We've Expanded Our Agency's Core Services And Have Scaled To $65K/Month Revenue [Update]
This is a follow up story for Kairos Digital. If you're interested in reading how they got started, published over 3 years ago, check it out here.
Hello again! Remind us who you are and what business you started.
We are Kairos Digital, a digital marketing agency in Jacksonville, FL. We focus on web development, design, lead generation, digital advertising, SEO, and video production. We’ve been in business for 4 years and have 5 full-time employees.
Here’s the link to our original Starter Story interview.
Tell us about what you’ve been up to. Has the business been growing?
This last year has been a really strong year of growth for the agency. We ended up bringing on several larger clients and we expanded some core services to our existing clients. We started selling SEO services to clients which have helped increase the profitability of our website projects and transition them into ongoing clients through SEO and other marketing strategies.
We had also been relying on a few core team members to execute a wide range of services and we started to get a little bit log jammed around those production areas. So we decided to divide up some of the roles and let people focus their skills in their area of expertise, which has helped free up some of the production jams.
Be faithful to the small things and help the people around you grow.
We are still woefully behind on our marketing efforts. Our hope is to make that a core focus of the coming year by investing time and energy into our email marketing, and social media marketing on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and working through a gifting strategy for clients and referral sources.
Most of our business has been coming from local SEO, where we rank generally in the top 2-5 spots for most of our relevant keywords. We emphasize our Google My Business page and make sure that is optimized and regularly updated, which has been a big help.
One large milestone we rolled out recently is that we’re now offering a full range of traditional benefits for our full-time employees, including Health, Dental, Vision, Accident Insurance, Life Insurance, Legal Shield, and even a membership for daily car washes. Although we won’t be hiring very aggressively this year, we plan to start the employee hiring process last 2023 and early 2024 again.
We always hire based on 5 criteria - we look for people who are 1) humble (they are teachable, low ego, and easy to redirect), 2) hungry (they have some inherent desire or drive that doesn’t need to be externally manifested, 3) people-smart (they have good EQ and don’t need the temperature of the room explained to them), 4) skilled in their area of expertise (whatever they’re supposed to be good at, they’re good at it), and 5) likable (they’re not a drag to talk to, you would choose to talk to them again).
What have been your biggest challenges in the last year?
The biggest challenges in the last year have all revolved around growing pains. We’ve onboarded new clients and more profitable clients and we reached our maximum capacity a few times and saw what that was like.
We also had to terminate one employee (the first time in the agency’s history) and we restructured how we are operating on accounts to increase the efficiency of the work we’re doing.
What have been your biggest lessons learned in the last year?
As one of our benefits, we offer each team member 3 months of full-pay maternity or paternity leave for birth or adoption. I happen to be the first person on our team to have a child, which means I am going to be setting the agency up to be able to operate for 3 months without my direct involvement.
This is going to be one of the largest and most beneficial experiments our agency has done to date. I need to set an example of leadership doing this first so every employee doesn’t feel like there is a written allowance but a different expectation when that time is requested. If I can do it, anyone can do it.
What’s in the plans for the upcoming year, and the next 5 years?
Our goal is to hit between $800,000 and $1,000,000 in revenue while still being profitable. We just hit a big milestone in rolling out benefits for the team. We decided to split this year up into 4 quarterly mantras about what the focus for that quarter is.
The first quarter of this year was “Improve” - so we looked at each aspect of our business and set new improvements in place with me being gone for 3 months in mind. The second quarter is “Perfect” - where we perfect the things we improved. The third quarter (when I’ll be out) is “Release” - so we trust the systems we put in place and let them stabilize and smooth out. The fourth quarter is “Reflect” - so we will look back on this year, identify wins, identify changes and challenges, and set a plan for the coming year.
We are also about to launch a missional arm of the agency where we’ll be doing philanthropic work with a portion of profits.
What’s the best thing you read in the last year?
The War of Art. This is a book that walks through the deep resistance that creatives face in their work. It does a great job of personifying resistance as a force and walks through tactics for overcoming it in areas of your work and life.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who might be struggling to grow their businesses?
Be faithful to the small things and help the people around you grow. Focus on what is most important and beneficial for others and keep being faithful to that. Nothing strong grows quickly.
Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?
Not until maybe the fourth quarter of the year. We don’t want to onboard someone right before I’m gone for 3 months and certainly not while I’m gone. The day will come when the agency will hire and fire people without me, but this year isn’t that year.
Where can we go to learn more?
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Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
