00.03 Hey, welcome back to the show. Today I've got Nick on board with us and he's gonna give us all sorts of stuff. But before we go into that, Nick, who are you and what do do?

00.13 Todd, thanks for having me. I'm a SEER entrepreneur and I am a nerd on all things marketing. Right now I'm the COO and co-owner at Doe Media and we're gonna be the next big thing when it comes to all things paid marketing and advertising.

00.29I love it, I love it. Talk to me because a lot of people get scared about paid advertising and what's your take on it? mean, how do you talk people off that ledge?

00:38 You know, luckily in today's world, I think it's actually a little bit easier because a couple of years ago, you're, you know, you're having conversations with business business owners and you're like, hey, you know, I want you should be doing Facebook ads, you should be doing Google ads, know, TikTok wasn't a thing at the time. Now it's like, okay, they've already done Facebook ads. And luckily, there's a lot of bad actors or people that just kind of don't really know what they're doing out there. So they have already been sold on the concept of paid ads.

00.59 Sure.

01:06 Now they just need an expert that actually knows how to take them to the next level. And that's what we do. You know, I like to tell people it's really cool to, you know, start fires, but we're the gasoline where you set that fire really going to blaze.

01:12 love it. Okay, okay, so what you're saying is a lot of people kind of tinker with it and try to run some ads on their own But then when it's time to really turn up the volume you guys are it

01:39 Exactly, exactly. You bring us in when you actually want to go to that next level.

01:32 I like that. I love it, I love it. And honestly, for those listening who are not running ads, it is a good idea to run ads. There's no doubt that running paid ads is gonna drive more traffic to anything on your site, to anything in your digital footprint, and it just takes throwing the gas onto a fire, even a simple post that converts well, it has a lot of engagement, throw some money at it, and then watch what happens. Am I wrong?

02:01 It's wild. It's wild. We've got some crazy stories like there's some businesses that we've worked with even back in, you know, 2018, 2019 that are still with us that, you know, they started off in their closet or their dorm room with just a small little idea. And, you know, now they have giant warehouses off of just this little idea and a little bit of Facebook advertising and Google advertising. You know, it's it's it's life changing for a lot of people.

02:16 Love it. I love it. Well, there's a lot of agencies out there, like a lot. And a lot of people like to proclaim that they are all things to everybody in terms of marketing. But you guys are not all things to everybody. You are very hyper-focused on the paid and on social media. And so walk us through what differentiates you guys from a lot of the marketing agencies out there to try to profess that we've got such a big team, we're the best at everything.

02:56 That's a great question. you know, what really separates us from everybody else is we were entrepreneurs first. We owned and operated our own e-commerce and technology companies. so along the way, you know, we sold some and some other brands, you know, came up to us and I used to come from agency world. So in between starting and selling companies, I worked at a pretty big agency where I got to work on a lot of these brands and, you know, really learn how to like scale a lot of these.

03:04 Uh-huh.

03:25 because you know, got to have that knowledge unlock. you know, a lot of people don't have that ecom knowledge or that business owner knowledge. And so we take that same ethos, and we put that into all of our team members, so that they think and act just like a business owner would just like a CMO would, and they speak to that PNL level, we just happen to be kickass at advertising, but we're marketing gurus or I you know, I hate that word grew up.

03:32 Agreed.

03:51 I don't even know why I said that because I probably just read something earlier. I was marketed to but you know, we are those those e commerce experts and it's not just e commerce because we've actually expanded a lot into lead generation and SAS and app downloads because at the end of the day, it's all about data and we know what to do with that data and we know how to scale that data. And so we take that ownership approach and you know, that's not uncommon.

04:11 Yeah.

04:19 11 o'clock at night, I've got to be working on a client. I don't care. I treat it as if it were my own. And so does everyone here.

04:25 Okay, so that actually does go a long way. I mean, that does help a lot of people feel more at peace knowing that someone has been an entrepreneur first and doesn't just treat their company as this redheaded stepchild they gotta go build some ads for. Walk us through this strategy that you take most people through and help us understand your avatar a little bit. Who is your preferred type of client? Is there a niche that you guys hit or are you pretty like, and a flexible depending on the type. I personally remember I ran into a food company I did marketing with and I was like, man, I am not a food marketer, I discovered. I'm really good at other things, but the food marketing was hard for me. Where do you guys find your strength in diving into that?

05:14 I would say our strength, kind of going back to my gasoline comment earlier, is really centered around if you already have traction, you have a great product, people are coming back and buying your product, and you just need a lot more customers, that's when you hire us. You don't necessarily want to hire us for starting that flame and building up that traction. And there's brands that we definitely have launched.

