February 17, 2025 • 32 mins
Company: Crowd Digital Marketing
Owners: Alex Schupp
Year Started: 2017
Employees: 1 – 10
Most agency acquisitions are long, strategic, and carefully planned—but what if a growth opportunity landed in your inbox out of nowhere?
That’s exactly what happened to Alex Schupp, founder of Crowd Digital Marketing. One day, an unexpected email led to an opportunity to acquire another agency’s clients. At first, he almost dismissed it. But after looking closer, he realized he could scale his business overnight.
In this episode, we break down:
- How a single email led to an acquisition deal
- The smartest way to absorb another agency’s clients
- The biggest mistakes to avoid in an acquisition
- Why the best growth opportunities aren’t always obvious
If you’re thinking about agency acquisitions—or if you just want to hear a wild business story—this episode is for you.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Welcome to An Agency Storypodcast where we share real
stories of marketing agencyowners from around the world.
From the excitement of startingup the first big sale, passion,
doubt, fear, freedom, and theemotional rollercoaster of
growth, hear it all on An AgencyStory podcast.
(00:24):
An Agency Story podcast ishosted by Russel Dubree,
successful agency owner with aneight figure exit turned
business coach.
Enjoy the next agency story.
Russel (00:40):
Welcome to An Agency Story podcast, I'm your host,
Russel.
In this episode, we're joined byAlex Shoup, the driven founder
of Crowd Digital Marketing basedin Denver, Colorado.
Alex takes us on a journey fromhis early days, managing social
media for iconic brands tobuilding a people first agency
that partners with nonprofitsand underserved industries.
(01:01):
Hear how Alex's strategic risktaking including discounted work
and acquisitions.
laid the foundation for hisagency's growth.
And how a chance encounter on aski lift turned into a new
client and a write off.
Enjoy the story.
Welcome to the show today,everyone.
I have Alex Schupp with CrowdDigital Marketing with us here
today.
Thank you so much for joining ustoday, Alex.
Alex (01:23):
Thank you for having me, Russel.
I'm excited to be here and talkabout marketing.
Russel (01:26):
I'm excited as well.
Other than my business partner,as long as I can remember, I
think you're the first fellowMizzou grad.
Go Tigers, glad to have you onhere for this.
If you don't mind, start us off.
What does Crowd DigitalMarketing do and who do you do
it for?
Alex (01:38):
Yes.
Crowd Digital Marketing, we're adigital marketing and
advertising agency based inDenver, Colorado.
Our team's virtual so we gotteam members kind of all over,
but we're based in Denver and wehave a lot of clients in Denver
and Colorado.
Our specialty is working withgrowing brands to help tell
their stories.
We work with individuals andnonprofits and organizations who
have marketing goals and dreams,but they don't have the
(02:00):
resources to make those happen.
We partner with them to helptell their stories and drive
tangible business results forour clients every day.
Russel (02:07):
Perfect.
Beautifully put.
Want to hear about all thethings that you're doing in that
space and in your business.
I'm sure there's tons and tonsof paths we can go down, but
before we get to all that, uh,tell us what a young Missouri
boy like yourself was wanting tobe when he grew up.
Take us back in time.
Alex (02:23):
Though I think there's a nice line to where I'm going, I
didn't start off in kind of webdesign and digital advertising
like I am now.
My background is really insocial media management and
social media marketing.
When I was in high school,that's kind of when this whole
Facebook thing took off, Iremember emailing Mark
Zuckerberg when he still had apublic email address saying, I
want to invest in your company.
They never got back to me, butwhat a story that would have
(02:45):
been right?
Different podcast.
My background is in social mediamarketing.
What I loved about that was thisvery real time, authentic
interaction.
People in brands.
That's something that's alwaysspoken to me.
I went to school for journalismand again, kind of that organic
storytelling was always reallyspecial and powerful and
important to me.
When I left college, I went to,as you've mentioned, University
(03:06):
of Missouri, go Tigers, M I Z.
When I left Mizzou, I went to alarge, super large agency in
Boulder, Colorado called CrispinPorter Bovesky.
There I had a really awesomeopportunity to manage social
media for some big, largebrands.
Bigger than I'd kind of reallydreamed about, like Domino's
pizza and, uh, RockShox, KraftMacaroni and Cheese.
(03:26):
Some really fun, diverse andloud brands as far as the social
media spectrum.
After that, I followed agirlfriend at the time to
Boston, Massachusetts, where Ijoined a social media startup.
There we were actually workingwith small brands, very small
businesses, small, medium sizedbusinesses.
After a couple of years, I waslike, I miss the mountains.
I miss Colorado.
I want to get back there.
I got hooked up with a reallyawesome boutique digital
(03:48):
marketing agency out here, ledthe social media marketing team.
I kind of started getting moreinto the web end of things.
Web development, SEO, managingdifferent forms of digital
advertising.
That allowed me to, from thisboutique advertising agency, go
to a web development companywhere I managed the North
American team and we produced100 to 200 websites a month.
It was a sweatshop for websites.
(04:09):
In fact, when I, when Iinterviewed, it was something
they made very clear.
I kept talking about advertisingagency and they were, this is a
website production facility.
We make websites, we make themvery quickly.
It was interesting taking myadvertising background and
applying it to kind of a massproduction facility, a digital
production facility.
After about two years or sothere, I left not 100 percent
sure what I was going to donext.
(04:30):
The corporate world had jaded mea little bit.
I left this company a littlefrustrated kind of how large
companies work with small,medium sized businesses.
I felt that they were out tomake a profit more than, and
nothing wrong with making aprofit, but I felt they were out
to make a profit more than theywere out to actually fulfill
their partner's missions anddreams and goals.
After a year or so ofinterviewing, I'm thinking like,
(04:52):
what do I want to do with mylife?
I was like, I want to do thismyself.
I want to come up with abusiness where I can kind of set
the terms and set the clientrelationships and do this
myself.
At the time it was called DenverCrowd.
I want to focus on Denver basedbusinesses.
I want to work with people whoare local people who understand
the importance of relationshipsand interconnectedness with the
people that you work with.
I grew some really amazingbusinesses and brands in Denver
before pivoting a little bit andstarting to work with a more
(05:14):
national audience.
Now we work with people, it'snot just national, it's global.
Russel (05:17):
You really got the full swath of experience.
You've got big agency, smallagency, uh, boutique, more
bespoke to factory.
Really completed the gauntlet ofagency experience or a real
world experience in that sense.
If I heard you right, you saidyou just quit your job and
didn't exactly know where youwere going next is that, did I,
did I hear that right?
Alex (05:39):
So I was at this company.
Things were going well, thecompany was growing, but, um,
when you're out there, we werea, we're a white label reseller.
We were doing work on behalf ofother parts of other large
marketing agencies.
There's a huge disconnect fromsalesperson to fulfillment team.
Then you throw it over toanother company and they start
fulfilling it, and the customeris like, what, what the hell is
(05:59):
this?
This isn't what I bought fromTony, who I have never met in my
life.
I don't even know a guy namedTony.
For me, there was this, youknow, both there's this personal
idea of like, it, it sucks thatI'm fulfilling things that
people didn't really want to buyor pay for.
But also for me, there's thisopportunity of there's all these
people out there that can't getthe marketing services that
they, that they need.
I left the company withoutknowing what was next, but, um,
(06:21):
it wasn't completely blindbefore I do this, done this, I
have friends that are businessowners in Colorado.
I said to them, you know, if Iwas doing my own thing, would we
work together?
I had past clients from pastagencies that, that I kept in
touch, hey, same thing.
If I had my own agency, could wedo some of this work that we
used to do together?
I had a little bit of a net inthat there was at least some
people who in theory would bewilling to work with me.
Russel (06:44):
Did you think you were heading down an entrepreneurial
path, or, or was it just, justkind of more just figuring
yourself out?
Alex (06:51):
I had had enough of a career to understand what I was
looking for, but not enough toknow exactly what I wanted.
Actually during that year, Ididn't just interview for, for
like marketing management rolesand things like that.
I worked at a friend'srestaurant.
I thought maybe one day I wantedto own a restaurant.
I still want to own a restaurantone day but what I learned out
of that was I don't want tomanage it.
I want to sit at the bar with adrink and hang out, you know?
(07:12):
This year was about it exploringa little bit, like where do I
want to spend the rest of mylife?
Anyone that's been in marketing,especially in kind of a
corporate marketing agency, canprobably identify with the idea
of getting burned out and notreally knowing that you've got a
skill set, knowing that you canhelp people but also not really
being sure if you want to goback there.
There was a lot of thoughtbehind my next move.
Really the reason that I endedup kind of fully taking the
(07:35):
plunge was one or two of theseclients that I had talked with,
they were like, you know what,let's, let's just do this thing.
My first year, so I, I, I thinkthat I registered my company in
January.
I had a full first year ofbilling and stuff, but it was a
terrible year, financially.
You know, um, and we'll, we'lltalk about this a little bit
down the road, but I was doing alot of things to invest in a
business down the road thatweren't paying off right now.
