No Hacks

SEO and Beyond: How ADHD Enhances Optimization Skills with Arnout Hellemans

• Slobodan (Sani) Manić • Season 2 • Episode 2

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In the latest episode of No Hacks, we dive deep into the art of optimization in both digital and personal spheres with Arnout Hellemans, a renowned digital strategist. From addressing ADHD's impact on SEO skills to the importance of maintaining basic SEO fundamentals, Arnout shares his invaluable insights. 

He discusses common misconceptions in SEO, the significance of website performance, and logs' role in historical data analysis. Arnout also emphasizes the holistic approach to optimization and extends these strategies to everyday life, parenting, and even national trends observed in the Netherlands. Plus, get ready for some fun anecdotes about optimizing mundane tasks like loading the dishwasher and some memorable stories from the legendary Conversion Hotel conference. Tune in for an engaging conversation on mastering the essentials and achieving success through comprehensive optimization strategies.

Don't forget to get your Experimentation Elite ticket at experimentationelite.com and use code NOHACKS10 to get your 10% discount!

00:00 Welcome to No Hacks Podcast
01:09 Meet Arnout Hellemans: Digital Strategist
03:34 Understanding ADHD and Its Impact on Optimization
08:47 The Dutch Culture of Optimization
10:33 SEO Fundamentals and Their Importance
16:16 Google Search Console Issues
17:23 Common SEO Misconceptions
20:24 Importance of Logs and Historical Data
22:51 Conversion Hotel Stories
28:29 Holistic Optimization in Real Life
31:59 Final Thoughts and Takeaways



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[00:00:00] Arnout: If you have ADHD, you always want to know the why.

I hate inefficiencies. Absolutely hate inefficiencies. 

I like to think that if I optimize a website, you could almost see how many trees you've saved the climate 

I'll get you into the room with the best SEOs in the Netherlands.

Who do you think loads the dishwasher at my house? Who do you think loads the dishwasher? 

And he basically said, I think this is bullshit.

the main common misconception about SEO is that 

[00:00:30] Sani: dress for the podcast you want, not the podcast you have




Welcome to No Hacks Podcast
---

[00:00:40] Sani: Welcome to a new episode of no hacks podcast, where we explore the ins and outs of optimization, whether it's for your online presence or personal habits, because around here, we know that mastering the process is the first step to success. It's season two, and we have a new logo, new website, and a new, easy way to follow the podcast wherever you want.

So if you go to no hacks pod. com slash follow, you will never miss another episode. Is that incredible? And another thing that is incredible is my next guest. 


Meet Arnout Hellemans: Digital Strategist
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[00:01:09] Sani: Arnout Hellemans is a digital strategist who specializes in SEO, SEM, PPC, web performance, analytics, and CRO to drive business growth. So how do you specialize in so many things?

That's just one of the things we'll cover today. Arnout, welcome to the podcast. 

[00:01:24] Arnout: Thanks for having me was really looking forward.

[00:01:27] Sani: It's a pleasure to talk to you. And I must say what led to you being on the podcast. I was at experimentation elite in June and our mutual friend, Abi Hough, also a guest on the podcast in the past, grabbed my arm and said, there's a person you need to talk to. Okay, let me see who that person is.

And my guest today is here. Thanks to Abi Hough. 


The Journey of Specializing in Multiple Fields
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[00:01:46] Sani: So thank you, Abi Hough, let's talk about your background, it's a lot of different things to specialize in.

What are the most uncommon or, not thought about benefits of having such a diverse skillset? 

[00:02:00] Arnout: It starts with, in the end, if you want to help a business grow, you need to understand their business model. If you understand their business model, there's loads of ways to improve. You can get more traffic to the site. You can improve their whatever. 

Or it's just removing friction on the site, right? So from the beginning, my starting point is always how do you make money? And once you figure out how you make money, you can work backwards on what's needed. And I think, from a very early moment, that's just the way I started consulting. I didn't start out just, I want to get more traffic to my website.

It was like, how can I improve this business? And, yeah, but I, the problem with that is it's been taken by all these growth hackers that do tactical things, right? They don't look at it holistically. I don't want to say I'm a growth hacker yeah, I don't know.

I'm just an optimizer. Right? I'm just an optimizer. 

