about Me

Hey, I’m Jimmy. I’m working full-time as an SEO Manager at a Digital Marketing agency, servicing U.S-based clients.

Jimmy Phan avatar

Quick Facts about Me:

  • I studied and worked in Singapore for 7 years. Such a long time 😓. I graduated with a student debt of ~50k.
  • Managed to pay it off in 1.5 years 🥴. The debt pressure motivated me to look for ways to make additional income. I came across building Authority Site, and learnt SEO through doing so.
  • My marketing career started as a PPC Account Manager (managed ad budget account for Facebook Ads and Google Ads). First at Zalora, and then Shopee (both leading e-commerce companies in South East Asia at the time).
  • I quitted job and travelled around ✈️. Start with Sri Lanka, then Egypt, India, China. Took up diving lessons (I have an Advanced Diving License 🤿). Life is good.
  • Learnt coding as I felt coding is cool, and could complement marketing. Signed up for a coding bootcamp at Coder School, end up as a Teaching Assistant.
  • Spent 1 year at a Full Stack developer job. Realize I’m not cut out for it! 🤣
  • Now I work full time as a SEO Manager. The fish is back to the water baby 🐠!
  • And yes, I love using emoji. If you haven’t figured this out by now, well … 🙄

What I’m up to now?

Well, I’m on my mission to build up a side income 💵. All those news about successive layoffs get to me.

As you work full time, you have only one source of income. If you get kick out, life is gonna be tough, fast.

I realized early that no one is irreplaceable. Even the CEO got kicked off. As you got older, it’s much harder to get a job too. Do you think you can use ChatGPT better than those 20-25 year old kids? 🥲

I focus my freelance on SEO & link building (the skills that I’m most qualified with).

There’s a steep learning curve when it comes to freelancing though 🧗‍♀️: finding clients, closing deals, contract, invoice. I’m solving those, one by one, taking up lessons when necessary.

I document my entire freelance journey in my newsletter – The Freelance Journey. So, if you ever think about freelancing but do not know where to start, subscribe and say hello 🙋‍♂️! I share all my insights there.

Freelancing is just my initial start. I quickly realize that finding clients is really tough. Also, you will hit the ceiling of working hours fast. 😨

I’d have to build up a personal brand, so clients could come to me instead (hence, this personal blog). I also look to productize my service in the near future, so I’d no longer have to trade time for money.

Again, subscribe to my newsletter to follow my journey!

Places where I was Featured On:

Get in Touch:

  1. LinkedIn: I’m active on LinkedIn, trying to follow the footpath of Justin Welsh, the legend when it comes to building personal brands.

    I maintain a daily posting schedule, writing about my own experience starting to earn a side income via freelancing, and my thoughts on the importance of developing a side income, as you could be kicked out of your job at any time.

  2. Twitter: Once I get used to posting on LinkedIn, I’ll cross-post onto Twitter. A lot of interesting stuffs happening on Twitter. With its limit of 140 characters, Twitter trains me to condense my thoughts into bite-size chunks.

  3. 📩 Email: Contact me via hello@jimmyphan.com. Just tell me who you are and what you need help with.

    I have experience in digital marketing, SEO in general, and building passive incomes (a lot of failures from me though). Or just say hi, no pressure 👋