Ali Hafezi Mashhadi
SEO Specialist / Business Growth Development / VP of Babash Rug Services
Los Angeles, CA
babashrug.com
instagram @__yrstrly
Q What do you do?
“I’m currently the VP of Babash Rug Services, a Los Angeles based company specializing in rug cleaning, rug resizing, rug repair and rug appraisals.”
Despite being one of the newest businesses on the block, we’ve been fortunate enough to establish ourselves as industry leaders and the number one rated company among our competition on Google.
Running a business usually means you’re being splitting apart in 360 different directions at once, so I’ve adapted to become a general problem solver, but my one particular area of expertise that could obviously be commodified is my ability to draw up and implement SEO strategies to achieve top ranking for competitive keywords. Our company holds the at least one of the top 3 positions for all of the most competitive keywords in our industry. If you’re in LA, try searching “rug cleaning,” “rug repair” or “rug resizing near me” to see what I mean.
I'm also currently studying Cognitive Science at UCLA and when I can, I write, sing and produce my own music!
Q What steps did you take to get to where you are now?
I spent a lot of time on the computer when I was younger. I found myself drawn most to social community-built games like Gary’s Mod (the 2000’s equivalent to Roblox), where I became interested in being a part of the world that I was a creator of at the same time. I also immersed myself in a lot of roleplaying communities where everybody was creating alter egos and editing anime pictures and videos to reflect them on MySpace, so I started making custom projects and servers that ended up laying a lot of the groundwork for my inner creative geek. It taught me a lot about graphic design, video editing and web development. When my dad launched our business, it made sense to use all of those skills to build up our business’ online presence.
Learning to produce and write music on my own, while learning multiple different instruments, was a really important stepping stone for me, it taught me a lot about project management, problem solving and the creative process. Creativity is just as much as about tuning your head into the ether and picking up those magic melodies as it is about figuring out why the god damned DAW keeps crashing every 20 minutes and not letting it drive you nuts. I’m the type of person who needs to do things to learn, and I’ve always been a bit “meta” about everything I did, so I became interested in learning how to learn things efficiently, which I translate over to nearly everything else now.
Through the work I've been doing here at our family business for the past 10 years, I learned a lot about strategizing business growth and development, with the most tangible of those skills being in SEO and running paid ad campaigns targeted at high ROI’s. We now hold first to third positions for the most competitive major keywords pertaining to our industry including “rug cleaning” and “rug repair,” and are the one of the largest rug service providers in greater LA county, despite being one of the newest ones. It taught me a lot about communication, how to be realistic and how to face results that speak for themselves, regardless of your opinion of what a misunderstood artistic genius you might be.
Q How do you stand out in your field?
The first job I had, that I still hold to this day, is the one at my family business. I think that speaks to my loyalty, if nothing else. Being in this position, where it was just me, my mom and my dad for the most part, I learned to be extremely resourceful. I used to hate that I could never pass something off to someone else or “let an expert handle it” but I realized it was another one of those trials in life that actually shaped into one of my superpowers because I became frugal and I realized I can teach myself how to do some approximated version of nearly anything with enough time and the help of the internet. I don’t see the same constraints others do, and can do with what canvas is provided for me whatever is expected of me.
Coming of age while watching my dad work as hard as he still does to this day instilled the same spirit in me. I feel oddly at peace when I’m working on things that are meaningful to me, and anxious when I’m not doing something that could in some way be thought of as productive. I also have the tendency to get obsessed and achieve hyper-focus when I’m working. I’ll lock in and obsessively chase what I’m doing down, which allows me to go deep and take my projects to the next level. It’s a powerful and exciting feeling to hold inside of yourself when you can control it.
I spend equal amounts of time looking up literature on metabolic expenditure under cognitive load as I do in la-la land trying to meditate into states of awareness that could break my self-conception and the established conventions that might be creating fixedness in my thinking and creative process. I realize that human beings can be bound by the shells that get constructed involuntarily as a result to their reactions to experiences and their upbringings, and I seek to continuously break out of the ones I’m inside of and into new ones that shape me into a better person. I have a “can do” attitude and I get my hands dirty while also being able to float my head in the clouds to see the beauty and potential of the bigger picture.
Q What are you working on right now?
I’m working on taking our family business to a place where my parents can hopefully retire while the business continues to function and provide for them. They sacrificed so much to get us here… It’s the least I can do.
There’s a lot of sub-projects I’m working on at the business while getting through school, and I know my competitors are reading this so nice try, but I won’t be giving anything specific away ;)
Q What’s your style?
I see creativity as a dialogue.
In the first stage the dialogue takes place between the creators and themselves. Think of this as the process of writing along with continuous revision. It’s about growth, the way we came about as human beings through learning and adapting. We do things, we get feedback (often from ourselves) and we adapt as a result. From my understanding, this is also how great AI models can be trained as well.
In the second stage the the creator has a dialogue with their audience. Think about how a stand up comedian tries new material out and sees which ones get the best reaction before consolidating them into their special. Another example is product design, where some prototype is tested in conjunction from the community, and versions are continuously reiterated through customer feedback.
And finally is the dialogue the work and it’s community has with culture and time. With changing expectations, certain works may pop in and out of the public conscious, but the strongest ideas return in one form or another, maintaining their stature both in consistency and longevity through time.
I'm naturally drawn to concepts that seek to integrate polar-opposite conventions together. There’s places where it works (layering mariachi trumpets over the synth of an electronic dance track) and places where it doesn’t (pouring ketchup on your ice cream... no one should ever pour ketchup on your ice cream) but keeping an open and mindful eye on experimenting with these combinations and allowing my intuition, along with data and feedback from others to serve as the judge is the gyst of my creative process.
