AL EP 5: Brian Welch – How to Accelerate Your Business By Slowing Down

Show Notes

OFFER – Brian is offering free website evaluations – evaluations that gauge the functionality and appearance of your website, and the effectiveness of your overall online presence. Get yours at https://amitydigital.com/free-evaluation/

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Episode Transcript

00:00:00:00 – 00:00:32:22

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.

00:00:32:24 – 00:01:01:08

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.

00:01:01:10 – 00:01:23:13

You are now listening to leverage for growth. Hey everybody, this is Jesse Gilmore, founder of Niche in Control and creator of leverage for growth. Welcome to the agency Leverage Edition. Today I am here with Brian Welsh, a co-founder of Amity Digital, a full service digital agency providing affordable web design, hosting and digital marketing services to small businesses.

00:01:23:18 – 00:01:49:04

Thanks for coming on our show today. Yeah, thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Absolutely. Can you tell us a little bit about the history and background of your agency? Sure. So, how many digital? I mean, relatively new. So it’s 2018. We launched it. I I but this is all I’ve ever done. when I was, right out of high school, I started a web design company.

00:01:49:07 – 00:02:12:25

that was back in 94. So that’s dating myself a bit. but, you know, it’s pretty much been. Yeah, I’ve lived through, the boom and the bust. we’ve learned a lot, and we’ve been doing this for longer than Google and Facebook, and all these companies have been around. when we launched, when I had perfect presence, it was just right out of high school.

00:02:12:25 – 00:02:30:13

I had no idea what I was doing. I was showing up as, you know, high school graduate. None of this stuff was being taught in college to businesses and trying to pitch them on the idea of website. So back in the 90s, businesses were still like, what do I need a website for? What is the internet? They still it just was not fully adopted.

00:02:30:13 – 00:03:01:09

There was there was no, you know, half the companies, they just said, well, here’s my business card. Can you put it online and that’s that’s all they wanted with the website. I did that for a while, and then we ended up starting an e-commerce business, and bought a company called Superhero stuff.com. so that, you know, it kind of led from taking my, my web design and digital marketing skills, leveraging and just starting this, this e-commerce brand.

00:03:01:12 – 00:03:23:20

we bought it when I was doing like $60,000 a year, so it was really tiny. we shipped the inventory from Portland, Oregon to to my space and, my, my office slash new warehouse in Pennsylvania. That was a pallet and a half of inventory. That’s all they had. we grew it over 12 years to, to a little over $10 million a year.

00:03:23:20 – 00:03:49:28

So it was pretty big growth. We were the largest supplier of superhero merchandise online. it was a lot of fun. We we, we supply Big Bang Theory with, most of the shirts that Sheldon wore, they used to order stuff from us all the time. That was always, fun. we’ve had some celebrities buys that we had, one of them, Louis, from, the the band One Direction.

00:03:50:00 – 00:04:08:27

his agency, his, agent called and ordered literally one of everything. that was that was in order, like Louis, like superheroes. You’d like one of everything. So we sent four pallets of merchandise. We had over 4000 SKUs. to some apartment in London. so that was interesting, trying to figure out how to ship for pallets.

00:04:08:27 – 00:04:34:19

So it was a really fun journey. but we sold that business in 2018. I can’t see myself ever retiring, so I literally took three weeks off and then tried to figure out what I was going to do next. I launched two companies at the same time, but they’re still growing. and we digital was kind of getting back to my web design and digital marketing roots because that’s, that’s the part of superhero stuff that I managed and loved the most.

00:04:34:21 – 00:04:57:06

and so much had changed since I had my previous web design company. we also started giant robot printing. because I was the other part of superhero stuff that I like was, was, printing and, selling, selling embellished merchandise. so, we started both of those companies, and the idea at the time was, let’s see which one does the best.

00:04:57:12 – 00:05:22:16

And, we’ll focus all of our time into, you know, the winner. And both have been neck and neck for this whole time. And it did not take long, about a year to realize, well, if if a client is going to come to every digital for a website, they probably also need, you know, embroider polos or promotional products, or if a business is going to come to the print shop, they’re probably also going to need a web design, a digital marketing team.

00:05:22:18 – 00:05:43:20

so the two really worked really well together. 2018 it was at my house and my basement. Right. The, the the march of, Covid, the quarantine hit, was when we decided to lease a new location. So we moved in on the weekend where they said, hey, you’re no longer allowed to go to your place of business.

00:05:43:22 – 00:06:06:13

so that was fun. but that was a much smaller building. And then we moved to, a much larger location just recently. and Boyertown, Pennsylvania, where about, you know, we went from 1500 square feet to about 70 500ft², and that’s office and production space. So it’s much nicer than, than what we had before.