(07:55):
There were a lot of differentangles that I was pursuing and
even while I was at thatprevious company, I was starting
to think about what are the nextmove.
I had bought the domain for mywebsite like a year before I
left the company, so I wasstarting to think about the idea
of entrepreneurship.
But I didn't, I hadn't taken theplunge.
I'm in marketing in Denver.
It's saturated.
There's enough of us.
We don't need any more marketersin Denver.
(08:15):
But what I found was there was aspecific need in some specific
groups of small businesses andorganizations for a type of
marketing that's really not, notas much being served over here.
After a year or so kind oftesting the waters and having a
few kind of test clients, we'llprobably talk about that in a
little bit.
I said, let's just, let's justdo this thing.
Russel (08:34):
There's a couple of things that I think are
fascinating is, one, just thecourage to, you know, kind of
leave something that's probablysafe, but not fulfilling you and
not necessarily having where youwere going next in stone, but
taking the time to just searchyourself and figure some things
out, you know, both from abusiness planning and like you
said, working at a restaurant.
I too have never worked in foodservice.
(08:55):
I feel like this is still a boxI might want to check someday.
I don't know if I want to ownit, but I feel like I need to
have the claim that yes, I'veworked in food service.
But also even thinking aboutyour product, you know, I think
a lot of folks when they, whenthey know they don't want to
work for a company anymore, thatthey go, you know, immediately
into selling whatever skillsthey have are more staffed or
feel like they can sell, versusthinking about this in terms of
(09:17):
a, hey, what is the service andthe product that need the market
needs, and how do I start toplan and build that?
As you were kind of saying, slowto start, um, or planting some
seeds that wouldn't get,wouldn't bear fruit until more
down the road.
I'm curious, just since youmentioned it, what are some of
those things that you felt likeyou were doing in the early days
that weren't going to have anysort of instant gratification?
Alex (09:36):
I think this can be a controversial opinion in
marketing, but it's worked forme very well, and I'm very proud
of where we've gone, gone fromthis.
I'm going to preface this bysaying, my friends in the agency
world, always, something thatthey're always aware of when
doing free or discounted ortrade based work is devaluing
themselves.
Don't devalue your work.
Don't do work for free becauseit devalues you.
(09:57):
I disagree with thatwholeheartedly.
Most of my first clients were,if not free clients, they were
paying for costs or paying forthe cost of tech or doing some
sort of trade.
What this allowed me to do ishave a client.
We're doing very serious workfor it.
We get some real tangiblebusiness results.
Then when we go and turn thisinto a case study, I'm not
saying this was a free client orthis was discounted.
(10:17):
This is a client.
This is very real work we didfor a very real business
organization.
First five or 10 of our, not ofall of our clients, but, but
many of that first five or 10client group was people who were
getting a hell of a deal ondigital marketing services
because I was, I'm a new brand.
If you look at my portfolio inmy book from the past, you know,
I've mentioned some really greatbrands that I've worked with,
(10:37):
but, but I didn't manage thoserelationships.
I didn't manage the relationshipwith Kraft Macaroni and Cheese.
They don't know who I am.
What this allowed me to do wasbuild up my presence and my,
frankly, my persona a little bitin Denver.
I have a lot of friends who ownbusinesses or kind of tangential
to that.
They're in startup, in thestartup world or they help
people start businesses.
It was a really greatopportunity for me or us to
prove ourselves before we had toland a really big client.
(10:59):
I mentioned first year wasn'tgreat.
Financially, it was, like a 30thof a 40th or something of maybe
what we're doing now, what wedid last year, but what it did
was set the seeds of success.
I still think of Denver as a cowtown.
We got the rodeo that comes hereevery year.
If you go out to eat withsomebody, with somebody who's in
the community, they're going torun into somebody they know.
It's not just running intosomebody you know at dinner,
(11:19):
these things apply in businesstoo.
If I can get good results for mybuddy, who's a restaurant owner
down the street, well, there maybe another restaurant or another
small business that wants orneeds those same services that
they're willing to connect meon.
My first few websites were veryunprofitable.
I either broke even or lostmoney on them, but they all made
more connections to new clients,new people who are very much
(11:39):
paid clients who are excitedabout the work that we can do
for them and excited about theresults that we could get.
Russel (11:44):
Thank you for sharing that.
I don't actually believe thatit's a controversial notion that
you're saying.
It's funny, it makes me thinkof, when we actually started our
agency we just, we didn't do itfor other people, but we created
portfolio websites that weren'treal businesses.
I don't even think it wasdisingenuous.
It was a reflection of our work.
We actually built the website.
Probably better to, to at leastgive it to someone that like,
for your saying, that can go outthere and, and, you know, tout
(12:07):
you and, um, you know, share,share your name and whatever in
the marketplace.
One of the things that sticksout to me there is, is being
intentional and strategic aboutit versus doing it from a place
of, well, I just, just whateverI can do to get the business or,
um, I'm scared they won't dobusiness with me.
Makes me think of all this thingin, in probably life in general,
but anytime we do a thing fromfear, that that's probably not a
(12:29):
great decision, but anytime wedo it from strategy and
intention and we make, wemaximize that, then we're doing
that from a good place.
That was a great nugget that youshared there.
All right.
You're stepping out and, andlike you said, rough first year,
but you're investing.
When was the first time whereyou're like, you know, cause I
imagine there had to be at leasta little hesitation.
Is this going to work out?
When was that first moment oflike, oh, that was smart on my
(12:50):
part and then it did work out?
Alex (12:51):
For the record, as a business owner, there's going to
be those like, oh, shit moments,always.
I have them all the time.
Is this going to work out?
I would say in the second year,we've got some, we've got, we
have some clients under ourbelt.
We have some nonprofit and, andbrick and mortar store and
restaurant clients and othersmall businesses.
Real quick sidetrack, youmentioned some portfolio sites.
We did those too.
I had to shut down our Beekeepersite because the amount of honey
(13:12):
requests we were getting frompeople.
We did the same thing, but atsome point in, at the beginning
of the second year, we got ourfirst RFP.
A local nonprofit reached out tous and they said, we've seen
your work with this othernonprofit you work with, and we
want you to apply for this RFP.
If anybody's, you know, appliedfor this stuff, you know, it's a
shot in the bucket.
You don't know you're going toget it.
But what was interesting wasthey invited us specifically to
(13:33):
apply.
We kind of thought we had an inhere.
As far as the budgets ofwebsites that we've produced,
their budget was a lot higherthan our average client.
It was a really cool opportunityfor us.
We, of course, won the RFP andwe built the website and they've
been a great, and I don't wantto mention them and out us
completely, but they've been agreat client for us since, since
that inception, I don't know,six or five or something years
ago now.
That was kind of the big signof, all right, we're, we're onto
(13:55):
something here, we're buildingtrust and, and we can do the
thing.
This site was a challengebecause there was development
that we hadn't done before.
There was a lot of things thatwe had to kind of tie together
that we had done in pieces thatwe had to kind of do for the
real deal.
It was a great test for us.
It was a proving point for us.
We still enter RFPs all thetime.
That's one of our sources ofbusiness.
But I think that for me, thiswas the first very legitimizing,
(14:16):
oh, shoot.
People know who we are.
That for me meant that we wereonto something.
Russel (14:19):
Nice.
You were kind of mentionedthere, you know, and maybe I'm
assuming some of this free workmight've been in the nonprofit
space, but even as your businesshas continued and you probably,
you don't need to do the freework anymore.
I understand that you do stillgive back to certain causes in
terms of, you know, work andthings like that.
One, why?
Just out of curiosity and, youknow, how have you been able to
make that make sense, um, from abusiness perspective or, or work
(14:44):
it into the business?
Alex (14:44):
As a small business owner, as somebody who gets to choose
what I do every day, there's a,there's something important
about what results are wegetting, are we getting out of
things?
It's nice to leave, leave theworld a little bit of a better
place than you found it.
I don't know if the whole worldis going in that direction, but
my communities are, and it'sreally nice to be able to make
an impact in our smallcommunities.
That's part of it for me.
There's a more selfish reasontoo, which is, I don't think
(15:06):
that a lot of these businessesget, get the attention that,
that they deserve, both fromlike a individual marketing
perspective, but also, if we'regoing after them with our
services, I think that there isa, there's an underserved group
of people in these nonprofits.
I love the causes that they'reworking with, but I also see
some huge opportunities to workwith people.
And actually, uh, next monthwe're acquiring a business that
(15:28):
exclusively works withnonprofits.
They do website design anddevelopment for nonprofits, and
we're taking over their existingbook of clients.
What was really interesting forme in this particular deal is,
nonprofits, they got tinybudgets.
They have very small budgets.
Most of them, 90 percent of themhave a very, very small budget.
The other 10 have a huge budget,but all of these people have a
need for certain types ofmarketing and access to certain
tools that maybe otherindustries don't have.
(15:50):
For instance, Google givesnonprofits all sorts of free
stuff like email addresses, andthere's this Google ad grants
program that gives participating501c3s 10, 000 dollars a month
in a Google, uh, Google AdWordsbudget, which is a crazy amount
of money to spend.
