I was the client first.
I opened a barbershop in Valparaiso, Indiana in 2018. Filling chairs was my job. I tried flyers. I paid an agency $10,000 for a video and a website that was really a template. The chairs stayed empty.
Then The Idea Farm put $500 in ads behind that same video, and people started showing up. That’s when I learned the asset is rarely the problem. The system around it is.
In 2022 I bought into The Idea Farm, a design shop that had been around since 1973. I planned to be the investor. I ended up running it. In my first 30 days I found one lead source and no real systems. So we rebuilt everything, starting with what we sell. We made ads the main product, because ads were what actually moved the phone.
In 2023 we moved the company to Houston and built a new team here. Then we saw leads weren’t the real problem. Most businesses lose them after they come in: slow follow-up, no nurture, no sales process. So now we run the ads, track every lead from day one, and build the sales system that turns those leads into customers, for owner-led businesses doing about $500K to $10M a year.
I’ve been burned by agencies. Early on, I oversold my own production skills too. I don’t want to be that agency. So we quote flat fees in writing, we don’t guarantee results, and we put KPIs in place we can both see.
