Company: Solid Digital
Owners: Jesse McCabe
Year Started: 2007
Employees: 11 – 25
Welcome to another engaging episode of “An Agency Story”! In this episode, we sit down with Jesse McCabe of Solid Digital, a web design and marketing agency known for building strong foundations for their clients’ marketing strategies. Jesse shares his journey from a young computer enthusiast to a successful agency owner, providing a deep dive into the evolution of Solid Digital.
Throughout the episode, Jesse discusses the significant shift in Solid Digital’s approach, moving from one-off website redesigns to a more sustainable model that evolves with their clients’ brands. This change underscores the agency’s commitment to delivering long-term value. Jesse also reflects on his early interest in computers, sparked by his father’s electronics repair work, which led him to a career in programming and eventually, web design.
A highlight of the conversation is Jesse’s recounting of his first web project—building a site for an Amish furniture company during his college years. This project not only marked the beginning of his professional journey but also provided invaluable experience in web development.
Jesse’s story takes an interesting turn as he talks about the challenges of running an agency, including a pivotal year in 2014 when Solid Digital faced significant financial hurdles. This period tested his resilience and forced him to hone his sales and marketing skills, eventually leading to a transformation of the business.
Listeners will be particularly intrigued by Jesse’s insights on balancing quality work with a great client experience, emphasizing that a positive working relationship can sometimes outweigh the technical aspects of a project. He also shares the importance of knowing when to say no to projects that don’t align with the agency’s capabilities or values.
As a cherry on top, Jesse talks about his latest venture—a professional haunted house business inspired by his son’s successful Halloween-themed YouTube channel. This new project showcases Jesse’s entrepreneurial spirit and willingness to explore new business models.
Tune in to hear Jesse McCabe’s candid reflections on the highs and lows of his entrepreneurial journey and gain valuable insights into building a successful, sustainable business. This episode will leave you contemplating the importance of resilience, adaptability, and the power of a well-crafted client experience. Don’t miss it!
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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 Russell. In this episode we’re joined by Jesse McCabe, the founder of Solid Digital based in Chicago, Illinois. Jesse shares his inspiring journey from a young computer enthusiast to leading a successful digital agency, emphasizing their unique approach of evolving with their clients brands rather than periodic redesigns. What I really appreciate in this episode is Jesse’s passion for quality work and great client experiences, which has paved the way for solid digitals success. Enjoy the story. Welcome to the show today. Everyone. I have Jesse McCabe with solid digital with us here today. Thank you so much for being on the show today, Jesse.
Jesse:
Thanks for having me, Russel. Appreciate it.
Russel:
I’m very excited for this episode as well. If you don’t mind start us off, what does Solid Digital do and who do you do it for?
Jesse:
We’re a pretty straightforward web design and marketing agency. Our intention with our clients is that we help build a strong foundation for them. Working with their marketing team and developing the website as a hub for everything that they’re doing. We built, some programs that we think really help leverage that foundation to make it a valuable asset for for the brand. Our evolution is, at one point we know we were doing a lot of websites and we just redesign a website and move to the next project. I just felt how valuable are these sites to the organizations we’re building them for? Can we even put a, like a dollar amount or some kind of value to it? Also like, why do brands redesign their website every three to four years? Why can’t we just evolve with the brand and keep it valuable? That’s our intention. Our intention is we’re going to help you get going. We’re going to have something really strong that we can utilize and then we’re going to keep it updated and we’re going to help your team use it.
Russel:
I can really appreciate that. Not only because we had the same evolution, but I actually recently just got some landscaping done. And the sinking feeling was that today is the best day that it’s ever going to look. And that was not a great feeling after making a significant investment like that. So just love the thought process can see that where that really benefits folks. I want to hear more about all the things that you’ve done in your agency journey, but before we get there, I assume that you weren’t born out of the womb building websites for people. What was young, Jesse thinking he was going to do with his life?
