Introduction to Max Oliver
Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of the Digital Revolution Podcast. Today, we are on with Max Oliver.
His name is Max, a social media marketing owner at Three Second Media. He has grown his company to over a hundred thousand dollars a month in revenue, while serving over 300 clients in just his three years of existence at the age of 24.
Husband, father, endurance athlete and passionate about helping people achieve actual freedom.
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Who is Max Oliver?
Early Life and Formative Experiences
After getting his footing as a record executive, Max Oliver went on to become one of the most successful in the independent label scene. Max grew up in a caring family and was provided plenty of resources for success in life. His mother signed him up for swim lessons when he was young, and Mr. Ledecky showed an early aptitude. That early success in competitive swimming instilled a confidence in Max that would come to define his approach to life, and obstacles, in the future.
I think that was really cool for me to get wins early on in life and to be kind of praised socially for those wins,” explains Max. These early successes gave him a hunger for accomplishment and social acknowledgement that would come to animate his professional aspirations later.
Max had been a shy kid, but when his family relocated when he was about 11 or 12, he made a deliberate choice to change his personality. “I was like, I’m tired of being the shy kid. I want to have tons of friends when we move,” he remembers. “That’s when I made the decision to be an extrovert.”
Creative Pursuits and Confidence Development
Outside of his athletic accomplishments, Max found a love for music in his teenager years. He became a member of a band, where he wrote, produced and performed his own music. Not only did he find joy in this creative outlet but it also helped mold his clear career goals.
“I knew from that moment forward I always wanted to do something creative.” Max tells. His initial dream was to be a musician, a passion he pursued with what he calls “delusional confidence.”
“That’s the confidence of knowing who you are,” explains his mom over the familiar backdrop of a high school guidance session, where, when asked about his college plans, Max boldly replied, “I’m going to be a rock star.” When the counselor recommended coming up with a backup plan, he said, “Rock stars don’t have Plan B’s. They only have plan A.”
Family Background and Influential Surroundings
Another interesting fact about Max is that he grew up in a well-off neighborhood where his father worked for a corporation in a marketing role which gave him access to the corporate business world from a young age. The family subsequently relocated to a neighborhood sandwiched between two well-known billionaires: Todd Peterson, the Vivint owner, and Ryan Smith, the Qualtrics owner.
“Those two people had a big impact on me,” Max says. “Neither of which had claimed their missions made them successful.” This showed Max the rewards of hard work and dedication, as successful entrepreneurs like these became a role model for Max
Religious Mission and Life Direction
One of the turning points in Max’s life was serving a religious mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This was a decision influenced by seeing successful individuals credit their success in part to this experience as well as being in a relationship with his now-wife, Whitney.
“I was at a family gathering with them up at her dad’s cabin,” Max explains. “Literally I heard God telling me, ‘Hey, if you want a family like this someday… you know what you have to do. “
Max served in Calgary, Canada, and worked with the Latin community and learned Spanish. And it opened up valuable life lessons: the discipline of setting and sticking to a routine, the valuable relationship skills of communication, accountability, and teamwork, and the tenacity of pushing through trials and obstacles like long distances and inclement weather.
“For me, the mission hit me in the face with hard work, like with what it actually takes,” he says. “It taught me a lot about the discipline of a routine and how routines are very important.”
Current Projects that Excite Max
Building a High-Performing Sales Team
Max is also practicing for his future, on how to become become the CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) of his own company. If you put these systems in place and built your team for serving clientele, he has now focused on developing his sales team.
“The area I noticed growth in is within me, learning how to build a high functioning sales team for my marketing agency,” says Max. “I’ve been the marketing agency’s sales person. And I’ve sold well over 250 marketing deals, and sort of like organized the systems to then create a sales team.
There, was, however, a transition so, far from smooth. “I’ve brought on a ton of sales guys that just flat out didn’t work and it’s all my fault,” he says. “In retrospect, I made so many wrong hires and trained them poorly.”
Amid these challenges, Max is optimistic about this next chapter of their personal and professional growth. “I love expanding my skill sets, and right now that is being able to build and manage a sales team,” he says. “I love my sales guys. They have a certain personality and energy that I just vibe with.”
Embracing AI and Technological Advancement
Max is also excited about the implementation of artificial intelligence and emerging technologies in the process of his marketing agency.
“Now all of the tech and AI that we’re now implementing as marketing agencies … all of those who are implementing it are getting way, way ahead,” Max says. With agencies that do not embrace these technologies trailing both fiscally and operationally, he adds.
Tactical and Strategic Social Media Marketing Advice from Max
Foundation Before Marketing
Max calls out the most common mistake businesses make: “Pouring gas onto a fire that hasn’t been started yet.” He notes many entrepreneurs try to sell products or services without building the right base.
“There are so many entrepreneurs with cool ideas who have no idea what the first thing is regarding how to market their product,” Max says. “They approach a marketing agency without a proof of concept, with an idea and a half-finished MVP for a product.
