"Sorry, I sound very harsh, or pessimistic, but an entrepreneur must be extremely resistant to repeated rejections if they are to survive"
Alex Alexakis was born in Athens, Greece, and has been living in the USA for 22 years. He’s the CEO and Founder of PixelChefs -an award-winning SEO-focused web design firm. Moreover, he loves fishing (saltwater) and has a giant collection of toy robots from the 70s – 90s. (transformers, power rangers, etc.). Alex is a devoted family man happily married with two young kids – a girl and a boy. He loves food and cooking (a lot) and lastly, he really loves his job.
He is a guest speaker at SEO conferences and local events, where he talks about his process of combining SEO data with business goals to create better-performing websites. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts/Illustration from Ringling College. He is an excellent painter, but he says he barely has time to create any art.
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Table of Contents
Thank you for joining us today. Please introduce yourself to our readers. They want to know you, some of the background story to bring some context to your interview.
Alex Alexakis: Hello everyone. My name is Alex Alexakis, I am an ardent digital marketing enthusiast with a knack for organizing, optimizing, designing, and developing websites. I am the owner of PixelChefs, a small SEO Focused Web Design firm comprising a group of highly qualified programmers, SEOs, and web designers.
Together, with the help of these skilled individuals, Pixelchefs assists brands by adequately researching and building or rebuilding their websites to help spread their digital footprint and allow sales to skyrocket. Our goal is to demystify SEO and provide a data-driven approach combined with the business’s goals to create websites that can scale and deliver results.
You are a successful entrepreneur, so we’d like your viewpoint, do you believe entrepreneurs are born or made? Explain.
Alex Alexakis: I truly believe that it’s a mix of both. Some people are just born with an inclination that causes them to stray from the traditional path of working a 9-5 job. You could say they’re genetically predisposed to seek ownership and fulfillment in the work that they do, and to pursue the more uncertain and sometimes more rewarding outcome, wherever it may be.
Many such people discover their innate disposition at a very early age, whereas in others this trait lies dormant until circumstances or a certain degree of introspection allow it to be revealed. Then there are also others who may not have been born with a desire to start a business of their own, but they shape their personalities in such a way by constantly taking risks and searching for greener pastures, that they too inevitably stray towards the path of entrepreneurship.
If you were asked to describe yourself as an entrepreneur in a few words, what would you say?
Alex Alexakis: The first thing I would say is that I truly, truly love what I do. It may sound like a corny one-liner from a Hollywood movie. Still, I genuinely believe that this is the one indispensable quality you need if you ever plan on pursuing entrepreneurship.
I always wanted to have my own business, but right after college, I decided to work for various companies and understand how these big corporations and firms worked. Parallel to my full-time job, I always had a side business, which allowed me to experiment and fail without hurting my pocket.
When I think back to all the hours of work and hurdles I faced in the initial stages of my career, I can only recall one thing that kept me going, and that was a fiery, unrelenting passion for the kind of work I was doing. I also believe that I’m the kind of entrepreneur who’s always looking forward to the next bend, the next curve, the next approaching opportunity, whatever it may be, so that I can take advantage of it and propel my work to even greater heights.
Tell us about what your company does and how did it change over the years?
Alex Alexakis: Pixelchefs started in 2009, right after the 2008 market crash, as one of my “side businesses.” We started doing a lot of design work and basic websites. As we began to build websites, we focused on scaling these sites using SEO and then offered SEO services. I love SEO, but I think I love designing more. In 2019 we switched our focus to building websites designed with SEO as part of the initial planning and framework and not an afterthought. Today 90% of our business comes from SEO firms that introduce us to their clients and trust us to create websites that can help the companies scale.
But none of that would be possible without my team. Through the years, some of the people I worked with joined Pixelchefs; our team is made up of highly qualified and motivated programmers, SEOs, and web designers. If I were to summarize what we do concisely, I would say that Pixelchef helps brands adequately research, structure, and build or rebuild their websites to help spread their digital footprint and help sales skyrocket. Our goal is to demystify SEO and provide a data-driven approach combined with the business’s goals to create websites that can scale and deliver results.
Thank you for all that. Now for the main focus of this interview. With close to 11.000 new businesses registered daily in the US, what must an entrepreneur assume when starting a business?
Alex Alexakis: That they will fail. Sorry, I sound very harsh, or pessimistic, but an entrepreneur must be extremely resistant to repeated rejections if they are to survive. That is the nature of the field you are entering. It is impossible to learn and grow without failing.
Always remember that each setback that you experience will cause you to learn, at the very minimum, at least one thing which you should not have done. And as you continue going through these disruptions and obstacles, slowly, your experience and expertise will begin to accumulate, and before you know it, success will come knocking at your doorstep.
Did you make any wrong assumptions before starting a business that you ended up paying dearly for?