When I was making music, it was always a source of deep curiosity for me how melodies and ideas would come, seemingly out of nowhere, and I used to think that it was something magical, somehow separate from linear problem solving. Think left vs. right brain, intuitive vs reflective thought, or System 1 vs System 2 in Daniel Kahneman’s terms. I’ve learned to integrate these seemingly disparate ideas together (surprise, surprise), realizing that they work in tandem with one another. With the recent developments in AI, I think we can acknowledge that there is a “pattern” of some sort that can be replicated through mathematical functions from which even the greatest creative works are born out of, so score one for making sure your analytical axe is sharp and refined, but that’s not to forget that we are far more efficient when we internalize that part of ourselves and allow our intuitions to take over the steering wheel for the decisions that matter the most.
In that line of reasoning I like things that are supple and effortless but stern and meticulously-crafted at the same time — deceptively simple. Think the music of The Strokes or ChatGPT.
Whatever I make has to invoke a powerful feeling but the data has to be there to prove its impact so I don’t waste time chasing my own tail or indulging in my own fantasies somehow.
Q Out of all your slashies, which one do you wish you could do more often?
I wish I had more time to dedicate to making music. I read somewhere that creativity and cognitive ability in human beings tends to dwindle down after turning 25, which is disturbing since that’s how old I am now, but also lights a nice fire under my a** to get up and try to do something good in the world.
The problem is that the music industry isn’t kind to its artists, just as the rug industry isn’t kind to its weavers, so I thought it best to strive for the highest net good in my current situation in a way that I saw realistically foreseeable.
I know, I kind of sold out… As much as I do believe in music’s power to change the world, and as much as it is the most potent form of stimulation I’ve ever experienced and of the greatest loves of my life, I can’t say that it’s more important than the security and quality of livelihood of my family. If I’m fortunate enough to get to the place I wanna be, a solo project would be the first thing I would set aside a chunk of my time for!
Q What is frustrating you right now?
Being in a family business is a privilege but you do tend to run into the classic conservative vs. progressive dilemma. I want our company to be cutting-edge and experimental but I have to get that through leadership that has grown world-weary and in that process my inner-child is being actively challenged to see the world from entirely different perspectives. All things considered, it isn’t a bad thing, but it does feel like I’m picking up some wisdom scars and world-weariness of my own. I suppose my goal is to know where to draw the line between caution and optimism. It's nice to know that it's not a unique problem, it’s an archetype of sorts that is currently and has always been happening, even on a political level, all over the world.
Q If you could hire someone for $20/hour, what would you have them do to make your day easier?
I’d hire as many salesmen-in-progress that are quick learners to get them up to speed and help move our services — all day.
Q What do you wish you could have told yourself, when, and why?
I spent a lot of time in my youth looking at the mirror and asking myself “am I good enough to try this?” Trying to approximate the height of your potential is a challenge. The process of getting to know ourselves as we are is hard enough, let alone figuring out what we could be…
I’d tell my younger self not to personalize things so much, and that it’s okay not to be good at something right off the bat. It’s actually an inevitable part of the process. For example, I’m sure that if I got a taste of what my singing voice sounds like today back when I first started learning how to sing, I wouldn’t have gave up as often as I did during those initial practice sessions. I would have worked much harder knowing the kind of growth that was around the corner. From a day to day perspective, it’s almost impossible to notice. But now that I’ve acquired the taste of what the learning process is like from what I’ve learned picking up all kinds of different skills I’ve realized that you actually have to zoom out a few months and years to see the real progress, and without fail it usually always clicks in the end and will leave new abilities in your body that you’ll have for life.
The tough thing is maintaining the wisdom to keep that sense while being able to let go of things which are out of my control, and getting my big head to understand that it can’t do everything it wants to. That’s something I still haven’t figured out, so if future me is listening, pls send help.
Q If you could talk to an expert to gain more insight on something, what would it be about?
I am convinced that the advancement of artificial intelligence will represent the most significant leap in human progress since the era of industrialization (I had ChatGPT write that sentence for me) and I’m learning more about it from my studies at university. I’d love to talk to someone who is familiar with technologies that are available right now to see what problems can be solved through applications that utilize its power.
Q What kind of opportunities/projects are you looking for?
I believe in creating beautiful, useful, fair, and valuable things, then taking the profits from those things to either continue the cycle or contribute to social good. I’m looking for anyone who shares such a vision.
Most tangibly, for those looking to supercharge their SEO efforts, I think I can provide the individual attention that you would never get from a marketing agency to help you reach your business goals.
Q Describe your ideal job/client/collaboration.
My favorite kinds of collaborators have been the ones who are talented, responsive, hard working, and fair. Bonus points if you’re excited by new ideas and can hold healthy disagreements!
Q What is your rate?
For SEO the pricing would be custom based on how difficult the keywords are. Like everyone else says, the truth is that it’s a long term investment, but if you go at it the right way you’ll own a piece of digital real estate that far outweighs the cost of its development.
Paid Ads are 20% of ad spend (minimum $300 per month) with custom landing pages designed at $400 per page. See babashrug.com for an example of a landing page.
Q How should someone approach you about working together?
A simple introduction in the format of your choosing sent to my inbox at alihafezi@ucla.edu would be more than sufficient!
Q Who is a creative you admire?
Nick Rufo is a dear childhood friend and a photographer that’s worked for Adidas, Audi, and Haagen-Dazs.
Q Oh! and… how do you stay creative?
I plateau in creativity when I am optimistic about the future and in service to causes greater than myself. Putting my best foot forward, doing the right thing and fostering love for the human condition is the fastest way of getting myself there.
This member profile was originally published in April 2023