Company: Boro Business Lab
Owners: Dean Heasley
Year Started: 2020
Employees: 11 – 25
Welcome to “An Agency Story,” a podcast series that delves into the journeys and insights of agency owners and leaders. Each episode offers a unique perspective on the challenges and triumphs of running an agency, with engaging conversations that reveal the heart and soul behind successful businesses. In this episode, we feature Dean Heasley, the founder of Boro Business Lab, a digital marketing agency that champions small, local businesses.
Dean Heasley shares his compelling journey from aspiring archaeologist and philosophy professor to a successful entrepreneur in the digital marketing space. The episode highlights Dean’s transition from working in federal probation and selling elevators to founding Boro Business Lab. Key themes include the importance of serving small, local businesses, the value of genuine client relationships, and the creation of a productized digital marketing formula tailored to client needs.
Dean’s story is rich with engaging anecdotes and insightful reflections. He discusses how his philosophy background enhances his approach to client interactions, emphasizing the importance of understanding diverse worldviews. Dean also shares the origins of Boro Business Lab, born from a collaboration with competitors-turned-friends, and how the agency’s seven-step marketing formula simplifies digital marketing for clients. Notable highlights include Dean’s humorous take on selling elevators, his strategic response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the innovative Burrow Prom charity event that combines fun with community support.
Tune in to hear Dean Heasley’s inspiring story and discover how Boro Business Lab navigates the complexities of digital marketing with integrity and creativity. This episode will leave you contemplating the power of authentic relationships in business and the innovative ways agencies can serve their communities. Don’t miss out on the chance to learn from Dean’s experiences and gain valuable insights for your own entrepreneurial journey.
You can listen to this episode of An Agency Story on your favorite podcast app:
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Show Transcript
Welcome to An Agency Story podcast where we share real stories of marketing agency owners from around the world. From the excitement of starting up the first big sale, passion, doubt, fear, freedom, and the emotional rollercoaster of growth, hear it all on An Agency Story podcast. An Agency Story podcast is hosted by Russel Dubree, successful agency owner with an eight figure exit turned business coach. Enjoy the next agency story.
Russel:
Welcome to An Agency Story podcast. I’m your host Russel. In this episode, we’re joined by Dean Heasley, the insightful founder of Boro Business Lab based in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Dean takes us through his fascinating journey from a philosophy student to a federal probation analyst and eventually to an elevator salesman before finding his true calling and digital marketing. Discover how his unique approach to serving small local businesses with a seven step marketing formula has set Boro Business Lab apart. Dean shares how forming the agency just before the COVID pandemic posed unexpected challenges and how I quirky jar of avocado dip became a symbol of the agency’s fun loving culture. Tune in to hear Dean story of perseverance creativity and the genuine relationships that drive his business success. Enjoy the story. Welcome to the show today, everyone. I have Dean Heasley with Boro Business Lab with us here today. Thank you so much for being on the show, Dean.
Dean:
Absolutely. Thank you for having me.
Russel:
I’m excited to have you. Let’s get started. What does Boro Business Lab do and who do you do it for?
Dean:
We are a digital marketing agency and we’re located about 20 miles south of Nashville. We do a few very specific things for local businesses. When I say local, I don’t just mean Murfreesboro. That’s where
Boro comes from,
Dean:
in the name. I don’t just mean middle Tennessee. I mean, any business that serves a local area. Single location, mom and pop businesses that pull their clients and customers from, I don’t know, 10 to 30 mile radius. That’s who we work for. We do seven very specific tactics within the digital marketing realm for our clients. We help with local directories, which is the number one thing. We help them get reviews. We build websites, we do social media, we do email marketing for clients. Step six of our formula is paid ads for us. That’s both Facebook
and/or Google
Dean:
ads. Last on the list is search engine optimization.
Russel:
Love it. I always appreciate companies that do help the small and local businesses. That’s a worthy noble cause. That’s why I do what I do. I just love, the small local business environment. Want to hear a lot more about what you do inside the business, but, let’s hop in the DeLorean and let’s go back. What prize was young Dean’s eye on back in the day?
