Marketing Wiz Unpacks Business Growth & Sobriety Journey

Masters in Marketing Agency

Dive into an insightful conversation with Preston Powell, CEO of WebServ, as he shares his transition from battling addiction to pioneering marketing strategies. Explore the nuances of narrowing a business focus while staying agile enough to embrace lucrative opportunities. This episode deftly mixes triumph, practical business tactics, and a dash of humor – perfect for anyone seeking inspiration on professional and personal fronts.

Here are a few topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Masters in Marketing Agency Podcast.

• Overcame heroin addiction
• Build MRR for growth sustainability
• Specialize to provide industry-specific value
• Learning curve steep for business finances
• Expanding reach beyond behavioral health

Resources:

• WebServ
• DevNoodle

Connect with Preston Powell:

• LinkedIn

Connect with our hosts:

• Josh Hoffman - LinkedIn
• Alex Garashchenko - LinkedIn

Quotables:

• 46:12 - Because more general answer that might apply to just marketers in general is just, is specialized. That's what I would tell to an aspiring marketer. Like, figure out one thing that you like, whether it's, you know, technical or creative or you know, whatever it might be. But just go way down the rabbit hole over there because you'll provide a lot more value. You know, I've tried to make sure that our departments are like highly specialized so that we can provide a unique value that that isn't easy to find.
• 53:35 - Josh: The day that I realized that everyone's insecure was the day that I became a little bit more secure. And same thing. 'cause like, oh, like everyone's walking around just thinking about themselves and like, about all their little insecurities and everything. So I was like, that makes me feel a lot more secure. The same thing with imposter syndrome. Like if you kind of know that everyone's walking around doing it, there's like almost there hopefully is like a comfort level that comes with like, oh, that's like a normal feeling to have. And I'm not like, that's how progress goes with humans, right? Is you put yourself into
  Alex: This Yeah. The feeling of uncomfortableness and you wanting to show up.
• 33:09 - Initial plateaus were around like just not having the organization. So if I was focusing on service delivery, I couldn't focus on sales and vice versa. And then once we got to maybe a 100K we plateaued for a long time because we'd get clients, but we weren't retaining clients as well as we could. So we needed to work on retention. And yeah, there's been a number of plateaus. I think we plateaued again around 200K and exact reasons for each one are definitely somewhat debatable. But, mostly it's just that either you're not set up for growth, like you don't have the infrastructure for it or your focus is in, in the wrong area.
• 24:35 - I think it depends a lot. So I had a pretty, pretty high tolerance for like, I guess just like the pain that I put myself through and just really didn't have an interest in making a change. So like that kind of struck me. I, you know, I was so far beyond what should have been rock bottom for so long and I wasn't in too much worse a state I'd been in for, you know, the previous several months. But that was just something for like, that stood out to me as kind of like that fork in the road. But it is really hard. So like if you wanna like help somebody out that's struggling, their rock bottom or their turning point could be way higher than that. And hopefully for most people it is. Cause you can, I dragged myself through a lot of things that I didn't necessarily need to, I don't really regret it or anything 'cause I don't know if I would've just subscribed to like doing the right thing when I was in my teenage years and, it just wasn't my personality I, you know, was kind of a troublemaker for a long, long time. So I don't know.
• 30:05 - It's never worked very well if you go too broad because one like behavioral healthcare is an industry where everybody knows each other. So if I do really good work in behavioral healthcare, everybody hears about it and I get a lot of inbound referrals. So kind of like free marketing there. Also, we put on a lot of events in the space and those are all just great marketing opportunities for us. And we go to every conference. So I've got like five business development people and at any given time I've probably got a couple of 'em in different states at different events