we’re playing. So much more. It’s beyond human comprehension.

So what I would recommend as a starting point is, whatever your interest or curiosity is focused on—some sort of psychic thing or spiritual phenomenon, a psychedelic experience, doing some ayahuasca and in a jungle somewhere with a shaman who’s legit and not printing out his own kind of certificate, opening your Akashic Records. You want to take a class on the Akashic Records. If you simply just want to read something that’s almost kind of like The Matrix from a hundred years ago, there’s a book called The Game of Life and How to Play It by Florence Scovel Shinn, published literally a hundred years ago.

And it’s so forward-thinking in terms of how this illusion works and how to break open the illusion, and how to attract things, the law of attraction, manifesting, and all this from a hundred years ago. There are courses. For example, Sheila Gillette, who has courses on developing your psychic abilities, and Anne Marie Pizarro, a well-known Akashic Records reader, who has a course on the Akashic Records and how to open your records.

And once you get that experience, and you think, “Wow, what else is possible?” And it’s just the rabbit hole goes deep. Let’s say you open your Akashic records and learn how to do so. It’s a pretty simple prayer that you say, and then you feel what’s called the Akashic headache, which is this band of energy kind of, I don’t know, buzzing or type of electric, prickly wrapped around your head.

And you know your records are open, and you’re communicating with the record keepers, and then you do the closing prayer, and it just vanishes. It’s like, whoa, this is amazing. Freaky is what might be your first inclination to describe it. But I would say be careful with your words if you’re talking about this as crazy, freaky, weird, or whatever, it’s kind of disrespectful because it is magic and how the universe is meant to work. Synchronicity isn’t just this spooky action at a distance like quantum entanglement. No, it is the scaffolding of the universe. This is how the universe is meant to work.

Synchronicity isn’t just this spooky action at a distance; it is the scaffolding of the universe. This is how the universe is meant to work.

Chance occurrences, people who end up becoming your soulmate, your business partner or whatever. This is destiny. That chance occurrence, “Oh, I missed the train.” And then they did too. And then we had a conversation like, “What are the odds?” We ended up becoming soulmates, business partners, or whatever. The odds are 100%. It’s one out of one because it is a rigged game, 100% rigged.

The more you just surrender into it, relax, trust and allow, the more of the magic happens. And then all of these things—like being bold, putting yourself out there, and all that—are just a mechanism to do your little 2%, and then allowing the creator, all the angels, and all your unseen support team to do the 98%. And then anything and everything is possible. It just becomes this incredible game, and you’re just in love with life. Even when things go really sideways, you know that, “Hey, this is for my highest good because I know and trust that I have that experience, that relationship with the creator that tells me just to relax and trust even through the bumpy road.” 

Fascinating. Stephan, a lot of people listening, they’ll be like, “You know, this stuff is really far out.” I’ve not experienced a lot of what you’ve said as well. But one thing I do know is that the stuff that I once thought was far out is now just everyday practice. Like, once upon a time, I thought it’d be far out to run a business that pays me enough to live. And then at one stage, I thought it’d be far out to have a company where I could employ 5 people, 10 people or whatever. At one stage, I thought it was far out to believe that the words that we use make a difference in our lives, and practically in the copy that we write and things like that, it’s really the product that people buy or the pricing or whatever.

The more you surrender, relax, trust and allow synchronicity, the more of the magic happens.

So things that I take for granted now as fact, as things that I see for a certain stage, I thought we’re far out. And so I’m more open these days to thinking about things that I now see as far out. I’m like, “In a year, two years, and five years, will I just see this as fact?” Like I do these things. So, that’s what I would say to both myself and to anyone else listening who is thinking, “Hey, this stuff is far out there. I don’t know, to be honest, I’m not there yet.” 

I recommend that if you are on the fence about it, look for practical applications. And then that will be further reinforcement when you get these miracles happening, like, “Okay, there’s something to this. I need to accelerate this. I need to keep going.” An example is Vishen Lakhiani, the founder of Mindvalley. He tells this story about how he founded Mindvalley. He worked as a commission-only salesperson at a SaaS company that served law firms. 

He would get his assigned territories and lists of law firms to call. He was barely making it; he was commissioned only so he was 100% reliant on yes to pay the bills, not making enough. So he was eating ramen noodles, essentially. And then he went to The Silva Method seminar. He learned some of these things about how the universe works and how you can attract, manifest, and stuff. And then he went back to work, and instead of calling A through Z the law firms he was assigned to, he would only call the ones that he felt a tug, a pull, a spiritual or an energetic kind of nudge.

And guess what? His sales doubled, and he kept doing it. And guess what? His sales doubled again, and within months, which is like three, four or five months, he was a VP at that company. Well, of course, he figured out he was playing small, so he quit and started Mindvalley —but wow, what a great practical application of the idea that the unseen world is more real than the seen world. You know, it’s just a great experiment that you can try yourself. 