[00:03:05] Sani: This is the perfect podcast to say you don't want to be a hacker. There's no better place to say hacks are bad than this. I guarantee you that . When we were preparing for the interview, I sent you the intake form because this podcast is fancy. We have intake forms, we have everything now basically in season

[00:03:20] Arnout: Very well prepared. Well done.

[00:03:22] Sani: I appreciate hearing that and what I tell people and who want to have a podcast like dress for the podcast you want, not the podcast you have currently, and that's how you will reach that next step in your growth. 


Understanding ADHD and Its Impact on Optimization
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[00:03:34] Sani: One thing you mentioned is having neurodiverse background and, how that and ADHD help pattern recognition, finding optimization opportunities.

So tell me about that first. Like, how does that actually help you?

[00:03:47] Arnout: First of all, when I started consulting, which is in, I think, 2010, I just thought I was, my brain worked in exactly the same way as everybody else. But I think just before COVID, I read an article and I basically self diagnosed with ADHD and my wife basically said, I don't want you to talk about ADHD if you didn't do a proper test. And I was like, okay. So I got proper diagnosed.

And when they then explain to you how everything works, you kind of go, Ah, I get it. I get it. And suddenly it also makes sense because ADHD basically, my brain, I pick up everything. I can't sit in a conversation. If there's other people having a conversation, I can, I listen in on everything.

So I multitask all the time. And I store this useless information. at that moment. But apparently it's not useless, right? And um, when you start learning about this, I can, in my brain, I connect dots very easily. But I can also morph into other people. So, I can look at a website and think, this is what I'm missing. Pretty much immediately. It just suddenly, because everything comes in. When I look at a SERP, I always ask the question, why is it there?

Why is this happening? Why is that happening? And, and I think loads of SEOs have the same thing, right? Because, the good ones, because they, they want to know the why. And that's the whole thing. If you have ADHD, you always want to know the why. And as a parent of two ADHD kids, it's terrible because they always want to know the why.

Sometimes there is no why, yet I would do exactly the same

[00:05:34] Sani: I was always looking at things pretty much the same way. I never got where someone wouldn't want to know why. And it's normal sometimes to, to just not want to know. I get that. But when I started, I was first a developer for quite a long time, but I was always looking at websites in a way I, ah, this is broken, like this can be better.

And once you start thinking that way and accept that mindset there's no turning back, especially with websites. The first thing, and we both did a lot of performance, like speed optimization. The first thing I do with a website is open the console and see how it loads.

Even when I don't. Work with the website. I just, I need to know if they're preloading some stupid things, if they have some script, I don't know why, I just need to do that. Anyway. Uh,

[00:06:18] Arnout: thing I do is, is I test it because it also benchmarks. If, if they're really optimized, I know I have to bring my A game, right? But

[00:06:25] Sani: uh, exactly,

[00:06:26] Arnout: know I can already add a lot of value,

[00:06:29] Sani: exactly. And to go back to that article you mentioned, there's one thing that. Was really eyeopening for me and a few other people. I shared it with the interest-based ADHD, nervous system.

[00:06:40] Arnout: Yeah, the interest based nervous system.

[00:06:42] Sani: So what's that exactly? I want you to explain it to the audience in your own words.

[00:06:46] Arnout: An interest based nervous system is basically, that you, if something interests you, you go full on in, but you lose interest very easily and get distracted by something else. This is multiple tabs, these kind of things, you, there, my brain is constantly functioning and what happens, interest based nervous system is just If I'm really interested into something, I really want to know everything on it.

I want to improve it, make it better. But once I've already done that, it's not very interesting anymore. And I think you can see that in my career as well, right? At some point I was fed up with links, changing a page title and changing a bit of content, right? And then I started doing more technical stuff or analytics.

And this is why I like CRO so much is because you, it works in a completely different way. You're basically manipulating a human brain on the other end, which is so much fun.

[00:07:45] Sani: A hundred percent. I could not agree more. I've seen myself do that. The journey and the trying to learn something is the fun part. Once you're good enough, it's not as appealing.

Right. I mean, that, that's my personal perspective.

[00:08:00] Arnout: It's also a mindset. I hate inefficiencies. Absolutely hate inefficiencies. Anywhere, right? Whether it's the dishwasher, whether it's the laundry, whether it's anything. Whether it's the way bikes are parked. It can always be done better, right?

