Why I Started Signaigo Legal Content

This article was originally published on my LinkedIn profile.

The Origins

The year is 2019.  The world is about to change because of Covid, but nobody knows it yet.  I have recently joined the Peace Corps and am preparing to move to Ghana.

I am in my apartment in North Park when the phone rings.  It’s Jim Iagmin.  Jim is one of the best personal injury lawyers in San Diego.  We used to work together as lawyers at The Gomez Law Firm.  Jim called because he had a project for me.

The project was to write the content for his website – the home page, practice area pages, blogs, all of it.  He chose me because I was trained as a lawyer but wrote like a normal person.  It was a great opportunity.

I agreed to work on the project but told Jim I would only have a few weeks to work on it before I moved to Ghana.  Peace Corps does not allow you to take other jobs.  You are supposed to be completely focused on your Peace Corps mission.  So, I worked on Jim’s project for a few weeks, then moved to Ghana as planned.

Covid

After three months in Ghana, I heard rumors about a strange virus that started in China.  I didn’t worry too much about it because I was on the other side of the world.  However, within a couple of weeks, Covid shut down international borders.  Peace Corps had no choice but to evacuate all of their employees from all over the world and bring them back to the United States before the borders closed.

So, thanks to Covid, I wound up back in San Diego with no job, no place to live, and no car.  When I moved to Ghana, I sold or gave away 90% of my belongings (including my car), so I had nothing except what was in my suitcases when I got back – this was the scariest and most liberating thing that had ever happened to me.

The only reason it was liberating was because I could find a job.  When I returned to San Diego, I called Jim and told him what happened.  Thankfully, he hadn’t hired anyone else to do his website, so I got the job again.

At first, I didn’t know what I was doing.  There is a difference between writing and writing for SEO.  My first articles were not very good.  I tried hard on them, and the writing wasn’t bad, but I didn’t know how to write content that ranks on Google.  There are rules you must follow to rank high on Google, and I didn’t know them.

However, I studied, researched, and learned the techniques to write high-ranking content.  I wrote down all of the techniques I learned and created a Quality Control Checklist to ensure every blog was optimized for SEO.

Building Assets

With lots of studying and practice, my work improved, and soon, my articles were consistently ranking in highly competitive search fields.  Ranking for personal injury search terms in San Diego is not easy – the market is fierce – so I knew that I had developed a valuable skill.

More importantly, I realized that my work was creating a valuable asset.  The content I created for Jim would continue to generate business for him for a long time.  When you spend money on ads or billboards, you spend it, and then it is gone.  When you spend money on content, you get to keep the content, which keeps driving traffic to your website for as long as you leave it on the internet.

Thus, I realized that content is a long-term investment, meaning I am both a writer and an asset-builder.  I became passionate about my work once I realized I was creating life-long assets for my clients.

I am not simply taking my clients’ money.  I am creating valuable assets for them.  That is why I love what I do, and that is why I started Signaigo Legal Content.  I love creating assets for my clients and building wealth together.

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