In this enlightening podcast, Dmitrii Kustov, the visionary behind RegEx SEO, shares his remarkable journey from the last days of the USSR to becoming a celebrated leader in the digital marketing industry. Kustov's story is a testament to the power of opportunity, hard work, and innovative leadership. Arriving in the U.S. as an exchange student, he quickly realized the vast potential for growth and achievement. This realization propelled him to establish a company that not only excels in SEO but offers comprehensive online marketing solutions, driving brands towards their goals.

Kustov emphasizes the importance of team-first leadership, especially in challenging times, advocating for prioritizing team welfare over all else. His approach to leadership is grounded in the belief that a motivated and valued team is the cornerstone of any successful business. Throughout the discussion, Kustov underscores the significance of adaptability, resilience, and a customer-centric focus in navigating the complexities of the digital landscape. His insights into leadership, team dynamics, and business growth offer invaluable lessons for aspiring leaders and entrepreneurs in any industry.

Want to learn more about Dmitrii's work? Check out their website at https://www.regexseo.com/.

Connect with Dmitrii on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/DigitalSpaceman/.

Bullet List of Key Points with Timestamps:

• Introduction to Dmitrii Kustov and RegEx SEO (00:00:00 - 00:01:04)
• Journey from USSR to the U.S. and Entrepreneurship (00:04:55 - 00:06:36)
• Building a Successful Digital Marketing Firm (00:13:24 - 00:13:49)
• Leadership Philosophy: Team-First Approach (00:18:18 - 00:20:29)
• Navigating Business Growth and Economy (00:20:29 - 00:21:34)
• Importance of Time as a Non-Renewable Resource (00:22:23 - 00:22:34)
• Rebranding and Expanding Services Beyond SEO (00:13:24 - 00:14:02)

Transcript

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:29:00
Craig Andrews
Today I want to welcome Dmitrii Kustov of. And I'm sure I'm pronouncing that wrong, and maybe he'll set me straight. But you got it. I did, that's awesome. and Dmitrii is the, head of, the internet marketing company called Reg ex SEO. And they were declared the SEO Rockstar by American Marketing Association. That's pretty good accolade.

00:00:29:02 - 00:00:55:07
Craig Andrews
Dmitrii has significantly increased the online presence of brands through custom digital marketing campaigns and innovative content marketing techniques. His work has appeared on Forbes, which I'm sure everybody has heard of Mars. Well, that's a little bit of an industry term, but if you're an SEO and you appear on Mars, that's pretty awesome. he's also been on SEMrush, which is much the same if you're an SEO and you've been published there.

00:00:55:07 - 00:01:04:00
Craig Andrews
That's awesome. hacker Noon and many other high profile marketing platforms. Dmitrii , welcome.

00:01:04:02 - 00:01:12:24
Dmitrii Kustov
Well, thank you for having me. It's, pleasure to be here. And I hope I can drop some golden nuggets in our conversation today for your listeners.

00:01:13:01 - 00:01:22:22
Craig Andrews
I'm sure you will. I'm sure you will. you know the question everybody's, asking right now as they're listening is, what does that accent.

00:01:22:24 - 00:01:42:00
Dmitrii Kustov
Well, I'm the last, I'm the last of the USSR. what you call it? Not population, but the, Oh, my, the last year before USSR broke down. So, Yeah, that's where I'm from.

00:01:42:02 - 00:01:58:12
Craig Andrews
Oh my goodness. That's that's a interesting. And, what's that mean? Because, you know, I, I think I know what you're talking about. I think most people do, but yeah, you know, we're we're not everybody's spot up on their history. What do you mean? The USSR fell apart?

00:01:58:14 - 00:02:27:12
Dmitrii Kustov
Yeah. So in 1991, it used to be USSR. And then all of the containing now countries decided to go their separate ways. So now it's a collection of. I don't remember the exact number, but some like eight countries, you know, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, all of those countries, so yeah, that was, quite a childhood.

00:02:27:14 - 00:02:46:20
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Now, you know, some place that, place I've visited is, Karlovy Vary in the Czech Republic. and it's the only place I've ever been where all the signs were in four languages. And the languages were, of course, Czech, because it's in the Czech Republic.

00:02:46:24 - 00:02:47:16
Dmitrii Kustov
Yeah.

00:02:47:18 - 00:02:56:19
Craig Andrews
German, because there are a bunch of German tourists there. English because that's the international language, but also Russian.