If, if you, if I drive a car, Not in Germany because in Germany I like to drive fast, but otherwise I'm always gaming. I'm always gaming. How much, kilometer to the, uh, to the liter? Can I get, can I get down? Can I do better than last month? Right. I'm, I'm always gaming. I hate it when my wife has driven the car because she screwed my stats.

Right.

[00:08:42] Sani: I get that, I know what you mean, but that's great. 


The Dutch Culture of Optimization
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[00:08:47] Sani: One thing I learned about your country and you're from the Netherlands, uh, I was always wondering, and I've had so many people from your country optimizers, like if there's an optimizers per capita country, the number one, it has to be , so obvious.

I never understood why until I visited last September, I went to a WordPress conference to work in Europe, Netherlands there, and. It was in Arnhem, I think was the city.

[00:09:11] Arnout: yeah, yeah,

[00:09:13] Sani: And when you walk the streets in the Netherlands, you see that everything is optimized here. Like it's like no other country in the world.

Everything is in order. maybe not according to you who live there, but just live somewhere else and come to the Netherlands and you'll see what I mean. 

[00:09:28] Arnout: I think there's another reason because with Lukas you also discussed this, right? Why is it? And my theory on why is very simple. Because we're middlemen.

[00:09:40] Sani: Hmm. Explain

[00:09:42] Arnout: We don't have any natural, national resource. We just don't. Right? We have a few cows, but we're so small but, if you think about it, we've got one of the largest, I think the largest harbor in Europe, Rotterdam.

What do we do there? We get stuff from abroad. We repackage it and we make money on doing that, right? 

So if you have that, every little thing counts.

[00:10:06] Sani: right. 

[00:10:07] Arnout: If you can buy it cheaper, if you can ship it more efficiently,

[00:10:11] Sani: You have to, you have to optimize the entire process and squeeze every drop everywhere you can, right?

[00:10:17] Arnout: Exactly. At least this is my theory, right?

[00:10:20] Sani: it's a good theory, you know, 

[00:10:21] Arnout: And this is also why we have Conversion Hotel and why we've got all of these conversion conferences and why there's so many speakers.

We need to squeeze every little thing out of it. 

[00:10:31] Sani: That's really interesting. 


SEO Fundamentals and Their Importance
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[00:10:33] Sani: So, The main topic today, and we'll have a side topic and the main topic. The main topic is SEO and why the fundamentals will always matter. So we'll jump into that, but before that, before we do that, I want to ask you in your many years of doing optimization, what is the one.

Advice from a mentor, formal or non formal that you got, that was the most beneficial to you.

[00:10:55] Arnout: Ooh, I think,, one of the best ones was, Joost de Volk. 

[00:11:03] Sani: WordPress legend. Let's just say that. Yep. 

[00:11:05] Arnout: Before I started freelancing, I started, I worked at a company and the guy, uh, Robin Ellinson said, do you want to learn SEO? I'll get you into the room with the best SEOs in the Netherlands. One on one mentorship. So I was there in a room with, Joost. And he didn't start Yoast then. He just had Yoast. com as a blog. . And, uh, he asked me, what kind of clients do you have? And I said, I do cargo bikes.

And he said, can I have a cargo bike? I'll get you a link. So we got a cargo bike versus a link. And then afterwards I, I looked at a full frame site, like with frames, right? And needed a new one. And I, I went to him and I made a plan. And, and so I said, can I like pay for your advice for two hours?

And I sat there, I gave him my whole plan. And the only thing he said, I would change that into an H1. And that was it.

That gave me so much confidence. That was such a confidence booster. If, if somebody is so well known in the industry and like gives you this kind of feedback, you're basically saying, I can't see any flaws in your plan. And that was boom. 

[00:12:15] Sani: That's a great story. That's a really good, because I was also in Leiden at WordCamp Europe, uh, 2013, the first WordCamp Europe ever. And Joost was one of the speakers there and talking about, uh, making the pie bigger versus fighting for pieces of the pie, the open source pies was a

[00:12:31] Arnout: Yep. Yep.

[00:12:32] Sani: Such a respected figure, such an incredible SEO and WordPress figure that I'm really glad you mentioned him and it was him. Now the basics of SEO, that's the most basic question, quote unquote, that I can ask, but why do fundamentals still and always seem to matter in SEO? And let's just list, what the fundamentals are 

[00:12:50] Arnout: yeah, well, the fundamental is think about the user, but also think about search engines so they can index everything so they can understand what is on a page like the simple fundamentals,? A lot of people go after the shiny objects and, um, but the basics have become more and more important over the years.