00:06:06:16 – 00:06:30:28

That’s quite a journey that you’ve been on since 1994. yeah. And as you kind of go through that and how did you know that you were going to be an entrepreneur? like, was there some kind of moment in the beginning that you were like, I got to own my own business? did you come from a family of entrepreneurs, or was it something that you kind of stumbled upon?

00:06:31:00 – 00:06:52:08

Like, can you talk a little bit about, you know, entrepreneurship and, you know, yeah, I, I loved the idea from a work that nobody in my family, was it. Well, I guess my aunt had a small business that she, she did, she what she did, she was a in-home nanny, to a couple of families.

00:06:52:10 – 00:07:13:00

you know, her husband was a traveling dental salesman, and she stayed home all the time and watched a bunch of kids. so the only experience the family had was her nanny business. and I can remember, you know, I was like, 10 or 11. I told my parents that I, you know, I think I wanted to be a business owner, that that just seems really cool.

00:07:13:00 – 00:07:30:10

I, I was always full of ideas. it’s what I wanted to do. And they hated the idea. They felt absolutely not. Look how your aunt struggles. She has to pay for her own health care. It’s a scam. You’ll never, you know, you’ll you’ll never. You’ll never make it work. Go find a job doing something else.

00:07:30:12 – 00:07:45:19

And every time I would come up, I would say, no, I want to be a business owner. And every time they would say it’s a terrible idea. And finally, I think, I mean, I was, I was there was no chance I was ever going to be an engineer. but he said, you should be you should be electrical engineer or something like that.

00:07:45:19 – 00:07:59:24

That’s a good career to follow. So from that point on, for like my entire high school career, I just told everybody I was going to be an electrical engineer, knowing that it was just a lie. I just got sick of arguing about it. I knew that as soon as high school was over, I was going to start a business.

00:07:59:27 – 00:08:20:22

I just said, well, it’s it’s far easier just to say, sure, I’ll be an electrical engineer. then to to to argue every time it came up. so when I did graduate high school and, you know, there was they didn’t teach HTML, they didn’t, you know, they they didn’t teach anything regarding the internet or digital marketing or websites.

00:08:20:24 – 00:08:37:18

in college. So I, I went for two years and got the basics done, but I dropped out because there was, you know, I knew more than all the teachers. The teachers were trying to teach me. Windows 3.1 and windows 95 would just come out. I was showing them how to use their new computer so that they could, you know, load programs.

00:08:37:19 – 00:08:57:09

I was like, well, why am I paying a tuition when the colleges just were not ready for for the internet at that time? So it was, not a favorite move when I dropped out and said, I’m going to start a business. I had already started the business. but I said, I’m going to do this business full time.

00:08:57:11 – 00:09:21:06

but, you know, pretty soon after I gotten approached, I created a the first network, ads that were based on text links instead of banners, because back then banner ads had ruled, and that actually got acquired by a startup out in California. I had gotten, over $1 million worth of stock options during the, the.com boom.

00:09:21:09 – 00:09:46:20

I was in the local paper for, why is this man smiling right on the whole page of the Red Eagle for the latest.com millionaire. I think about a month before our IPO is when the.com crash happened, and those stock options remained $1 million worth of worthless paper. Tuesday, I run into people that wonder, like, you know, where did all my money go?

00:09:46:27 – 00:10:09:20

You know, you got so rich there. Like, you know, it just never happened. But what a great experience. I, I was like 19. I was getting flown out to California. I was involved in this big startup, during that.com boom. So once that stuff started happening, my parents were magically like, oh, we’ve always supported your entrepreneurial, you’re like, we’ve always known this is what you wanted to do.

00:10:09:21 – 00:10:27:15

I’m like, okay, whatever. Yeah, yeah. It was not that something anybody thought I should do, but it’s. And as for as long as I can remember, it’s all I ever wanted to do. And it’s all I’ve ever done. I’ve ever worked for. in my mid 40s. I’ve never worked for anybody. it’s just been one business after another.

00:10:27:18 – 00:10:51:20

So I feel pretty lucky that way. Yeah. And it seems as though, you’re pretty comfortable starting businesses, having and work together, growing. even getting them acquired. So with, Amity Digital, if you were, if you were to think about maybe somebody that is, maybe 1 or 2 steps, before you maybe that doesn’t have the, you know, decade’s worth of entrepreneurship.

