What’s your story?
I was born in Los Angeles, but grew up in the small town of Ojai, California. I grew up always trying different small business ventures, from the typical lemonade stand to buying and selling beanie babies so that I could afford an electric guitar.
I went to college at the University of Arizona and studied business. During college I took jobs specifically to learn. The first one was working in a real estate office, the second one selling kitchen knives door to door for Cutco, and then the summer of my junior year I decided to co-found my first business, called Stormwater Maintenance Company. I ran the sales and marketing aspect and helped sign our first few clients, but learned the valuable lesson of working on a business I am passionate about and though the outcome of clean water was important to me, I hated actually jumping down in storm drains and the other things that came with the job, so I decided to go back and finish school.
Upon graduating in 2008, I decided to pursue a career as a commercial real estate agent. I got my license and began my first week on October 8th, 2008. Exactly 7 days later, Lehman Brothers collapsed and the entire banking industry with it.
I actually did not know what that meant at the time, nor did most, so I continued working with my head down.
Six months went by and I had over $35 Million in listings, but couldn’t draw in an offer on a single property, so I started to work on other ideas.
I made a total of $350 that year. That is not a typo.
To make a long story short, I ended up Co-founding an online music company called Fame Wizard, which I ran for two years and then hired my replacement to take over and run profitably for three more years (he is my current business partner).
After leaving Fame Wizard, I started a company called Swag of the Month, which was a t-shirt subscription company that we then sold 1.5 years later.
I then joined the incubator “Science” famous for launching Dollar Shave Club amongst other things. I helped them launch a women’s active wear brand called “Ellie” which they ended up selling to Bally Total Fitness, which then leads me into the story that brought Hawke Media…
What’s the biggest mistake you’ve made and what did you learn from it?
I honestly don’t have glaring mistakes that I regret. I don’t think anything that has gone wrong for me to this point hasn’t then lead to something even better. I could list mistakes like joining the real estate industry during the worst period since the great depression, selling my t-shirt business for an incredibly low value and also not doing more to research how we could have grown it more, relying on partner’s promises and not getting things in writing, but all of my “mistakes” lead me to where I am and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Where did the idea for your company come from? (what was the aha moment?)
After leaving my last company I began consulting for a lot of large and small brands. Through 6 months of doing so I kept running into the same problem. Once it came time to execute my advising companies had two options, hire in house or hire an agency.
The problem was hiring in house is not cost effective and that is if you can find the talent. On the agency side, 98% of them seem to have no idea what they are doing, and the few that are any good tend to be really expensive, want long contracts, or have some other barrier they put up that makes them hard to work with. I got sick of it and decided to hire my own team to solve this problem.
What was the first step you took after you had the idea?
I started by hiring my own team of 7 people. An email marketer, facebook, search, influencer, affiliate, web design and overall strategy and I want back to these companies and said “everything is a la carte, month to month, cheaper than hiring in house, but basically we can spin up a team that fits your needs, based on a menu of services.” That’s how it began and 3.5 years later we have bootstrapped to over 105 people.
Tell me about an accomplishment that shaped your career?
I would say my most recent accomplishment. I tried a lot of different things that worked to some level along the way, but it all seemed to bring me to build a business around my passion. I have always had an inherent love for growing things and building things. I always had to improve in video games to an addictive point, same in extreme sports, same in collecting different things, and now I get to run a business built around growing other businesses. It really is a blessing.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
“Swing the bat.” I have really seen that the level of success someone reaches is do to timing. The book “Outliers” by Malcom Gladwell really explains this well. The other part of this though, the part you can control, is that I have noticed that the difference between people that reach some level of success and those who don’t, given all circumstance being equal, is their level of getting things done or just going for it, or in other words “swinging the bat.” This was something my dad said to me very early in trying to start my first business. You may or may not succeed the first time, but just swing the bat, something will connect.