Especially with new technologies like react people seem to just forget about the basics, right? I get really annoyed, um, that they don't, don't get this, but I think it's getting even more important because, , the web is growing at such a scale.

You need to make it easy for search engines to grab your information and do something with it. Because if you make it difficult, then why would they care? And if you look at the simple cost of crawling at the moment, it's ridiculous. There's a very nice piece about the real cost of JavaScript by Addy Osmani.

[00:13:51] Sani: Yep.

[00:13:52] Arnout: I like to think that if I optimize a website, , you could almost see , how many trees you've saved the climate, right? It's ridiculous. So it, it really matters.

[00:14:03] Sani: This is sort of half conspiracy theory, but I was always thinking that Google introduced Core Web Vitals to cut their costs on crawling the web. Like I,

[00:14:14] Arnout: I've been saying this for ages, they frame it towards users and, and, but actually you're saving them so much money. If you think about AMP, if you think about like all of these kind of things, it's, uh, it's just about cost saving because

[00:14:33] Sani: So I'm not crazy.

[00:14:34] Arnout: they sell?

[00:14:36] Sani: You're saying I'm

[00:14:36] Arnout: don't think you're crazy. No,

[00:14:38] Sani: Thank you very much for saying that. But that's the thing. I mean, uh, what they did with the Core Web Vitals initiative. I was riding that wave and working as a performance optimization specialist for the first few years of Core Web Vitals and what they did to put that performance mindset in the heads of people who maybe didn't even need to be so scared of it, but it was good that they put the conversation on table and now everybody was talking about web performance, and I think that's great. 

[00:15:07] Arnout: They framed it correctly, because in the beginning, they used um, wpostats. com, which gives you all case studies on, on, because they tried to, to do this through CRO people. And then what they said, I saw the official statement about Core Web Vitals. They said it can impact rankings, yet all the publications went, it impacts rankings.

And suddenly everybody was like, ah, let's go. And the other thing is, it's something tangible for an SEO, right? You see a number change, so you can show the client, hey, I've done my work,

[00:15:45] Sani: And not just the number, it goes from red to green. Like, that signal, that signal, that tiny little thing,

[00:15:52] Arnout: it's, there's so many dark patterns in there. They're like, it's very shady. Right. And it's not even true.

Right. You can, you can score a hundred yet have an enormous page, which doesn't load.

[00:16:04] Sani: I had a similar problem with the previous website for the podcast. Uh, I was hosting it with one of those tools that, you know, you give it RSS feed, it creates the entire website. Like they do everything for, I was just lazy.

[00:16:15] Arnout: Yeah.


Google Search Console Issues
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[00:16:16] Sani: And I checked Google search console.

Uh, uh, the, the pages were not getting indexed. I just thought it's thin content. Like maybe Google doesn't want, but when I checked the reason is why they're not getting indexed. There was an explanation that said, uh, Google bot wanted to crawl the pages, but thought that this would overload the server and that's why we delayed the crawl.

And it's been like that for months. Yes. It's not even like my website was slow. It's I never saw that before.

[00:16:43] Arnout: no, no, no. Me neither.


Migrating to WordPress
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[00:16:44] Sani: I moved the website to WordPress three weeks ago now. I I'm not even sure new domain. I registered on Friday. I set up, I launched WordPress on Saturday. On Monday, every page is indexed. On the new website, the old website had like 63 percent of pages, not indexed.

For that reason, I was angry at myself because I wasn't checking. I was lazy, but there, there are so many ways that bad performance, not just Core Web Vitals, Core Web Vitals are just, you know, they're the, the eye candy that you can throw at clients basically. But having a performant website and server is, it's so damn important.

And yeah, more people should know about that. 


Common SEO Misconceptions
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[00:17:23] Sani: Let's talk about some common and evergreen, misconceptions and mistakes that people make, because this was like the most obvious mistake to me that I've ever made in my life. I was dumb for not checking this and you can just go to search console and just check.

What are some of the most common misconceptions people have in SEO space and optimization in general? 

[00:17:41] Arnout: I think the main common misconception about SEO is that you can layer it over once you've launched, right?

