I am Alex Panagis. I’m the founder of ScaleMath – an SEO & marketing agency. I’m currently living and working out of the UK, but I grew up all over the world including Nigeria, Leeds, Bahrain, Oman, and Switzerland…
The Journey Began
I got into WordPress at a very young age – 11 – so before WordPress, my digital-life was heavily focused on photography, videography, and tech products. At the age of 14, I was already able to partner with some incredible companies like Punkt and Think Tank Photo just to name a few when I was more focused on photography/videography.
I initially came across WordPress when I was testing a number of solutions for my photography website & blog and wanted to take it more seriously since I was getting some attention from brands and publications.
I quickly realized that other platforms didn’t provide the flexibility and powerful customization opportunities that WordPress does so they wouldn’t have been a good fit if I wanted to build a site that I could use for years to come. Obviously, things have come a long way since then!
The Need for ScaleMath
ScaleMath Logo
This is an excellent question. Because it’s very true – there are tons of SEO & marketing agencies out there. In my mind and from what I’ve been told by clients as well as people that know about ScaleMath there are a couple of things that set us apart.
ScaleMath is half SEO & marketing agency and half SEO & marketing training. We help both people and businesses across the globe drive rankings, recognition, and revenue by:
- Sharing what we know
- Working directly with people (1:1)
- Fully handling SEO & marketing for our clients
So, in reality, we serve three audiences. B2B on the agency-side of things where we work with the businesses directly with our managed approach. B2C, working directly with people 1:1 for strategy and sharing what we know with the ScaleMath Pro community and last but not least, helping those who aren’t yet members with our blog.
The worst experience for me is the formalities. I’ve always been really focused on execution/the actual doing part of a business, so when ScaleMath grew to the point where lawyers and accountants needed to get involved to handle certain things, I initially wasn’t that happy about having to spend time dealing with that instead of doing what I really enjoyed doing for a while…
So far, I’m most proud of launching ScaleMath Pro – as this was a monumental decision and has been something I was considering for a long-time, and I’m really glad I’ve finally made the leap and found the perfect way to serve the people that don’t want the managed solution but want to learn/run SEO & marketing campaigns on their own or build their own teams.
I’m extremely proud to work with a number of companies in the WordPress industry alone including Rank Math and Atarim both of which are building incredible products – and it goes without saying that I’m more than looking forward to what’s in store for them for the rest of 2020 and beyond.
Myself with my Brilliant Team
We’re currently a fully-remote company! But here’s a photo of my workspace
Alex Panagis Workplace
Simple but effective and extremely portable for when I travel which I normally do a lot but haven’t been able to recently due to the situation with COVID-19 (also featuring a lot of water so I don’t forget to stay hydrated haha)…
Advice for Business Owners
Build an audience first or if you’ve already started a business and haven’t built an audience, start now. It isn’t too late. Even if you don’t know what you want to do, build or sell, start building an audience and then mold what product you build or how you serve people through the demographic you’ve attracted as well as what it is that you actually enjoy doing.
Stay in Touch
WordPress & Beyond
I’m very optimistic about the future of WordPress and can currently only see it powering an even larger share of the web as time goes on.
Personally, I don’t think there is a real threat from any competitors – after all, competition is good and options like WordPress, WooCommerce & Shopify can co-exist, they both have their place and people deserve to have options.
There’s a reason WordPress already powers 1/3rd of the Internet and that’s because it’s powerful and flexible. You’ll always have some people (mainly developers) doubting it and saying that it’s solely for bloggers. They’ve always been the loudest voices but the smallest in numbers. All in all, we all know that WordPress is not only the right choice for 99% of websites, but it’s also the right choice for clients.
That being said, more traditional web development obviously still has its place especially when it comes to SaaS companies where their website would evidently be powered by something completely custom.
But going forward I believe we’ll see more and more small business owners recognize WordPress as the solution (over the other more beginner-friendly website building platforms) as the barrier to entry & ease-of-use continues to improve and become more appealing.
My Love for the WordPress Community
As everyone in the industry can tell you, one of the best parts of WordPress is the amazing community so I really enjoy attending WordPress-related events. Recently, I took part and even hosted a talk at the WP FeedBack Virtual Summit which was a great experience as it came incredibly close to emulating the real-world conference experience online.
At the beginning of the year, right before this whole COVID-19 situation got out of hand – I also went to the WordPress Meetup in London and it was great to meet some familiar faces from the internet in real life…
If you’re new to the WordPress industry and looking for smart and talented people to follow on Twitter – apart from me obviously – here are a few that come to mind:
Paul Lacey | Rajendra Zore | Jan Koch | Raleigh Leslie | Justin Tadlock | Jason Resnick | Matt Medeiros | Brian Jackson
This is just to get you started, there are definitely others that are just as worthy of being here as well…
How I Keep Myself Updated
As I mentioned above, one of the things that makes WordPress so great is the community. Whether that’s on Facebook, in Slack communities, or in the WP FeedBack Community – there are some incredible people engaging and sharing things they come across all the time. Just by being a member there and participating is a great way to stay on top of and keep a pulse on the industry…
I Have a Life Other Than the Work
Although ScaleMath is my main focus and I really enjoy it, it’s definitely important to have a life outside of “work”. So aside from this, I really enjoy traveling to Switzerland because that’s where my family lives and is the one place I really consider “home”. Besides that though, I also really enjoy eating out at nice restaurants with friends/family.
I Reward Myself by
I reward myself by spending time with my family, relaxing and giving back however I can…
