Introduction

“Should I keep going with my business or shut it down?”

When Kevin first showed up to my digital marketing agency, he was understandably frustrated. He had wasted the entire previous year and tens of thousands of dollars on two agencies that didn’t know what they were doing. Neither of them could get him even close to profitability or his first million dollars.

Although Kevin was passionate about hishigh-end car accessory brand, poor sales persuaded him that people wouldn’t buy it. “Is it even worth it?” he wondered. He started questioning the value of what he had built.

But nothing was wrong with hisfive-star product or its ability to attract an audience. What he needed to question instead was the competence of the agencies he’d hired to do the work. Our audit showed exactly why the product wasn’t selling: They didn’t target the right audiences. They had followed a misguided strategy, setting up his targeting all wrong and failing to optimize his ads to drive revenue. They’d created multiple campaigns and weren’t spending nearly enough on any one of them to do any good.

They wasted his time, squandered his cash, and almost destroyed his will to continue.

When Kevin and I met, he wasgun-shy and losing money. Spending $4,000 a month on advertising to make $3,000 in the same period, he was frustrated enough to close his business. But my agency had helped a good friend of his make millions of dollars, so he decided to try us as his last resort.

During our audit of his brand, we uncovered a second problem: when people complained in comments on his Facebook and Instagram ads that his car accessory was too expensive, Kevin had been defensive with them.

We coached him to see the comments not as adversarial but as an opportunity to emphasize quality, listen instead of argue, and respond with empathy.

Although it’s hard to measure the impact of that transformation on sales, you can be sure it makes a difference. No one who disputes their customers can expect to scale.

Here’s what’seasy to measure: We repaired Kevin’s broken strategy and made his advertising profitable in just four weeks. For only twice what he had been spending, he’s now seeing a profit that’s sixteen times that amount.

Since his business has taken off, Kevin has something to scale. In fact, the ads we did for him got so much attention that he not only proved the validity of his product and made money for the first time, but he also attracted a major auto manufacturer who wants to set up a partnership deal.

Where You Come In

You probably have a lot in common with Kevin. You founded a company born out of your passion. You’ve poured good money into bad places, so you’re nowhere near where you want to be. You know there are a million ways to spend money on a business, and it could fold up