Mandatory Questions –
• Kindly give our readers an introduction to your business. Please include what your business is all about, in which city you are located and if you have offices in multiple locations/ cities.
◦ Wavetelligence is a strategic, data-driven digital marketing company in Frisco, TX.
Our company was founded on two simple principles: Results & Transparency.
In my career in the digital marketing industry, I have been a low-level social media manager all the way up to a vice president for different marketing companies and there was always something that concerned me about the industry as a whole. The sales team would sell a small business a digital marketing plan that fit their budget – not what would deliver actual results based on their goals. In general, most business owners have some kind of budget constraint, big or small, but being on the operations side of the business it was nearly impossible for my team and I to generate results, like leads or sales, because the plans that we were implementing were solely based on budget, not performance. If the marketing campaign is destined to fail, it’s actually a detriment to the client and the marketing companies because the client ends up cancelling and no one wins.
I knew that there had to be a way to provide every client with an honest strategy that would fit their budget constraints, while also delivering quality results. Truthfully setting expectations is key.
I was also determined to give each of our clients a solution that made Wavetelligence accountable for the results. That meant creating a transparent pathway for our clients to tangibly interact with the marketing campaign so that they can see where their marketing dollars are being spent and quantifiably attribute ROI to each campaign.
Combining those two needs, I determined that we had to be more than just a digital marketing company. We had to be data experts and strategic marketing advisors that were held accountable for the results derived from our suggested campaigns.
So, Wavetelligence stems from the concept of delivering waves of leads using intelligent data. That’s Wavetelligence.
• Kindly give us a brief description about yourself (it should include your brief educational or entrepreneurial background and list some of your major achievements).
◦ As I mentioned, I have been in the digital marketing industry since 2009. I started my first company in my final year in college. Shout out CSUCI. I founded a social media platform in the music industry called Musician Master. I still own that company today. I have always been in love with music and been in bands since early in high school. I wanted to create a platform where musicians could connect with other musicians. We were always looking for new band members to jam with. We would buy ads in the newspaper back then. At that time, MySpace was the social media platform that everyone was on, so our site mirrored that a bit where everyone had their own “MyStudio” page and they would upload their own music, images, videos, and profile updates with tags so that other musicians could search by geographic location, instrument, genre, and a bunch of other filters to find musicians near them that ‘fit the bill’ for what they were looking for. That company ended up turning into a publishing company and live streaming concerts.
I have always been a person that’s eager to learn, but I prefer to learn “hands-on”. In the early stages of that company, I wanted to learn more about online marketing and the site was still in development, we were still raising capital and I had to live so I took a job with a relatively large digital marketing company in LA. I learned a LOT about digital marketing during my time there and took that knowledge and implemented that in my own company.
That being said, the music industry is a very…well, it’s not for everyone. There’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes and it takes a lot out of you. I decided to start my second business, which ended up being Wavetelligence and really enjoy working directly with other marketing companies and small businesses directly.
• What inspired you to (start a new business venture) or (to make significant changes in an existing business)? How did the idea for your business come about?
◦ Again, I was inspired to make significant changes in the digital marketing industry because before Google started releasing algorithm updates to ensure that spammy pages didn’t flood the first page of SERPs, it was the ‘wild west’. Marketing companies had all kinds of black-hat methodologies and tactics and even then, the end-user clients were still not getting the results that they should have been getting.
That’s why I decided to change the industry from the inside. Wavetelligence was founded as a white-label digital marketing company. We partner with other digital marketing companies and provide the highest quality digital services at wholesale so that our partner agencies can offer their clients strategic marketing campaigns that deliver results. Maybe our partner agency only offers social media, but their client needs a new website and wants to run an organic SEO campaign. That agency would need to either refer them, turn down the business, or hire someone internally which would increase overhead and reduce the profitability of the company. That’s where we step in to offer our services “behind the scenes”. Our partners now have room to be profitable and their clients are getting ‘red-carpet’ services, transparency and data-driven strategic implementation of those services which breeds trust and client retention. Our client retention rate to this day remains at 93% over 12-months.