And if you're a nonprofitlistening to this now, we'd love
to connect about helping youwith spending this money, but
10, 000 dollars, you know, let'ssay it's 5 dollars a click.
(16:11):
That's like 2000 clicks to yourwebsite from people that weren't
coming there before.
It's, again, a free program toparticipate in.
So as long as we can prove thatwe are earning our nonprofits
money through, through themanagement of this product, it's
something that we can do.
We identified a fewopportunities for these, for
this group of nonprofits that,even as a cost conscious
organization, they cancollaborate with us.
(16:32):
They haven't gotten thenotification yet of the
acquisition, when they do getthe notification, they're going
to sit, they're going to hear,you know, you, we've been
working with you to support yourwebsite and your storytelling
goals.
Well, now here's a whole newsuite of things that we can help
you with.
I love working with causes tohelp improve the world, but
they're also just a incrediblyunderserved group of
organizations in the world.
Russel (16:50):
I'm all about this where if we can help the world and
make it make business sense,then, then is there anything
better that we could honestly dowith our time and effort and
energy is, as you said, make theworld a better place?
I love how you've been able todo that.
Now you've got an acquisitionkind of, um, I guess we're on
the cusp of right here, itsounds like under your belt.
Was that something you activelysought out as a strategy or, or
(17:12):
how did you even come aboutthat?
Alex (17:13):
Great question.
No, and what's crazy is this isour second acquisition.
We did one in 22, 2022, andneither one did I seek out.
Both of these kind of came to meextremely randomly.
The first one, so I, weprimarily build on a website
platform called Duda.
Really great platform for a lotof reasons.
Whole nother podcast could bedone on this.
We use them and we're a Dudaexpert, so we do podcasts and
(17:34):
webinars with Duda and we helpwith case studies and how tos
and things like that.
Another Duda customer saw usthrough the work that we did in
2022, and he reached out andsaid, he's going into
retirement.
He said, my, I got, I forget 4060, something like that, 50 or
60 clients and I no longer, he'sa one man shop.
I no longer have the capacity tomanage this stuff and I want to
(17:54):
pass it along to somebody else.
There was a really coolopportunity.
He was based in Colorado.
I'm based in Colorado.
He worked with a lot ofnonprofits, brick and mortar
stores and restaurants, and wealready work with those three
groups of customers.
Incredible opportunity to notonly make sure that their
businesses are being covered,but we're experts.
We are on the platform you'realready on.
Who better to hand it off to youthan the guys you can watch
(18:15):
videos talking about thissoftware about all day?
A couple month or two ago, I gotan email from a agency owner out
in San Francisco and he said,we're looking to offload offload
this portion of our business.
Would you be interested?
When I first saw the email, Ithought it was fake because who
wants, you know, if you've got aprofitable business or if you've
got a business that has asemblance of profitability, why
are you going to go sell it tosomeone else?
But I was like, let's go hearthis guy out.
(18:36):
We got in a couple of phonecalls and talked through their
needs and really, their, theirniche is in the software space.
They kind of got into thewebsite development and
management space so that theycould begin engaging with these
nonprofit customers.
Then they found they reallydidn't have the capacity or the,
the, the, the team and theworkflows in place to manage
these websites and managerequests for keeping them up to
(18:57):
date and active.
It's not a very profitablebusiness for them, but we've
already got the infrastructureto do this so it's a, it is a
great connection for us.
Next month we'll be taking overthe management of, I think it's
like 65 or 70 new nonprofitsites.
The challenge of this now is,well, we got 75 people to
onboard or 70 people to onboardand get in touch with really
quickly, let them know who weare, what we do.
Say, hey, we're not going tochange your price, but, but we
(19:18):
have these awesome opportunitiesif you want.
For me what's been so cool aboutthis is having done it before.
The first one it went well andthe former agency owner and I
are still colleagues, we go outfor lunch, you know, a couple
times a year and catch up.
But I learned so much from thatthat I was able to navigate this
one just, just smoother.
Understanding how the agreementswork and how should this
transition work and from atechnological perspective, how
do we move 60 clients in one dayand not cause outages?
(19:41):
I'm very excited for thisopportunity to reach out to, so
I mentioned now we have 10 or 15nonprofits.
We're going to have 60 or 70more.
This is a really awesomeopportunity to kind of, to, to
specialize within this niche forus.
Russel (19:53):
What I love there is, is it, it aligned with what you
were already doing.
It wasn't the shiny red ballthat you, you know, it was
causing you to chase, right?
Serendipitous opportunities can,can align very well, and this
sounds like that has in thiscase.
You've learned some lessons.
Curious for folks that, youknow, might be on the cusp of,
or thinking they might want todo this someday.
What is two lessons learned,one, what you should do.
(20:15):
Second is what you shouldn't doas far as lessons learned in
this particular instance.
Alex (20:20):
Due diligence is obviously important for any business deal.
These are small acquisitions.
We're not acquiring, you know,hundred million dollar companies
or anything.
For me to do due diligence It'sa look and equip books and look
through customer records andthings like that, it's not a big
deal.
But for me one thing that Ididn't do as adequately during
the first one was understandingnot just the financials, but
(20:41):
what are the clientrelationships?
Who are these people?
How do they expect to engagewith you?
How do you increase your billingrate with them?
Or how do you increase theservices that you're doing with
them?
I'm still really glad I did thefirst acquisition.
But from an opportunityperspective, again, a bunch of
restaurants in Breckenridge,that, that's a captive audience.
They don't need a websiteredesign.
They don't need search engineoptimization.
(21:02):
A lot of them don't even takereservations because they're
full every night on a ski seasonor full every night in the
summer season.
For me, I think that during myfirst acquisition, I anticipated
larger opportunities from thisnew partnership than actually
came about.
The year after it did not panout the way I thought that it
would.
That made me, when I went to dothis new deal, think a little
(21:22):
bit differently about numbers.
Not projection numbers, but, butreal numbers and calculate
churn, you know, from mybackground in corporate
marketing, calculate churn inthere, do all those things so
you know exactly what are wegoing to get out of this
business deal the first year.
That was one lesson.
Another thing that I learnedreally is, is how to, how to
publicize this.
This is a cool thing for me.
When I'm acquiring a business,there's, there's two
(21:44):
motivations.
One is increase my company sizeand revenue.
The other is, this shows thatwe're a player in the industry.
I learned, uh, we did, you know,press releases and social media
posts and all that thing lasttime about it.
We got some really awesomeresponse and I want to do it
better this time.
Working off of those templatesof how we communicated both to
the clients and also justexternally to the rest of the
world about this acquisition.
(22:04):
It's a big deal if we want it tobe.
If we don't post it, no oneknows that we've acquired
another company.
Thinking about this from a PRperspective of how do I, how do
I now spin this to let peopleknow, hey, we're, we're growing,
we're successful, we work withnonprofits and we're going to
work with even more nonprofitshas been a big lesson for me.
Russel (22:22):
Just to recap.
One, relationships and how wellthey do or don't, don't
transfer.
That's so important in theagency space to not
underestimate when, when that ishappening and how many people
are tied to an agency,especially a smaller agency
because of those relationships.
Another term I heard you saythere are kind of, I think it
sounded like you were alludingto is what I call revenue
optimism and kind of overglorifying maybe what the deal
(22:45):
might bring about in terms ofrevenue.
We probably need more revenueskepticism to really evaluate
the deal from, and then the lastone is called squeeze the juice.
You're doing a big thing, likeyou're saying, and, you know,
get as much opportunity is allthe work and an effort that
you're putting in this already.
Promoting it and how do wemaximize this opportunity?
Those are great nuggets.
Thank you for sharing those.
Alex (23:06):
I love the squeeze the juice too.
That's a great metaphor.
Russel (23:08):
That can apply to so many things.
Got to squeeze the juiceeverywhere we go.
Switching gears a little bit,that was so insightful.
I know, you know, culture andteam is a big part of the work
you're doing and what you'retrying to build and even doing
it in a remote environment.
Was that a focus from the getgo?
Or did you learn your way intothat being something you knew
(23:29):
you had to care about?
Alex (23:29):
It was a focus from the get go.
I've talked about selling snakeoil before.
I think anyone who's worked at asnake oil selling marketing
agency is familiar with thetoxic workplace.
I think that those things kindof go hand in hand.
If you're not proud of the workthat you're doing and you're not
truly serving the people whoyou're charging money, I think
that often you can create aplace that does not value the
people in the work.
We're a small company, a smallteam, but I think that we've
(23:51):
created a really awesome cultureof a few things.
The first thing is I amsolutions and results oriented.
There's a phrase that I say likeseveral times a week.
It's always something.
Because in our business, in ourline of work, there is always
something breaking or broken andbeing able to figure out what is
the best next steps.
No need to point fingers, buthow can we pick this ball up and
get it going?