00:02:56:21 - 00:03:12:18
Dmitrii Kustov
Yeah, yeah. Czech Republic was, big supporter or friend of the USSR before everything fell apart. And, yeah, there's a lot of Russian speaking people there still.

00:03:12:20 - 00:03:26:11
Craig Andrews
Yeah. When it's, it's a big spa town, it seemed like it was a resort town that at least if you were well favored in the party, you could, you could go to Karlovy Vary and unwind a little bit.

00:03:26:13 - 00:03:30:08
Dmitrii Kustov
I haven't been there, but, sounds like a blast.

00:03:30:10 - 00:04:06:02
Craig Andrews
Yeah, yeah. And then they have hot springs and what have you. It's real nice. you know, my first time in the Czech Republic was in 95. It was January, early January of 1995, and they were still transitioning out of the USSR. But I was staying. I was backpacking through Europe, and I was staying in a youth hostel that was right next to what I believe was the largest soccer stadium in the world, and I think went back during the era of the Soviet Union.

00:04:06:02 - 00:04:15:17
Craig Andrews
They would play games in that stadium. It if I remember right, they could play. I think it was ten simultaneous soccer games in that one stadium.

00:04:15:19 - 00:04:27:10
Dmitrii Kustov
Wow. I think I know the one it was you're talking about. I think I've seen like a documentary and now it's not being used. And I think it's kind of abandoned. Right. Is that the one I'm thinking about?

00:04:27:12 - 00:04:42:03
Craig Andrews
Possibly. I mean, it was mostly abandoned when I was there. yeah. But you know, that again, that was still that that was so close after the, you know, the end of the USSR, you know, the weeds hadn't really had time to grow up.

00:04:42:05 - 00:04:44:13
Dmitrii Kustov
Right. Yeah. Yeah.

00:04:44:15 - 00:04:55:17
Craig Andrews
So, but so you moved to the United States and, you know, what brought you here? Where did you move to? You know what's what's kind of the story there?

00:04:55:19 - 00:05:26:23
Dmitrii Kustov
Yeah. first I came as, exchange student. there is, exchange programs that, different students get to participate and learn about the culture and whatever else, different countries. And of course, the Hollywood plays a huge role, I'm sure, for and across the world, really, where America is portrayed as this country where everything is, made of thought of gold.

00:05:26:23 - 00:05:58:22
Dmitrii Kustov
Money grows on trees and the, the like the Bible reference, the, milk and honey flows in the rivers, right? The, the. So yeah, I got here in 2010 just for like five or so months as the students got to do a bit of work. It was like a lifeguard, got to meet local people. And I just saw that there was a huge opportunity here.

00:05:58:24 - 00:06:36:04
Dmitrii Kustov
if I stayed back in Russia, back in USSR, know I would. I would never be able to achieve what I was able to achieve here. And I can talk about that for hours, I'm sure. But yeah, just, I noticed that basically, if you work hard and put a lot of time into anything, you can become whatever you want here because there are opportunities and and even nowadays in certain countries, no matter how smart or talented you are, you can't really achieve that much, unfortunately.

00:06:36:06 - 00:06:38:13
Dmitrii Kustov
And I'm one of the lucky ones.

00:06:38:15 - 00:07:07:14
Craig Andrews
Well that's awesome. We're we're glad you're here in, you know, it's. It's easy from from the American perspective. It's really easy to say, well the opportunity is gone. You know it. You know America has changed. It's it doesn't have as many opportunities as it used to. But I what I'm hearing you say, wherever we are now, there's still a lot of opportunity here relative to.

00:07:07:16 - 00:07:56:14
Dmitrii Kustov
Of course. Yeah. I was going to say I've I'll fight with those people who are saying that that there's no opportunity. yeah. If I not just suggest, but I implore every single American or people from what we call first world countries, you know, UK, whatever the richer countries go travel around the world, go to Second and Thorold or, second and Thorold, second and third world countries that are poorer, where things are not as nice and developed and they don't have to go far, go into small villages in Mexico, go to South Salvador.

00:07:56:14 - 00:08:28:01
Dmitrii Kustov
I just came from Salvador a couple of weeks ago. And, you you start appreciating things that you here don't even think about. and, I, I really implore everybody to go travel and understand that there is so much opportunity, there is so much things that are available here to everybody that, it's it's, it makes me mad when people say there's an opportunity.