Dean:
In elementary and middle school, I wanted to be an archeologist. Then in high school, I thought for sure I was going to be a philosophy professor. I actually went to a community college for two years to get a degree, to get a associates in philosophy. I found out that community college actually paid me money to go there. I got pretty good grades in high school. When I went, they were like, hey, we need more people like you. We’re going to just write you a check. I spent four years at community college collecting degrees. I got one in business and one in philosophy. Then I went to, Palm Beach Atlantic college where I got my bachelor’s in philosophy. While I was there, I decided that no one was going to pay me to philosophize for them, which is very disappointing. I don’t know why that’s not more of a thing. I decided I was going to get an MBA. I went to get an MBA, originally in finance, and I quickly learned that the people in the marketing department were having way more fun than the people in the finance department. So I switched over to marketing and eventually got an MBA in marketing. That’s where the marketing comes in. That’s what I was doing when I was young.
Russel:
Normally I may ask this question later, but I’m just so curious. How much has your philosophy knowledge and experience come into play in what you do in the agency today or not at all?
Dean:
I would love to say that it was a tremendous amount, but I think if anything, the philosophy degree taught me to take a step back and actually pay attention to how I’m thinking. I think that has helped much more, not so much on the marketing side, because what we do is very tactical and very, it’s ones and zeros is really a lot of what we do. But on the customer facing side, me being able to think about, okay, how is what they’re saying affecting me? What’s their worldview? How can I help them get to where they want to go? But also how do I interpret what they’re saying with what they’re actually thinking? That’s where I think the philosophy degree has really helped is in, the interpersonal stuff and just helping pay attention to worldview and understanding that everybody thinks in a different way. That’s really helped me a lot.
Russel:
I can see where that can come into play in a lot of different facets. So you got paid to get that part of that degree and it’s coming in to help, in your agency business. Got your MBA, I assume there’s some level of career. Walk us up to up until the point of actually beginning your foray into entrepreneurship.
Dean:
I got my degree. Lived in, grew up in South Florida, got married in South Florida. After I got my degree, I was, working for federal probation as a data quality analyst.
Russel:
That sounds exciting.
Dean:
I’m naturally an introvert. I would take a big thick file of someone’s life and sometimes misdeeds and quantify it and sending up to, send it up to the sentencing commission and the judicial committee. It was really entertaining and fun, but then we decided as a family, not just me and my wife, but her parents and my parents and her sister’s family, we all decided we’re going to leave South Florida. This was in 2007 and move, to Tennessee. A transfer within each of the federal judiciaries is not possible because each, this is getting into the weeds, but each judge is like his own little kingdom. There’s no transfers. You have to just quit and then get hired on somewhere else. I didn’t really know anybody where we were moving to. We just loved the area. A friend of mine from high school called me one day. He said, hey, I know you’re looking for a job. Do you want to come work for me selling elevators? I said, Craig, that’s stupid. That’s not a real job. Then he told me how much he was going to pay me and I said, I will sell an elevator for you, Craig, all day long.
Russel:
That’s hilarious.
Dean:
I actually spent almost a decade in national sales. I would get on an airplane at the beginning of the week and go travel to a different market and sell elevators and elevator stuff to elevator people. And then at the end of the week, I would get on an airplane and come home. I had little kids at home and I decided it was time to stop that. But I’m glad that I did that because working with small local elevator companies is one of the places that I really decided and crystallized in my own thoughts that I love working for small business. These are the people that are running the economy of the United States. This is the engine that drives all of what we’re doing. So much of our education is focused on, especially in marketing, you can get out of this marketing program and go work
at Procter Gamble.
Dean:
I don’t want to work for a hundred billion dollar corporation. I want to go help small people that are actually boots on the ground, turning wrenches and doing real work. I’m glad that I had almost a decade working with small business like that, but I’m also glad that I’m not on an airplane anymore away from my family. In 2016, I stopped working for corporate America and I started, I called it an agency at the time, but it was really just me. I was a freelancer and I started a company called Nashville Marketing Systems, and quickly found out that just like no one was going to pay me to philosophize, there are very few local businesses that want to pay someone to do brand strategy for them. I ended up building websites and doing SEO for local businesses. Once again, I, I, at the time I thought it was a problem, but it’s turned out to be really beneficial because now, four years into Nashville Marketing Systems
is how Boro Business Lab came to be.
