Good Neighbor Podcast: Cooper City
Bringing Together Local Businesses & Neighbors of Cooper City
Good Neighbor Podcast: Cooper City
EP #192: Blck Panda Creative with Lior Manelis
Embark on a journey of growth and discovery with Lior Manelis, the visionary from Black Panda Creative, as he unveils the twists and turns of his path from the vivid South African vistas to the pulsating heart of American entrepreneurship. Our latest Good Neighbor episode is a testament to the power of adaptability and the art of relationship-building as Lior shares the transformative lessons he's learned while navigating the nuances of business culture across continents. He brings to light the significance of trust and connection, which are at the core of his web design and SEO strategies, offering a refreshing perspective on the laid-back, community-oriented approach that's resonated so well within the US market.
In our revealing chat, we also delve into how personal growth can be as challenging as it is rewarding, contrasting the ease with which children embrace change against the resilience required by adults. Lior's insights into technology's role in our lives, especially for the younger generation, will provoke thought about the balance we strike between screen time and traditional play. But it's not just about personal narratives; we steer you through the perplexing world of digital marketing, stressing the importance of patience with SEO investments and the advantages of entrusting your brand's online presence to those who truly get it. For any business owner caught in the digital marketing maelstrom, this conversation with Lior might just reveal the collaborative partner you've been searching for.
Learn more: www.blckpanda.com
Call us: (954) 684-9594
This is the Good Neighbor podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Jeremy Wolf.
Speaker 2:Hello, hello everyone, and welcome back to the Good Neighbor podcast. I'm your host, Jeremy Wolf, and today I am joined by a friendly resident of our great community lives not too far away from me. I've seen this gentleman active posting on Cooper City Buzz. I know he does a lot of great things here in the community and he has an interesting story to tell. So today I'm joined by Lior Manelis. Did I get it right? Perfect Perfection, Batten a hundred. Already. Look at that. Monday, Batten a hundred. It's going to be a great week and a great year. By the way, Lior is with Black Panda Creative and he's going to talk a little bit about his business and his backstory. I'm interested to get into this because he's in the marketing space as well as myself, and so this should be for an interesting conversation. So, Lior, tell us a little bit about Black Panda Creative and then we shall proceed from there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so Black Panda Creative is. I've got a passion for marketing. I've got a passion for relationship building and partnership. I've got a better way than to create a service that allows for that, with meeting strangers and making them part of my growth and be a part of their growth through website design and search engine optimization. We've always found that the joy of seeing a business grow helps the morale in the business and we like to be a part of that. We strive to deliver the best service possible. We do regard ourselves a notch above the rest and we like to keep it small and focused. We don't like the big accounts.
Speaker 2:So you're doing primarily web design and then SEO services for your clients.
Speaker 3:Correct In all regards, whether it's a local business, a home services account or a local dentist, or a national franchise or an e-commerce site. On the SEO side, there's no scale limitation per se. But yeah, that's primarily our two niches, or is it standing up as a niche?
Speaker 2:Yeah, in fact, what I found as I've entered into this space over the last couple of years as you know, you get my publication. I have Cooper City Living, we do some stuff on the digital platforms for our clients and then also this podcast platform One of the things I've noticed is that the rabbit hole runs deep and deep and it gets deeper and deeper as technology grows. With all the different social media platforms, with AI, it could be wildly overwhelming for your run-in-the-mill business owner out there that has no experience with marketing and they really rely on folks like us to come up with useful marketing strategies for them, and I found that nobody could do it all. There's different niches, like you have to say. Niche Niche is niche yeah.
Speaker 2:And I think it's important for folks like us, who handle these different niches, to get together and learn from each other and refer clients to each other and work together to help, kind of like a rising tide lift all boats. One of the things that's important that we have these conversations, and a lot of what I do is long-term branding, name recognition, helping clients or helping businesses, I should say, build the no-like and trust factor and really give folks here in the community a reason to want to do business with them. And again, it could be challenging for businesses to find the right strategy and I think the more information we put out there, the more education we provide, the easier it is for them to find what works for them. So, leo, I wanted to back up a little bit how did you get into marketing, how long you've been doing this for? Talk a little bit about your journey and your progression leading up to that, because I know you're not you're from South.
Speaker 3:Africa.
Speaker 2:You're from South Africa, so yeah, tell us a little bit about your journey.