Jesse:
i’m old enough that wasn’t even a possibility until a certain age of this being a career. I don’t think like there’s any chance like in second grade I can say, I want to be a, a web designer. I will say like at, at the early age of, eight or nine, like, my dad repaired electronics. Even though we didn’t have a lot of money we had access to computers at a early age. He was good at repairing them and building them. I remember building computers, PCs, at a, at an early age. As soon as I started doing any kind of programming, I just this was what I was going to do. I started by typing basic from Mad Magazine into the computer and, seeing what that came to. Doing my own little games. I had a Atari ST, which is, Atari’s only PC computer. I used to do a lot of stuff there. I went to school for computer science. I didn’t end up with computer science, but it was, just my passion. I even, had other passions, like doing music and all these other things. But I think I’ve just always come back to, making computers do cool things is, is what I like to do. The web didn’t exist when I was a kid. I was on the path to, it being my thing.
Russel:
That sounds like you’ve ended up in the perfect spot. Went to college, got a computer science degree, at what point did you decide to start an agency?
Jesse:
As a computer programmer, and I was even thinking about this before the recording. When I was graduating school, late nineties. There was definitely the dot com boom, right? Everything was happening, but it was still very much, you’re going to go and you’re going to go work for an awesome company and you make a bunch of money just being a programmer. That was, I think, my intention. I didn’t graduate from college thinking, oh, one day I want to own my own business. I think that actually came a little bit later. But I went and worked at a big hosting company. I worked at, I wouldn’t have called it an agency, it’s more of a company. And then worked for a couple startups, but it wasn’t until I actually got into what I would consider, like, agency experience they’re doing advertising, they’re doing media buys, they’re doing a variety of different things and they’re doing, at the time called interactive, where I got to find my place. I really liked that atmosphere and the way that we were working with different companies doing different things. How like the technology that we’re building applies to this bigger campaign and it’s going to last for only six months and then we got to do something else. That was always I don’t know, just more intriguing to me than working on the same product every day. It wasn’t, until I left that agency and really just started freelancing. We moved cross country and I just decided, well, it seems like I could scale this.
Russel:
Everything just seems to lined up so far, not only in terms of what you were doing as a kid to be exact, but just seems to be a very natural contiguous path that you’ve been on. And one of the things that did forget to ask a very interesting thing I knew from your story was the first website that you built. It’s probably maybe not the client or the website you would think exists in the world and especially during such an early timeframe. Can you share more about that?
Jesse:
It’s a good trivia question because I don’t think anybody would guess, but yeah. I grew up in a very, very small town, like 800 people in central Illinois. Kind of close to the University of Illinois, which was a pretty good hub for technology at the time. But there’s a lot of Amish communities that kind of circle around that area and so the first website that I ever built was for Amish furniture company that one of my best friend’s dad worked at. They were extremely progressive. They wanted to get their product catalog online and it was a great first experience for me. I actually took a lot of learning from that project. I was solo on it. I was doing everything. But it was actually great, really. From that project, I got a lot of experience that really helped me in, in the next things that I was doing. But that was during college. Part of the reason, like going back to like why I didn’t end up in computer science was that while I didn’t mind it, it wasn’t like, this was 94 to 98. The web was blowing up. I was learning so much outside of school, just doing that kind of work. At some point I just stopped being interested in what they were teaching us the curriculum of computer science at that time. It was like hash tables and recursion and all this stuff where it’s yeah, but I want to learn HTML and JavaScript. I decided that I could learn other things from school that maybe I couldn’t learn and in my outside of school experiences. Business communication, that kind of stuff that I think actually helped me quite a bit as I got into the real world.
Russel:
As someone with it has two kids in college. I’m totally dreading that question, right? Where they call one day and say, Hey dad, how about three more years of this? But it sounds like you didn’t turn into the eight year college student, what a great pivot, especially to realize, I don’t know that my young self would’ve realized anyway, that I can go learn, I’m already ahead of the game here. So I’m going to switch my majors. I don’t know. My folks might’ve just stayed with the status quo.
Jesse:
I wouldn’t say I was that smart. It was just like, I’m not learning anything over here, but this class is really interesting and I’m learning a lot. It seems like this is a good skill to have. Business communications, I was just like, I, this is not anything I’ve ever thought about. That was the class I was just recently talking about, like the first day of that class was so awesome. The professor had us go around. It was like a, a room of 40 kids. The first kid said their name, the second kid had to say the first kid’s name and their name. And then the third kid had to say the first kid’s name. Second kid, same third name. It went all around the entire room. Most people couldn’t remember them all. Some people could remember them all, but at the end of it, he went around, he said, everybody’s name. He said, it’s really important that you remember people’s names. It’s like number one rule I’m going to tell you in business communications is, you can remember people’s names. To this day, that was like a, oh, wow. That’s awesome. I’m going to keep keeping that in mind.
