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Warren Jolly, the CEO of Ad Quadrant, a social marketing agency that made $4 million in revenue in its first year. Warren\\u2019s an expert in leveraging social media and mobile marketing. Listen in to hear why you need to plan obsessively before you launch a business, why focus is the key to success, and how Warren aspires to scale massively...without becoming a SaaS business.

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Famous 5:

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• Favorite Book? \\u2013 Good to Great
• What CEO do you follow? \\u2014 Gary Vaynerchuk
• Favorite online tool? \\u2014 Slack

• Do you get 8 hours of sleep?\\u2014 Yes
• If you could let your 20 year old self know one thing, what would it be? \\u2014 Focus on one business; be great at one thing at a time

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Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:27 \\u2013 Nathan\\u2019s introduction
• 01:49 \\u2013 Welcoming Warren to the show
• 01:56 \\u2013 Ad Quadrant was founded in 2014
• 02:05 \\u2013 It\\u2019s a managed services agency
• 02:35 \\u2013 Ad Quadrant works in the social marketing niche, including social media and mobile advertising
• 03:12 \\u2013 They make money by charging a percentage of the ad spend that they manage - if they meet their acquisition targets then the ad spend may be increased
• 04:00 \\u2013 \\u201cFirst year revenue was $4 million\\u201d
• 04:23 \\u2013 Spent a lot of time pre-planning and finding clients before they launched the business
• 05:14 \\u2013 \\u201cIt was a painstaking process...we failed a lot and spent a lot of time working out our niche\\u201d
• 05:25 \\u2013 Revenue in 2015 was $15 million
• 05:46 \\u2013 33 employees, based in California and New York
• 06:01 \\u2013 Take around 20% of ad spend on average
• 06:14 \\u2013 Will take more than that if they arbitrage a campaign - and will take less from high-volume clients
• 07:02 \\u2013 Have 35 active clients
• 07:17 \\u2013 Most revenue comes from percentage fees from ad spend - and some comes from a different model where they take a fixed price-per-action from customers
• 08:24 \\u2013 The metrics that are important to Warren\\u2019s team are new opportunities, growth, and churn and attrition
• 08:55 \\u2013 \\u201cIf you\\u2019re not carefully focused on churn, you\\u2019re just filling a leaky bucket with more water\\u201d
• 09:05 \\u2013 \\u201cThe two things you can control are flawless quality and fanatical customer service - those are what reduce churn\\u201d
• 10:30 \\u2013 Ad Quadrant\\u2019s aspirations are to develop and incubate consumer products
• 11:05 \\u2013 \\u201cIf we can find verticals that are ripe for disruption and a good fit for social, then we want to use our expertise to get into that space\\u201d
• 12:08 \\u2013 Warren believes in bootstrapping - he\\u2019s more interested in investing in the business than paying himself a large salary
• 13:16 \\u2013 \\u201cReach an inflection point and pay yourself a ratio\\u201d
• 13:45 \\u2013 Don\\u2019t try to run 5 businesses at once - find the one that you really want to focus on. Passive investment is an option as well
• 14:50 \\u2013 Warren\\u2019s generated his own wealth from prior exits
• 08:16 \\u2013 Connect with Warren on Linkedin or Twitter
• 17:44 \\u2013 The Famous Five

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3 Key Points:

• Focus on one thing at a time.
• If you\\u2019re in a service industry, you\\u2019ve got to control churn. Have astonishingly good customer service - otherwise you\\u2019ll bleed clients instead of growing.
• Plan. Plan painstakingly and obsessively before you try to launch your business.

Resources Mentioned:

• Freshbooks - The site Nathan uses to manage his invoices and accounts.

• Host Gator \\u2013 The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for cheapest price possible.
• Leadpages\\xa0 \\u2013 The drag and drop tool Nathan uses to quickly create his webinar landing pages which convert at 35%+
• Audible \\u2013 Nathan uses Audible when he\'s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5 hour drive) to listen to audio books.

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• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

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