(24:12):
I think agencies waste so muchtime blaming, you know, doing
the blame game and doing thattoxic workplace stuff of, you
know, the campaign didn't dogood cause Nancy didn't do her
part or whoever didn't dowhatever.
Russel (24:22):
Dang it, Nancy.
Alex (24:23):
Yes.
One thing that, um, that I loveis that we have an, a attitude
of collaboration.
Things don't always goperfectly, but when we do, we
look through our optionstogether, communicate them and
figure out the best next step.
That's been really great for me.
My history is very much inmanagement.
As long as I've worked, I can'treally think of somebody who
didn't want to do their job.
Everyone is out here to do theirjob, right?
(24:43):
Even though I got to pay youmoney to be here, people still
want to do a good job at the endof the day.
I think that being able tocommunicate with people when
there are shortcomings in a waythat is, again, solutions
oriented, instead of saying,hey, you did this wrong.
Say, hey, next time I'd love itif we could see more of this.
There are opportunities there.
I think that, um, creating aculture where people are not
afraid to announce a mistake isreally important because then we
(25:06):
can go and fix this thing andlearn from it and move on.
Things like Facebook justchanged the way that they're,
they're, um, they could change acouple of things, but they
changed certain ad types, howmuch money you can spend or how
little money you can spend.
Things change, technologieschange all the time.
All of the things that we dohave changed significantly from
when we started, both in termsof best practices and in terms
of the actual technology itself.
(25:27):
Being willing to learn from bothmistakes and changes is really
important.
Russel (25:31):
It sounds like, you know, another way you can speak
to that, is just embracing thatthis will not go perfect.
Can we just learn from the lackof perfection?
And if as long as we embrace itup front though, then we're
going to have our feelings less,less hurt, I guess might be the
word to describe it when, whenthings do go wrong and we can
just, you know, learn from it,grow from it and business as
(25:52):
usual if we expect it to gowrong.
Very great takeaways.
All right.
Well now I'm curious, when youlook at the future of Crowd
Digital and where you're tryingto go, what does that look like?
Alex (26:02):
I mentioned the nonprofit thing, and we're certainly going
to go a direction with ournonprofit team members or our
nonprofit clients.
I see a few other opportunitiesas well.
But the other thing is I've beenmaking a very conscious effort
to get into a new industry, anew niche.
It's an exciting one for me.
One in Colorado, and it's also acontroversial one, which is the
psychedelics industry.
We have a couple of clients inthe kind of wellness,
(26:24):
psychedelic, psychotropic spaceand I said, I want to do more of
these.
The way that I'm looking at is,I mean, look at where cannabis
is right now.
There are some really hugeplayers in the space.
Who were they 15 years ago?
Nobody.
And it was illegal.
They couldn't even be doing whatthey're doing.
But I see, again, a group ofunderserved people in a niche
underserved industry, and I seean opportunity to work with
(26:44):
these people.
These are people who, I mean,people are, people are scared to
work with them on social mediabecause they keep getting
deplatformed, even if they arefollowing Meta's rules.
They're scared to work onwebsites or, or e-commerce
stores because the legal issuessurrounding those.
I think that if we can bethoughtful and be smart about
how we work in this space andhelp people tell their stories,
help people do it throughcontent marketing and education
(27:05):
and engagement and awareness.
There are some ways we can getout the word, get the words out
about these organizations thatfulfill Meta's obligations, but
also allow these businesses togrow and be successful.
It's a really cool new market togo after and it stretches our
creative brains because we gotto learn how to tell these
stories without getting introuble with Shopify or Facebook
(27:26):
or Meta or whoever.
There's some really awesomeopportunities for us there.
Russel (27:29):
Central underlying theme seems to be, uh, you know, going
back to the beginning of yourstory, is find a group that's
underserved and serve them.
Bonus if they're, the perks ofthat group are psychedelics or
something like that on the sideor you're helping the world
become a better place.
I'm always all about thefundamentals.
It sounds like you've got a lotof those covered in your
business.
Love to hear that.
(27:49):
All right, Alex.
We do have to wrap this up.
I've got one last big questionfor you.
Are entrepreneurs born or arethey made?
Alex (27:55):
Yes, it's such a good question.
I think it's a little bit ofboth.
I spoke to that, corporatism inmarketing and how it can create
feelings of being like jadednessor frustration or like we're
selling snake oil.
I have some colleagues that havecreated, started their own
businesses as a direct result ofthat, wanting to get away from
this and do their own thing.
I also think there's a group ofpeople who, and I think I'm in
(28:17):
both groups of people, thepeople who got jaded and then
also the group of people whotheir whole life, have had an
idea of how they want to dothings.
They're, for lack of a betterword, disappointed time and time
again, when they go to acorporate workplace or a new
workplace.
For me, entrepreneurship cameout of being born wanting to do
my own thing and set my ownterms, set my own relationships,
making sure that my clients arehappy with the standards they
(28:39):
and I have created together.
Then there's also these peoplewho are pushed away from their
old jobs because they're notdoing things the way that they
want.
People have a very strong senseof justice that are in the
marketing world.
More often than not are going toend up consulting or doing their
own thing or starting abusiness, because at some point
you say, I don't like the waythat they run things here.
I would do things differently.
You say that enough times, itsticks.
Russel (28:58):
Does that work with anything?
Alex (29:00):
No.
Russel (29:01):
No.
Dang it.
Awesome.
Couldn't agree more.
Great perspective on that.
If people want to know moreabout Crowd Digital Marketing,
where can they go?
Alex (29:10):
You can go to denvercrowd.com, D E N V E R C R
O W D.
com.
I'm Alex Schupp, you can find meon LinkedIn, S C H U P P.
I have conversations like thisall the time with small business
owners, and whether they're inmarketing or another industry,
just picking each other'sbrains.
I often get just as much out ofthe conversations as they do.
If anyone ever wants to connect,I love talking about this stuff.
(29:30):
I love talking about how to drawresults and how to tell
businesses stories.
Russel (29:34):
Beautiful.
There you have it, folks.
You know where to go.
Thank you so much, Adam, fortaking the time out of your day
to share your story, yourlessons learned, and just really
intentional and methodical andmaking the world a better place
approach to which you take yourbusiness.
So many great things you wereable to share today, and I
really appreciate you taking thetime to do it.
Alex (29:52):
Thank you for having me.
It was a great conversation.
I really enjoyed chatting withyou.
I love talking about smallbusiness and business growth so
it was a really fun opportunityfor me.
Russel (29:59):
Likewise.
M I Z.
Alex (30:00):
M I Z Z O U.
We hope you've enjoyed thisepisode of An Agency Story
podcast where we share realstories of marketing agency
owners from around the world.
Are you interested in being aguest on the show?
Send an email topodcast@performancefaction.com.
(30:21):
An Agency Story is brought toyou by Performance Faction.
Performance Faction offersservices to help agency owners
grow their business to 5 milliondollars and more in revenue.
To learn more, visitperformancefaction.com.
The most interesting to me thing to me about owning and
(30:43):
managing a business is gettingto be flexible with my own
schedule.
I live in Colorado, on aTuesday, if it's dumping snow, I
can get out there and gosnowboarding.
I carry my business cards withme in my, in my ski jacket.
I can't tell you how manybusiness deals have been started
on a ski lift.
Just talking to, hey, what areyou doing?
Why aren't you at work today?
Oh, I own my own business.
I do too.
Something that's so awesome andfun about being a business owner
(31:04):
is being able to be open tothese sorts of conversations.
Leads come from everywhere.
My colleagues, my fellowbusiness owners who are having
trouble with sales, it's becausethey're not open in
conversations.
And I'm not like a classic salesguy.
I'm not trying to sell you everytime I talk to you.
But I do have an eye foropportunities and when I see
that there's an opportunity forus to work together, I love
pursuing that.
I have no shame in saying, look,I got a digital marketing
(31:24):
agency.
I want to tell your story.
Let's work together.
For me, I think the funny storyis getting on a ski lift, chat
with somebody, finding out thatthey own a small business or an
e-commerce store and finding away to work together.
That's been just really fun andrewarding for me, especially
when you're playing hooky on aTuesday.
Russel (31:38):
I hope those listening, the biggest takeaway is that
they can get out and do more ofthose fun things that seem like
it's so far removed frombusiness, but just go make it,
make it viable businessopportunity as well.
Then you can do more of thethings you want to do and love
in this world.
Another great perspective.
Alex (31:52):
Yes.
Write off that ski pass.
Russel (31:54):
Exactly.
Write off the ski pass is, oh,that's funny.
Do you actually write off theski pass?
Alex (31:59):
I gotta talk to my accountant.
I forget if she accepts it ornot.
Probably not.
Russel (32:03):
Those accountants always want to play by the books.
But I don't know.
I feel like it's a valid, uh,and especially in your case,
it's a valid expense.
Product testing.
Alex (32:10):
Several of my clients are in the snow sports industry, and
I actually did, I made a, thisis a good funny story.
I purchased a, a snow skate.
A skateboard snowboard hybrid.
They're allowed at the resorts.
I bought this thing on awebsite, then I emailed the
website and said that sucked.
