Jesse had the pleasure of working on all levels of the advertising stack, from scaling large in-house SEO teams for both clients, and his own web properties, to personally overseeing the deployment of millions per month in paid ad spend (both in online DTC, international distribution and physical retail).

Remotepreneur Insights

• Always Say ‘Yes’– In the beginning of growing your agency or company, you might need to hustle and take on as many deals as you can until you earn the privilege to turn clients away.
• Save Money – Once you start growing your companies you might need to hire teams of people to handle the work. You have to pay those people for their services. That’s why it’s important to save up.
• Keep it Simple – Stay true to your niche. If you want to do graphic design, do only that. If you want to do SEO, just stick to SEO. Don’t stray off because you might end up torn apart by all sides.

Quotes

“I ended up picking up from my personal network from people that I knew to do kind of growth work on it. I didn’t know what I was doing. I just needed to make money really fast to pay for the hotels I was staying at.”

“I put a job offer for someone to help me with my agency. At the time, I just wanted somebody to help with content writing. I just needed some more content . I didn’t want to pay some one off services. So, I did that and it kicked off and did really well.”

 “I ended up making the company a lot smaller. I found employees that I let go. Letting people go for me was a sign of defeat. I didn’t want to let my team down. So, I made sure everyone had new jobs and prospects to go to that paid the same amount of money, more often with previous clients. I let clients that consume a lot of time go. I kinda started all over again, this new model of hiring writers, look for more firms and managing them.”

 “I think in the early days there is a lot of accepting deals that are potentially toxic because you need the money. It’s not until you got some cash in the bank, things are smooth that you’re comfortable to say no. There are so many people that are on a podcast, Youtube and stuff that are it’s ok to say no. When you’re not making money and you’re broke, you kinda have to say yes to everything. “

“The agency, for a lot of things, was like my own venture capital firm. I was like ‘Can I please have some money?’ and they would give me money. I would deploy it in terms of developing marketing or engineering resources. I take money from the agency and put it into my passion.”

“First, save money. Make sure you have some cash because if you’re going to employ anyone, have the responsibility to back them when stuff doesn’t go your way. So, If you have to let employees go, you need to cover that.”

“When you go from consulting to an agency, keep it simple. Do it well, keep it simple. Be the best in your class or category, whatever that is. I just do SEO and I’m the best at it. I just do link building and I’m the best at it.”

Timestamps

06:30 – What made Jesse become a digital nomad

21:35 – Does Jesse’s agency run without him?

23:12 – Why did Jesse decide to move on from his agency and build a SaaS company y?

30:00 – How Jesse used money from one company into growing another

36:08 – When is a good time to pivot from one business to another

39:10 – How much money should you save before starting an agency

44:14 – Do you need to build a system?

48:00 – How to remove yourself from fulfillment?

Resources

Socials

@jessetravels

Book

4 Hour Work Week – Tim Ferris