• What three pieces of advice would you give to budding entrepreneurs?
◦ First would be to find your niche and fill a specific need with EXTREME VALUE! If you’re not offering something valuable, no one is going to pay for it.
◦ Second, make sure that you know your worth. Many entrepreneurs make the mistake of thinking that if they under-cut their value – meaning they come in at a price point below what they’re actually worth – that it will give them a significant advantage in the marketplace. I disagree with this way of thinking. I believe that once you know that you have step 1 down perfect – you have EXTREME VALUE – then you need to be confident in presenting that value. Caveat – That does NOT mean that you “over-charge” for your value. There’s a difference between being unrealistic with your pricing and knowing your worth. It’s a mindset. It stems from the way you think. You do have worth. You are valuable. But you have to know that otherwise your customers definitely won’t know that. So there’s a happy medium that only you can figure out when it comes to knowing your worth and price your product or service accordingly.
◦ Lastly, the third thing is to remember what the most important asset is in the entire world. PEOPLE.
I am a God-fearing man and through my journey thus far, it’s led me to understand that the most important asset in this world is people. You don’t want to run through this entrepreneurship journey alone. You can, but I don’t advise it.
If people are the most important asset to an entrepreneur, then that means that you must be mindful of how you treat people, how you serve people, and how you interact with people.
First, if you’re in a position in your business to have some capital in the bank, your first investment should be people. You need good people around you that carry the same vision.
Second, you have to be a great leader of people. This is a topic that could get deep, but on the surface, you must be eager to listen, steadfast in your mission and lead the people around you.
Lastly, you have to have a servant mentality with your clients. Focusing on HOW you serve your clients is just as important as what your serving to your clients. In my industry, if for some reason a marketing campaign doesn’t deliver the top-tier results that we were aiming for, my relationship with my client is what will determine the outcome of that campaign.
Build meaningful relationships with your clients and build a community that nurtures each other, pushes each other to be better and that doesn’t get offended.
• What would you say are the top three skills needed to be a successful entrepreneur?
◦ Mindset
◦ Hunger to learn and grow as a person and as a leader
◦ Willingness to work 24/7
• How many hours do you work a day on average?
◦ I still work a minimum of 12 hours a day and I also work on the weekends. The company (employees) gets the weekend off, but I am always working on things on the weekends to get ready for the next week.
• To what do you most attribute your success?
◦ Once I changed my mindset from being focused on accruing money, to how can I serve my clients better, everything changed. What I call ‘the poverty mindset’ is when you’re focused on money, what I don’t have, I wish I had this or that, speaking negative statements or affirmations like, ‘I’ll never be wealthy’, ‘My company will never be that big’, ‘I screwed up, I’m such an idiot.’ etc. etc.
Breaking off that poverty mindset and replacing it with a mindset that has a foundation of ‘serving’ – everything changed.
When you know who you are, you know the value you carry, you know your worth and you focus on serving others, the money will follow. It’s a fact. I wish that I knew this when I started my first company. This applies in EVERY INDUSTRY.
• How do you go about marketing your business? What has been your most successful form of marketing?
◦ In the beginning of the business, I hustled and hustled and hustled some more. I combined sales and marketing together by doing cold calls to other agencies, remember a large portion of our business is white-labeled digital marketing, and I would do public engagements, speaking tours and providing presentations for free that deliver extreme value. I did this for the first year and built up a solid foundation of clients.
◦ Then, we started running SEO & PPC campaigns that allowed us to grow well beyond our initial goals year over year.