Let me rebuild it.
Now these guys are my clients.
I actually did get to write thatoff.
I wrote it off as, uh, I don'tknow what, what, what she, you
(32:32):
know, categorized it as, but itwas product research and we sold
the client so that was a greatwrite off.
Russel (32:36):
There you go.
Find a client and the thing thatyou want to do and love the
most, and then you candefinitely write it off because
it's all product research.
Welcome to An Agency Storypodcast where we share real
stories of marketing agencyowners from around the world.
From the excitement of startingup the first big sale, passion,
doubt, fear, freedom, and theemotional rollercoaster of
growth, hear it all on An AgencyStory podcast.
(00:24):
An Agency Story podcast ishosted by Russel Dubree,
successful agency owner with aneight figure exit turned
business coach.
Enjoy the next agency story.
Russel (00:40):
Welcome to An Agency Story podcast, I'm your host,
Russel.
In this episode, we're joined byAlex Shoup, the driven founder
of Crowd Digital Marketing basedin Denver, Colorado.
Alex takes us on a journey fromhis early days, managing social
media for iconic brands tobuilding a people first agency
that partners with nonprofitsand underserved industries.
(01:01):
Hear how Alex's strategic risktaking including discounted work
and acquisitions.
laid the foundation for hisagency's growth.
And how a chance encounter on aski lift turned into a new
client and a write off.
Enjoy the story.
Welcome to the show today,everyone.
I have Alex Schupp with CrowdDigital Marketing with us here
today.
Thank you so much for joining ustoday, Alex.
Alex (01:23):
Thank you for having me, Russel.
I'm excited to be here and talkabout marketing.
Russel (01:26):
I'm excited as well.
Other than my business partner,as long as I can remember, I
think you're the first fellowMizzou grad.
Go Tigers, glad to have you onhere for this.
If you don't mind, start us off.
What does Crowd DigitalMarketing do and who do you do
it for?
Alex (01:38):
Yes.
Crowd Digital Marketing, we're adigital marketing and
advertising agency based inDenver, Colorado.
Our team's virtual so we gotteam members kind of all over,
but we're based in Denver and wehave a lot of clients in Denver
and Colorado.
Our specialty is working withgrowing brands to help tell
their stories.
We work with individuals andnonprofits and organizations who
have marketing goals and dreams,but they don't have the
(02:00):
resources to make those happen.
We partner with them to helptell their stories and drive
tangible business results forour clients every day.
Russel (02:07):
Perfect.
Beautifully put.
Want to hear about all thethings that you're doing in that
space and in your business.
I'm sure there's tons and tonsof paths we can go down, but
before we get to all that, uh,tell us what a young Missouri
boy like yourself was wanting tobe when he grew up.
Take us back in time.
Alex (02:23):
Though I think there's a nice line to where I'm going, I
didn't start off in kind of webdesign and digital advertising
like I am now.
My background is really insocial media management and
social media marketing.
When I was in high school,that's kind of when this whole
Facebook thing took off, Iremember emailing Mark
Zuckerberg when he still had apublic email address saying, I
want to invest in your company.
They never got back to me, butwhat a story that would have
(02:45):
been right?
Different podcast.
My background is in social mediamarketing.
What I loved about that was thisvery real time, authentic
interaction.
People in brands.
That's something that's alwaysspoken to me.
I went to school for journalismand again, kind of that organic
storytelling was always reallyspecial and powerful and
important to me.
When I left college, I went to,as you've mentioned, University
(03:06):
of Missouri, go Tigers, M I Z.
When I left Mizzou, I went to alarge, super large agency in
Boulder, Colorado called CrispinPorter Bovesky.
There I had a really awesomeopportunity to manage social
media for some big, largebrands.
Bigger than I'd kind of reallydreamed about, like Domino's
pizza and, uh, RockShox, KraftMacaroni and Cheese.
(03:26):
Some really fun, diverse andloud brands as far as the social
media spectrum.
After that, I followed agirlfriend at the time to
Boston, Massachusetts, where Ijoined a social media startup.
There we were actually workingwith small brands, very small
businesses, small, medium sizedbusinesses.
After a couple of years, I waslike, I miss the mountains.
I miss Colorado.
I want to get back there.
I got hooked up with a reallyawesome boutique digital
(03:48):
marketing agency out here, ledthe social media marketing team.
I kind of started getting moreinto the web end of things.
Web development, SEO, managingdifferent forms of digital
advertising.
That allowed me to, from thisboutique advertising agency, go
to a web development companywhere I managed the North
American team and we produced100 to 200 websites a month.
It was a sweatshop for websites.
(04:09):
In fact, when I, when Iinterviewed, it was something
they made very clear.
I kept talking about advertisingagency and they were, this is a
website production facility.
We make websites, we make themvery quickly.
It was interesting taking myadvertising background and
applying it to kind of a massproduction facility, a digital
production facility.
After about two years or sothere, I left not 100 percent
sure what I was going to donext.
(04:30):
The corporate world had jaded mea little bit.
I left this company a littlefrustrated kind of how large
companies work with small,medium sized businesses.
I felt that they were out tomake a profit more than, and
nothing wrong with making aprofit, but I felt they were out
to make a profit more than theywere out to actually fulfill
their partner's missions anddreams and goals.
After a year or so ofinterviewing, I'm thinking like,
(04:52):
what do I want to do with mylife?
I was like, I want to do thismyself.
I want to come up with abusiness where I can kind of set
the terms and set the clientrelationships and do this
myself.
At the time it was called DenverCrowd.
I want to focus on Denver basedbusinesses.
I want to work with people whoare local people who understand
the importance of relationshipsand interconnectedness with the
people that you work with.
I grew some really amazingbusinesses and brands in Denver
before pivoting a little bit andstarting to work with a more
(05:14):
national audience.
Now we work with people, it'snot just national, it's global.
Russel (05:17):
You really got the full swath of experience.
You've got big agency, smallagency, uh, boutique, more
bespoke to factory.
Really completed the gauntlet ofagency experience or a real
world experience in that sense.
If I heard you right, you saidyou just quit your job and
didn't exactly know where youwere going next is that, did I,
did I hear that right?
Alex (05:39):
So I was at this company.
Things were going well, thecompany was growing, but, um,
when you're out there, we werea, we're a white label reseller.
We were doing work on behalf ofother parts of other large
marketing agencies.
There's a huge disconnect fromsalesperson to fulfillment team.
Then you throw it over toanother company and they start
fulfilling it, and the customeris like, what, what the hell is
(05:59):
this?
This isn't what I bought fromTony, who I have never met in my
life.
I don't even know a guy namedTony.
For me, there was this, youknow, both there's this personal
idea of like, it, it sucks thatI'm fulfilling things that
people didn't really want to buyor pay for.
But also for me, there's thisopportunity of there's all these
people out there that can't getthe marketing services that
they, that they need.
I left the company withoutknowing what was next, but, um,
(06:21):
it wasn't completely blindbefore I do this, done this, I
have friends that are businessowners in Colorado.
I said to them, you know, if Iwas doing my own thing, would we
work together?
I had past clients from pastagencies that, that I kept in
touch, hey, same thing.
If I had my own agency, could wedo some of this work that we
used to do together?
I had a little bit of a net inthat there was at least some
people who in theory would bewilling to work with me.
Russel (06:44):
Did you think you were heading down an entrepreneurial
path, or, or was it just, justkind of more just figuring
yourself out?
Alex (06:51):
I had had enough of a career to understand what I was
looking for, but not enough toknow exactly what I wanted.
Actually during that year, Ididn't just interview for, for
like marketing management rolesand things like that.
I worked at a friend'srestaurant.
I thought maybe one day I wantedto own a restaurant.
I still want to own a restaurantone day but what I learned out
of that was I don't want tomanage it.
I want to sit at the bar with adrink and hang out, you know?
(07:12):
This year was about it exploringa little bit, like where do I
want to spend the rest of mylife?
Anyone that's been in marketing,especially in kind of a
corporate marketing agency, canprobably identify with the idea
of getting burned out and notreally knowing that you've got a
skill set, knowing that you canhelp people but also not really
being sure if you want to goback there.
There was a lot of thoughtbehind my next move.
Really the reason that I endedup kind of fully taking the
(07:35):
plunge was one or two of theseclients that I had talked with,
they were like, you know what,let's, let's just do this thing.
My first year, so I, I, I thinkthat I registered my company in
January.
I had a full first year ofbilling and stuff, but it was a
terrible year, financially.
You know, um, and we'll, we'lltalk about this a little bit
down the road, but I was doing alot of things to invest in a
business down the road thatweren't paying off right now.
(07:55):
There were a lot of differentangles that I was pursuing and
even while I was at thatprevious company, I was starting
to think about what are the nextmove.
I had bought the domain for mywebsite like a year before I
left the company, so I wasstarting to think about the idea
of entrepreneurship.
But I didn't, I hadn't taken theplunge.
I'm in marketing in Denver.
It's saturated.
There's enough of us.
We don't need any more marketersin Denver.
