We were lucky to catch up with Kevin Schrage recently and have shared our conversation below.

Kevin, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear from you about what you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry and why it matters.

They play it way too safe and create boring campaigns that don’t resonate with their audience. They move slow, which costs them time and money to create high performing marketing campaigns.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

When I was in college, I was given an opportunity to do an externship. Which is an internship during spring break. So my spring break in 2007 was spent working with the VP of Marketing at a tech company. I ended up loving everything about marketing and got offered a job. I started working there after I graduated. This was when digital marketing was really starting to take off and the very beginning of Social Media Marketing. I was obsessed with the idea that you can create a marketing campaign out of nothing in a matter of hours, launch it, and immediately see results. After working in several companies and eventually leading marketing teams, I started my own marketing agency in 2020. I wanted to start an agency that put a focus on building profitable marketing campaigns. Most agencies are given a budget and they launch campaigns without any real attachment to profit. So I now run Brandarrow, an ad agency that focuses on performance marketing. We help companies create profitable, high performing campaigns built to scale. And we’ve now helped several businesses quickly scale into the 7 & 8 figures.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

There was a point about a year ago where I was so underwater with work that I was burning myself out. I was getting tons of referrals and I rarely said no to a project. I found myself working late nights and weekends. It was constantly stressed. It wasn’t sustainable and I rarely stepped away to enjoy moments away from work. Even the moments away from work, I was still thinking about work. I decided to make some changes. The first big change I made was to raise my prices. I knew I would lose some clients, but I also knew what I was worth. This ended working out for the better. I was able to bring in more revenue, deliver more value, and eventually hire another team member. With a new employee, I focused on bigger picture things and got out of the weeds. It also freed up some of my time. Which came at a crucial time. Shortly after my first hire, my daughter was born 3 weeks early. She spent a few days in the NICU, so I was away from my business for about a week. If it wasn’t for the team I put together I would have been drowning in work and not giving my family the attention they needed when they needed me most.

Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.

Back in 2019, I was working at a startup and was laid off. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do but I started getting requests to help friends and family market their businesses. So I started taking on small jobs. I didn’t plan on launching an agency, but I started to get enough work to make it a reality. I made the decision to go all in about 4 months into taking small jobs. In the beginning, I was doing everything related to marketing. From website design to running social media campaigns, to running ads. I then decided I needed to niche down and get focused. So I chose paid advertising. It’s typically the fastest way to grow a business if done correctly. It’s also a service that rewards you with monthly contracts if you continue to deliver profitable results. This focus helped me effectively communicate my value proposition and made it easier to build systems that scale.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://brandarrow.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brandarrow.co/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brandarrow
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brandarrow/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/brandarrowco
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7bxU9oCb7H9cV819v2Be9g

Image Credits
Kevin Schrage, Ryan Fazio