AL EP 19: Marshall Nyman – Lay the Foundation & Get Started

Show Notes

Marshall Nyman is the Founder and CEO of NYMO & Co., an affiliate marketing consultancy that helps emerging brands grow. He is also the host of the Performance Marketing Spotlight podcast. In 2017 Marshall launched NYMO with his first client and the goal of helping serve early stage startups interested in leveraging affiliate marketing. Today, NYMO serves 30+ DTC brands across a plethora of verticals.

Connect with Marshall Nyman & NYMO & Co. here: https://www.nymo.co

Episode Transcript

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Hey, everybody, this is Jessie Michael Moore, agency and transformation coach and founder of Mission Control. Creator of leverage for growth and I’m Lucas James, founder of Twist Attire, which scaled from 0 to $200,000 a month with my own agency. We are the host of leverage for growth, podcast agency leverage and Episodes. We know that in order to scale your agency successfully, there are multiple shifts that need to happen within the founders mindsets, skill sets, and leadership styles.

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We are on a mission to interview marketing and PR agency owners on their journey to six, seven and eight figures and leverage the lessons from their journey to save you time, energy and money. In order for you to get your agency to the next level. If you find value in these episodes, watch the case study video to learn more about leverage growth and how we successfully scale agencies quickly at Niche in Control Decomp case study at Niche in Control Accommodation.

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You are now listening to leverage for growth. Hey everybody, this is Jesse Gilmore, founder of Mission Control and creator of leverage for growth. Welcome to the agency Leverage Edition. Today, I am here with Marshall Nyman, founder and CEO of Nimmo and Co, an affiliate agency on a mission to provide superior affiliate management with a brand first approach through developing brands and strengthening their identity, high value partnerships, and offering affiliate services at a reasonable rate.

00:01:31:07 – 00:01:58:18

Thanks for coming to our show today. Thanks for having me. Appreciate that. Intro. Absolutely. Can you tell us a little bit about the history and background of your agency? Yeah, I got started in the affiliate marketing space back in 2011, and I always kind of knew I wanted to go out and do my own thing and just started from kind of just on a side project, helping a brand with our affiliate marketing.

00:01:58:25 – 00:02:22:24

And never really thought much of it. And that’s really how the agency was started. And then as time progressed, I started to notice something was there, and then it blossomed into a full grown, business outside of just being a consultant on one brand. And it really just didn’t happen overnight. It really took a lot of time. And my intention when I started the business was to never actually go into business.

00:02:22:24 – 00:02:43:13

It was really just to make a few extra dollars on 1 or 2 brands and not think much about it and just focus on my full time job. But as the company started to grow, the pandemic definitely changed a lot of things in the marketing landscape, and people were rushing to get affiliate marketing services. And so the and the agency just started to grow overnight.

00:02:43:15 – 00:03:05:23

And so what we do is we’re on a mission to help brands drive new customers through content placements with publishers. So maybe you’re reading a top ten article or maybe best sandals for summer. Or, you know, maybe it’s how to clean your cast iron skillet. Whatever these different questions that you’re typing into Google, you’re interacting with these articles.

00:03:05:26 – 00:03:26:05

we’re helping our brands get placed in there. and everything is paid on a commission basis. So no big upfront budgets, required. it allows people to run on a performance basis. And, it’s a great channel to, to to kind of dip your toe in, and really gain new customers and drive scale. Awesome.

00:03:26:07 – 00:03:49:06

And you had talked about, you know, over a decade since the forming and you talked about, you know, started off as kind of a consultancy and something you were doing on the side. And then all of a sudden I kind of the environment opened up for a full scale agency. Can you talk a little bit about some of those kind of pivoting moments where, you’re like, okay, starting off as a consultant now, something is, happening or it’s going to be a little bit bigger now.

00:03:49:09 – 00:04:12:25

What was the kind of like that moment or bam, those kind of pivots? Yeah, I would say that the key pivot was probably about three and a half years into the business. So up until that point it was always just one client, maybe two. And it was always like, you know, just me. And then, in 2020, in August, my wife was expecting our second child.

00:04:13:02 – 00:04:31:22

And, I was also working a full time job, and so I just couldn’t manage everything on my own. And then a few new clients came on board and I was just like, okay, this is no longer something I can do on my own. I need to bring on somebody to help me manage this because I still have my regular job.