So, so you launch a website and then go now SEO this, or you write an article and say, now SEO this like. No, it doesn't work that way,

[00:18:00] Sani: Why

[00:18:00] Arnout: works

[00:18:01] Sani: Why is, why is it, why doesn't it work that way? What is the difference? And I'm genuinely asking this. I agree with you. Like I agree, get it done properly and then launch it. But why like launching a website and then two weeks later work on SEO? Why is this approach bad?

[00:18:18] Arnout: Because you only have, one shot at a first impression, right? And, uh, and it takes a while. So, so say you launched, right? And you just had only chat GPT content of it. I'll rewrite it over, over time, but. A search engine does not know that you will do that.

[00:18:38] Sani: Right.

[00:18:39] Arnout: Right? So it will index everything, and then, Ah, well, I don't really need to rank this, right?

And then you're all the way down. So there's no reason why they would recrawl it. So then it takes a long time. And I've actually seen this where it was so crappy that we're better off just moving it to the new domain with a full new website. And it would outrank everything with way better content.

[00:19:03] Sani: This is really interesting. So basically Google is saying, if you couldn't bother, I'm not going to bother, like,

[00:19:11] Arnout: But why should they? The web is growing at such a massive scale. Like, they need to make decisions. What to revisit, what to re crawl, what to re index. Like, when you work for a massive site, like I work for one of the biggest technology blogs in the world. It would be visited, literally, it would be visited, the feed URL would be visited multiple times a minute. pretty much every five seconds or four seconds, right? If they would, uh, publish an article, it would be crawled within two minutes, right?

[00:19:53] Sani: Yep.

[00:19:53] Arnout: Now that does not

[00:19:54] Sani: to happen.

[00:19:56] Arnout: exactly, right? So,

[00:19:58] Sani: good.

[00:19:59] Arnout: so that's, yeah, that's why I think that that's a common misconception that it's a source you can do after launching,

[00:20:08] Sani: this is something that, , An SEO person like you would know, I would have a guess maybe, but I guarantee you, most people don't know this and are not aware of this. And don't think of it that this way. And this is something that you should talk about. We should talk about it. So I like that a lot.


Importance of Logs and Historical Data
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[00:20:24] Sani: You mentioned logs and, uh, the interview you did with SEJ, with Loren Baker, you were talking about logs as well. Now, How does logs and looking back at history and at things like way back machine also, how does that play in with your optimization efforts? How do you use those tools? 

[00:20:42] Arnout: Sometimes you see a dip in traffic, say for instance after migration or something like that, right? And what happened was, in this case for instance, a local flower shop. They lost a ton of traffic because of a migration and they and I looked at everything the 301s were all there But you know what happened what I found when I went into the Wayback Machine They removed one news or one blog article about a venomous Frog they found in a box of lilies, which made the local news, the BBC news and everything.

It got linked to by all of these news outlets, but it was about six years ago, so they thought it's out of date. We'll just, with the new website, we don't need to do this. And by looking in the Wayback Machine, I was able to find the article, the exact article, just revise it, get all the content, put it back in, the same URL.

Boom! And the traffic went straight back up. 

[00:21:45] Sani: I would say this is doing things like this is part of the holistic SEO mindset and SEO approach. Like you really need to be mindful of literally everything like when you're doing,

[00:21:56] Arnout: Machine, we spoke about it offline, right? And the interesting thing I found is for every client, you ask them, you go to a client, a medium size or a large size, and you say, how many iterations of the website have you had? And you say, well, this is the second.

[00:22:13] Sani: Hmm.

[00:22:14] Arnout: And then you go, how long have you been here? And they go, four years.

Okay, cool. Um, so that means they got like two in four years, or maybe a little longer. But when you actually go into the Wayback Machine, you can see that there's actually six or seven or eight. Right?

[00:22:34] Sani: they're like full redesigns.

[00:22:37] Arnout: and so you'll find loads of links that are not working, because people look at the current website, they redirect it to the next one.

But what if there were already redirects in? 

[00:22:47] Sani: That's absolutely incredible. That's such a good story. And. 


Conversion Hotel Stories
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[00:22:51] Sani: Let's move on to stories. Now let's talk about like how this holistic get the basics done, right, can really be applied to actual life and not just SEO and optimization to start that you have a story that I want you to tell it's a conversion hotel story and.