Speaker 3:It's been quite a journey. So back home in South Africa, I've always had Black Panther. For the past 13 years I had another company prior to Black Panther that it is a corporate events technical solutions company. So we used to get a brief from one of our clients and they would need the staging, the lighting, the sound, the AV, the scripting for the MC. The whole thing we facilitated, beginning to end.
Speaker 3:And as we got more involved with the high end corporates, they would say well, for this event we need a website, do you know someone? Or for this event, we need some marketing, do you know someone? And the more I outsourced, the more I got frustrated by. This is something that I can do, and that's where Black Panther was born back then and as time grew, I so did my passion for marketing and website design and specifically SEO. And just so happens that during COVID, south Africa wasn't very good to having financial aid from the banks or the government and I unfortunately had lost that business. But thankful enough that Black Panther is still around and decided what better way to grow the brand and bring it to the US?
Speaker 2:Interesting. How long ago did you come over here? Did you mention that we?
Speaker 3:were on. As a matter of fact, tomorrow's 18 months, yeah, so this is recent.
Speaker 2:I remember you telling that to me.
Speaker 3:Very, very recent yeah.
Speaker 2:So let me ask you a question on that note. What has been the biggest challenge in coming over from South Africa to the US in terms of cultural differences? Have you found it difficult to adjust? Has it been an easy transition? What?
Speaker 3:have you experienced.
Speaker 3:It's been interesting. The culture is completely different. My sales approach back home was sales, sales, sales sales. You go in, you sign, you walk out, you see through the contract and make sure it gets delivered.
Speaker 3:Where I find that over here in the United States we're a little and I kind of like it, I'm not kind of I like it a lot. We're a lot more laid back on the business sense. We want the approach and the relationship, and the trust factor that you mentioned earlier plays a monstrosity role and that's kind of remoulded my approach as a whole for everything that I do. Rather than being hardcore sales, I am now more of an approachable kind of let me educate you. If you like what I can tell you about, then the choice is yours whether you use me or not. I'm confident in the information that I provide and I think that has been my door. The biggest challenge, of course, has been not knowing anybody Other than arriving to a country that I have family. I started 18 months ago here in South Florida with absolutely zero networking no friends, no industry colleagues. Nothing Started afresh completely here.
Speaker 2:Well, you're in a good place for that, because Cooper City is just a fantastic community. It's very, very tight-knit community. It's very easy to make great connections within our local community. So you are in the prime place to get to know people. And then I should say it looks like we're gonna do a feature on you and your family and the publication hopefully upcoming. That'll give you a chance to get to know more people in at least your local neighborhood. That'll be a lot of fun.
Speaker 3:Yeah, looking forward to that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I wanted to ask a little bit about. I wanted to get more back into the marketing side. I had something I wanted to touch base with when it comes to the SEO side of things. One of the things that I've been doing for clients through the podcasting platform is trying to help businesses, or help produce podcasts for the businesses, in a way to help their SEO, drive their SEO, get them found more on Google, promote and social media, and I started doing that last year and I'm starting to get.
Speaker 2:As you know, this stuff takes time right. It's not something you don't do two podcasts and all of a sudden you're showing up. But if you do it frequently and consistently over time, you start to get some traction and I was curious to see I know there's so many different components when it comes to SEO a lot of the things I'm not familiar with what are your thoughts on a company utilizing that podcast platform to put out content at educating, asking frequently, answering, frequently asked questions and really just getting out there and and taking that and putting it on their website, putting it out on the streaming platform, sharing it on social media? In, from your experience, just do him. All of that have a significant impact on the overall SEO strategy.
Speaker 3:It is very Doesn't have an impact. Absolutely can it be beneficial? No two ways about it. Absolutely it can be. I think it also has a lot to do with the industry that the client may be in. If, if a manufacturer is selling yacht motor parts, it's not gonna be, not gonna benefit him much. However, majority of the other niches or niches, then absolutely yes, you, you're gaining trust, you're gaining familiarity, familiarity people are gonna start to get to know as to who you are, the platforms that you put it up on to onto the internet, with the right SEO, you create backlinks and interlinking back to your website, because that's social juice. Yeah, there's, there's this juice.