(08:15):
But what I found was there was aspecific need in some specific
groups of small businesses andorganizations for a type of
marketing that's really not, notas much being served over here.
After a year or so kind oftesting the waters and having a
few kind of test clients, we'llprobably talk about that in a
little bit.
I said, let's just, let's justdo this thing.
Russel (08:34):
There's a couple of things that I think are
fascinating is, one, just thecourage to, you know, kind of
leave something that's probablysafe, but not fulfilling you and
not necessarily having where youwere going next in stone, but
taking the time to just searchyourself and figure some things
out, you know, both from abusiness planning and like you
said, working at a restaurant.
I too have never worked in foodservice.
(08:55):
I feel like this is still a boxI might want to check someday.
I don't know if I want to ownit, but I feel like I need to
have the claim that yes, I'veworked in food service.
But also even thinking aboutyour product, you know, I think
a lot of folks when they, whenthey know they don't want to
work for a company anymore, thatthey go, you know, immediately
into selling whatever skillsthey have are more staffed or
feel like they can sell, versusthinking about this in terms of
(09:17):
a, hey, what is the service andthe product that need the market
needs, and how do I start toplan and build that?
As you were kind of saying, slowto start, um, or planting some
seeds that wouldn't get,wouldn't bear fruit until more
down the road.
I'm curious, just since youmentioned it, what are some of
those things that you felt likeyou were doing in the early days
that weren't going to have anysort of instant gratification?
Alex (09:36):
I think this can be a controversial opinion in
marketing, but it's worked forme very well, and I'm very proud
of where we've gone, gone fromthis.
I'm going to preface this bysaying, my friends in the agency
world, always, something thatthey're always aware of when
doing free or discounted ortrade based work is devaluing
themselves.
Don't devalue your work.
Don't do work for free becauseit devalues you.
(09:57):
I disagree with thatwholeheartedly.
Most of my first clients were,if not free clients, they were
paying for costs or paying forthe cost of tech or doing some
sort of trade.
What this allowed me to do ishave a client.
We're doing very serious workfor it.
We get some real tangiblebusiness results.
Then when we go and turn thisinto a case study, I'm not
saying this was a free client orthis was discounted.
(10:17):
This is a client.
This is very real work we didfor a very real business
organization.
First five or 10 of our, not ofall of our clients, but, but
many of that first five or 10client group was people who were
getting a hell of a deal ondigital marketing services
because I was, I'm a new brand.
If you look at my portfolio inmy book from the past, you know,
I've mentioned some really greatbrands that I've worked with,
(10:37):
but, but I didn't manage thoserelationships.
I didn't manage the relationshipwith Kraft Macaroni and Cheese.
They don't know who I am.
What this allowed me to do wasbuild up my presence and my,
frankly, my persona a little bitin Denver.
I have a lot of friends who ownbusinesses or kind of tangential
to that.
They're in startup, in thestartup world or they help
people start businesses.
It was a really greatopportunity for me or us to
prove ourselves before we had toland a really big client.
(10:59):
I mentioned first year wasn'tgreat.
Financially, it was, like a 30thof a 40th or something of maybe
what we're doing now, what wedid last year, but what it did
was set the seeds of success.
I still think of Denver as a cowtown.
We got the rodeo that comes hereevery year.
If you go out to eat withsomebody, with somebody who's in
the community, they're going torun into somebody they know.
It's not just running intosomebody you know at dinner,
(11:19):
these things apply in businesstoo.
If I can get good results for mybuddy, who's a restaurant owner
down the street, well, there maybe another restaurant or another
small business that wants orneeds those same services that
they're willing to connect meon.
My first few websites were veryunprofitable.
I either broke even or lostmoney on them, but they all made
more connections to new clients,new people who are very much
(11:39):
paid clients who are excitedabout the work that we can do
for them and excited about theresults that we could get.
Russel (11:44):
Thank you for sharing that.
I don't actually believe thatit's a controversial notion that
you're saying.
It's funny, it makes me thinkof, when we actually started our
agency we just, we didn't do itfor other people, but we created
portfolio websites that weren'treal businesses.
I don't even think it wasdisingenuous.
It was a reflection of our work.
We actually built the website.
Probably better to, to at leastgive it to someone that like,
for your saying, that can go outthere and, and, you know, tout
(12:07):
you and, um, you know, share,share your name and whatever in
the marketplace.
One of the things that sticksout to me there is, is being
intentional and strategic aboutit versus doing it from a place
of, well, I just, just whateverI can do to get the business or,
um, I'm scared they won't dobusiness with me.
Makes me think of all this thingin, in probably life in general,
but anytime we do a thing fromfear, that that's probably not a
(12:29):
great decision, but anytime wedo it from strategy and
intention and we make, wemaximize that, then we're doing
that from a good place.
That was a great nugget that youshared there.
All right.
You're stepping out and, andlike you said, rough first year,
but you're investing.
When was the first time whereyou're like, you know, cause I
imagine there had to be at leasta little hesitation.
Is this going to work out?
When was that first moment oflike, oh, that was smart on my
(12:50):
part and then it did work out?
Alex (12:51):
For the record, as a business owner, there's going to
be those like, oh, shit moments,always.
I have them all the time.
Is this going to work out?
I would say in the second year,we've got some, we've got, we
have some clients under ourbelt.
We have some nonprofit and, andbrick and mortar store and
restaurant clients and othersmall businesses.
Real quick sidetrack, youmentioned some portfolio sites.
We did those too.
I had to shut down our Beekeepersite because the amount of honey
(13:12):
requests we were getting frompeople.
We did the same thing, but atsome point in, at the beginning
of the second year, we got ourfirst RFP.
A local nonprofit reached out tous and they said, we've seen
your work with this othernonprofit you work with, and we
want you to apply for this RFP.
If anybody's, you know, appliedfor this stuff, you know, it's a
shot in the bucket.
You don't know you're going toget it.
But what was interesting wasthey invited us specifically to
(13:33):
apply.
We kind of thought we had an inhere.
As far as the budgets ofwebsites that we've produced,
their budget was a lot higherthan our average client.
It was a really cool opportunityfor us.
We, of course, won the RFP andwe built the website and they've
been a great, and I don't wantto mention them and out us
completely, but they've been agreat client for us since, since
that inception, I don't know,six or five or something years
ago now.
That was kind of the big signof, all right, we're, we're onto
(13:55):
something here, we're buildingtrust and, and we can do the
thing.
This site was a challengebecause there was development
that we hadn't done before.
There was a lot of things thatwe had to kind of tie together
that we had done in pieces thatwe had to kind of do for the
real deal.
It was a great test for us.
It was a proving point for us.
We still enter RFPs all thetime.
That's one of our sources ofbusiness.
But I think that for me, thiswas the first very legitimizing,
(14:16):
oh, shoot.
People know who we are.
That for me meant that we wereonto something.
Russel (14:19):
Nice.
You were kind of mentionedthere, you know, and maybe I'm
assuming some of this free workmight've been in the nonprofit
space, but even as your businesshas continued and you probably,
you don't need to do the freework anymore.
I understand that you do stillgive back to certain causes in
terms of, you know, work andthings like that.
One, why?
Just out of curiosity and, youknow, how have you been able to
make that make sense, um, from abusiness perspective or, or work
(14:44):
it into the business?
Alex (14:44):
As a small business owner, as somebody who gets to choose
what I do every day, there's a,there's something important
about what results are wegetting, are we getting out of
things?
It's nice to leave, leave theworld a little bit of a better
place than you found it.
I don't know if the whole worldis going in that direction, but
my communities are, and it'sreally nice to be able to make
an impact in our smallcommunities.
That's part of it for me.
There's a more selfish reasontoo, which is, I don't think
(15:06):
that a lot of these businessesget, get the attention that,
that they deserve, both fromlike a individual marketing
perspective, but also, if we'regoing after them with our
services, I think that there isa, there's an underserved group
of people in these nonprofits.
I love the causes that they'reworking with, but I also see
some huge opportunities to workwith people.
And actually, uh, next monthwe're acquiring a business that
(15:28):
exclusively works withnonprofits.
They do website design anddevelopment for nonprofits, and
we're taking over their existingbook of clients.
What was really interesting forme in this particular deal is,
nonprofits, they got tinybudgets.
They have very small budgets.
Most of them, 90 percent of themhave a very, very small budget.
The other 10 have a huge budget,but all of these people have a
need for certain types ofmarketing and access to certain
tools that maybe otherindustries don't have.
(15:50):
For instance, Google givesnonprofits all sorts of free
stuff like email addresses, andthere's this Google ad grants
program that gives participating501c3s 10, 000 dollars a month
in a Google, uh, Google AdWordsbudget, which is a crazy amount
of money to spend.
And if you're a nonprofitlistening to this now, we'd love
to connect about helping youwith spending this money, but
10, 000 dollars, you know, let'ssay it's 5 dollars a click.
(16:11):
That's like 2000 clicks to yourwebsite from people that weren't
coming there before.
It's, again, a free program toparticipate in.