Russel:
All right. Going back to when you had started an agency with sounds like you went from freelancer to trying to do something bigger. What was the first step where you’re like, all right, this isn’t just on my own, but I’m in this for the real deal for the long haul.
Jesse:
Again, it was pushed to the point where, you know, I didn’t know what I could do or what I couldn’t do. I was in a position of I have a network of people. I have a skill. Let me see what, comes of it. But, even after my first year, I think I cleared, back then this was a lot, like 145,000 dollars. Billable work for, just as a freelancer. People were, kept coming, asking me to do more. That was when I was like, I think the risk is pretty low here. I could bring somebody else on. My business partner, Travis, who had worked at the agency that I left previously was moonlighting for me, like just as a contractor doing, extra work to help with overflow. I basically said to him, hey, like it’s either you or someone like you, because I can’t do this on my own anymore. Luckily he, he said, yeah, well, let’s do it. And then we tripled it the next year. That’s all the validation we needed. It was after year one where we saw that kind of growth. We had been like co managers in the previous agency. We really liked managing teams and, and growing talent. That’s always been a passion of mine too, is there’s a bit, finding myself in the leadership position and for him as well. How do we build great processes with great people and make that all work? After that first year, that’s, that was easy for us to start really focusing on like, all right, how do we get to the next step?
Russel:
Sometimes it can be really hard to appreciate just how exploratory this timeframe was, in terms of the web and digital marketing. We didn’t know the skills to how to build things, especially what that looked like to do from a service perspective and then throw the whole client situation in there and a lot of opportunity, ripe. For some issues during those early days. I don’t know if you had a similar type experience, how do we make this work? Not only again, from the complicated delivery, we just didn’t have the amount of resources back then that we do have in 2024. On how to go about this whole agency business.
Jesse:
The world is way better now, I think, from an agency perspective. I was thinking about how much, even at the old agency, like, you were building everything from scratch. There was no real, like, oh, de facto solution that you’re going to build this framework from. There was a lot of, late or all nighters, trying to figure stuff out, big teams building on a variety of different, things that are happening on the site. I was working on seven figure websites, back then. Today, those would be an e-commerce store like that you could probably get up in a couple of weeks now. It was obviously very different in the way that we approach things. I think that because of the technical effort that was required to launch something, it meant that we couldn’t focus so much on the things that we focus on now, which I think are much more effective. We’re able to help the brands get things that they need in place quicker. We can start working on what I think is really the most important parts. I loved the transition between technical effort to more strategy effort. That was, felt way better. For me, as, as we were working with our brands, like, just a simple thing is like the amount of time that we had to use for in QA compared to now, testing and making sure that things were working. It was stressful. The client would typically be unhappy. There was times where we were just unhappy with our work, even though we really couldn’t have predicted the things that happened, performance was always a problem.
Russel:
Right. Not to mention internet Explorer.
Jesse:
Yeah, yeah. IE6, so Nestle was our big, the big brand that we used to work for it, that at the previous agency. I remember, like, we were dealing with AOL issues like constantly. And then that transitioned to IE6 and we thought IE6, Internet Explorer 6 was like, the greatest thing after we got through the AOL challenge, and then of course, as Firefox and everything else started to pick up, then IE6 was like the Albatross, and so it was, I’m so glad.
Russel:
One of the things that I love that you shared about your story. And I think this sometimes hits people on the head really fast as this idea of I’ve got to get good or at least better at sales, or if nothing else get comfortable with the idea of selling myself, selling my company, selling to others. What was that journey like for you?
