Who: Eli Schwartz, growth consultant, SEO (search engine optimization) expert, and author of Product-Led SEO.
What: Eli Schwartz, SEO expert and consultant (SEO, search engine optimization, is the strategic development of websites and other digital content, such as blogs, so they can be found easily by people searching for those topics via search engines like Google and Bing), has over a decade of experience driving successful growth programs for major enterprise companies. He has worked with companies like Coinbase, Match, Gusto, Blue Nile, WordPress, Zendesk, and Shutterstock in building and executing growth strategies that have created billions of dollars in revenue.
In the past, Eli led a growth team at SurveyMonkey, an online survey tool for businesses, helping it drive hundreds of millions of dollars per year. He helped launch SurveyMonkey’s first Asia-Pacific (APAC) office and oversaw international growth before and after shares went public. Prior to SurveyMonkey, he led marketing initiatives at a start-up and helped them successfully exit to one of the largest online automotive networks in the world. Eli frequently speaks at marketing events and conferences around the world, and at top universities across the US, and his work has been featured on sites ranging from TechCrunch to Forbes to Y Combinator.
Where: Along with his wife and four boys (aged one to nine), Eli currently lives in Houston, Texas. Before that, he lived in Palo Alto, California, for 14 years, with a two-year stint in Singapore during that period.
Why: A few weeks ago, I saw that Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, posted a beautiful note on social media about a guy named Eli Schwartz. Why was one of the most influential women in the world (who also happens to be Jewish) praising this guy named Eli? It happened that Eli had just published his new book in the memory of Sheryl’s late husband, Dave Goldberg, and Sheryl was publicly expressing her appreciation. That piqued my interest. So, I reached out to Rabbi Joey Felsen from Palo Alto to learn more about Eli, and then, as Eli and I spoke, I knew I wanted to share his story.
1 of 9: What opportunities or personalities played a key role in your career path?
In 2015, my wife and I decided to pursue a dream of living, working, and traveling in Asia. After an extremely long and difficult recruitment process, I received an offer to lead the APAC division of a global marketing agency based out of Singapore. With a move date just two weeks away, I went to give notice of my impending departure to my manager. At the time, I had been at SurveyMonkey for slightly over two years, and while I really loved the company, they didn’t have any Asian offices and that was where we wanted to be.
But my boss pushed back on my leaving, and told me that she was going to have the CEO try to convince me himself. I wished her well and assumed that was the end. How wrong I was.
Within 20 minutes, I was sitting across the table from Dave Goldberg, CEO of SurveyMonkey. The first thing he told me was that he was personally offended that I had a dream of moving to Asia and that I had not looped him in to give him a chance to make it happen. Until this point, I had had many interactions with Dave, but never a formal one-to-one sit-down. I thought his opening gambit was just words, but I was soon to find out that he was truly serious.
After respectfully declining his request to reconsider my decision, or at least to change my move to somewhere else in the world where SurveyMonkey had an office, I assumed the conversation was over. Later that evening, he emailed me to say that he had found a solution and he was going to send me to Singapore as I wished. Without even waiting for my response, he emailed the CEO of one of the company’s largest investors that had an office in Singapore and told him that SurveyMonkey was going to need a desk in their space.
