Meet Michael Chagala | CEO Rank Harvest SEO & Digital Marketing

We had the good fortune of connecting with Michael Chagala and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Michael, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
I was a corporate employee most of my career. It wasn’t that I was unhappy, but somewhere under the layers of aligning with company values and Knott’s Berry Farm discounts, I wanted more than corporate life had to offer. Looking back, I can hardly remember companies I spent years of my life working for or what I did there.

Spending years in the corporate world as a software engineer and later in digital marketing wasn’t a total waste. Not having a college degree meant the work experience itself was my education. Early in my career I dreaded being asked “where did you go to school” as I had no answer and often got a “then how did you get hired here” look in return. Later I wore my lack of education like a badge of honor when the guy in the cubicle next to me was doing the same job for the same pay but probably spent $100k on his software engineering degree. My lack of education also meant I had to start at the bottom, the very bottom, and work my way up. Fast forward to today and I’ve held every position from unpaid intern to director. This set the stage to eventually start my own business.

Back around 2018 I decided it was time to stop dreaming of starting my own business and actually do something about it. Rank Harvest began as a side-hustle while I worked my day job in corporate marketing. I started by advertising on Craigslist and doing all the work myself. I got up at 4am to work 4 hours before my day job, then another hour during lunch, 4 more in the evenings and 12 hours each on the weekends. I did this for 2 years. It sounds brutal, but I knew every hour got me just a bit closer to my goal.

In a perfect world, I would have developed the side-hustle to where it was generating as much income as my day job, making the transition easy. But it didn’t work like that. Try as I might, I could never get the side-hustle to generate more than about half of my income requirements. I took the leap of faith and quit my day job anyway, and the rest is history.

What should our readers know about your business?
To understand the niche of the market in which we occupy, you have to understand what’s happened to the marketing industry over the last 20 years. Prior to 20 years ago, most marketing and advertising was developed at brick-and-mortar agencies, not unlike what you see on Mad Men. A group of seasoned advertising execs in suits invent a brilliant marketing campaign and a team of in-house graphic designers, copywriters and the like do the work. Not only is this expensive, but these seasoned execs had zero experience in the up and coming new technology called the internet. But then the pendulum swung too far in the other direction where only a few short years later it seemed all marketing and advertising came out of India due to low labor costs. Even though you might have been working with a United States agency, all the work was being shipped overseas.

We’re right in the middle. Without an expensive lease in a downtown building, or a team of obsolete executives on payroll, our costs are low. We pay extra to hire locally when necessary, content writing for example, but are happy to outsource work overseas when it requires no knowledge of American culture or fluency in English. And for the most part, our overseas employees are literally, “employees”, who are direct hires of Rank Harvest and go through the same rigorous application, interview and training process as our domestic team members. So we’re sort of a hybrid model. The result is we’ve found the sweet spot of clients not needing to overspend to get quality work and great results.

And perhaps what sets us apart the most is transparency. Sales is not my career – I am a software engineer turned digital marketer. I’ve never had sales training and have no strategy for getting people to say yes. This approach is reflected in all team members here who do sales. Our sales calls are mostly showing the prospective client where their marketing currently stands and how we can help. We never over promise and always set expectations that results don’t happen overnight. Sure, we could tell people what they want to hear and get more sales, but this leads to unhappy customers when those expectations aren’t met.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Even though I’ve lived in San Diego all my life, I love doing the Seal tour. It’s an old military vehicle that’s half truck, half boat. It takes you all around downtown San Diego including out in the bay.

Next we’ll hit some breweries. Not the well known breweries, but the small independent brewers who experiment with recipes you’ll never find anywhere else. There’s a bunch in Miramar operating out of small garages in industrial areas.

Dinner will be Asian food on Convoy street in Kearny Mesa, the best kept culinary secret in San Diego. The restaurants on Convoy cater to the local Asian community, many of whom will settle for nothing less than exactly how it’s done in their home country. Amazing food from ramen to dim sum to sushi.

Although the Gaslamp is tempting for the evening, we’re instead headed out to the local desert for a night under the stars. It seems only locals are aware it’s less than a 2 hour drive to some of the most beautiful deserts in the United States. Put the side-by-side on the trailer, strap the BBQ to the bumper, and we’re headed out in the motorhome.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
My shoutout goes to Archana Kanthwal, our Fulfillment Manager. She was employee #1. I’m not sure Rank Harvest would exist today without her. In the early days I was a one-man operation, but quickly found myself completely overwhelmed as new clients came in. As with any startup, your first hires will make or break the company. She spent the next year working 60+ hour weeks alongside me, putting everything she had into Rank Harvest. Today she manages the fulfillment department and her team produces most of the work that comes out of the company.

Website: https://rankharvest.com/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/rank-harvest

Twitter: https://twitter.com/rankharvest

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rankharvest/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@RankHarvest

Other: Forbes Agency Council: https://councils.forbes.com/profile/Michael-Chagala-CEO-Founder–Rank-Harvest-SEO/1c8153a8-a44e-4395-bdfe-00f3e052731c