Dean:
I had some strong specialties that I brought into,
to Boro Business Lab.
Russel:
Fascinating journey so far and you’ve certainly run the gamut in different roles. One might forget that people shop for elevators. So you had to leave corporate role. Obviously it’s this passion for small business the spark got lit and that became a focus. I’m sure many, many people are aware of the joys and sometimes the pains of small businesses that we got to come around the back door sometimes with those things they really need, but they only want part of it. It sounds like you, you got pretty adept at giving them all the benefits that they need over time.
Dean:
Exactly. You sit down with somebody over lunch or over coffee and, as an introvert, which is a benefit in sales, people say it’s not, but it is. You can ask three or four questions and get somebody talking and really figure out what their problems are. If you can help solve them, that’s great. If you can’t help solve them, the right thing to do is just remain in relationship with them, but not necessarily in a business relationship. Some of my best resources and assets were people in the elevator industry that I never did business with because they just didn’t need what I was selling. That has translated so well into marketing, into small business. That is how
Boro Business Lab got started.
Russel:
I want to hear that story and so we’ll jump to that, but I do love what you said there is. I think the world, if is getting smarter about this idea that sales isn’t talking, sales is educating, sales is listening, sales is providing and sharing value and not this gift of gab business as much anymore. Takes all kinds. You turned into a different business. How did that evolve? What did that look like?
Dean:
When I started Nashville Marketing Systems in 2016, was working out of my house, just like every freelancer does, but I didn’t want to bring clients to my house cause my kids were really young. They would step on a Lego and sue me or something. I joined a coworking space, downtown Murfreesboro. There I met two competitors, but we became friends and each of them had their own specialty. I met Josh Griffin. He had started a company called Creative Burrow and he was so fast and so good at building websites. We called his, system, the website factory. Then I met Jeremy Lee. This was also in 2016 and he had come out of, the membership site
industry and he’s super creative
Dean:
and really strategic. Has a really sharp brain for helping people and helping companies with their marketing messaging. I don’t have that. I’m fairly analytic. We kept trading business back and forth. We did a full day event in 2017 at the Chamber of Commerce and we
called it the Boro Biz Lab.
Dean:
We each talked for 90 minutes and then we had somebody else come in and do a talk. It was so much fun. We had a great time working together. We stayed in touch over the next couple of years, traded business back and forth. We decided to do a second
Boro
Dean:
Biz Lab. In early February of 2020. We did that and we sold like 50 seats. It went really, really well. We had a great time. We decided, let’s join forces. We’ll become a real agency. If we throw all our clients into one pot, maybe we’ll be able to actually hire somebody so that we don’t have to push all the buttons ourselves. On February 28th,
we formed Boro Business Lab
Dean:
and then two weeks later, the world shut down.
Russel:
As you’re saying this and just, and then the synergies and just different areas of expertise that I thought was coming to my mind is like the event where you’re forming the Avengers of a small business marketing unit.
Dean:
Mm hmm. It was. Yep. That’s actually on our website, but don’t tell anybody because Disney will probably sue us.
Russel:
All right, secret safe. Hopefully no one from Disney’s listening to this podcast. What was that like? Obviously there’s just a lot going on at the onset of COVID, but was there like any, just even conversation, like, we’re doomed to fail? We just started a business and then the whole world is collapsing. What were your guys thinking? What was your thought process during that time?
Dean:
We had two very distinct thoughts because we each kept our own companies going. We didn’t throw in all at the same time, all during Covid. We each were still running our own individual companies, which turned out amazingly to be in digital marketing during Covid. I hate to say a global pandemic was a good thing, but for digital marketing agencies, it was really a good thing because every local business, you know, businesses that have been around for 30 or 40 years and the owner says, I still advertise in the yellow pages, not anymore. They all started to pay a lot of attention to what was happening digitally. That was a huge benefit for us. The other thought, at least for me was, wow, we really are dumb. We started a business right, right before a pandemic. We didn’t actually sell anything
officially on Boro Business Lab paper until
Dean:
I think July 2020, because we spent three months just holed up in our house. Which for me as an introvert, I was like, this is the best. Love this. I have a valid excuse not to go outside. It’s perfect.