So as long as we can prove thatwe are earning our nonprofits
money through, through themanagement of this product, it's
something that we can do.
We identified a fewopportunities for these, for
this group of nonprofits that,even as a cost conscious
organization, they cancollaborate with us.
(16:32):
They haven't gotten thenotification yet of the
acquisition, when they do getthe notification, they're going
to sit, they're going to hear,you know, you, we've been
working with you to support yourwebsite and your storytelling
goals.
Well, now here's a whole newsuite of things that we can help
you with.
I love working with causes tohelp improve the world, but
they're also just a incrediblyunderserved group of
organizations in the world.
Russel (16:50):
I'm all about this where if we can help the world and
make it make business sense,then, then is there anything
better that we could honestly dowith our time and effort and
energy is, as you said, make theworld a better place?
I love how you've been able todo that.
Now you've got an acquisitionkind of, um, I guess we're on
the cusp of right here, itsounds like under your belt.
Was that something you activelysought out as a strategy or, or
(17:12):
how did you even come aboutthat?
Alex (17:13):
Great question.
No, and what's crazy is this isour second acquisition.
We did one in 22, 2022, andneither one did I seek out.
Both of these kind of came to meextremely randomly.
The first one, so I, weprimarily build on a website
platform called Duda.
Really great platform for a lotof reasons.
Whole nother podcast could bedone on this.
We use them and we're a Dudaexpert, so we do podcasts and
(17:34):
webinars with Duda and we helpwith case studies and how tos
and things like that.
Another Duda customer saw usthrough the work that we did in
2022, and he reached out andsaid, he's going into
retirement.
He said, my, I got, I forget 4060, something like that, 50 or
60 clients and I no longer, he'sa one man shop.
I no longer have the capacity tomanage this stuff and I want to
(17:54):
pass it along to somebody else.
There was a really coolopportunity.
He was based in Colorado.
I'm based in Colorado.
He worked with a lot ofnonprofits, brick and mortar
stores and restaurants, and wealready work with those three
groups of customers.
Incredible opportunity to notonly make sure that their
businesses are being covered,but we're experts.
We are on the platform you'realready on.
Who better to hand it off to youthan the guys you can watch
(18:15):
videos talking about thissoftware about all day?
A couple month or two ago, I gotan email from a agency owner out
in San Francisco and he said,we're looking to offload offload
this portion of our business.
Would you be interested?
When I first saw the email, Ithought it was fake because who
wants, you know, if you've got aprofitable business or if you've
got a business that has asemblance of profitability, why
are you going to go sell it tosomeone else?
But I was like, let's go hearthis guy out.
(18:36):
We got in a couple of phonecalls and talked through their
needs and really, their, theirniche is in the software space.
They kind of got into thewebsite development and
management space so that theycould begin engaging with these
nonprofit customers.
Then they found they reallydidn't have the capacity or the,
the, the, the team and theworkflows in place to manage
these websites and managerequests for keeping them up to
(18:57):
date and active.
It's not a very profitablebusiness for them, but we've
already got the infrastructureto do this so it's a, it is a
great connection for us.
Next month we'll be taking overthe management of, I think it's
like 65 or 70 new nonprofitsites.
The challenge of this now is,well, we got 75 people to
onboard or 70 people to onboardand get in touch with really
quickly, let them know who weare, what we do.
Say, hey, we're not going tochange your price, but, but we
(19:18):
have these awesome opportunitiesif you want.
For me what's been so cool aboutthis is having done it before.
The first one it went well andthe former agency owner and I
are still colleagues, we go outfor lunch, you know, a couple
times a year and catch up.
But I learned so much from thatthat I was able to navigate this
one just, just smoother.
Understanding how the agreementswork and how should this
transition work and from atechnological perspective, how
do we move 60 clients in one dayand not cause outages?
(19:41):
I'm very excited for thisopportunity to reach out to, so
I mentioned now we have 10 or 15nonprofits.
We're going to have 60 or 70more.
This is a really awesomeopportunity to kind of, to, to
specialize within this niche forus.
Russel (19:53):
What I love there is, is it, it aligned with what you
were already doing.
It wasn't the shiny red ballthat you, you know, it was
causing you to chase, right?
Serendipitous opportunities can,can align very well, and this
sounds like that has in thiscase.
You've learned some lessons.
Curious for folks that, youknow, might be on the cusp of,
or thinking they might want todo this someday.
What is two lessons learned,one, what you should do.
(20:15):
Second is what you shouldn't doas far as lessons learned in
this particular instance.
Alex (20:20):
Due diligence is obviously important for any business deal.
These are small acquisitions.
We're not acquiring, you know,hundred million dollar companies
or anything.
For me to do due diligence It'sa look and equip books and look
through customer records andthings like that, it's not a big
deal.
But for me one thing that Ididn't do as adequately during
the first one was understandingnot just the financials, but
(20:41):
what are the clientrelationships?
Who are these people?
How do they expect to engagewith you?
How do you increase your billingrate with them?
Or how do you increase theservices that you're doing with
them?
I'm still really glad I did thefirst acquisition.
But from an opportunityperspective, again, a bunch of
restaurants in Breckenridge,that, that's a captive audience.
They don't need a websiteredesign.
They don't need search engineoptimization.
(21:02):
A lot of them don't even takereservations because they're
full every night on a ski seasonor full every night in the
summer season.
For me, I think that during myfirst acquisition, I anticipated
larger opportunities from thisnew partnership than actually
came about.
The year after it did not panout the way I thought that it
would.
That made me, when I went to dothis new deal, think a little
(21:22):
bit differently about numbers.
Not projection numbers, but, butreal numbers and calculate
churn, you know, from mybackground in corporate
marketing, calculate churn inthere, do all those things so
you know exactly what are wegoing to get out of this
business deal the first year.
That was one lesson.
Another thing that I learnedreally is, is how to, how to
publicize this.
This is a cool thing for me.
When I'm acquiring a business,there's, there's two
(21:44):
motivations.
One is increase my company sizeand revenue.
The other is, this shows thatwe're a player in the industry.
I learned, uh, we did, you know,press releases and social media
posts and all that thing lasttime about it.
We got some really awesomeresponse and I want to do it
better this time.
Working off of those templatesof how we communicated both to
the clients and also justexternally to the rest of the
world about this acquisition.
(22:04):
It's a big deal if we want it tobe.
If we don't post it, no oneknows that we've acquired
another company.
Thinking about this from a PRperspective of how do I, how do
I now spin this to let peopleknow, hey, we're, we're growing,
we're successful, we work withnonprofits and we're going to
work with even more nonprofitshas been a big lesson for me.
Russel (22:22):
Just to recap.
One, relationships and how wellthey do or don't, don't
transfer.
That's so important in theagency space to not
underestimate when, when that ishappening and how many people
are tied to an agency,especially a smaller agency
because of those relationships.
Another term I heard you saythere are kind of, I think it
sounded like you were alludingto is what I call revenue
optimism and kind of overglorifying maybe what the deal
(22:45):
might bring about in terms ofrevenue.
We probably need more revenueskepticism to really evaluate
the deal from, and then the lastone is called squeeze the juice.
You're doing a big thing, likeyou're saying, and, you know,
get as much opportunity is allthe work and an effort that
you're putting in this already.
Promoting it and how do wemaximize this opportunity?
Those are great nuggets.
Thank you for sharing those.
Alex (23:06):
I love the squeeze the juice too.
That's a great metaphor.
Russel (23:08):
That can apply to so many things.
Got to squeeze the juiceeverywhere we go.
Switching gears a little bit,that was so insightful.
I know, you know, culture andteam is a big part of the work
you're doing and what you'retrying to build and even doing
it in a remote environment.
Was that a focus from the getgo?
Or did you learn your way intothat being something you knew
(23:29):
you had to care about?
Alex (23:29):
It was a focus from the get go.
I've talked about selling snakeoil before.
I think anyone who's worked at asnake oil selling marketing
agency is familiar with thetoxic workplace.
I think that those things kindof go hand in hand.
If you're not proud of the workthat you're doing and you're not
truly serving the people whoyou're charging money, I think
that often you can create aplace that does not value the
people in the work.
We're a small company, a smallteam, but I think that we've
(23:51):
created a really awesome cultureof a few things.
The first thing is I amsolutions and results oriented.
There's a phrase that I say likeseveral times a week.
It's always something.
Because in our business, in ourline of work, there is always
something breaking or broken andbeing able to figure out what is
the best next steps.
No need to point fingers, buthow can we pick this ball up and
get it going?
(24:12):
I think agencies waste so muchtime blaming, you know, doing
the blame game and doing thattoxic workplace stuff of, you
know, the campaign didn't dogood cause Nancy didn't do her
part or whoever didn't dowhatever.
Russel (24:22):
Dang it, Nancy.
Alex (24:23):
Yes.
One thing that, um, that I loveis that we have an, a attitude
of collaboration.
Things don't always goperfectly, but when we do, we
look through our optionstogether, communicate them and
figure out the best next step.
That's been really great for me.