Get into a high-vibration, trusting place. Even if you’re agnostic and you’re thinking, “I don’t know about this, but just give it a try.” And that’s just one example. You probably have a list of prospects, the list of past clients and email lists that you could go through and just feel like, “Okay, I need a sign. I need some guidance here. I want to become more spiritually connected, and so I’d really love to get this to work, so please help me out here.”

Often, the non-spiritual term for that is ‘trusting your gut.’ Like so many times, I’ve ignored it and regretted it. It’s never steered me wrong. It steered me wrong when I’ve ignored it, when I’ve, like, I’ve got a bad feeling about this person, but you know, I think there’s going to be a profitable deal. This they seem, they’re saying they’re all the right things, and your gut feel is, there. So a lot of entrepreneurs will be familiar with that. But yeah, I mean,

But where is that coming from? If you just say, “That’s just me,” and that comes from the ego, instead, you’re realizing that we’re all connected, or at least willing to consider it. You know what I would call the willing suspension of disbelief. That’s a term. I didn’t invent that, but I love thinking in those terms. So if somebody is talking to me about, I don’t know, let’s say an alien abduction or something. It wasn’t long ago that I just went, my eyes involuntarily rolled backwards. I was so dubious of that. And that’s just even in the last few years.

If you are willing to suspend disbelief and just hear somebody out or try something, you’re going to have many more miraculous experiences than if you just shut the door on that and say, “You know what? It’s got to be proven to me first.” It’s not seeing is believing in this reality. You create this reality in this video game we’re playing. It’s believing in seeing when you think it, then you see it.

I love it, Stephan, always a treat to speak with you. I always come away from speaking with you more inspired, more open. So it’s fantastic to talk to you as always. Thank you so much. Where can people find you? You’ve got a couple of podcasts and a bunch of resources. There’s your book, there’s The Art of SEO, an incredible book for anyone who wants a very deep dive into SEO. Where else can people find you?

So the main place is stephanspencer.com. My two podcasts are Marketing Speak and Get Yourself Optimized. Those are at marketingspeak.com and getyourselfoptimized.com. The Art of SEO is, of course, available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and everywhere else, but it also has a website, artofseo.com.

My agency, Netconcepts, is at netconcepts.com. And actually, I was joking about the memoir thing, but I am working on one. So at some point, that’ll be out, and maybe that’ll be the thing I’m known for, not SEO. You see, it’s all possible and infinite possibilities. So if you believe that you have a book in you, then you do. And it could be. It doesn’t have to be like years for me. Do you know how long it took to write The Alchemist? The book that sold 150 million copies?

No, I don’t.

12 days.

12 days. Wow. That is incredible.

He downloaded it from above, right?

I need to figure out how to write a book in 12 days. Cause it took me nearly two years.

I feel you.

Incredible. Thank you so much, Stephan—such a pleasure to speak with you.

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Your Checklist of Actions to Take

• Provide value freely before asking for anything in return. Volunteer my expertise in spaces where my ideal clients gather, answer questions, and demonstrate my knowledge without expecting immediate compensation. This bold approach of helping others solve problems—even when uninvited—can lead to significant business opportunities.
• Overcome imposter syndrome by embracing the “Who are you not to be?” mindset. Remember, my playing small does not serve the world. Recognize that my light, not my darkness, is what most frightens me, and that stepping into my magnificence is actually my natural state as a child of the divine.
• Pivot my business positioning based on breakthrough moments, not just incremental growth. Identify the signature project or result that could redefine how the market perceives my expertise, then lean into that new positioning deliberately rather than staying attached to my original identity.
• Apply The Silva Method sales approach by following energetic nudges. Instead of working through my prospect list A through Z, tune into which contacts I feel a spiritual pull or tug toward, then only call those prospects.
• Show up with a higher intention beyond just building my business. Set an overarching intention to “reveal light” and serve in everything I do—whether in marketing, spiritual, or business contexts.
• Practice willing suspension of disbelief to access miraculous experiences. Even if I’m skeptical about spiritual or unconventional approaches, I temporarily set aside my doubts and try them as experiments.
• Trust my gut instinct as spiritual guidance, not just random intuition. When I get a “bad feeling” about a prospect or deal, I recognize this isn’t just my ego talking—it’s divine guidance coming through my intuitive sense.
• Look for practical applications of spiritual concepts to build reinforcement. Start with small experiments rather than requiring full belief upfront. Get into a high-vibration, trusting state, then ask for a sign or guidance on which prospect to contact from my list.
• Recognize that the unseen world is more real than the seen world. This perspective shift allows me to access a level of business intelligence and opportunity flow that purely tactical approaches can never achieve, as demonstrated by the multiple sales doublings when operating from spiritual alignment.
• Connect with Stephan Spencer at stephanspencer.com to dive deeper into SEO and personal optimization. I can access my expertise through two podcasts: Marketing Speak for marketing and SEO strategies, and Get Yourself Optimized for personal development and spiritual growth. If I want the definitive SEO resource, grab the fourth edition of The Art of SEO and for agency services, visit netconcepts.com.