The Truth About Scaling a Digital Agency from Zero to 7 Figures in Two Years With Dan Page

Shawn Massie - Episoide 49

Written by Eli Adams

Founder & CEO of Fire Us Marketing with more than 15 years in the digital space. My aim is to teach business owners how to elevate themselves online. The HOW is more important than the WHAT these days.

Introduction to Dan Page

Dan is COO at Scroll where he has bootstrapped the agency from zero to seven figures in under two years. He has developed all processes and procedures and has worked with over 300 small businesses on strategic, paid and organic digital marketing.

In addition to Scroll, Dan is also on the board of directors at Davis Technical College and founder and photographer at Dan Page Photography. He has worked in many industries including agency strategy director at the LDS Business College and marketing manager for the LDS Everything Food Conference where he organically drove 15 million views and 22 million impressions.

Dan is also the host of the Scroll Session podcast where he shares how to start and grow businesses and interviews industry leaders and entrepreneurs. He’s building a crazy different agency.

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Who is Dan Page?

Early Life and Business Beginnings

Dan Page was born in Kaysville, Utah just north of Salt Lake City. He attended Davis High School and was super involved in high school and junior high. Dan credits his parents and solid friend group for making him who he is today.

Dan’s business journey started early. He was always the one doing lemonade stands and selling things to friends. That entrepreneurial spirit grew in junior high when he started a recycling business to pay for a band trip to Indianapolis.

The Recycling Business

When Dan’s parents told him he had to pay for the band trip himself, he looked for a need in his community. At the time Kaysville city didn’t have a recycling program but there was a recycling plant in nearby Layton where you could drop off items and make money.

Dan created flyers offering to pick up people’s recycling – newspapers, plastic, and metal. He would then drop it off at the plant and make money from his monthly customers and from the recycling plant. This business ran for a couple of years until Kaysville city started their own recycling program.

Photography Career

Dan’s creativity and photography started in high school and got more serious after he returned from his mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in London. He worked as a photographer for the church for about a year before starting his own business.

He started with landscape photography and then transitioned to portraiture and weddings to make it financially viable. His wife joined him in the photography business and they ran it full time until 2019 when Dan started Scroll.

Dan Page family

Current Projects that Excite Dan

Transitioning Scroll’s Focus

Dan is currently excited about a major transition happening at Scroll. The agency is pivoting its focus to serve only other agencies, moving away from their previous client base in the home service and e-commerce niches.

“Right now, Scroll has been transitioning, pretty majorly pivoting who our ideal client is. We’re transitioning to only serving other agencies,” Dan explains. This shift involves helping agencies with their lead generation, fixing their sales systems, and assisting them in creating better offers that truly serve their clients.

Developing Courses

Another exciting project for Dan is the development of courses. He explains, “We’re also coming out with courses. That’s been something that we’ve actually always wanted to do and build up and share how we’ve built our agency, share how we’ve built our fulfillment engine, share how we’ve built our sales system.”

This initiative allows Scroll to document their processes and share their knowledge with other agency owners. Dan emphasizes the importance of documentation, stating, “If you don’t, you’re doing a disservice to your clients, to your team, to yourself in the long run, because you’ll be worth less, and you’ll be worth less if you don’t document.”

Tactical and Strategic Digital Marketing Advice from Dan

Focus on Your Offering and Target Market

For businesses in the low six-figure range looking to reach seven figures, Dan advises focusing on honing your offering and target market. He explains, “You really need to figure out who your best ideal top of market client is in order to serve them, no matter what you do.”

This focus is crucial because:

  • It’s where a good chunk of revenue will come from
  • It’s where the best relationships will be built
  • It’s where you can probably drive the best results for that particular client

Invest in Paid Advertising

Once you’ve nailed your product/service and target market, Dan recommends investing in paid advertising. He believes that with the wealth of content available online, anyone can learn paid advertising in about a month.

“You can learn paid advertising for yourself in probably a month or so. And now that you’ve nailed your offering and your target market, all you need at that point is to risk some capital and invest in paid advertising to get more of your ideal target market client,” Dan advises.

Outsource Before Hiring In-House

For businesses that have reached the seven-figure mark, Dan suggests being strategic about growth. He recommends outsourcing for as long as possible before bringing someone in-house.

“I would outsource and either outsource for as long as you can, as cheaply as you can before you bring someone in house,” Dan says. He reflects that while he and his business partner Shane love their team, they wish they had stayed smaller and leaner for longer to have more cash on hand for contingencies.

Utilize Google Local Services for Home Service Businesses

For home service businesses, Dan highly recommends Google Local Services (also known as Google Guaranteed). This platform offers several advantages:

  • It’s a pay-per-lead service
  • You only pay for legitimate leads
  • It’s relatively easy to set up and manage
  • It’s a low-investment option for businesses in the six-figure range

“Learning Google Local services is a great place to start, especially if you’re in that six-figure mark. Because it’s a relatively low investment, like all considering. And it’s really a turn on and turn off mechanism,” Dan explains.