00:04:31:24 – 00:04:50:26

and so that was really kind of like what changed it from just being a consultancy to really becoming an agency. And that was that, kind of that, that moment. And it was, as I said earlier, the first comment, like the pandemic was a driver. Everybody started saying, hey, affiliate marketing is something I need to take a look at.

00:04:50:28 – 00:05:08:16

Facebook isn’t working the same way. Direct to consumer is exploding, you know, what are other channels that we can tap into? So that really kind of force the moment. And so I knew that at some point I was going to have to leave my full time job to work on my own business. I just didn’t know when that was.

00:05:08:18 – 00:05:33:06

And that was about two years later before I was ready to make the leap full time. Awesome. And you’ve probably learned a lot, going from being an employee to, do you have people working for you or are you an employer now? Yep. We have, full time employees. So it’s a big change. And, you know, it’s definitely you have to shift your whole mindset.

00:05:33:07 – 00:05:51:10

You know, you’re used to kind of taking direction and just showing up, and now you’re kind of having to lead the charge. And there’s just so many things you have to learn as a business owner that you don’t really know. and I think that’s kind of what I use the time from when I started the business to when it kind of had that moment when I actually was able to go.

00:05:51:12 – 00:06:09:02

There was a lot of things that I needed to do, in order to get the business at a place where I could leave my regular job. I hated health insurance. You know, I needed to be profitable. you know, getting all these things in place, figuring out all these things ahead of time definitely made the transition a lot easier for me, too.

00:06:09:03 – 00:06:26:28

So I know some people talk about making that leap. I try to make that leap as short of a jump as possible. You know, I knew there was going to be some sort of gap. You’re never, you know, 100%. But, you know, I figured, you know, I felt comfortable at that point. so was just kind of building up the business in that time and learning as much as I could.

00:06:27:00 – 00:06:57:19

because that’s the one thing. As a business owner, you realize you don’t know as much as you think you do. You know, there’s all these things that you have to solve or that you never anticipated. Yeah. And for those that are listening, what kind of advice would you give to somebody that maybe is in either a pivot going from, employee to owning a business that’s one pivot or, going from like solopreneur to hiring team members and starting to build.

00:06:57:21 – 00:07:19:12

because I know you’ve gone through both of those transitions, and the audience is most likely in one of those two. Yeah. You know, for me, I kind of did it the opposite way, where I had employees before I was an employee of the business. so that was like kind of a little bit different. So I know usually people like, you know, are working in the business before they start to bring people on.

00:07:19:18 – 00:07:34:25

I had to build the business up before I could come on. so that was kind of what I was talking about as I kind of closing that gap. So I already had employees in place. I had health insurance, I had payroll, you know, these were all things that were going. So when I was ready to actually make the leap.

00:07:34:27 – 00:07:55:09

everything was in place. So that’s kind of what I would tell everybody else is if like, they’re, you know, ready to make that that leap, have as many things fixed and ready to go. So that way you don’t have to worry about what you need to do when you get there, you know? So I feel like I had a lot of things that I took care of, so I didn’t have to learn a lot when I started.

00:07:55:11 – 00:08:12:28

And it definitely like made the the jump from going from, an employee of someone else to employing myself a lot easier because it wasn’t like I was starting from scratch. So that’s really what I feel like, you know, helped me the best. So if I had to give someone advice, you know, just in general is always the same thing that anybody is.

00:08:12:28 – 00:08:28:20

Just get started. everybody gets caught up in the details. I get caught up in the details too, but if you just get started, you can kind of get to where you want to be. If you get caught in the details too, you won’t get started. When I started the business, it was never I never had a vision.

00:08:28:23 – 00:08:47:01

I just got started. That’s what made it so easy to get started. So if you have a big vision in the beginning, sometimes it bogs you down. So I think, you know, just going with the flow. And the other thing is there are no shortcuts. I think, you know, you see a lot of culture on LinkedIn that people hey, I grew this business overnight.

00:08:47:04 – 00:09:00:28

and, you know, people will tell, hey, oh, I see you’re having a lot of success very quickly. And I’m thinking, I don’t feel like I’m having a lot of success very quickly. I feel like I’m having success, but it’s taken me a long time to get to this point. People just see things. It’s very instant in their mind.