This episode is coming out, I think September 25th, and that means it's two months until conversion hotel. And you'll see both of us there. It's an incredible conference from everyone who's been there. Like they say, this is the place to go. This is the place to be. I cannot wait to be there and meet in person, but tell me that dishwasher

[00:23:23] Arnout: It's, it's, it's the only conference I pay to go for, I haven't missed an edition, apart from one when I was supposed to speak about COVID. But anyway, I think there's two stories. A very simple one was, there's an unconference, right? And an unconference basically means bring your own topic and talk about something.

And, um, I had a conversation with, Els Aerts the interesting thing was, she was like, how do I find the right people? She was struggling to hire the right people for agency. . And I said, you need an optimization mindset. And this is something you can't really get in an interview, so I came up with an idea. And I said, why don't you do a dishwasher test? She was like, what? I said, well, just put all of your dirty dishes on top of, like, near the waiting room and ask the person coming for an interview. Oh, could you please help us out and just fill the dishwasher? It's so stressful, but it needs to run.

And then halfway the interview, you walk out. You open it. If there is a structure, that means they thought about the outcome,

[00:24:40] Sani: right.

[00:24:41] Arnout: right? If they just chucked everything in, nah, they're not going to make the interview.

[00:24:46] Sani: But let me, let me ask you this as a follow up, then what if they're just going to do a better job than they normally would with the loading of the dishwasher, because they're at the job interview and they need to

[00:24:58] Arnout: They won't have a structure. You either have a structure or you haven't because you've constantly been improving this. So the interesting thing was that during conversion Hotel, um, I basically put in, just after dinner, at 8 o'clock, downstairs, there were just a few chairs.

I wasn't expecting a lot of people. So I said, Arnout Helleman's The Dishwasher Test. That was how to load the dishwasher. That was my unconference, right? And I started out with 3 or 4 or 5 people. Ended up with about 25 30, right? And one of them that also joined Was Lukas Vermeer, right? super smart guy, knows everything about experimentation and everything. And he basically said, I think this is bullshit. And, um, and then I think a few months later, we got talking on LinkedIn and messaging.

And then at some point he goes, Who do you think loads the dishwasher at my house? You were telling the story to all of these optimizers that gave up their weekend. Who do you think loads the dishwasher? There's nobody there that doesn't load the dishwasher. So it would be a useless, uh, conversation. So it needed a devil's advocate saying it's bullshit because otherwise you don't spark anything.

So that's why he took the opposite position, but I loved it. And the year after I was planning on coming and the idea was to bring a dishwasher. 

[00:26:28] Sani: Anout, are you bringing a dishwasher this year? I have to ask you now. 

[00:26:33] Arnout: They actually, did a, a similar thing. They got a, a cardboard box with all kinds of, um, groceries. And then it was the challenge to load it as fast as possible. Like, I have a structure on how to load it, right? 

So you put the heavy stuff and then the other stuff on top, but some people don't. Right? And it's a similar kind of test.

[00:26:59] Sani: I had a conversation , with another Dutch guy, not, not an op, not an optimizer, uh, about how do you empty a carton of eggs? Like which eggs do you pick first? And some people, savages, in my opinion, just go from one side to the other. But then if someone lifts it or pulls it, and then it's heavy on one side, it can fall, always make it symmetrical.

Like you need to be careful about

[00:27:22] Arnout: Of course! Of course!

[00:27:23] Sani: There we go again, I'm not crazy. Thank you so much. I appreciate the feedback.

[00:27:28] Arnout: I mean, and this is the fun thing, and the other thing you'll find, this is another thing I talked about, I find that a lot of people that are good at optimizing also love cooking. And if you think about the similarities, you've got ingredients, you've got preparation time, um, and you've got an audience.

So I will always ask , do you like spicy? No, not really. Then I leave the spices out, right? And so there's all these kind of things that play into this.

[00:27:59] Sani: I'm not big on meditation. I just can't do it. I really admired people who can, but I cannot. There are two ways. I, two things I do to substitute meditation. One is cooking because when I'm cooking, I can be standing for five hours and like they fly by literally fly by.

The other one is running. And the longer the run is more meditative, it becomes 

[00:28:21] Arnout: What I do is swimming. It also helps me structure my thoughts a lot.

[00:28:28] Sani: Exactly. 