05:30 Yeah. Okay.

05:40 You don't have a decent budget and marketing plan to do that. some startups don't have the same concept of that. But when you've already have some traction built in and you've got all your systems and your supply chain and your sales team ready to deploy, that's when you want to work with us. Because getting to 1 million, 5 million or 10 million even, that's a feat in its own. And that's very, very difficult. When you're at that one million, you need to go to 10, you hire us. When you're at that 10 and you need to go to 100, you hire us. You don't necessarily want to hire us to go to a million and you're probably better off just figuring it out yourself. Or, you know, we even have a consulting program and our own training system where you can learn all of this on your own. And it's actually really good for most entrepreneurs to learn the ins and outs of this, because for most businesses, it's all driven by marketing and sales plus your product.

06:15 Yeah, right. Right. Right.

06:37 And if you're a product designer or what have you, you know your products kick ass. Well, now you got to get kick ass at marketing. And that'll just tie those two together really well.

06:47 agree and what you said just went a long way with me because I feel like this is a recurring theme on this show is that you've got to make sure you know your fulfillment. You got to make sure you've actually got a sales process because if you drive a bunch of traffic and you get a bunch of leads and you don't have the system to actually fulfill it, tell us how that damages the business.

07:07 Oh, it's it's crazy. You know, you could damage it in both ways. I like to tell everyone it's like, you know, there's good problems to have and then there's bad problems to have. I want to have those good problems where like you're selling out or you, you know, you don't want to be sitting with inventory because if you're sitting with inventory and you're paying to move that inventory, that is a real pain. If you sell all your inventory. Well, that means, hey, you probably got to increase your prices a little bit.

07:1 Ha

07:17 Right. Fair enough.

07:24 Right. Right, right, right. Right.

07:35 You probably need to plan a little bit more on how you want to deploy that. And depending on when you're going to get your product back, you don't want to sell out and then you can't have enough product for the next 60 or 90 days. Because when you completely turn off your ads, you're kind of screwed. You lose all those learnings and you don't want to do that. So if you know, hey, things are going really good, but I'm not going to be able to get inventory for 90 days. That's when you kind of want to slow it down and be like, okay, let's at least pace it out for this next period.

07:41 Right. Sure. Yeah. Yeah.

08:05 Maybe we sell out like two to three weeks before that product is going to land. And that way you can at least still run ads and pre-sell that product or at least get people to sign up for your email list to notify you when it comes back. If you have other products, that could be a good time to upsell some of those products that are sitting on the shelf. But you really got to know that supply chain too, because if you run into a case where you sell out, you pre-sell and you get some damaged product, maybe you switch vendors or something or

08:10 Love it. Right. Right.

08:34 This is your second time buying from the vendor. The first time was good. The second time wasn't. Well, then you're in a little bit more trouble because you don't want to really pre-sale in that situation. there's definitely some knowledge that goes into different scenarios for sure.

08:50 And I'll just speak from personal experience, unfortunate personal experience. I ran an offer once where the ads were super dialed in way more than we thought they would be at first. a campaign launched, did over a million dollars in sales in the first three weeks. And my fulfillment partner did the, he did the dirty, like he started plugging in false shipping tracking labels and letting us think that we had shipped and it hadn't. And so About 30 % of sales actually got shipped, killed everything, killed the entire business loss, lost a lot of money. And it was an embarrassment. And so I warned people against that. Make sure that if you do choose to partner with someone like you, and you run a successful marketing campaign, make sure fulfillment is solid, make sure you got product, know how much you've got to work with so that you don't oversell because guess what? You can slow an ad down.

09:21 man. Yeah.

09:47pretty easily if you can't keep up with fulfillment, right?

09:51 Yeah, that that reminds me one time during the pandemic and I'm sure other people have done this too. But during the pandemic, I got a call from my partner, Ramsey, and he said, hey, I got the I got the call. We can sell masks and not only can we sell masks, we can print on them. So we were actually the only people in the United States that could print on a mask. we used to own he used to own a one of the first print on demand companies back in 2016 called Thread Me Up.

10:14 Wow.

10:20 And we had hundreds, not thousands of winning designs from t-shirts. So we just took those designs literally within 72 hours, barely slept, stood up a website, got ad accounts going, got 300 designs on a site and just let it bang. We did a million dollars in, I think it was like three and a half weeks. And man, that's a, that was a, that was a nightmare. Cause we, we had the, we had to hold the, hold the orders for a little while Shopify held like

10:21 Yeah. Wow. Wow. love it. Yep.

