Andrew Howlett, Chief Digital Officer at Rain, and a board member at the Society of Digital Agencies. Andrew started a million-dollar cleaning products business online at 26, before moving into marketing consultancy. Listen as Nathan and Andrew talk marketing, strategy, and how to get out of finance.

Famous 5
Favorite Book? – The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
What CEO do you follow? — Maurice Levy
What is your favorite online tool? — Pipedrive
Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— Yes
If you could let your 20 year old self know one thing, what would it be? —That finance wasn’t the direction I wanted to go - it would have been great to understand computer science more

Time Stamped Show Notes:
01:20 – Nathan’s introduction
01:40 – Welcoming Andrew to the show
02:00 – At 26, started a website that sold cleaning supplies
02:35 – At 29, started Rain
02:40 – uClean had total revenues of $200k in its first year; almost $1 million the next year
03:30 – Clear around $200k each year from uClean
04:05 – Rain’s latest client is BeachBody
04:40 – Rain is helping them re-imagine their products
05:00 – Revenue model is generally either a monthly retainer or T&M
05:25 – Retainer of $50-75k per month
05:55 – Works largely with 7 major clients
06:30 – First-ever Superbowl ad this year - Campbells Chunky Soup
06:55 – Wanted to focus on online placement
08:10 – 90% of placement is hustle
08:30 – They use People Pattern as a helpful piece of software
09:10 – Ended up with 3.5 million views in 2 weeks
10:00 – Made 3 videos for the Facebook 10-year anniversary
11:10 – Margin on video can be tricky to handle
11:56 – Total revenue in 2015 was $14 million
12:30 – Vision is to keep strategy, design, development and building in-house
14:20 – Happy with the current size of the company - no plans to grow dramatically
14:30 – Connect with Andrew on Twitter or LinkedIn
16:10 – Famous Five

3 Key Points:
The majority of marketing is hustle. Automation helps, but to some extent you need to have real people pushing things along.
There are benefits to limiting growth. Having a core team that’s small enough to be in the same room at the start of a project is fantastic.
You need to understand how technology works. Even if you’re never going to be a developer, educate yourself in the basics. It will pay off.

Resources Mentioned:
Freshbooks - The site Nathan uses to manage his invoices and accounts.
Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for cheapest price possible.
Leadpages – The drag and drop tool Nathan uses to quickly create his webinar landing pages which convert at 35%+
Audible – Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5 hour drive) to listen to audio books.

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

From Cleaning Company at 26 to $14m Agency By His 42nd Birthday, EP 266: Andrew Howlett

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From Cleaning Company at 26 to $14m Agency By His 42nd Birthday, EP 266: Andrew Howlett