Max insists that before pouring passive income into growth hacks for marketing, entrepreneurs need to work on this base:
- Identify the problem: Identify the problem to solve
- Market validation: Confirm that your target audience cares about the problem
- Understanding your customers: Understand your customer and their pain points
- Formulate a good offer: Create an offer that validates your price
Understanding Marketing Fundamentals
Max first focuses on the main marketing principles before you ever get into any competitive research. Going without this knowledge will lead business to copy Competitors efforts without knowing the actual things that works.
“You can go to someone’s Facebook page and click into their ad account and see exactly which ads are running,” Max explains. “But if you don’t know what you’re looking for, what ads are actually converting and what landing pages are actually working, you’re flying blind.”
Max also refers to Russell Brunson’s framework of “hook, story, and offer” as being a vital part of successful marketing:
- The hook: What will make people sit up at pay attention
- The story: Your individual process, testimonials, case studies, and mission
- The offer: What does a customer get for their dollar; how long does it take; what are the chances of success; what is involved
Leveraging AI Effectively
When it comes to using AI for marketing tasks, Max uses Dan Martel’s “10-80-10” rule:
- First 10%: Full context and guidance
- Middle 80%: Use AI to do the heavy lifting
- Last 10% : Check and polish the output
Max, emphasizes that “AI is only as good as the context you give it. He gives concrete examples of how his team is using AI well:
“What we do, for example, because we have a lot of this data, I put in a document, a PDF document, a hundred ad scripts that we’ve seen convert on a high level. And so, we upload that PDF to ChatGPT, and we’re like, ‘Hey, based on this hundred high-performing ad scripts, I want you to tell me the hook, story, and the offer. ‘Tell me the principles that make these video ads converted. “
This is different than just telling AI to write an ad without any context. “It’s when people just go in and provide absolutely no context to the AI and then expect a godly ad to come out. And it’s just unrealistic,” Max observes.
Essential Digital Marketing Tactics
Max shares two fundamental concepts relevant to business owners wanting to take their online presence to the next level:
- Master paid social media advertising: “If you can figure out how to unlock paid ads on social media, it can be the one thing that unlocks so much revenue for your business,” Max says. “Just go figure it out. It will be a ton of revenue and a consistency.”
- Build a personal brand: “Build a personal brand on social media that is so powerful as an entrepreneur, no matter what you do, to have an audience of individuals that you can reach out to and sell unique products and services to,” says Max.
He in particular recommends leaning into Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts for nurturing this personal following.
“If you’re running paid ads and you have a personal brand, that is the perfect storm on social media to have the high trust and high authority with your audience and convert way more,” explains Max. “You’ll get much higher show rates to your sales calls and convert way more leads, because they’ve already been indoctrinated by you as a human being.”
Where Does Max See the Future Going in Digital Marketing?
The Rise of AI-Enhanced Marketers
Max thinks that AI will very much change the marketing landscape just not as much by replacing humans.
“I don’t think that AI is going to take over humans, but I think A.I. is going to make humans superhumans,” Max predicts. “The ones that understand it are gonna get so far ahead and the ones that don’t understand it are falling so far behind.”
He ends by observing that, in the coming years, if you want your business to survive and make money, you must understand what AI is doing.
Changing Agency Economics
As Artificial Intelligent tools become more advanced and available, Max expects the agency business model to change dramatically.
“What we’re gonna see, I think, is marketing agencies cutting each other on price, purely on price, just because they can churn out so much volume for so cheap,” he says.
Gearing towards this new development, Max elaborated that the agencies that will thrive in that environment are the ones that:
- Able to churn out larger volumes without compromising on quality
- Stay focused on client outcome, not on profit margin
- Integrate AI tools effectively into their workflows
- Articulate their unique value proposition
“The ones that are going to do well are going to be the ones that can put out all that much more at such a much higher quality,” Max says. This will demand “just being that dedicated to the quality and results for your clients” no matter what AI tools are developed or how much easier they make fulfilling the process.
Conclusion
At only 24 years old, Max Oliver went from competitive swimmer to marketing agency owner, breaking into the industry by fostering confidence in himself, unleashing creativity, and embracing a cycle of constant learning. His focus on laying great foundations before marketing, finding underlying principles and playing with technology gives timeless wisdom for the entrepreneur whatever point they are at.
With AI and other technologies transforming the digital marketing field every day, I also appreciated Max’s overarching advice that marketers should develop both technical skills as well as a personal brand, creating a roadmap for professionals who want to remain competitive and relevant. When a business combines strategic paid ad campaigns with organic personal content, Max says they have “the perfect storm” for building trust, authority, and sales conversion.
So, whether you’re starting from scratch or ready to scale that business you already have, these insights will help make that small business life journey a gated expectation for every customer at your business!
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