00:08:28:02 - 00:08:41:01
Dmitrii Kustov
There's no, there's there's no ability to achieve new heights or to achieve something great.

00:08:41:03 - 00:09:15:01
Craig Andrews
Yeah. And, you know, there's something I've noticed over the years, and it creates an interesting tension, you know, because obviously we got to the point where we really didn't like the British so much. So we fought them and told them to leave. But the Brits gave us something amazingly powerful. And I don't think most Americans appreciate it. They they gave us our, our rule of law through, you know, and if you hear a lawyer say it, it's equitable jurisprudence and English common law.

00:09:15:03 - 00:09:41:06
Craig Andrews
And what those do is they bring predictability, that if you invest resources into something, you'll have the intellectual property, you'll be rewarded with it. It provides it provides safety and predictability that you can do hard work in something. You can build a business, you can do something else, and that will be protected. So it encourages people to go do things.

00:09:41:08 - 00:09:46:01
Craig Andrews
And that's just been observation of mine. I'm curious on your perspective.

00:09:46:03 - 00:10:44:10
Dmitrii Kustov
I think it's not I mean, what you're saying is true for sure, but I'm even talking about simpler things. Yeah, not necessarily intellectual property or anything of that nature. Like the the example that I always talk about, about myself is. To open a company to become solopreneur or entrepreneur in a lot of countries, even still now is, while maybe possible, it's close to impossible because there's no support to to kind of get product services to sell is almost impossible because either it's monopolized or there is some kind of, maybe not mafia, but it's all taken by local, bigger companies that would not allow you to explore or to provide the services.

00:10:44:12 - 00:11:20:03
Dmitrii Kustov
And, here, anybody today, tomorrow can open an LLC and become a solopreneur. And as long as you as long as you know what you're doing and have experience and good at what you do, you can open a business and at the very least, make a living. Maybe you're not going to become a multi-billion dollar company, but like earn enough to, to, to to buy bread and milk and, you know, pay for your normal stuff.

00:11:20:05 - 00:11:30:07
Craig Andrews
You know, now and that and that is I think that's important for us to remember. I think it's important for me to remember because it's easy to get discouraged.

00:11:30:09 - 00:11:35:13
Dmitrii Kustov
Yeah. I we can spend, I'm sure, two days straight talking about that.

00:11:35:15 - 00:11:49:01
Craig Andrews
Yeah. So you started your own company. but kind of give us the road from, you know, you come you come as an exchange student. What happened between then and now?

00:11:49:03 - 00:12:25:10
Dmitrii Kustov
Yeah. So, I, as any immigrant, I'm sure, was working in any kind of job that would hire me for, what, 4 or 5 years or so? Four years? then, by education, I am a mathematician. So, no surprise there. and, the application of applied mathematics, it was in it. So I was by training a programmer, a lot of programing, coding, in with, like, applying mathematics.

00:12:25:12 - 00:12:50:06
Dmitrii Kustov
So I found a company here that was looking for a PHP developer. It was a marketing company. And then I worked there for a bit, for a couple of years, and then. And there was a time where the question became, well, either I either I switched to another company, go work for somebody else, or I tried to go on my own.

00:12:50:06 - 00:13:18:18
Dmitrii Kustov
And I was young, naive, and, the stereotypical thinking, well, hey, if that guy can do it, I can do it better. And it's easy. And I pulled the plug and went for it. And I was fortunate enough to still be here and still be in the same company and have not taken a break from, from, working in my own business.

00:13:18:20 - 00:13:24:06
Craig Andrews
Wow. That's awesome. Now, what is your company and what does it do?

00:13:24:08 - 00:13:49:23
Dmitrii Kustov
well, it's, at this point, this marketing, we are in the process of rebranding. Currently, we are called a regex SEO, which implies we do SEO, which is search engine optimization. But, we do way more at this point. We do not just search engine optimization, but any online marketing activities that take a business from wherever they are at now to their next goals.

00:13:50:00 - 00:14:02:11
Dmitrii Kustov
so yeah, we are going to be switching our name to, it's easier to pronounce, easier to understand, because, oh, boy, we've been called everything under the sun besides SEO bro.

00:14:02:14 - 00:14:08:02
Craig Andrews
Yeah. So. So I get the name. Yeah, it's extremely geeky name.