Speaker 3:I love it social juice there. There is huge benefit out of that, especially if you get to a point where you're, your podcast is being featured on multiple pages or has a numerous amount of of views. The algorithms pick on that and they know exactly where where the authority lies.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so. So like the goal would be for just a random local business, that's, do it just, for instance, an AC company, right? Most AC companies aren't putting out podcasts for their business because most, most of them think, why would I do a pocket like who's Gonna listen to it? Right, but the idea would be, if you put out enough of the content consistently, then when somebody goes on Google and types an AC company or me, you'd hope that maybe you know, maybe not only the website to come up and maybe one of their podcasters come, would come up and they could hit play and maybe they're they're, they have a question about something to do with their AC and they type it in on Google and then that pocket. Now you can hear from the owner of the company Tell you what to do in that situation and then that's like a lock right, that just one help.
Speaker 3:I'm gonna it is gonna go to that one, and that is a misconception about SEO, where people think it's just about drinking your brand or a service on Google. But in order to do that, you need to be able to rank a picture. You need to be able to rank content blogging, press releases, google, my business, your website, videos, podcasts.
Speaker 2:Like I said, the rabbit hole.
Speaker 3:Back here, look pretty and take money. We've got work behind it to do so. Yeah, there's, there's, there's a lot of things in all those, but together make up for a real good ranking factor.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and, and there's Again. It can be overwhelming for businesses, and what my recommendation is always to Take one bite of the elephant at the time, at a time, and don't try to do too much at once. Slowly transition like do, do, do one or two things, get comfortable with it, find out what works and then add something else. And then, over the course of six months, 12 months, as your business grows, and then, before you know it, you're doing 12, 15, 20 different things, and that's when you really start to see some traction and things really start clicking.
Speaker 3:You know 100% organic text on the Wednesday it's beautiful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a beautiful thing for sure. So let's shift for a moment. We talked enough about business for the. For the moment, tell us a little bit about your family. I know you live here in the community. You have a lovely wife and some children, I believe.
Speaker 3:Identical girls, that's right. How old 7? Yeah.
Speaker 2:Double trouble, I might. My daughter just turned, oh well, no. No, she turned to 11. She'll be 12 soon. She's in pioneer middle school, so it has been an interesting, interesting transition.
Speaker 3:I Love them to bits but I Attitude amongst their personalities as immense. But yeah, it's a gonna get an amazing wife who supported me through thick and thin. I've got my kids, whom I love big time, yeah, and that's and that's our little circle here, obviously over and above my cousin who, who also helped me through through difficult times of COVID and was Part and parcel the reason why I'm here in the United States. So yeah, so how?
Speaker 2:how have your children adjusted to the shift from South Africa over here? That probably pretty seamless, because kids it's.
Speaker 3:I don't think they fully understand the the difference that they're actually flew across the country or across the globe to a new country. Well, it definitely helps that the language is the same the language is the same, the accent is different and they're starting to Really get the American twang going. So to me it's a take a bath. They're asking for a bath. They want to dance. It's asking, not asking. So yeah they, they're American eyes a lot quicker than I will.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the transition for children is always always a quick yeah well, cuz it was at an age right.
Speaker 2:Like they're still forming the, the programs in their mind. It's a, it's a clean slate. Sure, and for us, for me for I just turned 44, you know, for me to change habits that I've had for the last 20 years is painstakingly difficult and requires a lot I of work and uncomfortability. But with years comes wisdom and keep getting better and better and better. Yeah, it's an interesting journey. We're on my brother interesting journey. So what do you guys like to do for fun when you're not working? What do you guys like to do in your downtime?
Speaker 3:It's more of what do my daughters like to do in our downtime. Keeping them busy is a task. Whether we go to Off the Wall, we go to Tree Tops or we go to the movies. We try and keep as busy as we can to burn some time. I try and keep them away from screen time at home, as important as it is nowadays. My kids probably know more about that iPad than I do, but I like to keep some old school at home.
Speaker 2:God bless your soul. I've screen time is an issue for us over here, because 9-11, 9-11.
Speaker 3:Global thing, because it's all too easy to say here's your iPad, leave me alone.
Speaker 2:It is. I made the mistake of my son never really played a lot of video games and my brother-in-law bought him the VR headset for his birthday. And I thought to myself well, he doesn't play a lot of video games, so they probably won't play the VR headset so much, and he's glued, oh my God. He went from. There's a bunch of kids in the neighborhood he would go out and play with them, play soccer and get lost for three, four hours with a group of friends, and now I have to like peel him out of his room. With this headset he's doing the virtual reality with this friend that he used to go out and play soccer with. It's like dude, take that thing off, get your ball and go outside and be a kid.