10:50 You can't just pop open a store and do a million dollars in three weeks. Shopify held 250,000 of our money for like, think, 180 days. Then we had to switch to PayPal. They held 350,000. Man, and we just put it all on our credit card. Luckily, the vendor covered us. But it took a while to fill that. We got it all out. But at that point, you know, we had to shut it down. We probably could have done 15, 20 million. It would have been nuts.

10:57 yeah, yeah. Yeah.

11:16 Well, I feel your pain and so for those listening, for those listening, this is important. There is a different strategy for zero to one million and then there's a different strategy for one to five and six. And then once you hit 10, it changes the game a bit. Everything kinda changes at 10 and likely your fulfillment's different, likely you've got different leadership in place, likely you're not as involved in the day-to-day decision making that everything's going on. And that's where, It is so smart to have reliable partners like an agency like yours to come in and actually manage that whole nugget of your company so that you don't have to try and train, hire, and build someone into that role. You have great partners that can set you up that way. So let's talk about your business for a second because everybody knows what an agency does and we now know that you guys are very specialized in the pay to play game. And talk to us about your business though. because we talked offline a little bit about your growth strategy and some of the things that you've done to build your portfolio. Walk us through that. What are some key things that you did to kind of build off of your initial stage of growth into something much bigger?

2:29 Yeah, so, you know, it just started with three of us. We had no investment, nothing. you know, had some minor success selling some companies prior and we decided to pull our resources together and we had a couple of brands and some, you know, and it just kind of snowballed from there. And I think, you know, every million that we've grown over the years, excuse me, has unlocked a whole new level of what you said, like there's a new level of management.

12:39 Right.

12:58 There's a new level of relieving duties. And I actually think a lot of entrepreneurs get stuck here in like the 1 million mark, especially in agency world. And I'm lucky that I have two other partners that like, instead of just one person shielding, you having it all, like you can divide and conquer. And so for us, I feel like that was like, you know, getting to 3 million years ago was like a big like, hey, you know, we've, we've met what most single individual people could do individually, right?

12:58 Yeah. yeah. Totally.

13:25 And so, you know, each of those levels, you give up a little bit more, a little bit more. We've gotten to a point now where, you know, we want to keep growing. you know, we've realized how we've gotten here isn't how we're going to go to the next level. And we also want to go faster. And so, you know, one of the levers that we've started to pull and we've been a part of, you know, &A a little bit with some other partners of ours, where they ask us to come in and help.

13:26 Right.

13:53 transition their marketing teams and just overall companies. And we're sitting in the board meetings going, this is all you're doing. It's easier said than done still, because you got to source the deal and negotiate the deal and then get it done. But now we're tapping into a lot more of an &A play where we're looking for hungry agency entrepreneurs that want to stay in the game, don't want to just sell and leave because I don't want those people. I want those hungry people

14:21 Right.

14:23 that want to go to the next level. They don't want to deal with all the BS that, you know, having to be a solopreneur is, you know, and they might just want to sell or they might just want to work with the biggest partners out there. And so we've started doing a lot more of that. And, you know, the best people in our industry start agencies. Now, typically when they do that, they get a little burnt out because they're doing all those things. So, you know, for us, it's like we want to bring those people on. What you've built is beautiful.

14:30 Right, right.

14:52 Let's bring it in. We're all Do Media now in the Do Media family, even though we act more like a team than a family. And that's kind of just our dynamic. But we're really leveraging that. And it's allowed us to expand not only our clients, but also our services. We wanted to add on email. We wanted to add on Amazon. We want to add on TikTok. Well, any agency can just pick those up, be like, yep, now we're going to learn TikTok ads and we're going to learn how to do it. It's like, no.

14:59 Yeah. Sure.

15:21 We went out, we sought out the best at doing that. So we acquired Chase Chapel. And so Chase is now a partner in Go Media, which is amazing. And Chase is doing amazing things out there. And so we want to keep bringing those type people. And we want to be at that Vayner level. we're really young. We're younger than where Gary even started Vayner. And we're already way ahead of where he started there.

5:25 Right. Totally Yeah, right.

15:49 And so we just got to climb that mountain and get there a little bit faster. So we're coming for you, Gary.

15:49 Right, right. I can totally, I can totally appreciate that. And honestly, this is a really important thing for those listening because grow through acquisition is a fun play. It's a fun strategy because there are so many people stuck at a million dollars and they don't know how to get over that ledge. And when you provide them a path by just, hey, bring what you've got in and we'll make it better, you know, and bring what you've got and now you don't have to worry about X, Y, and Z too. And it's like,That play brings a whole new game to your business because a lot of times you make up for that price you just paid to buy them out in the first year of revenue from their existing clients. Let alone the value that they're bringing into your business. It's just enormous in some cases. For example, your experience with Chase. Walk us through that by the way, because that's a fascinating case study on how, what did that do to your bottom line revenue? and what did it do to, not bottom line, top line, what did it your top line revenue and how did that acquisition fold out for you guys?