Russel:
I kind of felt the same way. I think I’m more in the middle between introvert and extrovert, but I can’t say I didn’t mind just no pressure to go anywhere whatsoever.
Dean:
Exactly. That was a great pause for me. There was about a month in April where we literally didn’t go anywhere and it was a lot of fun. Once we came out of that, then we really hit the ground running and we started focusing on getting clients specifically for Business Lab. It just, it grew. Part of what we, the seven steps I talked about, we call the get more customers marketing formula. The reason that I think it resonates with people is it helps to take the confusion out of digital marketing. There’s a lot of confusion with it because I mean, it is literally confusing, but there’s also a lot of companies that, that use that confusion to prey on people in an what I consider to be an unethical way. We don’t do that. We’ve got the seven steps. Each one is a service and we sell each of those services at a menu pricing. It’s just like
going to Chick-fil-A
Dean:
with the number one and the number three. All right. We got that. We do the number one and the number three all day long. There’s no confusion about the pricing. We don’t care if you’re selling frozen yogurt, or we have one client. He’s a doctor, but he provides prosthetic limbs for people. The price is the same, no matter, no matter where your pricing is as the client, we charge the same. That resonates with people too, because there’s a lot of agencies that just plain take advantage.
Russel:
I think it speaks to, and we’re on the leading edge of understanding that, hey, as marketers, we need to productize this. We need to have very defined solutions so that one, we can understand it and deliver results consistently. But also that our clients and our potential clients can understand that. We’re getting there, but it sounds like you were on the leading edge of this. How did you go about this process? Where did that idea come from to essentially build a digital marketing product in this way? What was your inspiration outside of maybe trying to avoid some bad practices that existed?
Dean:
When I had Nashville Marketing Systems, I sold a service that I called Local Foundation. Originally came from John Jantz, who you probably are familiar with. When I had Nashville Marketing, I was in his network. He is just, he’s fantastic. He’s a good, good, genuine human. He had the idea of, you should, as a marketing company, you should have a couple packages that you sell and it’s the same thing more or less for everybody. I just picked the least expensive one because most of my clients were sub 2 million a year revenue companies and it’s high value and I sold the heck out of it. I’ll give you a little bit of insight
into the way Boro Business Lab works.
Dean:
We get together, we go on a retreat twice a year for a couple of days and we pitch ideas to each other. The first idea that we accepted at that pitch was what we turned into Five Gold Stars, which is, step one is local directories. Google, my business optimization, all that stuff, and reviews. We bundle that together. We call that Five Gold Stars and that’s what we started selling. But then we realized that people would come to us and say, hey, do you also build websites? Initially we created a
thing called Boro Sites where
Dean:
we would just charge monthly for the website, but we got burnt a couple of times. That model didn’t exactly fly, but basically we had, we created the seven step formula with no intention of providing five of those services. Every time we did a presentation, we’d talk about, okay, we do these three and then you’re on your own for steps four, five, six, and seven. Clients were like, just, just do that. Why won’t you do my social media? We hired somebody to do some of the creative work for us. The idea of the formula came before the idea of offering everything as a package. Now we just, we do everything. We do all of the steps.
Russel:
I’m going to just read between the lines. It sounds part strategic and listening as we even go back to that part of the conversation, and then part maybe twisting your arm, or was there any element of that in there?
Dean:
Clients would twist our arm a little bit. After three or four times of somebody saying, please do this for me. I will literally give you money to do this and us saying no, we were like, okay, two things are happening here. One, we’re leaving money on the
table, which as a business
Dean:
owner is dumb, but two, the market is literally speaking to us. It’s saying, we want you to do this. We ended up doing it. One of our core ideas is to create opportunities for other people. We had an intern at the time, she was still, she hadn’t graduated yet from MTSU and we hired her and she basically created our social media
and email service
Dean:
offerings. We created that opportunity for her to build, an entire service offering for a marketing agency.