00:14:08:03 - 00:14:10:11
Dmitrii Kustov
It is? Yeah. Because I'm a nerd.

00:14:10:13 - 00:14:15:03
Craig Andrews
What's regex for those that don't know what regex is? What's regex?

00:14:15:05 - 00:14:40:08
Dmitrii Kustov
Yeah. So regex is mathematical and kind of coding term stands for regular expressions. And there was a thought behind that. so what regular expressions do they find? They find and search. Let's say they find things in a slew of data or in the slew of symbols, characters, whatever it is. And they find the answer for you.

00:14:40:13 - 00:15:14:12
Dmitrii Kustov
They it's like a, a way to recognize patterns and find the solution, which is what marketing is all about. So that's what it is, especially SEO. It is about cracking the code of Google. How what are the patterns? What are the how can we find the solution for this particular problem. So yeah, it it it did make sense to me, but oh boy, we've been called anything from reject CEOs to read regex to oh my goodness everything.

00:15:14:14 - 00:15:17:09
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Do you know who Matt Cutts is?

00:15:17:11 - 00:15:19:13
Dmitrii Kustov
Yeah. Of course.

00:15:19:15 - 00:15:46:18
Craig Andrews
So yeah. Matt Cutts, was it kind of the, you know, the, the liaison that would go to conferences and talk and do videos and talk to people about, how they could do SEO. did you know that his first job at Google was writing regular expressions to filter out porn in the search results?

00:15:46:24 - 00:15:50:07
Dmitrii Kustov
You know, he was the search engineer? Yes. yeah.

00:15:50:09 - 00:16:04:00
Craig Andrews
And so, yeah, he and I remember him telling the story. He was like, yeah. So my job was I had to search for porn. And, on the company computer and then figure out how to filter it so it didn't show up in the algorithm.

00:16:04:05 - 00:16:05:18
Dmitrii Kustov
Yeah, yeah.

00:16:05:20 - 00:16:17:14
Craig Andrews
And, yeah, it's, yeah. And people, you know, people laughed. They thought it would be fun. I was like, I don't know if I'd want that job. I don't think that's.

00:16:17:16 - 00:16:25:05
Dmitrii Kustov
Hey, honey, I'm just doing my job here. Yeah. My.

00:16:25:07 - 00:16:34:05
Craig Andrews
Yeah. So. So now now you're doing more than SEO. So, like, what what type of companies do you work with and what type of things do you do?

00:16:34:07 - 00:17:01:01
Dmitrii Kustov
currently we work with mostly home services companies. So your electricians, plumbers, air conditioning repair folks, pest control and so on and so on and so on. that is about 85 or so percent of our, portfolio. and, again, we just helped them grow from wherever they are to their next goals, helping them develop their business.

00:17:01:01 - 00:17:36:03
Dmitrii Kustov
And we do whatever it takes. In a sense, for some people, for some businesses, it is helping them to establish proper call tracking for others, they need more PPC or like paid ads. They for others, it's maybe email marketing. For others, it's all of the above and so on and so on and so on. So our idea, our goal is to come in and and be almost like an internal marketing team for a brand.

00:17:36:04 - 00:17:58:12
Dmitrii Kustov
We just happen to be located elsewhere. so yeah, it's, it's not definitely it's definitely not a vendor relationship. we are looking for growth partners, for businesses that that are great and maybe operations and need somebody to take the pain of marketing away. Yeah, that's what we do.

00:17:58:14 - 00:18:18:13
Craig Andrews
Outstanding. You know you've had such an interesting life. You know, growing up in Russia, coming to the US, working for someone else and then launching your own business. What are some of the lessons that that you've learned? And along the way.

00:18:18:15 - 00:18:27:00
Dmitrii Kustov
boy, you have to be more specific because there's so many. do you have any specific, direction you want to take me?

00:18:27:02 - 00:18:52:00
Craig Andrews
Well, yeah. Let's think about, you know, one, just sort of leadership and and let's think about the, you know, the context. It's 2024. Some people are terrified by the economy. Some people say it's going to be, you know, it's okay. It's it's moving forward. You know something? You've certainly had to face over the years in running your business, as there have probably been times of slow growth and times of fast growth.

00:18:53:13 - 00:18:56:09
Craig Andrews
what did you learn during the hard times.

