Navigating the Challenges of Building an Advertising Agency and the Future of AI in Marketing

Hey, hi everyone. Now, welcome to your show, your E-Coffee with Experts. This is your host, Ranmay here. And today we have Jeff, who is the CEO and founder of Ethic Advertising Agency with us. Hey, Jeff, how’s it going?

Good, Ranmay. Thanks for having me on.

Great. So Jeff, before we move any forward and pick your brains, why don’t you talk us through your journey, how were you as a child growing up, and what got in your digital marketing? Let’s get to know the human behind the mic. And also more about your agency, Ethic. What do you guys do? What do you guys specialize in? What are your competencies? We take it off from there.

Yeah, I think maybe for efficiencies, I’ll start with the agency and then go back into how I got there a little bit, too. The Tech Advertising was founded in 2014. We are focused on hyper targeted local advertising, paid advertising. We do a lot of digital in-house. I still do traditional advertising, media buy and planning, as well as the creative that supports it, so video animation, graphic design, website development. I actually have what I found to be a a unique journey where when I was in college, about 20, I figured out that doing what I’m doing now is exactly what I wanted to do. I was actually between zoology and advertising. Then I was like, I had an internship at an ad agency I was like, I like the creative, I like the media, I like the blend of business and everything. It just excited me. I said, Someday I want to run my own shop. It took about almost 10 years for me to get the skill sets from CBS Television, being a media buyer and planner, to develop that as well as the capital to launch the agency. And then now we’ve developed into what we have today.

Lovely. And it all started as a one-man shop, initially. And how were the initial days starting an agency is not easy. And to keep it there, to keep it hanging is, again, another challenge, right? So talk us about those initial days, how challenging was it, those initial clients that you got, and how did you overcome those challenges? Talk us through your journey that. Yeah.

The initial days have been that garage, band, company of working out of the house before it was the common thing and just being on your own. I have a sales background, so a lot of it was getting new business, but I also have a big advertising marketing background, so a lot of it was doing the work. I was really working on other people’s business mindset of being a ad person, a marketer, and finding those people that I could build a trust with and develop that. I was willing to take, not everything, but I was willing to take a lot smaller clients than what it probably should have and everything, but really learning that. Then as I started adding employees and as I started growing and developing, I shifted gears after really about four years of being in the weeds and bottlenecking my company and trying to figure that out and saying, I need to switch gears from being the person doing the work to the person who understands how to run a business. And that shift It really helped me.

It helped the transition.

Yeah. So I got focused in the scalability, reading books, going back, and I’m still part way through getting my MBA with entrepreneurship focus, going into getting business coaches and entrepreneurship groups, and just learning as much as I can, and realizing I love that aspect of it as well, too. And as you grow, you can’t do everything, so you have to hire out. So as I’ve developed and I’ve grown into nearly 20 people, it’s really one of those things where I I have to give up some responsibilities, but I have to put the processes in place and allow them to have success as well.

Delegation is the key as you grow up the ladder. If you want to expand, you got to delegate. You cannot be doing everything. And each person that you add comes up with their old core skillsets, which, again, you can train, but again, you would want to have a mix of what you want and what they come up with to have that charismatic nature and have an individuality intact of your employees, of the creative side of the person whom you’ve hired. So that’s it. And I think advertising agency lifts up talking about selection of client acquisition and project. So how has upholding ethical practices has impacted the client acquisition side of things? Because there would be clients who you would see saying no. How has been that process for you as an agency?

It’s not hard at all. And it’s not hard because of the pre-planning around it and the strategy behind that. We’ve developed, like a lot of companies, mission statement and core values, but we truly believe in them. I hire by them. I’ve let people go by them. Ours are quality, efficiency, kind, boldness, respect, and progress. When you find people that just match those naturally and it’s part of their own DNA, it makes it easier for them to uphold that. Then for us to just continue to be a mission of being a catalyst for happy, profitable partners through creative and advertising services. We have it very clear. We remind ourselves of that. We use this vocabulary in our everyday talk and have even rewarded people based off of it. But really having people that are attuned to that makes it easy. But then create an environment where it’s like, Hey, if something doesn’t jive with our ethics and our core values, we need to talk about it, we need to address it. So it doesn’t fester, so it doesn’t become a situation. And then those core values are the the rules of the game, and the mission statement is the way that you win this game.