Jesse:
That was probably the most challenging. I would add marketing into that mix. I felt okay with my sales ability, because if they’re coming to us for a website and they wanted that website to function in a certain way, I had enough experience of, hey, this is the way that we could build it and start working with them on, like, a solution. I think that always tends to work with a prospect of hey, we’re going to work through this with you. I don’t have all the answers, but we’re gonna, solve it together. That has always been my mentality, but in the first five years, five to seven years, everything that we got was based on referrals. Previous people that we had worked with that are going to a new company and now they want to work with us again. Recurring work. That was great. Then there was this period of time, like 2014, where our, five anchor clients that we had, something happened to all of them that, that either they left us or they slowed down work with us incredibly. That was like the time where I was like, oh, I gotta figure out how to sell, like really sell. People need to find out who we are. That was a big challenge because it wasn’t just oh, I can be a, solutions architect. I have to actually think about what do we offer? It took some time and it took some experiences. I went out and started to join entrepreneur groups so I could, learn from other entrepreneurs, even if they were in other, verticals, like, how, how they sell. I got a lot of experience from that. Put myself out there just as an individual. Networking, knowing more people and that helped. But we actually hired a sales consultancy to come in and I think that was a game changer for us, like big time. Then it was also not just this isn’t just my personality. It’s not just like building a relationship with somebody. It’s actually, like, doing something that’s repeatable, that’s trainable. That we can, iterate on, but we’re always going to have the same process. It changed everything for us to this day. Once I established that we have a sales process and once I can meet, like I, now I communicate upfront with any of our, prospects who come to us and I say, hey, this is our process. This is how we do things. This is going to be your experience through our sales process. It changed the dynamic of are they in control or am I in control of how things are going to go? That’s like the power dynamic that I think always has to be, like, worked through. I can be more aware of am I going to, am I actually going to win this deal? Or am I going down a path where I’m just going to feel very frustrated at the end of it? Maybe I should just, you know, cut my losses now.
Russel:
I’m sure everyone’s ears perked up in the initial words of sales consultancy, right? There’s a billion of those out there trying to promise, you know, returns and different things like that. It’s great to hear a successful story. It just comes down to this idea, you have a challenge in your business, how important it is to find a professional, find a group, whatever that might be for you and take a chance on seeing what they can provide or the value they can bring into your business. It doesn’t take a lot of ideas or alterations to your path. Or just seeing things from a different perspective to really get an ROI. Just help get unstuck faster is one way to look at it or help get, avoid getting stuck period.
Jesse:
The sales consultant was actually easy to hire because I really liked their sales process. I saw myself in that sales process where I was like, if I, yeah, that was awesome. If I could do that, like, that would be great. I liked that experience. I didn’t feel like I was being sold to, it wasn’t like somebody knocking on my door. I got a value out of it and I could walk away right now and feel like, yeah, that was worth the hour and a half that I spent with them. I took a lot out of that experience with them to make the decision of I, I think you’ll be a good coach for me.
Russel:
Yeah, I love that. It speaks to this idea that, talking to a lot of folks where their primary lead source is the referral and how critical and important it is to evolve as an agency to go beyond the referral. And this whole idea of that, ultimately what happens too, is a quick conversation and proposal doesn’t close the deal either when we look at those scenarios and you just have to be a lot more intentional about the sales process. The early stage relationship building. And there might even be this idea of education or giving an experience that allows people to get more comfortable, that you’re the solution on the other side of their problems, issues, or challenges, et cetera. And that sounds like where you.
Jesse:
I don’t feel like I actually changed. I didn’t have to change who I was. I was talking about, like I was a solution seller at the beginning. It was just like more on the technical side. Now it’s still solution selling, but I think it’s got, like, with the process and with the, with the clear path of what we’re going to be doing is the same thing. I’m still being able to be the guide here. While we’re not like talking technically, I’m talking more about, like, what our process is, what the experience is going to be like for you. There’s little things that I think that we do during our sales process that win us deals. They’re not big, crazy things. It’s just little things, and those little things are the trick in my mind. I don’t have to be anybody different.
Russel:
Yeah, it really just points to this idea and the importance of, and probably can’t ring the ring at home enough of creating a great experience that there’s no magical tool, just like any process in the business, but, start with the idea of wanting to create a great experience, optimize that experience. And it sounds like you’ve baked that into your business. I don’t know when it occurred in your chronology, but in so much as you’re comfortable talking about it. I know there was a rise and fall within your business, at least just in terms of size. That I imagine was probably could be a whole podcast episode unto itself. What was, what was going on? What happened there? If you don’t mind sharing.