Russel:
Wow. Think a lot of times, maybe some agencies end up in these, again, it’s not from any bad place. What can I sell? How can I generate revenue? Not necessarily, hey, here’s a specific group of people. Here’s the needs they have. Let us go serve those needs because they’re asking a lot or because we’ve just identified that as a pain point solution. That is really gets down to where, I don’t know where it originated, but right. There’s the quote out there of smartest thing to do in business is to, find out what your customers want and give it to them. I want to say it was like Henry Ford or something like that.
Dean:
Right. We literally, we just did what our clients asked us to do.
Russel:
Yeah and here you are. Sounds like it’s worked really well for you. You said, I can’t remember exactly how you worded it here, but you just, how you like to create opportunities for people. What are other ways that has, that thought process has manifested itself in your business?
Dean:
We hire lots of contractors to do, social media work because it’s one of the more time intensive things. We’ve actually gone out of our way to deliberately think about, okay. How can we help as many people as we can? Especially stay at home moms and, younger people with younger children that maybe aren’t able to be in the workplace, but they still want to contribute some financially. If they do good work, we’ll bring them on and they can, work within our process and do some social media. They can earn some money and we can serve our clients really well. We create opportunities in that way. I’ll tie this in a second, but one of our other core values is. We are going to have fun. There’s lots of laughter in our office. If you come to the office, you can sign the wall in the bathroom and write crazy stuff on the wall. We try to have fun, but a couple of years ago, one of our clients and friends, his wife is in charge of a thing
called Isaiah 117 house,
Dean:
which is a charity for, foster kids. They build a whole house. Everything is brand new. When foster kids are in transition from their, unstable situation, it normally takes a couple of days for them to find a placement. They would just hang out at the DCS office, like sleep on the floor. it’s terrible. This Isaiah house is a house where these kids go during the transition. And so we said, we think the eighties is really fun. We think that it would be really fun to go to prom as an adult knowing all the things that you know as an adult and not the idiotic things you knew as an 18 year old. For two years, we threw the
Boro prom, which
Dean:
was eighties themed, adults only prom and all of the proceeds from that went to Isaiah house. We created an opportunity for people in Murfreesboro. Actually, we had people drive from out of state to come here. My wife’s cousin never went to prom. She was homeschooled and her husband had never been to prom. They drove from North Carolina to come to prom and they went to prom together as adults. We created an opportunity for people to have fun and people to have a good time, and also we donated a bunch of money to a charity that we’re all close to, and we know that the people that run it and trust them. We try to create opportunities, any time we come up with a crazy idea. Which is fairly frequently.
Russel:
I can only imagine. That sounds amazing and awesome. I want to go to an eighties prom and I went to nineties proms, but I still probably wish I would have gone to an eighties prom. 16 candles. I guess that wasn’t prom but it seemed like it was as a school dance, that whole vibe. I can totally dig it. I guess there’s no shortage of teenage prom movies from the eighties now that I’m starting to go through them in my mind.
Dean:
Nope. John Hughes made a career out of it.
Russel:
Yeah, he did. He
listened to what his
Russel:
customers want and
gave it to’em
Russel:
multiple times over.
Dean:
That’s right.
Russel:
You’ve honed in on a product, you’ve got a great culture and team. You’ve got, obviously great partnership that’s working together. Where are you trying to take all this? What does the future hold for you guys?
Dean:
We’re actually going away in a month and a half to talk about what scaling continues to look like for us. We could just keep selling and keep hiring people and doing the same thing over and over again, or we could create opportunities for people other than our employees and contractors and clients. We’re talking about what that looks like, but our goal really, and my personal mission
is to bring
Dean:
some faith and honesty and integrity to the marketing industry. It’s not everybody, so please don’t misunderstand, I’m good friends with a lot of very good agency owners, but there are a lot of people out there providing services that they have no business providing, and they’re essentially just stealing money from small business owners. And that’s terrible. Part of my mission is to continue to grow and continue to let people know that there are companies that do really good, honest work, and it doesn’t have to be confusing and it doesn’t have to be expensive.
