Building in the open/

Armin Jonker, Paarl, behind the Sony A7 IV
Behind the camera / sony a7iv · natural light

I don't wait for the green light.

I'm Armin Jonker, 25, from Paarl. I run two businesses in the open: Gen1 Media, an SEO and website agency with clients in South Africa, the States and Canada, and SoftFlask, a running brand I built from scratch.

It started with my parents' law firm. I'd built them a good website and they still weren't getting clients from it, so I went and learned SEO from the best in the world and pointed it at their site. The traffic climbed until they were fielding enquiries from overseas. Being able to control that felt like a superpower. I was hooked.

I post a video every day and document the real numbers as I go. Most business owners here think SEO is a scam, or just social media. It's neither, and I make content to show how it actually works. I have big goals, and I know I'll spend my twenties paying for them. But I'm in love with the game: the struggle, the grind, figuring it out.

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Gen1 Media

Gen1 Media started with cold calls, and with driving out to wine farms and asking at the door if I could speak to someone. It took more than 100 calls before one of them turned into a client. Two years in, the clients are better. The ones who've been burned by an agency before and come in skeptical are usually the ones that push the hardest and get the best results.

The work is SEO and web design. I go after the money keywords, the ones someone types when they're ready to buy, not just browsing. “Burst pipe in Paarl,” not “plumber.” Lower volume, but the person searching is a customer, not a reader. One client is sitting at 10x the traffic. A directory site I built is pulling more than 4,000 clicks a month.

One client per industry per suburb. I don't take your competitor. No account managers, no jargon reports. You deal with me, and every month you see the leads, not a dashboard. I'd rather have a handful of clients I can genuinely move the needle for than a full roster.

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SoftFlask

I wanted to learn e-commerce SEO and couldn't find an online store that would let me near theirs, so I built my own. SoftFlask sells collapsible flasks to runners. The whole market was black, blue and transparent, so I made mine bright pink, different on purpose. I ordered 100 bottles, sold 2 online on launch day, called it a win, and kept going.

I hosted a 10K run in Stellenbosch with 48 runners that went 2km over distance. I sponsored relay teams. I gave away 30 flasks to running clubs and got 5 photos back. I stood at trail race stalls with a plastic table and a black tablecloth and learned what a premium setup should look like.

They still sell better in person, at race registration, than they ever have online. The pink did its job. Runners spot each other's flasks at events and message me about it. 1,500 on Instagram and counting.

What the grind actually looks like.

“Do so much work that it becomes unreasonable for you to fail.”
/ Alex Hormozi