17:02 Yeah, so, you know, it's kind of funny how we met Chase. He was raising capital for one of his other businesses, which is in the marketing realm called Surge. And, you know, I knew he was really intelligent and working on some cool things. And he said, hey, you know, I also have an agency on the side. And this is when we kind of just started like toying with the idea of wanting to acquire some agencies. It was about a year ago now. And, you know, I told my partner, Ramsey, I'm like, hey,

17:14 huh. Right.

17:30 Like we should probably talk to this guy and see if he like wants to sell it and do something bigger with us. And, you know, the guy who introduced me to chase actually, ended up having a house at South by Southwest. I called Ramsey and I said, Hey Ramsey, you got to go to South by Southwest. There's going to be some cool brands and people there. I want you to meet, meet all these people didn't know chase was going to go. and I couldn't make it unfortunately. And Ramsey calls me and he's like, Hey, I this really cool guy named chase. We should acquire his agency.

17:35 Right. Right. Yeah

17:59 And I'm like, I've been trying to tell you that. you know, Chase had a lot of really exciting opportunities and we liked everything that he was working on and we just knew that we could take it to the next level. And so, you know, even just Chase coming on, we'll easily be able to two to three X over the next 18 to 24 months, just based on, you know, all the deal flow that he has. And we're also looking at three more brands right now to just keep stapling on and

17:59 That's awesome. That's awesome. Love it. Love it.

18:25 You know, the next level, we want to go to that next bigger level, you know? I've met a couple people that have grown agencies past 100 million, and they really gave a lot of amazing insight of how they got there and how to do it. Now, most of those people have done it over 25 years. We want to it in 10. We'll see if that happens, but...

18:26 Love it. Sure, yeah, yeah. Well, I'm rooting for you, man. I mean, this is how you do it though. And truthfully, a lot of people listening to this are nervous about that. They feel like, dude, I can barely maintain my cashflow now. How am I gonna function if I go and acquire somebody? Like, how did that first deal feel to you and what made it more comfortable to do it again?

19:10 You know, I don't want to say that I'm ever comfortable. I don't want anyone to think that because, you know, I live in an anxiety high zone like me and Ramsey and Jacob and Chase, like we're grinding. We're just doing it. There is no fail, right? Fail is just another obstacle we need to get over and go to the next, go to the next. So, you know, I don't think any of it's easy. None of it is easy.

19:16 mRight? Totally. Yeah.Right, right. Right. Right.

19:37 In fact, I think it's all incredibly more challenging. That's another reason that I want to keep growing is because I'm like, man, if I get a little bit bigger, it's going to get a little bit easier. But I don't think so. I don't think so. Maybe certain things I don't have to do anymore. there's always new challenges that you don't consider. But that's exciting. That's the game. So that's what keeps me going.

19:41 Yeah.

19:54 Right. They're always, always.

20:04 Well, and I would suggest to you, and you probably already have recognized this, but through additional acquisition, you also need to be keeping your eyes focused on where is the talent that you need now to take you to the next level. And oftentimes you're able to find that role in an acquisition of someone that's like, dude, my strength is systems and I've got this amazing, you know, click up configuration that all my, you know. You're like, dude, we've been looking for someone to revamp our click up. You know what I mean? It's like, you can find those through acquisition and they don't even need to know that that's why you acquired the business. You know what I mean? You'll find, and this will be fun to check back in with you in the future, where that goes in terms of attracting the right client, the right acquisition that brings you something, this ancillary, that they may not recognize as a huge skillset that you need, but you do. And you're like,

20:58 Exactly. Exactly. I was always a big fan, know, me and Ramsey believe revenue brings and solves all problems. Because if you got constant revenue, you can buy all the solutions for your problems. If you don't have revenue, you can have the best processes in the world. It doesn't mean shit if you don't have revenue.

20:59 Gotta make this deal happen.

21:09 Yes, yeah

21:14 Fair enough.

21:19 Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, Yeah, it's weird how that works, isn't it?

21:22 But I agree. That's honestly the next couple of acquisitions we want to make are probably going to be a little bit more operational than sales. And so if there's any agencies listening to this or anybody, definitely reach out.

21:31 Yeah. Yep. Smart.

