5 From 5 Fold: Five Questions with Bijo George, 5 Fold Co-Founder and Marketing Director
Welcome to this edition of 5 From 5 Fold. Each month, we’ll ask a different member of the 5 Fold Marketing team five questions about themselves, what their job is like, and what they see as the future of marketing. This month, we sat down with 5 Fold Co-Founder and Marketing Director Bijo George to talk about how a windshield chip changed the course of his career, where 5 Fold is going, and how Teamwork helps him stay organized.
1. Where did you grow up, and where’d you go to college?
“I grew up in the San Fernando Valley in southern California, in a city called Granada Hills for most of my life. I went to school at Cal State Northridge and studied marketing there.”
2. How’d you first get involved with 5 Fold? What, in your mind, makes 5 Fold different?
“It’s what I call the ‘Rock-Chip’ story because it’s a chain of events that led up to me meeting Scott, our co-founder. It started out with a rock chipping my windshield while I was driving one day. To get it repaired, I called a company and the owner said they could fix it right away. While I was waiting there, I talked to the owner for a while; eventually, he said, ‘Hey, my printer isn’t working. Can you take a look?’ He told me that it hadn’t been working for months. So, I ended up fixing it while I waited and we hit it off and became friends.
At the time, I was freelancing doing web design work. I built him a website; and then a few months later a rep from a marketing agency called him trying to sell marketing. Long story short, this sales rep and I worked together for a while, eventually leading to meeting Scott who was working for the same agency. There was a chain of events for it to happen. If not for that windshield chip, I don’t think I would have met Scott or had the opportunity to be apart of 5 Fold.
What makes 5 Fold different? As 5 Fold evolved our goal became to give businesses a solid presence online by bringing the major components of online marketing together into one product. This was not easy, as there are a lot of moving parts. We’ve been able to accomplish this through many processes created by a dedicated team for each major part of the product, all working together on our clients’ campaigns. Our clients basically have their own marketing department with 5 Fold, a team of dedicated experts.”
3. What is your favorite part of 5 Fold? What do you love most about coming into work each and every day?
“My favorite part of 5 Fold is the process involved in building a great product and company. I enjoy learning, and I feel we’re constantly learning as both an agency and as individuals. Every time there’s a major milestone for our company, whether it’s adding new team members, new clients or adding to our product, there is a great amount of growth that happens and it pushes us forward exponentially.”
4. Where do you think SEO, as an industry, is generally headed? What recent trends do you find particularly exciting?
“It’s becoming more holistic, where you have to consider a variety of components as a whole instead of just focusing on one area. From social media, local listings, reviews, videos, the website, on-site and off-site content. It all connects together. If one of those areas is weak, that could affect the whole ecosystem of SEO. When things are clicking on all cylinders, that’s when you see a successful campaign.
We’re consistently seeing traffic increase on mobile devices across all verticals. One of the new technologies that came out recently is Google’s AMP—which stands for “Accelerated Mobile Pages.” This software helps pages load instantly on mobile devices. It’s something we’ve been testing the past few months to integrate into client websites. The technology will make it much faster loading pages on mobile devices, especially in places with limited internet access and speeds.”
5. What are you most looking forward to in terms of where 5 Fold is going this year?
“I’m excited to continue building out our team. Every time we hire someone, we’re getting a new perspective, background and an expert in a specific area. There is a certain energy each person brings which propels the company and we see ripple effects in every other department. This momentum will carry us into building a great platform for our clients and the 5 Fold team later on this year.”
Bonus: What productivity app (either on your phone or your computer) could you not live without?
“Teamwork. There are so many projects that need to get done and teamwork makes it easy to manage tasks while staying on top of it all. It helps me when I can get things out of my head. By putting it into Teamwork, I can go back to it anytime. That’s the number one app that I’m using daily for productivity.”