My history is very much inmanagement.
As long as I've worked, I can'treally think of somebody who
didn't want to do their job.
Everyone is out here to do theirjob, right?
(24:43):
Even though I got to pay youmoney to be here, people still
want to do a good job at the endof the day.
I think that being able tocommunicate with people when
there are shortcomings in a waythat is, again, solutions
oriented, instead of saying,hey, you did this wrong.
Say, hey, next time I'd love itif we could see more of this.
There are opportunities there.
I think that, um, creating aculture where people are not
afraid to announce a mistake isreally important because then we
(25:06):
can go and fix this thing andlearn from it and move on.
Things like Facebook justchanged the way that they're,
they're, um, they could change acouple of things, but they
changed certain ad types, howmuch money you can spend or how
little money you can spend.
Things change, technologieschange all the time.
All of the things that we dohave changed significantly from
when we started, both in termsof best practices and in terms
of the actual technology itself.
(25:27):
Being willing to learn from bothmistakes and changes is really
important.
Russel (25:31):
It sounds like, you know, another way you can speak
to that, is just embracing thatthis will not go perfect.
Can we just learn from the lackof perfection?
And if as long as we embrace itup front though, then we're
going to have our feelings less,less hurt, I guess might be the
word to describe it when, whenthings do go wrong and we can
just, you know, learn from it,grow from it and business as
(25:52):
usual if we expect it to gowrong.
Very great takeaways.
All right.
Well now I'm curious, when youlook at the future of Crowd
Digital and where you're tryingto go, what does that look like?
Alex (26:02):
I mentioned the nonprofit thing, and we're certainly going
to go a direction with ournonprofit team members or our
nonprofit clients.
I see a few other opportunitiesas well.
But the other thing is I've beenmaking a very conscious effort
to get into a new industry, anew niche.
It's an exciting one for me.
One in Colorado, and it's also acontroversial one, which is the
psychedelics industry.
We have a couple of clients inthe kind of wellness,
(26:24):
psychedelic, psychotropic spaceand I said, I want to do more of
these.
The way that I'm looking at is,I mean, look at where cannabis
is right now.
There are some really hugeplayers in the space.
Who were they 15 years ago?
Nobody.
And it was illegal.
They couldn't even be doing whatthey're doing.
But I see, again, a group ofunderserved people in a niche
underserved industry, and I seean opportunity to work with
(26:44):
these people.
These are people who, I mean,people are, people are scared to
work with them on social mediabecause they keep getting
deplatformed, even if they arefollowing Meta's rules.
They're scared to work onwebsites or, or e-commerce
stores because the legal issuessurrounding those.
I think that if we can bethoughtful and be smart about
how we work in this space andhelp people tell their stories,
help people do it throughcontent marketing and education
(27:05):
and engagement and awareness.
There are some ways we can getout the word, get the words out
about these organizations thatfulfill Meta's obligations, but
also allow these businesses togrow and be successful.
It's a really cool new market togo after and it stretches our
creative brains because we gotto learn how to tell these
stories without getting introuble with Shopify or Facebook
(27:26):
or Meta or whoever.
There's some really awesomeopportunities for us there.
Russel (27:29):
Central underlying theme seems to be, uh, you know, going
back to the beginning of yourstory, is find a group that's
underserved and serve them.
Bonus if they're, the perks ofthat group are psychedelics or
something like that on the sideor you're helping the world
become a better place.
I'm always all about thefundamentals.
It sounds like you've got a lotof those covered in your
business.
Love to hear that.
(27:49):
All right, Alex.
We do have to wrap this up.
I've got one last big questionfor you.
Are entrepreneurs born or arethey made?
Alex (27:55):
Yes, it's such a good question.
I think it's a little bit ofboth.
I spoke to that, corporatism inmarketing and how it can create
feelings of being like jadednessor frustration or like we're
selling snake oil.
I have some colleagues that havecreated, started their own
businesses as a direct result ofthat, wanting to get away from
this and do their own thing.
I also think there's a group ofpeople who, and I think I'm in
(28:17):
both groups of people, thepeople who got jaded and then
also the group of people whotheir whole life, have had an
idea of how they want to dothings.
They're, for lack of a betterword, disappointed time and time
again, when they go to acorporate workplace or a new
workplace.
For me, entrepreneurship cameout of being born wanting to do
my own thing and set my ownterms, set my own relationships,
making sure that my clients arehappy with the standards they
(28:39):
and I have created together.
Then there's also these peoplewho are pushed away from their
old jobs because they're notdoing things the way that they
want.
People have a very strong senseof justice that are in the
marketing world.
More often than not are going toend up consulting or doing their
own thing or starting abusiness, because at some point
you say, I don't like the waythat they run things here.
I would do things differently.
You say that enough times, itsticks.
Russel (28:58):
Does that work with anything?
Alex (29:00):
No.
Russel (29:01):
No.
Dang it.
Awesome.
Couldn't agree more.
Great perspective on that.
If people want to know moreabout Crowd Digital Marketing,
where can they go?
Alex (29:10):
You can go to denvercrowd.com, D E N V E R C R
O W D.
com.
I'm Alex Schupp, you can find meon LinkedIn, S C H U P P.
I have conversations like thisall the time with small business
owners, and whether they're inmarketing or another industry,
just picking each other'sbrains.
I often get just as much out ofthe conversations as they do.
If anyone ever wants to connect,I love talking about this stuff.
(29:30):
I love talking about how to drawresults and how to tell
businesses stories.
Russel (29:34):
Beautiful.
There you have it, folks.
You know where to go.
Thank you so much, Adam, fortaking the time out of your day
to share your story, yourlessons learned, and just really
intentional and methodical andmaking the world a better place
approach to which you take yourbusiness.
So many great things you wereable to share today, and I
really appreciate you taking thetime to do it.
Alex (29:52):
Thank you for having me.
It was a great conversation.
I really enjoyed chatting withyou.
I love talking about smallbusiness and business growth so
it was a really fun opportunityfor me.
Russel (29:59):
Likewise.
M I Z.
Alex (30:00):
M I Z Z O U.
We hope you've enjoyed thisepisode of An Agency Story
podcast where we share realstories of marketing agency
owners from around the world.
Are you interested in being aguest on the show?
Send an email topodcast@performancefaction.com.
(30:21):
An Agency Story is brought toyou by Performance Faction.
Performance Faction offersservices to help agency owners
grow their business to 5 milliondollars and more in revenue.
To learn more, visitperformancefaction.com.
The most interesting to me thing to me about owning and
(30:43):
managing a business is gettingto be flexible with my own
schedule.
I live in Colorado, on aTuesday, if it's dumping snow, I
can get out there and gosnowboarding.
I carry my business cards withme in my, in my ski jacket.
I can't tell you how manybusiness deals have been started
on a ski lift.
Just talking to, hey, what areyou doing?
Why aren't you at work today?
Oh, I own my own business.
I do too.
Something that's so awesome andfun about being a business owner
(31:04):
is being able to be open tothese sorts of conversations.
Leads come from everywhere.
My colleagues, my fellowbusiness owners who are having
trouble with sales, it's becausethey're not open in
conversations.
And I'm not like a classic salesguy.
I'm not trying to sell you everytime I talk to you.
But I do have an eye foropportunities and when I see
that there's an opportunity forus to work together, I love
pursuing that.
I have no shame in saying, look,I got a digital marketing
(31:24):
agency.
I want to tell your story.
Let's work together.
For me, I think the funny storyis getting on a ski lift, chat
with somebody, finding out thatthey own a small business or an
e-commerce store and finding away to work together.
That's been just really fun andrewarding for me, especially
when you're playing hooky on aTuesday.
Russel (31:38):
I hope those listening, the biggest takeaway is that
they can get out and do more ofthose fun things that seem like
it's so far removed frombusiness, but just go make it,
make it viable businessopportunity as well.
Then you can do more of thethings you want to do and love
in this world.
Another great perspective.
Alex (31:52):
Yes.
Write off that ski pass.
Russel (31:54):
Exactly.
Write off the ski pass is, oh,that's funny.
Do you actually write off theski pass?
Alex (31:59):
I gotta talk to my accountant.
I forget if she accepts it ornot.
Probably not.
Russel (32:03):
Those accountants always want to play by the books.
But I don't know.
I feel like it's a valid, uh,and especially in your case,
it's a valid expense.
Product testing.
Alex (32:10):
Several of my clients are in the snow sports industry, and
I actually did, I made a, thisis a good funny story.
I purchased a, a snow skate.
A skateboard snowboard hybrid.
They're allowed at the resorts.
I bought this thing on awebsite, then I emailed the
website and said that sucked.
Let me rebuild it.
Now these guys are my clients.
I actually did get to write thatoff.
I wrote it off as, uh, I don'tknow what, what, what she, you
(32:32):
know, categorized it as, but itwas product research and we sold
the client so that was a greatwrite off.
Russel (32:36):
There you go.
Find a client and the thing thatyou want to do and love the
most, and then you candefinitely write it off because
it's all product research.
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.