◦ I then started doing some “challenges”. This is a relatively old strategy that’s sort of similar to a webinar, but with some differences. Basically, we come up with a curriculum that would benefit a specific niche of our target market. We come up with either a 3-day or 5-day curriculum that we will teach. We run paid ads (Google and social) to sign up for the training and make the admission as close to free as possible. Usually, it’s something like $5 or $10. The goal is not to make money from the admission. We actually lose money initially. The goal is to provide EXTREME VALUE for free. We earn trust based on the value that we provide during our challenges. It’s not a YouTuber course that charges $2,500 for some pre-recorded videos. These are live trainings on a particular subject within our industry that will benefit the attendees. Then, we make an offer at the end of our challenges that allow our attendees to continue getting extreme value. • Where did your organizations funding/capital come from and how did you go about getting it? How did you obtain investors for your venture?
◦ In my first business, I created a business plan, set up hundreds – no joke – hundreds of meetings with ‘potential investors’. One of my professors in college, the only professor that had actually been an entrepreneur in real life, taught me that you NEVER use your own money for a business venture. So, I took my business plan, and I would go into country clubs as a potential “prospect” for the club and I would chat up members of the country club after they were done playing golf in the club house while they were drinking or playing cards. Mind you, I was 21 years old, so I dressed up in the only suit that I had so that I could come across as being older. I would offer to buy them lunch or set up meetings outside of the country club and I spent all the money that I had on those meetings until one of them said yes. This was in 2009 right after the market crash of 2008, so it wasn’t the best time to start a business. Especially the high-risk venture that I was pitching.
That being said, lessons learned along the way, when I started Wavetelligence, I didn’t need any start up capital. I used my hunger for success and hustle to get the company started. You have to eliminate the fear of being rejected. Because you will be rejected. Develop thick skin before you even go out to start your business.
I’ll put it this way, if you’re a service-based business, you don’t need any startup capital. Period. Make calls, put yourself out there and spend all your extra time figuring out how to make 100% sure that you have EXTREME VALUE.
If you’re a product-based business, you have two options: 1. You can figure out how much it’s going to cost you to create your product and start small. Work with what you’ve got. Don’t create 10 different product variations if you don’t have any start up capital. Start with a couple sku’s maybe. It’s more realistic to start with 1 product sku because there’s no telling if your product will sell or not yet.
Then, once you have a small batch of inventory, start selling. Spend all your time selling. If you end up getting orders for more inventory that you currently have, great. Tell your customers that based on the high-demand of the product that their order is going to be a little bit late. But you’re going to give them a 20% discount code for their next order thanking them for their patience and loyalty. Take the revenue from those sales, make another batch of products and keep going.
Again, you don’t need a bunch of startup capital to start.
Now if you’re business revolves around building an “app” or something like that, then that’s a different story. You’re going to have to raise money and you’d better be willing to give up some equity in the company, along with ALL OF YOUR TIME pitching to as many investors as you can. Similarly to my first business, all I had was a stack of paper that I called a business plan. But it was air tight. I knew everything about the forecast of the company. I knew every inch of my vision. So the investors that said yes were not investing in my “IDEA” – they were investing in me. They were betting their hard earned money on me.
So if you’re raising money from investors or venture capital firms, or angel investors, whatever, remember this – At that stage, YOU ARE THE INVESTABLE ASSET – not your business plan.
• What is the best way to achieve long-term success?
◦ Stay true to what got you through the first 18-months. I don’t know the statistic, but there’s some crazy stat that most small businesses fail in the first 18-months. That’s because of a couple reasons in my opinion.
- They try and grow too fast without the steady recurring revenue and gamble rather than strategically reinvest.
- They have poor leadership and don’t invest in the right people. Or they don’t invest in people in general. A business is a living organism. It needs people to survive. That’s the lifeline.
- They have poor customer service and don’t build relationships with their customers or their community.
If you can get through the first 18-months and even if you’re still not yet profitable – then stick with what got you there. Reinvest in making what you’ve built better.
It’s okay to take risk, but don’t risk everything on just one thing.
• Where you see yourself and your business in 5 – 10 years?