Jesse:
Like I said, like that first, those first couple of years, they were exciting. I just remember all of our conversations being like aspirational and just, full of energy. Maybe it’s because I was, 17 years younger. I, like, feel very happy and content right, right now in this moment. Where we’re at and how we’re doing things and we’re much more intentional and it’s not exciting, it’s not like I wake up excited every day about oh, all these opportunities. It’s just, it’s way more comfortable. It’s hard for me not to say, like, right now is actually a high point in the agency. The low points, I mean, those are the ones that, they test you. There’s so many times where we were so close to not hitting payroll. There are times where I just think back and I’m like, well, man, if we, if that didn’t come right at that exact moment, if that opportunity didn’t come, I don’t think we’d be, we’d exist right now. There’s probably like three different points, in our story where, we got, I would say extremely lucky that, that somebody came to us and approached us at that exact moment. Financially I’ve been in the situation where we completely maxed out our, line of credit. We had no other option, right? I had to like, get a check, beg somebody to pay me early so that I could wire a check to our payroll company so that we could actually cover our payroll. Those were not fun times. There was like a good year where I think that I was not mentally, doing well. That was tough. There were definitely times where I was like, I just think it might be easier for me to just go work somewhere else right now rather than do this.
Russel:
I’m sure many folks out there are saying, yeah, I know the feeling. And then reminds me very similar to a story in our own journey that we, had that turnaround year, but things were still pretty bleak. And I was just felt if the wind blew a different direction, mailman got a flat tire and the check didn’t come in. We might’ve been toast. That in fact did not happen. And we were able to turn things around and it all worked out. Maybe I’m inferring too much, but you didn’t have this cataclysmic event. Cause I know, yeah, you’re not in, you’re not the same in terms of people as big as you once were, but that there maybe wasn’t this big fall moment where you. You started here, like almost like a stock crash. And then, you had to recover from that. The word that I keep hearing in, in getting from you is this is where you’re at today is contentment. And I’m just kind of curious, how did you get to this happy Nirvana place, Jesse?
Jesse:
Well, that I think wasn’t intentful because like through that one year, the 2014 dark year, you know, we came out of that saying we don’t ever want to be in that position ever again. That’s where we started to, as we all know, as agency owners, it’s like, the pendulum is never in the middle. It’s always either, I don’t have enough work and I have all these resources or I have too much work and not enough resources. Finding ways to be more flexible with your, the resources that you need is really important. Whether it’s I’m going to leverage more technology. I’m going to love them, leverage more contractors. I’m going to scale back the scope of the things that we’re going to do, going to be more focused on, these recurring programs. Whatever it is, to me, the most important thing that we had to figure out. At one point we had 33 full time employees, no contractors. That was, like, where we struggled with making payroll, keeping people busy enough that they didn’t feel like things were bad or, not overworking too many people. But for me, that, that size, was beyond the capacity that I felt comfortable with. It felt like we had the quality control that we want. That’s still a small number in terms of comparing to other sized agencies and even agencies that I worked at. But I think it always depends on what kind of product are you trying to produce? What kind of experience are you trying to produce for your clients? If you want a high touch engagement and you want them to feel like they’re, your best client. For me, that number was too high. Every year we come together, we talk about what’s our strategy for this year. One of our strategies was like, how do we be able to flex? We very intentionally worked on that. That meant that, you we did make cuts. Purposefully making cuts, even when we weren’t like financially bad, but just that was, the right call for us structurally. Finding ways that we could say no on sales where we knew, like, that project is going to kill us, like, we cannot do that. That was a risk financially that, didn’t necessarily make sense at the beginning, but, like, looking back on it, it was like, oh yeah, I’m glad we didn’t do that. We were able to be more purposeful in the, in the work that we took. Now we’re down to, 11, a third of that, I would say we probably have about the same amount of contractors. We’re really good with our contractors. We try to give them heads up on how we’re going to be working with them and how long we’re going to need them. They trust us and we found, we’ve had long term relationships with them. That’s really worked to our advantage, but that also takes effort too, because what you don’t want is you don’t want, like, we really rely on this person and the skills that they bring to the table, but they have other clients and there’s times when they’re just not going to be available to us. We kind of want to be the one that they always look at as yeah, I’m really happy when I’m working with Solid Digital. They’re my happy place. I know I have to do this other stuff sometimes, but man, every time that they asked me to do something, I’m going to do it.
