Entrepreneurs sure love to discuss the challenges of building and running a business. But there’s one in particular we don’t talk about enough.

For many business owners, it can be ridiculously hard to market their own product or service effectively – for one simple reason…

They are too close to it.

They have been in the industry forever. They know their own product or service inside and out. In their head, they have a predetermined idea of what success looks like, and pursue it with single-minded focus.

Now, you’d think that all of this would help with marketing – but instead, all too often it causes entrepreneurs to make mistakes. Like:

  • Assuming what the customers want, and missing the mark.
  • Investing in a new marketing strategy while ignoring what has already worked.
  • Ignoring obvious opportunities for growth and improvement in favor of “shiny objects”

The list goes on.

By the way, we’re not saying all this to be critical. We are pretty marketing-savvy here at The Draw Shop – and yet, we’ve made all of these mistakes and more!

Hiring a digital agency and getting an outside perspective on our business helped us break the cycle and improve our marketing efforts exponentially.

And in this week’s episode of the Get Genius podcast, we want you to have a similar experience – to step back and look at your business through the eyes of a trained marketer with tons of successful projects under the belt.

Our guest today is Robert Rodrigues, CEO of Power Digital Marketing. And here’s why he’s awesome:

  • Robert has lifelong experience in creating and scaling profitable businesses, both product- and service-based. Born into an entrepreneurial family, his dream was to enter the restaurant business. But Robert’s journey led him into digital marketing instead (more on that on the podcast).
  • Robert has created several business ventures, but his most recent – and most impressive – is Power Digital Marketing. After hiring a string of marketing agencies that failed to deliver the results and the experience he was looking for, Robert did what any self-respecting entrepreneur would do: he started the kind of marketing agency he himself would want to work with.
  • Under Robert as CEO, Power Digital Marketing took off and made Inc Magazine’s 2017 list of 500 fastest-growing companies in the US. His agency has helped dozens of brands to 10x their results from marketing – including The Draw Shop.
  • Since working with Power Digital, we have boosted our conversions from organic searches by 171%, reached over 1 million people with social video, and dramatically increased the quality of leads we’re getting. If that makes us biased, so be it!
  • On a more personal side, Robert is an active member of Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) here in San Diego. He enjoys mentoring like-minded millennials and aspiring entrepreneurs.

For this episode, we really wanted to dig into how Robert approaches marketing. In the interview, you will learn his perspective on marketing mistakes made by companies, gets advice on scaling a business, hiring employees and firing clients, and more.

We’ll let Robert and Summer take it from here. Enjoy their wide-ranging and insightful conversation!

Click Here for the full transcription

Here’s what you will learn:

[00:15] Introducing Robert

[04:10] Robert’s dream was the restaurant business – how did he get into digital marketing?

[07:01] Why Robert is extremely selective about the clients he works with

[11:14] The biggest mistakes businesses make in marketing, according to Robert

[15:19] How Power Digital stays current with marketing trends without spreading too thin

[18:08] How Robert cultivates the culture at Power Digital Marketing

[21:37] Robert’s vetting process for new hires

[22:50] How Robert sees the future of Power Digital in 5 years

[24:24] Robert’s advice on scaling a business

[25:42] The biggest challenges Robert has faced while growing his agency

[27:08] How being in a community of entrepreneurs like EO has helped Robert

[29:40] Why Robert would have to fire a client

[33:24] Power Digital Marketing’s recent victory

[33:50] Where you can learn more about Power Digital Marketing

Resources from Robert:

Power Digital Marketing website

The jaw-dropping results Robert’s agency has achieved for The Draw Shop