Speaker 2:Stop this insanity.
Speaker 3:Yeah, those days are gone, I'm afraid. I think.
Speaker 2:For the most part so what would be, before we wrap up here, what would be one thing you'd like to leave our listeners with about Black Panda, the one thing you'd like them to know about your business?
Speaker 3:I strive to be different. I like to meet clients face to face. Zoom is great, phone calls are great, texts are great. I like to get to know my clients. I like to understand their struggles and where they foresee their business to be, and try and formulate a strategy for the web design or the SEO around what their needs are. We're very far from a cookie cutter implementations. What works for one client does not mean it's gonna work for another, so we need to ensure that our deliverables are always successful and we work hand in hand with everybody that is our client. We want to make sure that they feel looked after and that the results do come, but we also need to be stern and have set expectations. So when, especially when it comes to SEO, if you're booking me for SEO, you're not going to see results very quickly, because SEO is a long-term game. It is not an expense, it is an investment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, everybody wants instant gratification, Everybody wants a quick fix, everybody wants the magic bullet, the one thing they can do that they're gonna get all the results and just doesn't work that way, short of getting a celebrity influencer to plug your business and promote it, which in that case you'll see a spike for a while, but if it doesn't continue, it will come right back down. What's that?
Speaker 3:It will come right back down?
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, exactly Like you'll get a spike, but if you don't keep doing what you need to do. So there is no quick fix and, yeah, education is huge in that regard. With business, I speak to a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of business owners and again, they're all looking for immediate results. They all they take an ad in the publication and they're expecting to have 100 people call them and say, hey, I saw you in the magazine. That's not how this stuff works.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, it's a long-term game. It's a brand-building game and, especially with Google, you need to. The consistency of SEO is you teach an educate Google that you are the authority of your service, your product and with time, the algorithms on their own will decide. Okay, they know what they're doing. It's time to rank them and you'll realize. They can take three months, they could take seven, they could take a year. It really depends on your brand, what you've done in the past, what you're doing now, what your competition is, what your population around your area is. There are so many factors.
Speaker 2:Yeah, indeed, so many factors. And again, I alluded to this twice already it's overwhelming for business owners because they're dealing with staff, they're dealing with performing a good service, taking care of their clients, answering their phones, all that kind of stuff, and then to try to be on top of the marketing side of everything. It's nearly impossible Unless you have a background in marketing, and even if you do, still takes a lot of time. So it's so important to find a team that you can trust to handle all the stuff. And, on that note, I may actually have a client for you. I gotta see if he I don't know if he found somebody to do the website yet, but I have a client of mine who was looking to do his website and I'm gonna try to connect you with him, cause it sounds to me like you offer a valuable service and you really are invested in the client and what they need, and not just trying to kind of sell them.
Speaker 3:If a client's not gonna be happy with what I deliver, they're not gonna talk about me. If they're not gonna talk about me, I have no word of mouth. I'm gonna reputation to uphold.
Speaker 2:Absolutely On that note. How can our listeners learn more? Share your contact information, your website. Let us know how we can reach you.
Speaker 3:So that would be on my website. This is blackpandacom. Blckpandacom, no A, or reach me on my phone. It is 954-684-9594. You can text me or phone me. However you wish All my full name, leor Manelis, on Facebook and if you got a business out there, drop me a line. Get a hold of me and let me do a free audit for you see where you stand.
Speaker 2:All right sounds good. My brother and we will of course link in the description below to all of your contact information. Leor, thanks so much for coming on the show, brother. It was a pleasure getting a chance to meet your face to face and learn about what you do for a great community, and I look forward to working with you in the future. Brother.
Speaker 3:Likewise thank you. Thank you for your time.
Speaker 2:All our pleasure and thanks to our listeners for tuning in and we'll catch you next time. Everyone, have a wonderful day and a wonderful and prosperous new year. Take care.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to the Good Neighbor podcast, Cooper City. To nominate your favorite local business to be featured on the show, Go to gnpcoopersitycom. That's gnpcoopersitycom, or call 954-231-3170.