We recently connected with Adam Lowe and have shared our conversation below.

Adam, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea

After spending my early career working for other people, I decided to strike out on my own. I know a lot of people wish they had started sooner, but I’m actually glad that I had that time in corporate since it gave me business and management experience under someone else’s guidance before I had to do them for my own company. I still had a few meanderings and missteps before my business took on the shape it has today.

For starters, my initial business focused on photography and videography for people who already had websites or were doing updates. I provided website design services to the ones who didn’t, but it was initially a secondary service.

It didn’t take long for the website services to outperform the photo/video production, however, and I quickly grew my business into a full-service web agency that provided a wide range of related services, everything from website design all the way through to search and social media advertising.

During the pandemic, I was forced to revisit my business priorities and made the decision to scale back to just our core services. And what a great decision that was! I might have a smaller team, but now I’m more focused than ever. And instead of delivering a long list of things adequately, we now do just a handful of things exceptionally.

Adam, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’ve always loved the marriage of technology and creativity. Even as far back as the 1990s, when people were first experimenting with things like computer animation or multimedia design, I knew that this was going to be my path. The added business knowledge and experience that I picked up in school and my early career gave me the served to round out my blend of skills.

That’s what I love so much about building websites for businesses. It takes all those things that I’m passionate about and brings them together to help serve my clients.

A business website isn’t a design portfolio piece that grabs people’s attention. It isn’t a technical marvel that runs with ultra-optimized code. Instead, it’s a tool that brings technology, creativity, and business together to meet a business goal.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I feel like life and business are just one big pivot after another, but I guess that doesn’t answer your question. For me, one of my biggest pivots came around the beginning of the pandemic. Until then, we were on a very fast growth trajectory, with new work coming in from all sides and a growing team to handle it. Unfortunately, some of the main industries we worked with were immediately and devastatingly impacted by the pandemic. Within two weeks of the lockdowns starting, about 80% of our projects and retainers were canceled, and another 10% were put on indefinite hold.

It was not a fun time for anybody.

I quickly reevaluated our core services and scaled back my team to focus only on the things we were best at, which turned out to be Website Design, Development, and Optimization. When my lease ended later that year, I chose not to renew it, and we have been 100% virtual ever since.

All this ultimately made us more productive and allowed me to focus my time on the places where it mattered most, my clients. Instead of spending nearly all my time focused on administrative and marketing tasks, I’m not back in the front seat with all my clients and giving them the personalized attention that they deserve.

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

Word of mouth has always been the best source of new clients for us. Over the years, we’ve tried everything from referral marketing to advertising and even cold calling, but none of those things worked nearly as well as good old relationship building.

When I say word or mouth, I only partly mean existing customers. It goes without saying that your customers can be your best sources of referrals, but they shouldn’t be your only source. For me, that word of mouth marketing extends to other businesses I’ve met at places like conferences, networking events, and even online communities.

By simply being helpful with colleagues, prospects, and even competitors, I’ve turned many of them into potential referral partners. I don’t go out trying to sell them anything either, that’s the wrong mindset. Instead, I build the relationship, help wherever I can, and make sure they know what kind of business would be good to refer to me.

It’s more of a farming mentality than hunting and gathering.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://peakperformancedigital.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/peakperformancedigital/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/peakperformancedigital
• Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/peakperfdigital
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/PeakPerformanceDigital