00:10:51:20 – 00:11:15:02

Maybe the agency is their first, kind of baby. Right? what would be some advice that you would give somebody, to kind of help them kind of shortcut their way to success? Yeah, I think shortcuts probably the best way to describe it. I think it’s actually the opposite. I’m I my, way my brain works anyway is I dive in first and then figure out the details later.

00:11:15:02 – 00:11:34:29

Sometimes. definitely. When I was young, the biggest mistakes I made back in my early 20s, when starting businesses, was I’d come up with an idea. I’d pay to have it developed. I developed it, and it was afterwards that I would do the research on, okay, who should I, who should I? I did everything backwards because I get so excited about the idea I would run with it.

00:11:34:29 – 00:12:12:27

I, you know, work 20 hours a day. I hire programmers and, and then I figure out the product fit and how to market it afterwards. the biggest piece of advice is you will you will you will accelerate your company significantly faster if you slow down. if you plan that all out ahead of time, if you have a sales and marketing strategy before you go live knowing that it’s going to be a living document, that you’re going to change as you go, you know, guess you might have to do a little market research or guess as to who your, your your, your ideal customer is going to be.

00:12:12:27 – 00:12:41:11

But you have to start somewhere with a real plan, and really take your time before going live. And then the mistakes of going live and not generating the revenue one, you’ll accelerate so much quicker if you just do that, that pre-planning. I think I, I think the coupling along with that, I think the second biggest mistake I’ve always made is being so desperate to get clients, undervaluing my services and charging way last.

00:12:41:13 – 00:13:12:11

It’s so hard to go from being that cheap brand that just tries to get whatever business they can to a premium brand that charges what they’re worth. so I think as you’re coming up with what your brand image is going to be and what your marketing strategy is going to be, if you if you start with that expectation that your premium brand and your pricing and your pricing, it will save you a lot of, a lot of time trying to have to resell yourself to the clients you got at a lower price.

00:13:12:14 – 00:13:32:07

Totally. And, one last question. What is the, kind of like success for you in the next 1 to 3 years? Are you looking to sell your businesses? I mean, if you’ve already gone through that process before, but I guess, what are you working on or what’s, success for you coming up? Yeah, I’m pretty content with running these two businesses for now.

00:13:32:10 – 00:13:58:27

I definitely see myself, you know, selling them in the 7 to 10 year range, but I’m pretty, pretty comfortable with where they are and the growth strategy that we have. so for us, we just moved into this new location and we have we have a lot more, more room. So where I’d like to see is, in the three year mark for us to, to be just significantly larger, and more sellable.

00:13:58:28 – 00:14:18:06

I think we’re at we’re at a revenue point where I could sell, but it wouldn’t be the kind of return I would be looking for. So I’d like to really solidify ourselves beyond the local market. local is kind of what we’ve dominated. the company used to be in Amity Township, hence the name Amity Digital Share.

00:14:18:07 – 00:14:36:29

But Amity also means, you know, it just means a friendly place. So. So we’ve always tried to market ourselves as that friendly company that, you know, people like to do business with people they like. and that’s just been that’s just been the foundation of how we we’ve started that. And then we want to expand that reach, a little further.

00:14:36:29 – 00:14:55:17

I’d like to have a second location in the next 2 to 3 years. We’re not quite there, for this year and expand to another market. but I’m having I’m having a lot of fun with both companies, so I don’t see myself, selling anytime soon. Yeah. Cool. And, what is the best way for people to get in touch with you?

00:14:55:17 – 00:15:20:03

Or do you have any offers for them that they can take advantage of? Sure. So, you know, again, the companies are digital over printing. we we we operate them as one company. All the, all the employees that work for me work for both companies. so for me, digital, the the offer that we push the most that the people seem to really like is a free website evaluation.

00:15:20:05 – 00:15:38:09

so, you know, we have a form on the website. You can also just email me, Brian, with an eye at Amity digital.com. it’s very comprehensive, 30 to 40 pages where we look at what’s working and what’s not working on your website, how it’s performing at Google, what we think we would change. and then we kind of go from there.

00:15:38:09 – 00:15:59:17

We use it as a tool to say, this is where you’re at. This is where we think you can get to. and then let’s talk about, you know, pricing after that, the the proposal, the, evaluation is free. and it’s pretty comprehensive. Awesome. Well, thank you, Brian. And you can check out Brian at Amity Amity White digital.com.

00:15:59:20 – 00:16:22:04

thank you very much for being on the show. Yeah, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. 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.

00:16:22:11 – 00:16:40:12

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.

00:16:40:14 – 00:16:54:00

Go to Niche in control.com/case study that is niche in control.com/case study.

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