Leverage Meta (Facebook and Instagram) Advertising

Dan also recommends advertising on Meta platforms (Facebook and Instagram) due to:

  • Low cost per lead
  • Relatively okay CPMs (cost per thousand impressions)
  • Ability to target very specifically, especially in metro areas

The challenge with Meta advertising, according to Dan, is creating engaging content. He suggests investing in a videographer or creator to make content that will “stop the scroll” and capture attention.

Focus on Three Marketing Channels

One of Dan’s key pieces of advice is to focus on a maximum of three marketing channels. He explains, “Pick three channels that you want to own and be really, really good at and stick to those and master, nail those. And once you’re done mastering nailing those, keep going, and keep doing those things and then bring somebody in that can then be strategic in another area.”

This focused approach allows businesses to excel in specific areas rather than spreading themselves too thin across multiple channels.

Dan Page

Where Does Dan See the Future of Digital Marketing Going?

Dan sees the future of digital marketing heading in two main directions:

  1. AI Replacing Mediocre Marketers: Dan believes that artificial intelligence will likely push out mediocre or bad marketers. “AI is going to definitely replace the mediocre and bad marketers. It just will,” he states.
  2. AI Accelerating Skilled Marketers: On the flip side, Dan sees marketers who effectively utilize AI accelerating faster than those who don’t. However, he notes that some companies are strategically positioning themselves as AI-free, which could set them apart in the market.

The Human Element in Marketing

Despite the rise of AI, Dan emphasizes the importance of human creativity in marketing. “As AI is changing digital marketing, we as the human race are also realizing that there’s things that are innately human that can never be replaced by AI. And one of which is digital, you know, original creativity,” he explains.

The Future of Marketing: A Blend of AI and Human Creativity

Dan envisions the future of marketing as a blend of AI efficiency and human creativity. He hopes to see marketers “using AI to help you be faster, maybe more efficient, but becoming more human and more creative and being able to somehow blend the two to be a better marketer and also have better marketing for your business or the businesses that you work with.”

Custom GPTs and Automation

Dan sees great potential in custom GPTs (Generative Pre-trained Transformers) and automation for improving marketing processes. He shares several examples of how Scroll has implemented these technologies:

  1. Client-Specific GPTs: Scroll has created custom GPTs for clients, like an epoxy manufacturer, to help generate content that matches the client’s voice and technical knowledge.
  2. Onboarding Automation: They’ve developed a GPT-powered system that processes onboarding forms and generates comprehensive client profiles and marketing suggestions.
  3. Workflow Automation: Using tools like Zapier, Scroll has automated many aspects of their client onboarding process, from creating Slack channels to setting up client drives and populating them with necessary documents.

Dan believes these technologies have wide-ranging applications beyond just marketing agencies. “There’s so much that could be created to take a lot of that paper, like just paperwork filling, you know, and just make that not a thing anymore,” he explains.

How to Get in Contact with Dan

If you’d like to connect with Dan or learn more about his work, you can reach him through the following channels:

Dan welcomes connections and is always happy to chat about digital marketing, agency growth, and the future of the industry.

Advice to His Younger Self

If Dan could go back and give advice to his younger self, he would say:

“Don’t be too hard on yourself. The sun rises tomorrow.” Dan admits that he’s always been prone to overthinking and comparing himself to others, leading to imposter syndrome. He emphasizes the importance of being less critical of oneself, especially in the early days of his photography career when social media comparisons were particularly challenging.

Dan also adds, “Be more aware of others. I think I sometimes am less aware of others or maybe how my choices or the things that I do affect other people.” He acknowledges that as a Type A personality, he used to push forward without always considering the impact on others. Now, he’s much more aware of how his actions affect people, his future, and his family.

Selective Focus Photography of Bookshelf With Books

Books, Podcasts, and Leaders That Currently Inspire Dan

Dan shared some of the resources and people that currently inspire him:

  1. Book: “Five Dysfunctions of a Team” by Patrick Lencioni Dan highly recommends this book for anyone who wants to be a leader or is leading a team. It breaks down what makes a good team, how to build trust, and how to maintain that trust. The book’s key pillars are:
    • Building trust as the foundation
    • Resolving conflict
    • Committing to resolutions
    • Holding each other accountable
    • Focusing on results
  2. Influencers: Alex and Leila Hormozi Dan finds the Hormozi couple hugely inspiring. He admires Alex Hormozi’s approach to giving away valuable free content, comparing it to Tony Robbins and Gary Vaynerchuk’s “Jab, jab, jab, right hook” strategy.
  3. Books by Alex Hormozi:

Dan emphasizes how these resources, especially the Hormozis’ work, have been game-changers for him and his business partner Shane in the last couple of years. He appreciates their giving nature and the transformational content they provide, which has influenced Scroll’s approach to business and marketing.

 

Conclusion

Dan Page’s journey from a young entrepreneur to a successful digital marketing agency owner offers valuable insights for anyone looking to grow in the digital marketing space. His emphasis on focusing efforts, leveraging new technologies, and maintaining human creativity in the face of AI advancements provides a roadmap for success in the evolving digital landscape.

 

This Podcasts Audio

Written by Eli Adams

Founder & CEO of Fire Us Marketing with more than 15 years in the digital space. My aim is to teach business owners how to elevate themselves online. The HOW is more important than the WHAT these days.

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