We recently connected with Jake Ross and have shared our conversation below.

Jake, appreciate you joining us today. Can you tell us about a time where you or your team really helped a customer get an amazing result?

One of my favorite client success stories is when we helped (and still help) Maxie’s Delicatessen in Stoughton, MA drive in over hundreds new customers from our public relations efforts that erupted.

Maxie’s celebrated their 30th year anniversary in 2023, so we crafted a press release about how they were keeping tradition alive by still crafting their dishes from old religious recipes. The story caught fire as it was picked up by the Boston Globe, NBC 10 Boston, Yahoo News, QSR Magazine, and so many more publications in the span of 5 months.

New (and old) customers were flowing through the door and wait times were insane (almost 1 1/2 hours to have lunch). The momentum continued and outlets were covering the story left and right.

We’re still working with Maxie’s and plan to release a new story soon!

The co-founder, Steve Robbins, writes, “they really turned this place around.”

Jake, 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 would call myself an ‘accidental’ entrepreneur.

I ran a YouTube channel that surrounded sports trading cards called JR Sports Cards and garnered 11,500+ subscribers and 250 paid monthly discord members. At that time, I was still only a first-year in college, so my parents wanted me to get an internship.

So, I worked at a marketing agency in Boston for one year while taking classes at Babson College full-time. By the time I was a second semester Sophomore, I decided to work freelance with professional public speaker Wes Woodson to assist him in editing YouTube videos and designing a newsletter.

This was awesome and it was going so well. I knew two things… the power of community (from JR Sports Cards) and how to run an agency (kinda).

So I decided to pitch the idea of starting my own agency at Babson eTower’s semesterly pitch competition. At this competition, I included one thing that each of the judges could do to improve their marketing since they were all founders. Right when the competition ended, I was hired on the spot by my second ever client, EKOS.AI (who we still work with today).

From here, I researched how to hire an employee, opened payroll, and brought on Ryan Lytle (a fellow Babson Student).

Now, we’re still going strong, having worked with over 45 clients with 3 full-time teammates and 3 part-time that are all amazing marketers.

We offer:

1. Social Media Content Creation
2. Email Marketing
3. Website Design
4. Public Relations (press release pitching)
5. Personal LinkedIn Growth
6. Paid Ads
7. and literally anything else firms want to try

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

Results and Honesty.

Results —

The #1 thing are the results you generate. I don’t care if you have some impressive software or provide the best customer service… if you don’t get results, nobody cares.

Understand your client’s goals and come up with a plan to get it done. It really is that simple.

Honesty —

Let’s say you can’t get results or aren’t 100% confident (maybe the PR story is meh)… that’s ok. Just be honest and upfront.

On sales calls with potential clients, I am super upfront that for some things they are trying to do, we may not be the best option, but we’d give it our best effort (usually a service that isn’t normal to us). And I cannot tell you how many times the decision makers we speak to appreciate that, and CHOOSE US anyways because they trust us.

Be honest.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

Hire an amazing team.

I always tell people, “I don’t know how I got so lucky with the team I have.”

The Build You team is filled with the most passionate people I have ever met. Day in and day out they go above and beyond to help clients.

I really don’t want to take credit at all for this, but there are some things that I think help…

1. They see me working hard — we have a ‘to-do’ list that everyone can see and I put everything on there to show them that I am working too.

2. We use an app called BOND, founded by Chloe Samaha, that gives our team a question, quiz, or challenge everyday for our team to answer/do, which brings us closer together and has sparked some awesome team bonding activities that keep everyone closer together.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.thebuildyou.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thebuildyou/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/build-you-marketing-llc/
• Other: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jake-ross-64ab0318a/

Image Credits
Build You Marketing, Jake Ross