Russel:
Absolutely love that thought process and philosophy. It’s not an uncommon thing that I feel like is somewhat the mission of a lot of folks like yourself these days is how do we get the stink off of marketing as a service? That’s become the new age mission of a lot of agencies out there, which I’m here for and I’m all behind it. I’m excited for you. I’m excited for what the future holds. I can’t wait for, to hear more stories of eighties proms and the endless amounts of opportunities you’re going to create for other people. As we wrap up here, last big question for you, Dean. Are entrepreneurs born or are they made?
Dean:
I honestly think that they’re made because I am, personality type and upbringing, I am probably the last person that should or would be an entrepreneur. But I just sucked it up and did it. I think anyone with the intestinal fortitude to do it, can do it, provided they are in it for the long haul. I’ve never done anything where I have felt so proud one minute and the next minute just been utterly aghast at how bad the day can go. That emotional rollercoaster, it stinks, but it is what an entrepreneur’s day or even hour looks like. You got to buckle up for the ride. I’ll tell you a very brief story. When I was in sales, at each company I was in sales for, it usually took about six months to start to get some traction. During that six months, I would tell myself they’re paying me
just to knock.
Dean:
That’s all they’re paying me for. They’re paying me not to quit. I’m glad I did it because as an entrepreneur, I’ve gone way longer than six months and it’s been pretty bleak. But just not quitting is I think the key to the whole thing.
Russel:
I love that. Maybe not so much in the early days of entrepreneurship, but I appreciate so much more now how important runway is to figure out all these challenges, as you were saying, and difficult obstacles we have to overcome. Just the ups and downs and just time and runway for moving in a good general direction. We’ll get there. You can get there. Think of it as paying yourself not to quit, or you’re doing just enough to pay yourself not to quit as you go, per Dean’s elevator story. If people want to know more about Boro Business Lab, where can they go?
Borobusinesslab.com. That’s
Dean:
B O R O Business Lab, L A B. com. You can find us on
social media, Boro Business Lab
Dean:
and all of those fun things, but we’re here in middle Tennessee and we would love to hear from you.
Russel:
All
right, well head there
Russel:
folks. Middle Tennessee is absolutely beautiful. Dean, thank you so much for taking the time to be on the show today to share all your wonderful insights to champion for the power of being an introvert and you can still be successful in so many ways. I really appreciate you taking the time to share all that with us today.
Dean:
Absolutely. I appreciate you having me
on Russel. We hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of An Agency Story podcast where we share real stories of marketing agency owners from around the world. Are you interested in being a guest on the show? Send an email to podcast@performancefaction.com. An Agency Story is brought to you by Performance Faction. Performance Faction offers services to help agency owners grow their business to 5 million dollars and more in revenue. To learn more, visit performancefaction.com.
Dean:
We have a little display box of, we had a ribbon cutting cause we’ve got an office and, the display box is deep. On top of the display box, we have bottle of avocado. When we were
promoting Boro prom,
Dean:
it was like 10 of us off from owners and employees and contractors that got dressed up in eighties gear. We walked around the square in Murfreesboro, which is like our downtown. It’s got a historic courthouse and all that fun stuff. We were filming content to promote ticket sales for the prom, we walked by, it was on the sidewalk. There was a half open bottle of our can or jar of avocado dip. We just thought that was the funniest thing and how random and how stupid. Two weeks later, two of the women that work here, they were getting out of their, fitness studio on the square and they, it had moved. From two weeks prior, this same half eaten jar of avocado dip. For Christmas, one year, one of our contractors gave us a jar of avocado dip, and that’s on display above our diorama of the ribbon cutting. That’s just a little bit of an insight into the psyche and the
atmosphere that is Boro Business Lab, where we
Dean:
really take it seriously but we really don’t take it seriously.
Russel:
Yeah, I love this. Insight into your culture through this mystery can of avocado dip.
Dean:
Yes.