◦ I see Wavetelligence being the largest white-label digital marketing company in the United States in that time span. For me, I’m not thinking about the end-game yet. I’m focused on growing the company, hiring more great people and serving our customers with the best digital marketing services available. Focusing on results and transparency.
• Excluding yours, what company or business do you admire the most?
◦ I actually admire leaders more than specific companies. But I suppose that my admiration for the leaders filters down to the companies that they run. The first leader that I admire is Elon Musk. That’s probably a popular answer, but full transparency, I don’t own a Tesla. Again, I admire the leadership. I believe that Elon knows his worth, he knows his value and he utilizes that mindset to lead several successful companies, such as Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Company and now Twitter. He knows what he stands for and has proven that through understanding his target audience and being innovative, he is serving his customers well.
Secondly, I admire the leadership of Tim Kennedy. Tim is an army ranger that served in special operations within the US military and put his life on the line to protect our freedoms. I don’t know Tim personally, but his mindset, whether it was developed in special operations, or he already had a stellar mindset I don’t know, but it’s contagious to always wanting to be better at what you do. His companies like Sheepdog Response that was created to help civilians learn how to protect themselves and their family members in the midst of chaos. Ranger Up clothing brand, Apogee, and I am probably missing a few because he’s got so many projects. But my point is that I admire the leadership mentality and the hustle to GET AFTER IT. That’s what entrepreneurship is. It’s GETTING AFTER IT. It’s not getting discouraged when crap hits the fan. It’s not panicking when a problem presents itself. It’s staying calm in the midst of chaos and being prepared to know what to do; which is solve the problem in front of you.
I admire leaders like this regardless of their industry. Elon and Tim have a lot in common in this sense. They both GET AFTER IT. That’s why I love entrepreneurship so much because it’s up to ME what happens next. I can’t blame anyone. I can’t give an excuse. I am 100% responsible for the outcome of my companies. If I fail, I figure out how to bounce back. If I succeed, I give all the credit to the people surrounding me in the company because without them that success isn’t achieved.
Recommended Questions –
• How important has having good employees been to your success?
◦ As I mentioned previously, the best investment for any company is people. So employees are the lifeline of any business. Our employees are carefully vetted and trained. We invest a lot of time, resources and capital into our workforce because at the end of the day, our company is successful because of the relationships we steward with our clients and the work that we perform on a daily basis. We have strong employees with both great relational skills, as well as intelligence and experience in the marketing space. • How long do you stick with an idea before giving up?
◦ If it’s a great idea, I don’t give up.
The trick is to identify the difference between a great idea and a bad idea. Process the idea, just like in business, and walk through what it would take to implement that idea into reality. Build a plan of action. If the idea has flaws or breaks down in your initial analysis, then reclassify the idea to see if it’s still viable. That doesn’t mean if the process requires hard work, then don’t do it. It’s the opposite. If the idea requires hard work and sacrifice to make the idea a reality, then go for it “IF” it’s viable within your timeline and resources. If the idea is not viable within the parameters you set, then it’s not a good idea.
• What motivates you?
◦ I am self-motivated which is a blessing and a detriment sometimes. I push myself to be better in a lot of different aspects of my life, which in turn can sometimes segregate me from friends and family. I am motivated by the fact that I want to know what God has for me in this life. If I sit around and get complacent, I feel like I won’t ever find out what my life is destined to be. My greatest fear is looking back when I’m older and thinking “what if”. That literally gives me the chills just thinking about that. I want to avoid that at all costs.
• What are your ideals?
◦ Instead of ideals, I prefer to call them values or principles to live by.
▪ Put God First in All things
▪ Love family & friends
▪ Take care / help people that cannot take care / help themselves
▪ Honor
▪ Loyalty
▪ Trust
▪ Truthfulness
▪ Discipline
▪ Always push to be better
Those are the values that my family and I live by.
• How do you build a successful customer base?
