How I Went From Call Center Agent To Starting A $20K/Month SEO Agency For SaaS Companies

Jace Thomas

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Published: December 10th, 2022

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Jace Thomas

Founder, Hiperion Marketing

$20K

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

Hiperion Marketing

hiperionmarketing.io

from Springfield, MO, USA

started May 2017

$20,000

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

Discover what tools recommends to grow your business!

productivity

ClickUp

Slack

crm

Salesmate

Discover what books Jace recommends to grow your business!

The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuou... Eric Ries

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Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?

My name is Jace, I am from Springfield, MO and I run a company called Hiperion Marketing. I have a beautiful family, 3 daughters, and a soon-to-be fiance (keep it on the DL).

We offer an SEO solution to help B2B SaaS clients across the world acquire more customers organically. We are closing the gap quickly on the $30,000 MRR mark.

As a solo founder, I offered anything marketing a client asked for. Even if I didn’t have that skill, I would play it off “Oh of course we do logo design!” Then I would spend hours watching Adobe Illustrator tutorials on logo design. It was an extremely scrappy way to run a business.

What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?

I come from an entrepreneurial background, being raised on a cattle farm. My dad ran our family cattle business throughout my whole childhood. I took what I learned from my dad and started my own business at age 13, a home recording studio.

I graduated high school early to sign with a band from Ukraine to a major label out of LA, I was part of their online presence and became loosely involved in the writing/recording process. The band's name was Make Me Famous.

But that fell short so I got a job in Sales and Marketing at a call center.

After many toxic jobs and meeting my now girlfriend Tiffani, I decided to start my own business in web design.

I've always had a bit of a design eye, I had played around with building sites. But between that, I worked for a digital marketing company in Kansas City. I realized I could do this for clients of my own.

I felt like owning my own business would give me the freedom to spend more time with my family and give me the life we all deserved.

It was an absolute grind the first few years, with major support from Tiffani and my girls. We were super broke for what felt like an eternity.

I started listening to the needs of my clients at the time and it always came back to “I have this website, why aren’t customers buying from me?” After a ton of research, the marketing strategy that continued to pop up was SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

Take us through designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.

I built up enough clientele to leave my full-time job in early 2020 and go full-time with my business.

As a solo founder, I offered anything marketing a client asked for. Even if I didn’t have that skill, I would play it off “Oh of course we do logo design!” Then I would spend hours watching Adobe Illustrator tutorials on logo design. It was an extremely scrappy way to run a business.

We primarily offered web design, branded under the name “Dollar Web Design Co.”

Looking back, this was such a gimmicky way to run a business. We charged a $1 setup fee and a $99/month website management fee.

In August 2020, I started a software development company with my partner Seth Kitchen, called Hiperion. This set the tone for my business's branding, vision, mission, etc.

My focus shifted back and forth between the software development company and the marketing company, so I finally decided I had to choose. After a year of long deliberation, I decided to focus solely on the marketing company.

Describe the process of launching the business.

There were a few pivotal moments that happened in my business throughout 2022. In my mind, even though I started this business in 2017, day 1 for my business started somewhere around Q2 of 2022.

One pivotal moment was adopting the “SEO sprint method” created and taught by Ryan Stewart at The Blueprint Agency. This helped me understand how to manage SEO projects, drive results, and ultimately pick a target customer.

I picked SaaS businesses because I became obsessed with the startup/software world. The scalability of a SaaS company isn't capped. The sky is the limit. I dialed in on B2B for a couple of reasons: B2C client acquisition is hard. It's whoever is willing to pay the most to acquire a customer. For B2B, primarily high-ticket clients, we can move the needle and drive a ton of value/results for that client.

Another pivotal moment was meeting my Technical SEO Lead, Toqeer. Toqeer has been an integral part of helping own the technical SEO aspect of our business. The way we operate is 3 tiered, Technical SEO, Content, and Backlinking so I was on a mission to find individuals to own those 3 aspects.

A few months after working closely with Toqeer and the Hiperion Marketing Pakistan team (Toqeer, Hamza, and Nabeel), I met Haley who has been a stellar Project Manager helping act as the glue on the fulfillment side. Haley soon introduced me to Abbey, our Content Lead. The combination of onboarding those talented individuals has created a fulfillment team that consistently drives results day after day. That has unlocked my ability to focus on sales and growth for our company ongoing.

