"Every skill is teachable."
Meet Lovelia Horn, known as Bing. It’s easier to remember and pronounce it. She’s worked as a physical therapist in the US for 12 years and as a PT in her home country, the Philippines, for 2 years. She also dabbled in Foreign Service.
Lovelia is vertically challenged, but that has not stopped her from achieving her goals. Currently, she has been working as a dog rescuer & shelter animal adoption Advocate in the US. She founded Every Creature Counts to help promote animals’ welfare and encourage people to adopt shelter animals instead of buying them. This is a cause close to her heart because of her love for animals.
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Table of Contents
Let’s start with a brief introduction first. Introduce yourself to our readers.
Lovelia Horn: My name is Lovelia Horn, but everyone calls me Bing. It’s easier to remember and pronounce it. I’ve worked as a physical therapist in the US for 12 years and as a PT in my home country, the Philippines, for 2 years. I also dabbled in Foreign Service.
I’m vertically challenged, but that has not stopped me from achieving my goals. Currently, I have been working as a dog rescuer & shelter animal adoption Advocate here in the US. I founded Every Creature Counts to help promote animals’ welfare and encourage people to adopt shelter animals instead of buying them. This is a cause close to my heart because of my love for animals.
Our audience is interested to know about how you got started in the first place. Did you always want to become a CEO or was it something you were led to? Our readers would love to know your story!
Lovelia Horn: I started feeling burned out in physical therapy 6 years into the profession; the stress involved in a healthcare job was too much. So in 2018, I signed up for multiple online mentorship classes on how to make money online. I invested thousands of dollars in classes I never even needed because I didn’t know what I wanted – I just needed an escape plan from therapy jobs. I laid my hands in forex trading, healthcare writing, ghostwriting, and surveys, but nothing stuck.
During a mentorship class for lead generation, I met a fellow Filipino who’s very internet savvy and is a ninja on how to rank your site and monetize your blogs. That’s when something clicked in my head. I can do this too! I can be an entrepreneur! I saw results that made my eyes bug out! It made me realize I’ve chosen the best business strategy. I slowly started implementing what I learned in my mentorship classes, and fortunately, it worked! I’ve been growing it for 4 years now, and it’s still going strong.
“Selfmade” is a myth. We all received help, no doubt you love to show appreciation to those who supported you when the going got tough, who has been your most important professional inspiration?
Lovelia Horn: Tessah, CEO of the SEOmama. She’s been my guru because she’s an expert on the kind of business model I pursued. Our relationship isn’t like the teacher-student kind where there are a lot of barriers. She’s been very helpful, especially when giving me advice on my business. First, we met as online friends, and I confided in her the money I wasted and my total confusion on what to pursue. I didn’t even know back then she was an SEO expert. I have been able to grow Every Creature Counts because of her guidance, support, and friendship. I’m forever grateful to her for that!
Tell us about your company. What does your business do and what are your responsibilities as a CEO?
Lovelia Horn: I foster shelter animals with my husband in conjunction with Puppy Rescue 911, a registered animal rescue group in Chester, Illinois. I bought an old domain called everycreaturecounts.org and rewrote the content to focus on our adoptable animals in the rescue. But I noticed something that made me do a 180-degree turn. The domain I bought was originally owned by a huge nonprofit animal rescue organization in Fort Lupton, Colorado. Their followers still message the website asking for advice about animals. So I started producing informational content in conjunction with our rescue’s vet. The site’s correspondence volume grew, and now I received emails from all corners of the USA.
This was when I took the project seriously. I hired a professional to redesign my site to make it more user-friendly. I have a team of writers now that produce amazing content. I devote 2-3 hours every day to communicating with my outreach team so we can drive more traffic to the site. I worked extra on my day job to keep the lights on for my rescue site. The site blossomed and turned into an excellent way to advertise products for pets for a fee, which is getting more lucrative and is the main income-generating feature of the site.
What does CEO stand for? Beyond the dictionary definition, how would you define it?
Lovelia Horn: It’s a glorified halo you put on your head to indicate to your team that you are the one in charge and they should take your direction. It’s a weighty title that comes with a lot of responsibility. A CEO is a decision-maker a strategist and should have a firm grip on the company’s finances. A CEO is also the face of the company, so they must be likable and have a good public image.
There are many schools of thought as to what a CEO’s core roles and responsibilities are. Based on your experience, what are the main things a CEO should focus on? Explain and please share examples or stories to illustrate your vision.
Lovelia Horn: If the business remains static and refuses to innovate, your CEO needs to be replaced. In this digital world where clicks and the number of eyeballs earn fame and wealth, the CEO should be techno-savvy. Always focus on future innovations and how you can integrate them into your business.
When I was starting, I tried producing all the content on my site, churning out 9-10 articles each week to be published. But since I was rushing to write these articles, the quality of the writing suffered, and my stress level went through the roof. That’s when I learned to outsource my writing and focus on what I’m good at (strategy and decision-making).
But I’m a control freak and wanted to check everything before clicking publish. Tessah, my friend, my guru, told me I can still edit the site as long as we produce articles consistently every month. I learned to be disciplined and to delegate. If I wanted to remain in full control of publication, my site’s traffic would be 1/10th what it is today. I was the bottleneck (content producer), so I learned to let go.
How would you define success? Does it mean generating a certain amount of wealth, gaining a certain level of popularity, or helping a certain number of people?
Lovelia Horn: Success for me means freedom from the rat race. It also means I have unlimited funds to help as many homeless animals as possible without dipping into my retirement savings. It also means my site is being used as a tool to help others achieve their goals. Success means never having to answer to a superior at work again (although I love all my rehab directors; I work in seven nursing homes!). But the bosses at work are also under pressure from their superiors. It’s a really bad business practice to reward the most challenging working employee in the group with more work. So, success to me is being my own boss, making a difference in this world, and living a comfortable life.
Some leadership skills are innate while others can be learned. What leadership skills do you possess innately and what skills have you cultivated over the years as a CEO?
Lovelia Horn: Clear communication skills – I come from a country with multiple languages and dialects and for everyone to be understood. You need to clarify with every member of your team whether you’re on the same page.
The second is listening skills. I was a very young consul when assigned to our embassy in Cuba. It was very hard to cultivate trust among the older members of the diplomatic team, so I learned to be quiet and observe and absorb knowledge. I learned to listen well. We have a lot of Filipinos in distress overseas, and my jurisdiction included the Filipino diaspora in Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Guyana, and Haiti. They’re already in big trouble when they make it to the embassy. So I learned to be empathetic even though I was quivering from my immaturity inside.
Skills cultivated – definitely how to tame my fear of technology. I already use so many apps in my daily life, and being the CEO of an affiliate website, I needed to navigate so many more tools and builder apps. The bad thing with pursuing a business miles away from the profession you studied in college is brain capacity. So you need to get rid of old memories junk data in your head to make way for the skills required to navigate the modern digital age.
Thank you for sharing some of your knowledge with our readers! They would also like to know, what is one skill that you’ve always wanted to acquire but never really could?
Lovelia Horn: Every skill is teachable. If you desire to learn a skill, there are online resources, books, and apps to teach you. You have to be willing to commit and be disciplined. Hiring a mentor or coach is a great way to shortcut learning.
Before we finish things off, we have one final question for you. If you wrote a book about your life today, what would the title be?
Lovelia Horn: “182 Days in the COVID Trenches: Surviving the Pandemic while working for 7 Nursing Homes.”
Jed Morley, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Lovelia Horn for taking the time to do this interview and share her knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Lovelia Horn or her company, you can do it through her – Linkedin Page
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