Best Buy Employee Moonlights as Online Ad Consultant

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

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What is the side hustle school philosophy when it comes to actually building a company? Many of our listeners have no interest in such a thing. They just wanna make extra money, pursue a creative outlet, perhaps create options for a brighter future. All good things. But for those who do want to eventually embrace full-time entrepreneurship, the foundation steps, the pathway, and the principles are largely the same.

Here's some advice from today's featured case study. He says, "Lots of startups fail, so it's good to have a full-time job. I nearly replace my salary with my side hustle income before turning that into my job." All right, so whether you're just trying to make extra money or actually build a company, same pathway, same foundation steps, same principles. Now, this story today is all about a former Best Buy employee turned digital marketer who helps businesses with their online advertising. Naturally, it starts as a side hustle, operated from his living room recliner, and grows into a $2 million a year business with 16 employees.

Just a spoiler here. There's no word on whether he still works from the recliner. I tried to get that information, but I failed. There are, however, details on how he built this side gig into a high-earning and sustainable company, including a strategy for hiring employees in a way that makes sure you're never growing too quickly. So lots of stuff in this episode.

Here's a quick thank you to our sponsor, and then I'll tell you the story. [Music]

Jordan Meyer now runs the digital marketing agency Granular. It's a 16-person team based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And these days, it's his full-time job and a multimillion-dollar agency. But like most of our stories, it didn't start out that way.

Before building this digital marketing behemoth, Jordan was holding down a job at the Best Buy head office in Minneapolis. He climbed the corporate ladder for a while before realizing there was no end in sight. He then transitioned into the for-profit higher education industry, but felt like he was selling his soul to the highest bidder while making someone else a lot of money. It was around this time that Jordan decided to put his PPC skills to work. Whoa, PPC, what does that mean?

Hold on. PPC, or pay-per-click, is an internet marketing model where advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked. You know, when you do a Google search for something at the top of the screen, you see those ads. Those are Jordan's ads. Well, maybe they're not Jordan specifically, but those are someone's ads.

It's a way for business owners to buy traffic to their site. If his talents were already helping someone else's business earn a lot of money, why not apply those same talents and build something of his own? So he started freelancing on the side as a Google AdWords, paid social media and analytics consultant for businesses around the country. He based it out of his house, specifically his living room recliner. Jordan worked on campaigns late into the night after getting home from his corporate job.

He would also go and sit in his car during his lunch break to make calls. He ran the hustle this way for the first two years. He's never had to cold call anyone, telling us that his work in a high-profile corporation like Best Buy gave him all the authority he needed to easily attract small businesses. In fact, the only site he could think of that yielded him a client in the past was Craigslist. He found a company there looking for a PPC consultant, reached out to them and won their business.

It wasn't until a few years end that he explored the option of quitting his day job. Jordan had grown to managing 10 clients by himself, which he admits was too many, while working 50 hours a week in the corporate role. Encouraged by one of his larger clients to take the leap and then sweetening the deal by offering up their office to work out of for free, Jordan left his corporate marketing job and returned home to his native Milwaukee. He then officially started Granular Digital Marketing Agency. He also hired his first employee while working out of that client's office.

By the time he hired his second employee six months later, he knew it was time to get his own space. He took another leap and got a 2,500 square foot office for the three of them to work out of in downtown Milwaukee. One of the ways Jordan grew granular was to waterfall his client load. This was interesting. He hired that first employee out of necessity since he was already over the limit of clients he could handle by himself.

So he would load up the new employee with clients until that person overflowed before hiring the second employee. Then he would repeat the process until growing his team to its current number of 16 people. In other words, he's only hiring people when he's sure this worked for them. Granular currently serves 75 clients and Jordan tries to remain cognizant of his team's workload. He never wants anyone to be spread too thin.

So let's talk about the money. Startup costs were virtually nothing. In the beginning, he worked from home. I guess he had that recliner, but he already owned that. And then even the first office space he held for six months was rent-free.

Jordan said being frugal and growing only from necessity really helped him succeed and bootstrap his operation from zero. It helped to not blow money on a large office and marketing like he saw others doing. Annual profits from granular currently total around $2 million per year. However, unlike typical agencies who charge a percentage of ad spend or a markup, which is one of the things Jordan doesn't like doing, he charges more like a consultant by blocks of hours. The pricing varies, he usually has a monthly minimum $1,500 agency consulting fee for about nine hours of work.

And then his hourly rate is $200 per hour. For his enterprise clients, that figure could extend to over a hundred hours a month with a multi-person team working on their account. So what's next? He wants to continue building granular along with helping other companies grow wherever he sees an opportunity. He'd also like to build wealth outside of his business through real estate and other investments.

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Once again, the quote I shared at the top of the episode, this is from Jordan. He said, "Lots of startups fail, so it's good to have a full-time job. I nearly replaced my salary with the side hustle before turning that into my job." That is the way of the side hustle, my friends. You can take risks, but you take calculated risks. And is it really a risk once you have actually replaced your salary or come close to it with the side hustle when you're only able to work on it in the evenings, you know, and during your lunch break, then you're like, okay, if I go full in, just imagine what it can be now.

So when you see a clear connection between those things, perhaps that's when you start thinking about, okay, now is the time to take a leap. I thought this was also funny. Jordan told us, he said, "Everyone is frugal in a different way. For example, he will hesitate to spend $100 a month on a service, but won't think twice about spending $700 on chairs for his team." He's got a big team. So he might buy, you know, $1,600, $700 chairs, but he will hesitate to pay for that monthly service.

And that all makes sense to me actually, because he's maintaining that frugal mindset, which you can maintain, you know, no matter how much money your business is bringing in. In fact, a lot of really successful businesses, you know, continue to have that kind of mindset. But, you know, when it comes to investing in something that's going to make your work better, be more productive, be healthier, just be happier, then of course he's going to go ahead and make that investment. But it's true that everyone is frugal in a different way. Kind of reminds me of some of the stuff that I spend money on or I choose not to spend money on.

I also have some weird little quirks like that. Well, listeners, I hope you enjoyed this one. I just noticed as I was working on it that this is episode 850, 850 episodes on all these different stories of people who are building something for themselves. You know what that says to me? It says to me that you can probably do it too.

There's a story out there. There's an adventure out there. There's something out there that you have to create or make or find or discover. So I hope you do that. I hope that we can continue to be a small part in that goal.

So today's show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/850 since it is, you know, the 850th episode. And I'll be back again tomorrow, 851 and beyond. Thanks so much. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]

From the Onward Project.