21:39 Fair enough, I love it. Well, talk to me about, know, acquisition sounds really fun and rosy, but talk to us about the challenges. Like what are some hiccups that you found early on that you've been able to, you know, overcome and maybe some advice for people that are looking to get through their first couple of acquisitions.

21:59 Yeah, number one, don't listen to any lawyers that want to extend things because lawyers get paid by the hour. And so when you're when you're dealing with any of these things, you need to be first of all, you want to make sure you get a really good lawyer. It's OK to pay those higher prices, but be very clear. Here is my budget. And if you go over and don't get this done, that is on you. And that means you didn't ask the right questions because I'm not paying over that fee. And

22:25 Yeah.

22:27 Lawyers, both sides will want to drag this out. Well, what about this? What about this? Literally, I won't mention the deal, but I had to take two lawyers in a room and I had to be their manager. said, no, both of you guys, I don't care. Shut up. This is what we're doing. Answer their questions. There's no ambiguity. It's these things or nothing. And I'm walking. So I think like that's number one is like, no, because that that bill will get expensive. I think the second thing is just

22:41Right. Right. yeah.

22:57 You have to find... I'm big on like entrepreneur has to come unless I'm buying like one of a couple partners out. But and they have to see the long term vision. There's a lot of people that will buy for the clients or the logos and things like that. That's more, you know, private equity. That's not what most people like us are going to do. I want people that are going to be here that want to grind and we see the same vision because you don't want to have arguments on you. You have to make sure like

23:05 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

23:26 this is what we're doing. Are you on the same page or are you not? And then I think team culture because you have to have a really good culture fit. know several agencies that I won't mention that I think that the founders got pretty big and sold it and just didn't care. Well, there's a whole bunch of people there that do care about where that company was and what it did. And you can go into a whole new culture

23:29 For sure. Right. Yeah.

23:55 and it can be damaging. There's a big known name that just sold twice and the first time it sold to a bigger conglomerate completely wrecked that company. All the top talent left. It's funny because they all started, a lot of those top talents started their own agencies now. The cycle just continues.

24:07 Too bad.

24:12 Right, right.

24:15 It continues, it continues. And for the better, I think in most cases. And it is sad. And obviously in your scenario, you don't want to do that, obviously in an acquisition, you don't want the culture to fall apart. And that's why to your point, you just talked about alignment of those cultures and alignment of their vision of where they want to take it. To me, in looking at your scenario, it's so smart of you even to make the pitch here over the air of saying, hey, If you're worn out and you're tired and you're really good at one part of your business, maybe better than the other guys, let's talk. Because I think there's a lot of people that have tried their own agency, they get worn out, they're not good at customer service, they're not good at some part of it, and they're just worn out. And it's a grind. But when they partner with people, they handle the parts that they suck at, and they bring some extra value in what they're good at, great things happen.

25:12 You gotta find the things that are gonna energize you through the things that suck. And I think that's true for founders, for employees, team members, what have you. Find those things that really give you enough energy to get through everything else and you'll be okay.

25:22 Right. Right.

25:29  Love it, love it. Well dude, I appreciate so much the time we've had today and I really do feel like there's a lot of people out there that are in need of a good marketing partner in particular in the paid ad space. I think that that is voodoo magic to most people. Even good marketers have a hard time staying up with all the changes, the constant changes in paid ads. And so what do people want to do if they, again, going back to your avatar.

25:50 Yep.

25:57 Who are you looking for? And those listening, how would they engage with you if they want to talk paid ads?

26:03 I would say if you're between one and 160 million and you need to take it to that next level, whether you have it in-house, you're with a shitty agency, or you want to bring it all to one place, Doe Media is experts in Facebook, Google, TikTok, Snapchat, TikTok, Amazon, email, and web dev. And the only reason that we're the greatest at all those is because we hired and acquired the best in all those individual different realms. So can go to doemedia.com and...

26:29 Love it. Love it.

26:33 Get on a call with me.

26:33 Awesome. We're putting all the details in the comments below. So those of you listening, please, please, please, please know where your game is because it is so important. Marketing is such an animal and if you don't have an entire team doing it for you, chances are you're gonna fall behind the curve within months, weeks sometimes of what you just ran that worked. so this is one of the areas I consider in all of marketing. the most critical to find someone that this is their jam, this is what they do, because when you don't, it's so easy to fall behind the trends. So Nick, thanks for taking the time to be here with us, and thanks for giving us a scoop on acquisition growth.

27:17 Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me, Todd.

27:21 Alright, dude how'd that feel?

27:23 Good, I'm good. That's great, thank you for having me.

27:26 I thought it went great. Yeah, no, it super fun. I think the content was good. think if there's anything, I feel like we covered all the bases pretty well.