We recently connected with Brian Meert and have shared our conversation below.

Brian, appreciate you joining us today. Alright, so we’d love to hear about how you got your first client or customer. What’s the story?

After selling a business in the entertainment industry, I was eager to start another company. I found a co-founder and we began. After 2-3 years, we realized the business was not getting the traction we had hoped for and made the difficult decision to shut it down. I began looking for jobs to cover basic expenses. I found a job in the “Gold IRA” industry and even though I had little knowledge regarding investing in gold, I realized that the company had little knowledge regarding digital marketing and advertising. So it ended up being a great fit. While working for the company, I was managing a monthly ad budget of seven figures and was always looking for new ways to improve performance. I was lucky to be in that position when Facebook announced they were opening up the newsfeed for ads to display. After signing up, I was able to get in early and quickly determined the incredible power of their ad platform and all the targeting options that were available to advertisers. After a few months, I realized that Facebook ads were going to be big and made the decision to start an agency. I had to speak with my employer about my plans of starting an agency, but let him know that I was still dedicated to his success, but just wanted to specialize in Facebook advertising. He agreed and 10 years later, we are still working together.

Brian, 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?

I went to college to be a teacher, but had a friend that was going into business and convinced me that having an MBA would increase my chances of getting a job. While in MBA school, my dean of business encouraged me to try and start a business. I had no business background but he said come see me once a week and I’ll give you some pointers. He gave me the confidence to try and I quickly learned that once you have an idea, the next thing you’ll need is marketing. Because I didn’t have a lot of money, I began using my cafeteria money at school to run Google ads for my business. My first lesson is marketing was how important it was to succeed, and that if I didn’t get things right, I wouldn’t eat for a while. I’ve carried this lesson with me over the past 20 years as I’ve worked for thousands of different businesses. Every ad needs to make you money.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

I’ve actually had several businesses with business partners. Each one was unique and the most valuable business partners were the ones that had a completely different set of skills than myself. This allowed us to work in different areas without stepping on each others shoes. The very first business I started had three of the same “marketing” minded people. We had great ideas about growing the business, but there was often more talking than there was building. After selling one business and failing at another, I realized that I had the skillset to lead a business on my own. This led me to start AdvertiseMint by myself and without a co-founder. At times I’ve missed not having a business partner, but on other occasions, it’s allowed me to move extremely quickly and focus on what is working best. My advice is to find a business partner if you are new to business. Just like any relationship, its important that you have some hard conversations at the beginning about who will oversee what jobs and what happens in specific situations like having a month with low sales. Most of the most famous entrepreneurs you know often had co-founders that were just not in the spotlight as much as them.

Any advice for managing a team?

I believe that you need to treat people well, give them opportunities to thrive according to their strengths and that the role of a CEO is to actually work for the employees, not the other way around. Teams are fragile, the best teams are built over time and with individuals that want to be all stars at what they do. Another aspect that is important in the agency world is the ability to learn and adapt. The ad platforms are always changing and with new technologies like AI now integrated with creative, copywriting and even media buying, its important to learn how to adapt to what is new and how we can improve our productivity by using these new tools.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.advertisemint.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/advertisemint
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/advertisemint
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/company/3864009/admin/feed/posts/
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/advertisemint
• Youtube: www.youtube.com/advertisemint
• Yelp: www.yelp.com/biz/advertisemint-hollywood
• Other: www.tiktok.com/@advertisemint