We were lucky to catch up with Karl Finnbogason recently and have shared our conversation below.

Karl, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Getting that first client is always an exciting milestone. Can you talk to us about how you got your first customer who wasn’t a friend, family, or acquaintance?

It is always a little bit scary to start a business, especially a service type of business like a marketing and website agency. Since it was the first time that I had ever worked for myself it took some time trying to figure out how I would start getting some clients onboard. The first client that I ever got for my business I got by going and talking to local business owners and what they were doing and what were their pain points when it came to their websites and online marketing. As expected there was sometimes the hesitation and skepticism that I could actually get them results but the key thing that I could offer that was different than anyone else was the fact that I offered them their money back if I did not get them the results that I promised which really eliminated any hesitation and skepticism and that is how I got the first few clients onboard. When I got those businesses results, I got referrals, testimonials and case studies that made it a lot easier to get the next few clients and then it turned into us working with dozens of businesses in both the local area and nationwide. The key to everything is getting those first few clients which will the start of being able to really get going.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I have been working in the website and marketing agency for the past 10 years. I studied marketing in both my Bachelor´s and Master´s program and when I graduated my first job was to help a business in the construction industry increase their online presence. That led to working at a marketing agency, in the corporate world and then finally starting my own business.

What we do at Viera Digital is that we help businesses increase website traffic and sales from their website by running paid ads on Google and creating a long-term SEO strategy as well as optimizing their entire website to try and improve both the user experience and conversion rate.

My proudest moments have been when we get our clients results. Business owners reach out after having worked with other marketing agencies that promise a lot of things but then never deliver. Those business owners have been skeptical and have lost faith in the marketing industry but we have convinced them to let us help them and the results have been amazing. We have had instances where those businesses have been making 10-20 times return on investment after working with us which has been amazing to see and our entire team is very proud of that.

I say to my clients sometimes that the reason why we are able to get these types of results is that this is not just a job, this is our passion so we are constantly monitoring what is going on in the industry and we are often able to bring new ideas and new solutions to our clients months before their competitors even hear about them.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

The great thing about starting a website and marketing agency is that you don´t need a lot of initial capital. I used my saving to start the business and pay for things like a domain, hosting, logos, business cards, promotional products and the things that were needed in the beginning. I am proud to say that I have never taken out a loan or anything for my business, everything has been built through the money that we get in from client work so we have never had any sort of debt.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I left the security of a corporate job to start my own business. Going from a salary and benefits to starting a business with zero clients is a big leap of faith and I heard from some people that I knew why I would take such a risk. I had 100% faith that it would work out and even if it would take time and be a lot of work just to get started it was something that I was very passionate about so I was willing to take the risk even if it was scary and there was some uncertainty to begin with as I was getting the first few clients in over the first few months and fear and uncertainty were not going to stop me.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://vieradigital.net