◦ We built a successful customer base by being EXTREMELY honest up front. We’re not a sales organization. We don’t “hard close”. We also don’t ‘beat around the bush’. We tell it how it is. Our communication style is one of the primary skills that we train on internally because business owners and agency owners alike don’t have time to be fed with a bunch of fluff. They don’t have time to go around in circles. We give our data and information precisely and to the point. Once you’re able to communicate with your customers with honesty and integrity, while setting realistic expectations – that’s step 1. Step 2 is retention. The only way you’re going to retain a successful customer base is to out-perform the expectations that you set. You also need to be honest with the outcome of each campaign. Don’t hide bad results. Don’t sugar coat a ‘miss’ or a ‘fail’. Not every campaign is going to produce the desired result, but again, back to relationships, I would rather you shoot me straight than try and white-lie your way around a situation. Tell the truth, figure out what happened, and fix the problem. If you’re delivering on expectations more often than not, AND you’re honest when you don’t, BOOM, you’ve got a successful customer base.
• What do you feel is the major difference between entrepreneurs and those who work for someone else?
◦ Freedom to make your own decisions. Freedom doesn’t mean do what you want, when you want. Freedom means that you control your own destiny. It also means that when you or someone on your team fails, YOU FAIL and YOU’RE RESPONSIBLE. Taking ownership of someone else’s mistake is humbling. But humility is absolutely required in leadership and entrepreneurship. I see so many younger people thinking that they want to be entrepreneurs because they want to be their own boss and do whatever they want. There’s a major difference between being a YouTube influencer and an entrepreneur. I think that’s the major difference in today’s society. Social media has captured the attention of every young person and has made them think that entrepreneurship is easy, and you can achieve success and freedom without any hard work. That’s a lie.
If you don’t want to work a minimum of 12 hour days – 7 days a week to get your company started, then don’t be an entrepreneur. If you don’t want to sacrifice going out with your friends, spending time with your family and reinvesting your earned income back into the business, which means living well below your means for a significant period of time, then don’t be an entrepreneur. If you’re willing to do those things, then entrepreneurship is the BEST thing ever.
• In one word, characterize your life as an entrepreneur.
◦ Invigorating
Optional Questions –
• How has being an entrepreneur affected your family life?
◦ As I mentioned previously, if you don’t want to sacrifice spending time with friends and family, then don’t be an entrepreneur. Luckily, my wife is 100% onboard with entrepreneurship and understands the sacrifices that I have to make in order to achieve my goals. Similarly with the rest of my family. I suppose I am lucky in that sense. I work 12+ hour days and then I make time to spend with my family. Plus, I also make time to decompress by recording music in our recording studio, doing tactical firearm training, or even chilling out and playing video games for an hour or so. It’s possible to have a great family life, still do the things you love and have a successful business. It just takes discipline and hard work to make it happen.
• What are some of the biggest mistakes you’ve made?
◦ The biggest mistake that I made in business was having a lack of knowledge about how finances work. You don’t know what you don’t know. I wasn’t educating myself enough in regard to finances, that I could have done some things differently in my first business. Luckily, I learned that lesson the hard way, so in my next two business ventures, I didn’t make that same mistake twice.
See, high school and college don’t teach you about finances. Sure, you can take financial classes, but they don’t actually teach you about investing, reinvesting net income, tax liabilities, how to lessen your tax burdens, etc. etc. There’s so much involved with running a successful business, but financial education is absolutely essential.
• What are your hobbies? What do you do in your non-work time?
◦ Well, my first company was in the music and entertainment industry, so I love playing and recording music. I act as a studio musician for some projects. I also am still working on that company, so even though it’s “work” it’s not really work. I love it. I love learning and training self-defense, so I train tactical firearm training & situational awareness. And technically, even though Wavetelligence is “work”, it’s not really work for me. I love what I do, so the more time I can spend helping other business owners, it brings fruitfulness to my life.
But, I also enjoy going out with my wife and traveling. My wife is from Ireland, so we like to go there every year.
For More Information Visit us at https://wavetelligence.com/
