We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Hassan Del Campo a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hassan, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. So, let’s imagine that you were advising someone who wanted to start something similar to you and they asked you what you would do differently in the startup-process knowing what you know now. How would you respond?

Knowing everything that I know today, if I had the opportunity to do things differently I would. As an entrepreneur, I dove head-first into my business and figured out things along the way. While this may have accelerated my growth as a business to a certain extent, I missed out on some real opportunities to set up my business for success.

I’m a big fan of processes and systems. Without them in place, things can’t operate efficiently. I could have benefited greatly, at the start, if I had systems that were established to make work easier. I believe the more tasks you can automate in your business, the better – as this opens up opportunities to grow. My business lacked infrastructure. Thus, all the systems needed to run my business, from client management to marketing, were absent. I reacted to challenges instead of being proactive about opportunities. It was a hard lesson learned that I experienced several times over.

Hassan, 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’ve always thought of myself as a creative person and since an early age was encouraged to study visual arts as a discipline. While I dabbled in art, I curiously found my interest in marketing. I liked the idea of working with businesses while still being able to tap into my creative side. After a short stint as a co-owner of a social enterprise coffee shop, I decided to segue that experience into freelancing as a marketing and business consultant for local, mission-driven small businesses. Thus, Social Mediums was born.

As a business, Social Mediums provides digital marketing and content creative for mission-driven businesses and organizations. I’ve worked with social enterprise markets to nonprofit organizations, who all shared a common goal of wanting to amplify the good work that they do. But, marketing is more than just brand awareness. It’s actually customer/consumer-centric. If there’s anything that I can leave my clients with, it would be the importance of centering their marketing efforts (and business) around who they serve. That’s where the metrics matter and how you measure success.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

From my experience, the best source of new clients has been earned through referrals. When you go above and beyond to provide a great service or product to your clients, it can be reciprocated with a good review, or better, a recommendation. Content marketing is also a great way to attract new clients. Leveraging LinkedIn, for example, to spread relevant information can keep your name top-of-mind when someone is seeking a service or product like yours. In fact, using that tactic is how I landed my first client. I created an e-book about social media marketing and promoted it on Twitter. It took one person in my network to see it, who then referred me to a business that was in dire need of a social media manager. That client snowballed into another and the referrals came in.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

Fortunately, as a marketing agency, there aren’t a lot of upfront startup costs. My initial investment was in creating a website and acquiring various subscriptions for relevant services – all of which were self-funded. I avoided the costs of hiring a web designer or graphic designer because I built my website and digital collateral myself. I suppose that’s one of the perks of being a creative. As I became more established I participated in a micro-business program that offered up to $5,000 in funding. I took out an initial loan of a mere $500 to cover the remaining startup costs. Moving forward, any recurring expenses were paid out of profits generated by the business or out of pocket.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.socialmediums.design/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/social.mediums/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hassandelcampo/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/curateyourbrand