Russel:
As you’re talking through this, I’m just taking note of the underlying principles as you’re explaining this. But one just coming to mind is know thyself and live there and stay there and act accordingly if you will. And this idea that not all money is green. I think that’s always an important reminder where, It can be tough when cash is a little tighter and what, in terms of our comfortability there, but money is still not all green, even in those situations. And then really how important quality is. And I think sometimes people say that or they’ll, they know what’s important, but how much are you willing to die on that hill? And really live that and stand behind An unequivocal quality and how important that is in the journey. Did we miss any other underlying tenets there, as you think about your own journey?
Jesse:
Quality is somewhat subjective. I do want to have the best quality work that we can create, but I also would add experience to that as well. Sometimes that’s overlooked in the agency world. Your client is on a journey, especially when it’s their first project with you. Make it feel really good and celebrate accomplishments, for them as you go along, so that at the end of it, they’re like, that was a unique experience. I’ve never really felt that way working with an agency before. I would say 99 percent of the work that we do, people are pretty happy with that work. Overall, like, we’re getting good marks on it. I think you could even make the case that I could do a little less quality work if I provide a really great experience to the client. That risk of like, maybe I didn’t hit all the marks, but if they feel, like, really good about the working relationship, it has a big impact.
Russel:
I really feel like we’re born of the same agency, mother, if that can be a thing that, we absolutely said the same thing in our business and part of our, Simon Sinek golden circle for us was that our, how was create a great experience for our customers, for our team, for our customer’s customers. And how that was really motivating for us. We used to say something very similar, Hey, we can build a really crappy website, but if they had a great experience, they probably continue to do business with us, but we could build the best website in the world. And if it was a crappy experience, they wouldn’t come back. Really great takeaway there. If you don’t mind sharing, what does the future look like when you look at Solid Digital?
Jesse:
The future for us, the challenge I have right now is we’re at capacity, right? We cannot take any more projects on, pretty much for the rest of the year. I’m now telling people like, if you want to hire us, you’ve got to be looking at kicking off end of Q4 or beginning of Q1. I would like to continue to have that type of approach to the way that we’re doing business. If people really appreciate the work that we do and think that we’re unique and special enough to wait for, that’s an awesome place to be. It’s a really difficult place to be, especially when budgets are annual and like, they’re not going to be willing to tell their boss, like, we have to wait six months. But when you find somebody where you’re like, I’m okay. It’s been a couple of years and I’ve wanted to, our website, but Solid Digital is the one that I want to use, but I have to wait a little bit longer and I’m willing to wait. That’s great because I, then we have a shared understanding of we’re going to give you the attention that we want to give you. And it’s not going to be diluted by 10 other projects that we’re doing. You just have to wait a little bit longer, but at the end of it, it’s going to be awesome. We’re going to like, work together for a longer period of time. My hope for the future is that we can continue to extend out, the lineup of clients that are coming in, but then we can also extend out how long we work with them. If we could scale up our recurring business where we have more programs available to them, where we have them engaged more in our consulting side of our business and our projects are, less, but not gone because they’re always a great way for us to start with our clients. That’s, I think where we all want to be. We like the machine that we’ve built. How can we keep that machine going in a way that’s effective? And then also that we have more foresight into what’s happening in a longer time period.
Russel:
If you are known for great quality, if you’re known for creating a great experience, they will in fact, wait. that’s clearly proven in your story and even reminds me of David Baker talks about, this. Just this notion that we really want to build into our agency where they need us more than we need them. Thinking of this idea of whose hand is out. One interesting thing that’s, as you’re gotten to this place of contentment and got things rocking and rolling in your business as he went ahead and you’re in the process of starting another business. A fascinating business. not related to an aging agency. Can you tell us more about that?
