Meet Bill Ross

We recently connected with Bill Ross and have shared our conversation below.

Bill, we’ve been so fortunate to work with so many incredible folks and one common thread we have seen is that those who have built amazing lives for themselves are also often the folks who are most generous. Where do you think your generosity comes from?
When I started my agency back in 2013, I knew that I wanted to ultimately help businesses and people, and so that’s what I built it on—actually helping people. I knew that if I put the client or individual first over the money, in the long run, it would benefit everyone more than being a very money-driven company.

So the question is where did I get that level of generosity and the level of sacrifice for other people and helping other people? I think a lot of it came from my upbringing and specifically my mother. My mother stopped working as a nurse to take care of my sister and me when we were very young. I always saw her and took note of her generosity with her time and what she could do to help out other people economically – never expecting or wanting anything in return. This is why I am driven by utilizing the gifts I have been given to help others – without expecting anything in return.

Many people throughout my life have said I’m too generous, but I don’t think that caring about someone else’s success, whether it’s in business or life, and doing what I can to help them achieve that is ever too much to offer.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
Growing up, I always wanted to work with computers. I got my first computer when I was 15—it was a Tandy computer that my father brought home from the manufacturing facility that he worked at. It didn’t really do much; it came with a big booklet that you had to type out lines and lines of code to get something as simple as a basic screensaver to show up.

Fast forward to college, where I went to Siena College in Albany, New York to originally get a degree in computer science because at that point I thought computer science was computer graphics – which I found out very quickly in my first semester that it was not – it was programming which I didn’t have the mind to think abstractly within a programmatic language. So after my first semester, I switched to focus on psychology; which is what I got my degree in.

After college, I had multiple different sales jobs, working at a TV station, a radio station, and a publisher in Syracuse, New York. I’m not an inherent salesperson – I enjoy helping people but not selling them something.
Fast forward through the next 10 years and I worked at multiple agencies and ran the SEO for large Global brands. In 2013 I decided that working for somebody else in the corporate environment was unfulfilling because it was very much driven by money and how many hours I could bill, instead of what we could do to help this company regardless of cost. So in 2013, I started Linchpin SEO, and in 2023, I added on to that by starting a company called Emulent Creative – both of which, at their core, are about helping companies succeed and less about billing hours.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Have a desire to always learn something new and evolve. One of the biggest issues I’ve seen when working with companies is their lack of desire to change, grow, or evolve, which ultimately leads to them either falling behind in their industry or going out of business.

Once you’ve got a plan, follow it consistently. In business or personal growth, there will always be setbacks, ups, and downs. This makes it important to always stay consistent with your growth opportunities because ultimately, in the long run, that is what will be most beneficial.

Being agile is vitally important. As I said above, be hyper-focused on a plan, you have to be agile enough to be able to shift that plan slightly when the market changes, the users change, new products are launched, etc.

Don’t take things at face value. What I mean by this is questioning why something is done, thinking about new ways to do it, and always trying to improve. One of the biggest issues, again, that I see with businesses is that they have become comfortable doing things a certain way and refuse to change their point of view, even though all the data points to a new way of doing something.

Before we go, any advice you can share with people who are feeling overwhelmed?
That’s a great question, and I think, based on the state of corporate America, many people are feeling overwhelmed on a daily basis. They’re expected to do more with fewer resources, bombarded on social media with “perfection,” and have lost the personal connection with others and with themselves.

Growing up, I was a three-sport athlete: baseball, basketball, and cross-country. One of the most impactful things that I did to help when I felt overwhelmed was learning how to meditate. I started doing it before every basketball game, visualizing the process of the game, and getting myself in the right mindset to stay relaxed when every noise around me was heightened—whether that was coaches, teammates, or the crowd.

This is carried over into my personal and business life where I meditate before large presentations or client meetings, or if I’m speaking at an event or conference. It helps me quiet my mind and focus on what’s important and was a game changer for me.

I would recommend this to anyone who is going to be starting their own business or is going to be doing things that make them anxious. By no means is it easy to learn how to meditate, and get into that deep relaxation zone. For a while, your mind is still going to be racing when you’re trying to tell it to quiet down, but I promise the benefit you’ll get from teaching yourself to do that and teaching others to do it within your teams will outweigh the difficulty ten-fold.

Contact Info:

Image Credits
Photo of me is Jessica Woodall Photography.

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