Alex Alexakis: Yes. You can never overestimate the power of connections. Never. I made that mistake, I thought connections were important, but only to a certain degree, and that they had their place in the dynamics of businesses, like everything else. I was wrong. More than half of your serious problems can get resolved if you know the right person, or if you know a person who knows the right person.
There are so many people I know of who have very little to speak of when it comes to technical skills, leadership qualities, but their networking has been able to put them far ahead of others who possess these qualities but are not very good at socializing for the right purposes.
What is the worst advice you received regarding running a business and what lesson would you like others to learn from your experience?
Alex Alexakis: The worst advice I received was to follow my instinct, or my gut feeling, or intuition, or whatever else you want to call it. All these abilities have their respective uses at the right places and at the right time, but when you’re running a business, they will go haywire, and putting your trust in them is disastrous.
Once you take your first step and try to establish your startup, you might fail ten times, and your gut will tell you twenty times that you should give up, that you’re not made for this, that you’re not competent enough. That is exactly the time to not listen to it and to persevere because success will only come if you stick to discipline and leave your emotions at the door.
In your opinion, how has COVID-19 changed what entrepreneurs should assume before starting a business? What hasn’t changed?
Alex Alexakis: The one thing that has changed is the importance of digital marketing. It now holds a monumental significance in the world of businesses. Things we couldn’t ever have conceived of operating online have shifted to an online medium. In such times, establishing the digital presence of your firm is more crucial than ever, and you should make sure to take advantage of this opportunity and the innumerable benefits you can stand to gain from it.
One thing which hasn’t changed is human nature, i.e. people’s desire to acquire material wealth. They may not be buying tickets to the next Yankees match, but they’ll definitely be buying something else, maybe something to keep them occupied at home. Make sure you know what that is so that you can meet demand even in times of crisis. That is the key to success.
What is a common myth about entrepreneurship that aspiring entrepreneurs and would-be business owners believe in? What advice would you give them?
Alex Alexakis: Most people have a very fanciful and unrealistic notion of what entrepreneurship entails. They, especially the younger ones, imagine themselves at cocktail parties in exorbitantly expensive suits, discussing their business’s success to a group of awed and impressed people. Or maybe standing before an audience and giving a speech on how they “made it” in the world.
Entrepreneurship is not this. It is long grueling hours of work, day after day, week after week, many times with little to no success showing up as a reward for all your effort. Entrepreneurship means constantly striving to make your dream into a reality, and for the first few years, this means that your life will be very tough and hectic. So leave the cocktail parties behind.
What traits, qualities, and assumptions do you believe are most important to have before starting a business?
Alex Alexakis: Discipline is the doorway to success. Discipline means staying committed to something over the long run. It means routinely doing whatever needs to be done regardless of what mood you’re in, what the odds of success are, or how grim the situation looks.
If you can stick to doing something each day that will get you closer to your goal, then one day those incremental, tiny steps forward will compound on each other to give you huge results. The trick, however, is to stay committed. Too many people enter the entrepreneurial business expecting results to arise in the short run. Having such expectations will only disappoint you, and cause you to quit at an early stage.
How can aspiring leaders prepare themselves for the future challenges of entrepreneurship? Are there any books, websites, or even movies to learn from?
Alex Alexakis: If you want to read books, then there are plenty of fantastic recommendations out there, more than enough to overwhelm someone. Therefore, I won’t concern myself with naming any titles. You can choose whichever appeals the most to you. What I will give you, however, is one tip which you must remain mindful of when reading a book on entrepreneurship.
You need to remember that you’re not reading a work of fiction, you’re reading a manual that will give you important insights relating to entrepreneurship. As a consequence, please never read such books like they’re a story. Don’t flip through all the pages once and then forget everything you read once the cover is closed. Instead, write down every important idea and tool you discover in a notebook, and then go through that notebook daily or weekly. The results will surprise you.
Thank you so much for your time, I believe I speak for all of our readers when I say that this has been incredibly insightful. We do have one more question: If you could add anyone to Mount Rushmore, but not a politician, who would it be; why?
Alex Alexakis: I would choose John Fogerty, Lead singer of the band Creedence Clearwater Revival. John Fogerty’s music and lyrics travel you through crucial years in the United States in the ’60s and ’70s that shaped the current American culture. I migrated from Athens, Greece, to Venice, FL, in 1999.
His music, along with other similar rock bands, was the connector to understand essential social and cultural views and become part of the communities and people instead of being an outsider. We live in a time where immigration is a big issue, and I genuinely believe the most challenging part as an immigrant is understanding and fitting in but still keeping your cultural identity.
So definitely a great way to award an accomplishment like this is to add him on Mount Rushmore, hoping that more people will listen to his music and make it easier for them to feel accepted and understand part of the American culture.
Jed Morley, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Alex Alexakis for taking the time to do this interview and share his knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Alex Alexakis or his company, you can do it through his – Linkedin Page
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