00:18:56:11 - 00:19:25:20
Dmitrii Kustov
Yeah. So yeah, there's definitely has been quite a bit of that, that a few things that I want to mention. One of the biggest, I don't know if it's a lesson. The one of the biggest takeaways that I learned is your team is everything. Unless you're solopreneur, your team is everything. Your company, your business does not exist without your team.

00:19:25:22 - 00:19:52:19
Dmitrii Kustov
So putting them first before your clients, before yourself is the key. In the beginning, I used to think, well, hey, I'm just, you know, I'm paying them salary so they better do their absolute best and more. But there's so much more to that. because they can go to your competitor, to your neighbor company and possibly make even more.

00:19:52:21 - 00:20:29:10
Dmitrii Kustov
And especially if they can make more than you have to, you have to find a way which kind of goes into the whole branding thing about why would somebody work with you? And it's not just about teammates, it's about clients and everybody else. So, yeah, team first. And the other thing about since we've talked about economy bad, good, bad times, good times, obviously the type of work I do is not going to change the world tomorrow.

00:20:29:12 - 00:21:05:13
Dmitrii Kustov
And we are not Amazons apples of the world with billions of dollars where we can manipulate the markets type of deal. So because I don't really have a lot for almost none, none of the influence on, on on the big markets, all I do is let's do our best today and we'll figure out tomorrow. So kind of taking that one step at a time and do an absolute best.

00:21:05:15 - 00:21:34:11
Dmitrii Kustov
Because I would hope that if something happens from a economy perspective or I know get hit by a bus tomorrow, that people I work with, either team members or clients or whoever, they will, they will come in and step in and. They will help us out and we'll help them out because it's more than just the vendor relationship.

00:21:34:11 - 00:22:23:01
Dmitrii Kustov
It's it's, I hope that they will notice if we disappear tomorrow. and, Yeah, the last thing I'm going to say is, time is the only on renewable resource. So one of our brand, values brand. The why of our brand is to give as much time back to our team, team members, to. And by doing awesome work, we increase profits and revenues and leads for our clients, which hopefully then they can, through that, they can free up and give back time to their employees, teammates and so on and so on.

00:22:23:03 - 00:22:34:20
Dmitrii Kustov
So yeah, long answer to maybe a short question. I hope, I hope I, sparked some ideas and thoughts in the heads of our viewers and listeners.

00:22:34:22 - 00:22:52:15
Craig Andrews
No, absolutely. no, this is good. It's, you know, it's encouraging me. and I'm sure it's encouraging the listeners. It's, now, where would somebody reach out to contact you?

00:22:52:17 - 00:23:24:03
Dmitrii Kustov
the best way would be on Twitter, probably, my handle everywhere is digital space, man. Or at your digital space man. Because in certain on certain platforms, for example, YouTube, the digital space man was taken. So I had to go with your digital space man. And, yeah, Twitter is to start the conversation. Or if you're looking for videos, me sharing my thoughts.

00:23:24:05 - 00:23:27:17
Dmitrii Kustov
YouTube is where you can find me.

00:23:27:19 - 00:23:38:03
Craig Andrews
You know, I, I meant to ask about this earlier, so we'll go another minute or two. But digital space man. What's, what's the inspiration behind that name?

00:23:38:05 - 00:24:07:22
Dmitrii Kustov
Well, so our company started in Houston. that's where I lived for ten, 12 years, whatever long it was. Obviously, Houston is known for NASA and the whole space theme. And again, it falls within the marketing and the brand theme where space exploration is going to be on the horizon, going up, finding the exploring the unexplored, finding the new patterns and solutions and all that stuff.

00:24:07:22 - 00:24:33:21
Dmitrii Kustov
So from the brand perspective, if you go to our website, you will notice that we are branded as, in the space theme. We have the rockets and little astronauts and the whole mission control thing. So yeah, just made sense from that perspective. And so that makes us digital space man. And I'm one of them. Well, there you go.

00:24:33:23 - 00:24:43:24
Craig Andrews
Well, Dmitri, thank you for being on leaders and legacies. And I do hope people reach out to you, find you on one of these channels as either digital Space man or your digital space man.

00:24:44:03 - 00:24:48:24
Dmitrii Kustov
Yeah, yeah. Or just Google my name, and, you will find me wherever I am.

00:24:49:01 - 00:24:51:24
Craig Andrews
Excellent. Well, thanks for coming on, Leaders and Legacies.

00:24:52:01 - 00:24:56:08
Dmitrii  Kustov
Thank you for having.