We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Adam Silverman a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Adam, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about your team building process? How did you recruit and train your team and knowing what you know now would you have done anything differently?
I came into the business of owning a digital marketing agency as a website developer, so the very first thing I did was hire a web designer to complement my skills. So, I was doing all of the business development and management, and then I had a designer to start the projects for me. I had already been working with Leah (our designer) in other situations for a while so it was a VERY easy hire to make. I quickly figured out that I would need help in project management, and I happened to have another close friend that was looking to make a career change, so I hired them both and we started trying to figure things out together. As I’ve built this business I’ve moved from role to role and basically as soon as I learned how to do a part of the business, I’d look to replace myself as quickly as possible with someone better than myself. I’ve grown from 3 to 12 in 3 years so it’s definitely working. Our interview process is mostly around culture, making sure that we’re all going to enjoy working together was VERY important to me as we’ve been hiring more and more people. At the end of the day, I didn’t start a business to work with people I don’t enjoy being around, so that’s something that I hold very near and dear to my heart. I can teach skills, but I can’t teach someone to be a good person.
Adam, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
My primary business is Muletown Digital which is a full-service Digital Marketing Agency in Columbia, TN. We do everything from branding to website design & development and then into Search Engine Marketing and all of the other digital marketing avenues. Our goal is to help our customers grow their businesses and see a massive ROI on their digital marketing efforts. I think what makes us unique is that we can see all sides of the picture from the beginning of the process. Instead of working on websites and then trying to figure out what to do with them afterward, we work the other way, we figure out what we need that website to do in the business, and then we build around that. So the website is part of the strategy, it’s not THE strategy. I think I’m honestly most proud of the results that we produce for our clients, we have clients that make less than 1m/year and clients that make over 1B./year and we are able to build things that help them BOTH have major marketing success. That’s maybe what I’m the proudest of.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
Muletown Digital was less than 2 years old when we hit COVID. It was scary, everyone cut their budgets instantly and we were stopped in the middle of a $50k project that was really important to our business. We had to pivot and work on things we didn’t know how to do to help businesses get through this time. We were inventing ways to market our clients were before they were doing tradeshows, and now those didn’t exist. It was scary and many times I thought I was going to lose the business. I hung in there, my team hung in there, and we kept getting results for our clients. That turned into more and more clients. When COVID hit the US we had almost $150k out in proposals that were chopped, we nearly doubled that number and ended up later getting all of that work back in the door. It was one of the hardest times in my life when I felt I was going to lose everything, and instead, we made a massive movement forward.
Let’s move on to buying businesses – can you talk to us about your experience with business acquisitions?
We bought out another agency where the owner was looking to get into other things. The buying process was pretty simple as we were friends, so we worked collaboratively to figure out the best things for his customers, and both of our businesses. I’d say it was the friendliest purchase I’ve ever made in my life. We had more to offer to the clients and we did a really good job of showing up for them while keeping the respect for the initial agency fully in-tact. I didn’t want anyone saying – “why didn’t this other agency do x, y or z”? It was important to me that the other agency looked awesome and closed down really well. we did a great job for the clients getting them ported over into our systems. Overall, it was a great experience, I’ll be looking to buy out another agency again in the next 12 months.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://muletowndigital.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/muletowndigital/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/muletowndigital
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/organization-guest/company/muletown-digital/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOy2K5H0Qtxf-hMBYNwckHQ
Image Credits
All photos are by Muletown Digital