00:09:00:28 – 00:09:21:11

So you have to lay the foundation with just getting started and then just let things happen over time. There’s no shortcuts, there’s no doing things instantly. The faster you grow, the more challenging it is to. So like everybody wants to grow very quickly. But sometimes you also realize that maybe growth isn’t everything. You know, you kind of have to start to balance all these things.

00:09:21:11 – 00:09:39:19

So, you know, just kind of being realistic about things and not putting too much pressure on yourself. Those are so important. Yeah. There’s a whole part of being an entrepreneur, which is a mental game where you’re trying to balance a million different things and make it to where you have kind of like this. You can like running a marathon of entrepreneurship.

00:09:39:22 – 00:09:54:25

Yeah. And sometimes you have to take a like, you know, a mile to walk. You don’t have to run every mile, I think. So, you know, the other day I took a day off. You know, entrepreneurship is definitely like a marathon. And, you know, there’s a lot of hills and bends and, you know, you don’t know what’s going to come every week.

00:09:54:25 – 00:10:08:16

And we were just talking, you know, it’s Monday. We’re just getting started. But you know you don’t know what’s in hold. And so that’s part of being an entrepreneur. You don’t you just don’t know. So you got to be kind of prepared for anything. So what is it kind of success for you over the next like 1 to 3 years.

00:10:08:16 – 00:10:27:01

What are you working on and what are you excited about. Yeah I mean really for us what we’re most excited about Animo is helping emerging brands grow. So we’re not looking for like, you know, fortune 500 brands. We’re looking for someone that’s really just getting their footing and trying to figure out how they can scale up an affiliate program.

00:10:27:02 – 00:10:42:22

Most of the brands we work with either have no affiliate program, haven’t dipped into the channel, or they do. Maybe they haven’t really figured out how to run the program. They’re doing it on their on their own, or they had someone that really wasn’t experienced and they need someone to come in there and get the program set up.

00:10:42:27 – 00:11:04:23

We get a lot of joy out of helping someone that hasn’t had the right direction in the affiliate program, get that education, understand what they should be doing, and helping them grow. A lot of the brands we’ve been working with have been partners for two, three, 4 or 5 years. And so when we’re looking at where we were when we first started, maybe they were doing 5 or $10,000 a month in the account, and now they’re doing over six figures.

00:11:04:25 – 00:11:31:07

You know, it’s it really brings a lot of joy. And it also, you know, you feel like you’re part of the team. you know, we’re in it for the long term vision of the brand and helping them deliver. so I think just, you know, really kind of diving in is really helped us. and so, like, our vision is just to continue to support, you know, those clients and, e-commerce is just continue to grow more and more direct to consumer brands coming to market every day.

00:11:31:09 – 00:11:54:04

And so we’re just looking to continue to serve brands. That’s really our goal is helping people understand affiliate because it’s a very complicated channel. and so you need somebody that understands the channel. And as an expert, to really be able to get the right partners in there and scale the program up. Awesome. Well what’s the best way for someone to get in touch with you.

00:11:54:04 – 00:12:13:12

Or do you have any offers for them that they could take advantage of. Yeah. Well always the best way to get in touch with me is LinkedIn. You can find me Marshall Nyman. you can also visit our website, dot NY SEO. as far as an offer love to offer anybody that’s listening to this a free affiliate program audit.

00:12:13:14 – 00:12:31:26

If you have a program not sure where it’s at and need some advice, happy to take a look at it and tell you where the gaps are and where we can help you. Maybe fill in some of those gaps. if you don’t have an affiliate program ready, still happy to chat as well. reach out to me and we can talk about how an affiliate program could be a fit for your business.

00:12:31:29 – 00:13:09:29

so, yeah, reach out for that. Awesome. And for anybody listening, I’m going to put, Marshall’s contact details, in our website. And, and LinkedIn, links in the show notes. thank you so much for being on the show. Yeah. Preciate it. Thanks so much. Have a great one, everyone. Agency owners, if you want to transform your agency to sustain and grow without your direct involvement, where you can stop working in the business and switch to working on the business where you can regain control of your time, delegate effectively, get paid what you’re worth, and have your team run the day to day.

00:13:10:06 – 00:13:28:07

Go to niche incontrol.com/case study right now to learn more about leverage for growth. You can book a free strategy session with us to look at your systems, understand what needs to be done in order for you to scale and get a free strategic plan for the next year. To live the life of entrepreneurship that you’ve always dreamed about.

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Go to niche in control. Com slash case study that is niche in control.com/case study. Now you.

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