Jesse:
My son is a YouTuber, his YouTube channel, it’s Brick Thunder, but it’s all about Halloween. It started out more around like the different animatronics that, were coming out and him unboxing them. But it always applied to like, how is he going to use this in our home haunt that we have had over the last five years or so. They fed off of each other and grew into this crazy thing where, we were having thousands of people coming to our house on a nightly basis during the Halloween season. It, culminated into us actually getting on a reality TV show and, competing for this prize of best home haunt. That was last year and that was that was very exciting, but his goal. You said, I’m starting a business. It’s really his business, with the guidance of, risk, risky taking entrepreneur dad of, let’s make this a commercial thing. We’re going through the process of getting approval from cities. This is a whole new world. I didn’t really know the transition between being a freelancer to being incorporated as a business. Whereas yeah, this is a big learning experience of everything that it takes to create a business where people are going to be assembling and walking through. But I do really like the model of, we’re going to build, we’re going to have this upfront cost and we’re going to build this thing. But then every single head that goes through there is paying for a ticket to go through this experience that doesn’t require more resources, the more people that we, that come through it. I’m actually excited about the business model. Want to have products.
Russel:
That sounds absolutely amazing. Very exciting. What an awesome thing to get to do with your son, but, sure there’s many more things that we didn’t get to, but I’ll just have to end it with the last question, are entrepreneurs born or are they made.
Jesse:
I mean my answer is going to be political. I think that there is a born characteristic of an entrepreneur like because we all know it. Those of us who have kids, we know that there’s differences in personalities and I think like you got to be, you got to be willing to do crazy things and you got to be curious. Those are important traits to have, to be able to go and take the risk of starting your own, own thing. I think that there are people that even if they were born into a family that was like, no, don’t do that, they will still do it. However, I think there’s also a nurture side. I think that entrepreneurs breed entrepreneurs. I have yet to meet an entrepreneur who regrets being an entrepreneur and was like, yeah, I’d really like to go back and work for somebody else. We tend to want to have that for our kids because we, we appreciate the freedom that we have and what we get from being the owner of a company. There’s a nurture aspect there too, that even somebody who may not have been born with all of those qualities I said in the beginning, because they have, parents that are, they’re going to go with them on that journey, helping instill that into them. Jimmy John’s, I knew briefly that Jimmy’s dad and like his story was always like, when my son came to me when he was in college and said, hey dad, I want to drop out of college and open up a sandwich shop. The first thing I said of course was, let’s do it! I don’t think that’s the way most, most people think. But, when my son said, I want to open a, professional haunted house, I was like, yeah, let’s, let’s do it.
Russel:
That’s so awesome. Again, what a cool thing to be able to do. Well, if people want to know more about you or Solid Digital, or even haunted houses, where can they go?
Jesse:
SolidDigital.com or you can reach out to me, Jesse@SolidDigital.com. I love talking to people about whether it’s technology or it’s, issues that they’re having in their business. I get energy from doing that, and talking to people, so reach out to me and would love to chat.
Russel:
That is absolutely one of the great things about this whole podcast experience is the opportunity to connect people. Well, thank you so much Jesse, for being on the show and sharing so many great insights from your experience. Quality and experience itself, so much to take away from. And I really appreciate you taking the time to share it with us today.
Jesse:
It was awesome. Thank you for having me. I appreciate the invite.
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.
Jesse:
When my business partner and I were just starting out in the heydays, we both got really into craft beer. It was like that period of time when there were a whole bunch of micro brewery startups. Whenever we would get together, we would just go out and try to find the craziest, IPA or whatever that we could, Triple Bock, whatever. We were way into it. We go to this one store and they have this like, Sam Adams. I think it was a Bock of some sort, but it was like this small little blue, dark blue bottle. I have to like, try to find it. We didn’t know anything about it and we went up to the owner and we’re like, what do you think about this stuff? He’s I forgot exactly what his words were, but it was something to the point of if you really like beer, like, you might like this. It wasn’t like, oh, if you really like beer, you’re going to love this beer. It was more like if you’ve got the ability to see something in this, that is, got something positive, then maybe you’ll extract it. I remember like we, we took it home. It’s not the best ending of the story. We took it home. We poured a little bit into each of our glasses. It had little like flakes in it. It was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever drank in my life. We couldn’t even finish it. We poured it down the sink. It was so awful. But I also remember that during those periods of time, like, we would get together and then, like, obviously the next day was a tough day at work. I remember thinking like this was when I was in my early thirties. I’m like, man, what do our employees think about us right now? Bunch of degenerate business owners for sure.
Russel:
I’d be curious if they were thinking that, but my takeaway is just how important it is in any business partnership to do something outside of the business. Even if it is just to go drink a really crappy, horrible beer, or even find a really crappy, horrible beer.
Jesse:
Horrible, for sure.
