We were lucky to catch up with Preston Cone recently and have shared our conversation below.

Preston, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Looking back, do you think you started your business at the right time? Do you wish you had started sooner or later

It’s amazing what some motivation like that can do. Up to that point I had taken a few small marketing jobs for friends and family and referrals. At this point my biggest supporter and fan, and now my business partner, my wife Laura Rebekah gave me the encouragement to start a business and name it Cone Creatives. She took a difficult job to help pay our bills, while I did everything I could to build a business and find new clients… and fast.

I worked on some of the largest digital marketing campaigns in history, and was working over 80 hour weeks regularly and sometimes reaching over 100 hour weeks. During these weeks I would come up with ideas, manage my team of designers and copywriters and approve all ad creative, social posts, merchandising, landing pages, ad buys, and other items including billboards, and more.

I took this job to ease out of something stressful and into something that would allow me to come back to a normal life, something that my new wife and I could use to build our life upon. This new job doubled my salary, and when I lost it, it was a huge hit and discouragement.

It was in this time of stress that we buckled down and began our journey into the great unknown of entrepreneurship.

Could I have started sooner, yes, was this the perfect time, absolutely! I learned what I needed to begin this business, and was then able to start it from a place of expertise.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

In my early 20’s I found a listing for a job at Facebook as a marketing expert. They would bring you in, train you, and then put you on a team working with businesses to help them better utilize Facebook ads platform, ultimately spending more money on the ad platform.

This kickstarted my career into a large position working on a project that spent millions of dollars in ad spend a day, and generating even more in return.

As I think back on what I have done and the progress I have made, I am most proud of the fact that in every situation that was put in front of me I said yes, moved forward, and grew because of it. Does it mean you will always be perfect at what you do? No. What it means is you are willing to step out of your comfort zone to do whatever it takes to succeed and grow. That is the most important learning of my career. Be comfortable saying yes, and be comfortable in the uncomfortable.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

I have always admired entrepreneurs and always wanted to live my life outside the rat race, but I just wasn’t sure how that was going to happen. Because of this desire, I constantly took on side jobs to help me realize this dream. This ultimately led me to taking the chance to build my business and begin to realize this dream. That is when the rollercoaster started and I was on the journey of entrepreneurship.

Over the first few years of business our biggest milestones were first and foremost to get my wife into the business and out of her other job allowing us to be fully supported financially by our business. Second milestone, if you can call it that, was to nearly go bankrupt. We had just grown and hired several people, and everything started to collapse. Work wasn’t being done correctly, clients were unhappy, and we nearly lost everything. After restructuring, and building a solid business with processes we were able to recover. The next big milestone was hitting 6-figure months. And now we are focused on growing a strong and healthy business that we can step away from so we could use our time to build multiple income streamsThat will be the final milestone!

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

We were in a horrible loop. So the biggest lesson was to unlearn wearing all the hats and then, replacing it with a stronger skill which is to effectively delegate tasks to my team. Essentially getting off the “revenue rollercoaster”. Which is where you sell, sell, sell, and then when you close deals you then have to fulfill. So you stop selling. Then you lose a client, or maybe two, and now you are not making enough money to cover expenses so you have to sell again. It’s a horrible up and down roller coaster. You must have sales processes in place while you fulfill or you will never succeed. The few tasks that were off my shoulders allowed me to work on a sales process. Processes, for sales, and other tasks are the most important thing a entrepreneur can learn as they begin to grow and scale.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.coneagency.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cone_agency/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/conecreatives
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cone-agency/?viewAsMember=true
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/ConeCreatives
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJAQgq5J1i755_U63DBQ7bA