So if you’re breaking any of those rules, you can’t win the game. It’s just really those guidelines that makes it easy to say, We shouldn’t be doing this. We shouldn’t be working with this person, stuff like that. But also we’re very transparent about it, and that’s what we talk about. Sometimes it scares people away that are like, Well, maybe I don’t jive with that, which is fine. Our core values are not for everybody, but that allows us to avoid those situations. But also when situations do pop up that can damage our values and ethics, knowing them and abiding by them and being transparent and having a communication line about that really allows it to be an easy, quick, rip the bandaid off thing.

Absolutely. While you were starting out or whenever it happened, tell us the story behind landing your first major client, that first one big client we all trip for or try to get as soon as possible there.

Yeah, major clients are It’s always one of those things that are exciting, but then the pressure’s on, especially if they make up a big portion of your revenue. The first one came pretty shortly on after I started the company, but I didn’t start with them. I had a different client that would have covered my expenses, but their industry completely shifted within a couple of months of me launching my agency, and they ended up not only canceling the stuff, but they also couldn’t pay me for the work that I had done. So instantaneously, It put me into a cash flow situation. The neat thing is I started with that and had that downhill roller coaster. But then within a couple of months, I was able to land a client in the medical space for drug and alcohol rehabilitation. That was a fantastic client for us that we did a lot of great work for and had a good relationship for many years with them. It was exciting, and we dove into it, and you treated it like your own, and you put all your heart and soul into it as well, too, which is a great experience for that.

That client and then all the other smaller clients combined was like, I can project my year. I can make it a year for that first thing, which was really exciting. Now, one of the things that I did learn with that is bigger client means a little bit more sway in figuring those things out. I was by myself. I didn’t have my core values all laid out. It’s one of those things where it’s exciting, but it also means that you’re focused on that client more when you’re one person or a small team, and you don’t have time to work on your own business as much as well, too. One of the things I learned from that is no matter what’s going on within the business, you have to work on your own business and your own self to ensure that you’re doing the best quality work for people and that you’re growing how you want to grow and that you’re not overly reliant on individual clients.

Absolutely. You also built Q-Champ, right? So could you elaborate on the gap in the market that You identified which led to the creation of the platform? And also, how does it complement the services you offer at a tech?

Yeah. So Q-Jam is a platform that we built that leverages geo-fence advertising, but it allows people to go on, build the campaigns themselves, have access to really great top-tier technology, not have any minimums, have instant data, simple data as well, too. The reason why we built it, it was a project that started about two and a half years ago, and we’ve been launched for over a year with it. The reason why we built it is because ethics niche of hyper-target, localized advertising meant we were leveraging this technology. We had ended up having literally hundreds of conversations or inquiries over the years about geo-fence advertising, specifically. But as an agency, where we have a ad-outs person, an account management person to do this, we have to take a minimum, or we would have to do what some other places do and have a really high margin that doesn’t allow much of the advertising dollars to actually get spent on advertising, which we just don’t do that. So we created a minimum for that, as well as we, as an agency, don’t accept credit cards. So there’s a couple of barriers of entry for that, even for us.

And then we realized there’s even more barriers of entries for other companies and other solutions out there. And there wasn’t a really good solution out there where someone could just go on, they can plug their credit card in, they can set up the campaign themselves, they can do themselves. They can be in control. So for years, I was like, Who’s going to create that? Why is this not a thing? And I was like, We had a good year a couple of years back. And I was like, I’m going to create it. I’m going to sell fund. I’m going to do this thing and see if we can give this technology to people that otherwise wouldn’t have it or would be in a situation where they could get it, but they’re being overcharged or they’re not getting transparency or they’re not in control of their own campaign as well, too. And it’s been really a great journey and successful. We have over 600 people that have signed up to either explore it or leverage it and use it over the last probably 15 months.

Lovely. How do you feel is AI transforming the advertising industry in particular? We talk about AI in the SEO space a lot, but let’s talk about the paid search space.

Yeah. Specifically in paid search, you can leverage it for copy development, keyword development, analyze of data as too. Ai is one of those things that a lot of people are excited about and trying to figure out how to leverage it. But right now, it’s still a tool. A tool is really only as good as the person who’s wielding it and understands how to leverage it and utilize it. I think that’s still being figured out. We’re actively working on it, and we figured out some things, but the advancements and the opportunities of AI as it continues to develop, we still feel like we’re just scratching the surface because of how it’s going to develop. There’s that. There’s also the creative side of things of being able to tell AI, Hey, create two guys talking on a podcast and an ad for that. And one’s wearing a pink shirt and one’s wearing a gray sweatshirt and everything. And then it could develop something as well, too, with like, captions and stuff like that. So there’s a great leveraging and time-saving element of that that’s also going to increase the volume, but it’s also going to be on the flip side of things of the analysis of protecting people from certain content and running it.