Holistic Optimization in Real Life
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[00:28:29] Sani: So let's talk about some more, , real life applications for this. You mentioned parenting offline when we started. So how does this mindset translate to parenting? And

[00:28:42] Arnout: unconference session at Conversion Hotel, I think about five or six years ago with Jorden Lentze and some other people. And we talked about how to optimize parenting. And, um, I, I think there's, there's loads of ways, but for me, it started with the notion I somewhere picked up that you can, you can basically have an influence on your children up until the age of 10 to 12, right?

After that, it's just riding the waves. They are basically trying to break loose. This is what puberty is, right? Now i've got three in that situation now, so I know exactly what it is. But um, So the interesting thing is I started thinking about this and this is also one of the main reasons I got into freelance because it gives you the freedom to just say I work for four days a week Uh, I don't want any calls before 10.

I don't want any calls after 4 So you can always be there for them. And I think, um, it's very difficult because we get children at a later age. age at the moment. So it's also the busiest period, right? Everybody works on their career and everything. But I think if you make the decision that you'll have children, you should at least put the effort in, in those first 10 years, 10, 12 years, because you will reap the benefits all around.

So just be with them and just put them to bed. So we've like, we always had dinner with the five of us, 

[00:30:18] Sani: Having those moments in the formative years, like you said, the first 10 to 12 years of their lives, it's the most precious thing you have because.

They'll be gone at some point. 

[00:30:30] Arnout: Yeah, and, and I think that when they get into puberty, they're all, at least in my experience, they're more open to having conversations about it, because that's what they're used to, right?

[00:30:43] Sani: It's another habit that's for, that was formed in the first 10 to 12 years of their life. Let's just recap conversion hotel. There's talks about dishwashers. There's talk about parenting. What else can I expect at my first one?

[00:30:56] Arnout: One year I won a prize. Uh, so you basically have, say, best talk and, and I had, uh, I'd won the, uh, the best on conference. You know what I did?

I bought five, uh, big boxes of oysters and I said, MVT oysters, multivariate oyster testing. 

[00:31:16] Sani: You brought them to the conference or bought them afterwards?

[00:31:21] Arnout: I did a conference, I opened them, I just sat in a room with all these oysters, and then I said, yeah, taste one, pick one, taste one, tell me what does it taste like. So I got oysters from Ireland, I got my favorite ones from Zeeland, I've got them from France, I've got them from, like, I had four different ones.

Um, and they were, they were distinctively different. So everybody just asked me, like, Arnout, are we going to do a multivariate testing oysters? I said, no, because it's only fun the first time, right? And then my interest, uh, it was an experiment. I wanted to do it. Done. Tick the box. 




Final Thoughts and Takeaways
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[00:31:59] Sani: Let's just end the interview on what the takeaway message, when I asked you what the takeaway message should be for the people listening to this, it's that they're inspired to look at optimization in a more holistic way.

So I just want to repeat that the only way to optimize a system, whatever system that is, it could be something in your life. It could be a website. It's only as strong as the weakest link, because if, if your SEO is a plus, But you know, index every page or your developer, no indexes, every page, not many good things will happen.

Nothing good will happen. Let's be honest. So looking at optimization in a more holistic way, I couldn't agree more. And I could not have loved this interview more so I know what is the best way for the listeners to connect with you and find you online?

[00:32:48] Arnout: um, I think it's, uh, it's, uh, LinkedIn, uh, that's, uh, we're most active, but you can also find me on, on Twitter. You can find me on Mastodon, uh, like loads of other places, but if you want to connect with me more than happy to, uh, just say, um, That you listen to the podcast give me things that I should improve, right?

I love getting tips on where to improve because I have this mindset and you have as well. Um, so they can connect with me there and um, Yeah, uh, if if if anybody wants to work with me also fine fun, um I'll promise you it's fun that that's and we're gonna get the results as well. 

[00:33:28] Sani: I'm sure of that. So. I will have one last, very short question, but first of all, I want to thank the audience for listening to this episode. Like I said, at the beginning, go to nohackspot. com slash follow. You'll find the Apple podcast, whatever, all those links will be at that page. So nohackspot. com slash follow.

And then leave a review, rate the podcast. It helps with the rankings and people finding it. One last question for Arnout. What is the one word or phrase that you have for yourself six months from now?

[00:33:58] Arnout: Six months from now,

[00:33:59] Sani: Yep.

[00:34:03] Arnout: I actually have no idea. 






People on this episode

Head Shot

Slobodan (Sani) Manić

Host