The year hasn’t finished yet, but the final pivotal moment was meeting and working with my mentor Nabeel Khan. Nabeel has transformed everything I thought or knew about business. We have completed a 90-day Accelerator Program and have swiftly moved into an ongoing working relationship/partnership for the next 24 months.

If you’re doing under $1 million ARR, there are so many things that aren't as important. Your website, logo, branding, etc. aren't nearly as important as your ideal customer. Focus on your customer, and what keeps them up at night.

Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?

Currently, we do a lot of cold outreach: cold calling (not cold selling, there's a big difference), LinkedIn outreach, and email.

There's no secret sauce. We just try to make a genuine connection with B2B SaaS companies to explore if there is any value we can provide to their current roadmap. The core of it stems from our mission to provide value to the world of SaaS.

This is one of the biggest pieces of advice I can give to new or young founders, follow the 3-step order.

Pick your target audience
Deeply understand one problem they have
Define a solution to solve that problem

I started with step 3 and worked backward. My solution was SEO. We are still in the process of truly defining our target audience and their problem, but we are confident it is helping B2B SaaS customers acquire customers consistently through organic search.

Beyond understanding our target audience’s problem, just simply having the communication skills to let our prospects know we have driven results and will continue to go the extra mile to do the same for you has allowed us to work with major SaaS companies across the globe.

A portion of clients we work with are non-existent on Google. So we can establish their presence and then start acquiring customers organically.

Most clients are established on Google, but their organic presence needs someone to own it, and get obsessed about the results.

“We focus on one thing for our clients: results. Not deliverables”.

We do this by establishing a destination at the beginning of our engagement. Everything we do gets tied back to that destination. There is a lot of new SEO "tactics" and "tricks" but we replicate our process over and over for clients, continuously getting results.

How are you doing today and what does the future look like?

We’re hitting rapid growth and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. The challenge will be scaling while still maintaining attention to detail, but we’re very confident we can continue to do that.

We expect to hit $1 million ARR within 2023. We will be the lifeblood of B2B SaaS customer acquisition for multiple companies.

Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?

If you’re doing under $1 million ARR, there are so many things that aren't as important. Your website, logo, branding, etc. aren't nearly as important as your ideal customer. Focus on your customer, and what keeps them up at night. Pick up the phone and call until you reach someone that is a strong prospect for your services/product. Also, strongly consider paid mentoring.

Notice I said paid, in my mind - free mentoring doesn’t work 99% of the time. My mentor helped me align my Northstar, so every morning I read a paragraph that explains where my life is heading. I also review a slide deck of affirmations, images, and text all designed to realign me mentally and motivate me to continue building this company.

What platform/tools do you use for your business?

We’re under $1 million ARR so we try to keep it lean, but here is some software that is a must-have for us:

Semrush - Helps us track SEO data and show results.
Google docs, sheets, slides, drive, voice, etc. - Helps us stay organized, present, and store files that clients can access, Voice helps us call prospects.
Clickup - Project management tool that helps us stay on track.
Slack - Helps us communicate internally.
Salesmate - Helps us track sales deals.
LinkedIn - Helps us connect with our target audience.

What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?

The Lean Startup - This helped me understand an iterative process approach. I use this in many areas of my life outside of business. Testing in small quantities before you go all in.

7 Habits of Highly Effective People - This helped me align myself as a person. I’ve read this multiple times.

How I Built This by Guy Raz - I live for this Podcast. The guy is an amazing host, interviewing some of the most successful and influential entrepreneurs of our time. This brought perspective and helped me understand other founders running billion-dollar companies had scrappy starts as well.

Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?

Sobriety and entrepreneurship lead me to family, love, success, joy, freedom, and purpose. If you despise your day job, consider researching and creating a side hustle that could have the potential to turn into your key to freedom. Feel free to reach out to me on Linkedin or email [email protected] and I’d love to talk about how to make that a reality.

Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?

We’re always looking to bring on talented writers. In the near future, there will be many job opportunities: social media director, art director, etc.