There’s so many directions that it can go. Right now, we’re just trying to continue to learn how to do better for what we have and what tech tools we can leverage within our reporting dashboard that uses AI within ChatGPT and Julius and all these other things as well, too. But that’s how we’re leveraging it now. But the future of it is pretty interesting and exciting. But at the end of the day, it’s still a tool that needs to be wielded by somebody. That’s interesting how that goes versus being a reliant feature.

Absolutely. Finally, Jeff, you wanted to be an entrepreneur since a very young age. For our listeners today, especially young listeners, and then from that degree to now running your own agency. You have clearly gone through the ranks there and made it happen. For our young listeners today who are trying to make a mark, trying to start their own agency or own business or something on their own, what advice would you want to give to them?

There’s lots of advice, which is maybe where you should start is talk to people, educate yourselves, read books. You can say find mentors or find entrepreneurship groups where you can come together and talk. Entrepreneurship is a misunderstood, very lonely profession because not a lot of people understand it. Finding a group of people who are also going through it is exceptionally helpful, both from learning from each other’s experiences and successes, but also just the support network with that. Learning from others, whether it’s reading, podcasts, actual personal connections, which I think is the most powerful thing of talking to real people. Then the other main thing that every entrepreneur has to do is figure out their risk threshold. How much risk can they actually take on comfortably? What are they comfortable doing of going out on their own and experiencing and seeing if it’s for them? But the reality of it is that, honestly, no matter what age you are, there’s a really good chance that you can afford to take risk, especially if you’re young. You have so much time ahead of you. But even if you’re older, you can afford to take a risk and put a timeline on it and think it through and everything.

I said, Hey, if I don’t make it by this time, that’s what I did with my agency. I said, If I don’t make it in a year, I will have no regrets and I’ll feel so good about it and everything, and I won’t ever think what if thing. I’ve been lucky and diligent where it’s been longer than a year, it’s been a decade. But that risk calling thing is interesting, but also changing your perspective on risk and what would really be the worst case scenario if I I had to start my own business for one year. Best case scenario is it works and that becomes your profession and you end up loving it. Worst case scenario is it doesn’t work and mitigate the financial risks and everything. But then you patted your resume a little bit. There’s actually some upside of it not potentially being a worst case scenario.

Absolutely. I was having this conversation where a gentleman told me that when you’re starting out, when you’re doing it like you mentioned, rather than having that what if situation, go all out. Then if you fall back, you gotta ask yourself, whatever you’re doing right now, whatever job that you have right now which is holding you back. If you come back, if you go out and do your thing for a couple of years, will you get back at this job at the same scale? The answer is yes, go back. Spend that time, do something on your own. Because if it clicks, then you are on your journey. If it doesn’t, you still have the job. You still have that job. There is nothing that you are losing apart from your own time which you have invested in and what you wanted to be. So that is fine. I love what you said. Everyone has their own journey, and you’re really being on that now after wanting to be on that journey, now you are on that journey. So that’s quite impeccable. I agree with Jeff.

Yeah, and the last point actually on that as well, too, that’s aligned with it, is if you’re really wanting to be truly entrepreneur, there’s nothing wrong with getting started as a side hustle and everything. But if you really want it to be your career and your passion, there is a point that you have to come to where you say, I have to jump all in. Because otherwise, you’re going to stretch yourself too thin, you’re going to get burnt out, and you’re not going to dedicate 100% of yourself to one thing. You’re not going to do it to the job that you’re maintaining. You’re not going to do it to your entrepreneurial journey as well, too. There’s nothing wrong with getting started on the side. But if you really want to see what you can do, you will eventually have to jump full-fledged into it.

Absolutely. I can’t agree with you more, Jeff. Good, Jeff. But this has been a lovely conversation. I’m sure our audiences would find a lot of insights and a lot of inputs which you have shared to be really valuable. So thank you so much once again. And for our audiences, if they want to reach out to you, how do they do that?

Yeah, a great place is LinkedIn, so they can find me on LinkedIn and also They can reach me through ethic-ads.com as well, too. And I know I have a profile on those as well. But connect with me on LinkedIn. I’d be happy to talk with anybody if they send me a DM.

All right, perfect. Thank you so much for taking your time to do this with us. Really appreciate it, man. Cheers.

Yeah. No, thanks for having me on.