An Agency Story

The Entrepreneur Who Tested Rejection Like a Workout - X Agency

• Russel Dubree / Darwin Liu • Episode 160

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Most people avoid embarrassment and failure, Darwin Liu trained for it. In this episode, he reveals how doing the uncomfortable on purpose helped him build a multimillion-dollar agency and stay sharp in an industry that's rapidly changing. You'll hear the mindset behind pushing limits, hiring struggles, and why boredom can be a sign of progress.

Inside this Episode:

  • Why getting comfortable with embarrassment builds real confidence
  • The difference between being an entrepreneur and running a company
  • The critical stage where most agencies fall apart
  • What happens when you build mental toughness instead of avoiding discomfort

Hear details for an agency planning workshop event November 10th and 11th 2025. Visit anagencystory.com to learn more. 

Russel:

Welcome to An Agency Story podcast where owners and experts share the real journey, the early struggles, the breakthrough moments, and everything in between. I'm your host Russel Dubree, former eight figure agency owner, turn Business coach. Sold my agency and now helps agency leaders create their ideal business. Every agency has a story, and this is your front row seat. This is an agency story. Welcome to the show today, everyone. I have Darwin Liu with X Agency with us here today. Thank you so much for being on the show today, Darwin,

Darwin:

thank you so much for having me, Russell. Glad to be here.

Russel:

I'm glad to have you. Let's get right into the thick of things. Tell us what X agency does and who you do it for.

Darwin:

Yeah, so, uh, XAG Agency is a full service digital marketing, performance based marketing agency. And, uh, we do business for, I'd say mid enterprise level clients. Generally speaking clients generating somewhere around 5 million to 400 million plus, right? Primarily, you know, it's 70% e-commerce, 20% b2b. And I guess the USP or the big difference for what we do, Russell, is we're able to scale, meaning we're able to increase revenue and. So we have a unique strategy that we do internally that, you know, we built off these years of Google marketing where we take over a client. A recent example for you would be they were generating somewhere around$48 million in the first year. Once we took over, we increased, it, almost doubled it somewhere around 95.6, so something like that with only a increase of 20%. So we basically jacked up the revenue and the revenue at the same time.

Russel:

Yeah. Well, it sounds like the kind of service everybody should want a piece of agreed. Everybody loves that double word, that it never sounds anything less than sexy. Well, very cool. I wanna hear a little bit more about just how you created that, how you do that, and all the other things that go into running an agency. But before we get into all that nitty gritty stuff, I just wanna hear about Young Darwin. Tell us about that.

Darwin:

Yeah, man. Funny story for you is I never held a real job, right? So I, uh, right outta college, I really didn't know what I do. So Id how to get this back. That came up was online marketing. So that's basically where I started thousand eight in my mom's basement with the lights off. Right. So for two years I was trying all these games and just fy if anyone who hasn't been doing marketing for that long, back in the day, it was like the wild, wild West. Google CPCs were like 30 cents. Facebook just came out, right? So they actually didn't know what they were doing. And what ended up happening was when Facebook first came out, they allowed almost everything in anything. I created a quick script where. If you wanted this free iPad first, you had to invite your friends. It was quick. One click of a button. So happening was they click, they invite all their friends, they enter the email. I was making money like clockwork 30. And then guess what? Facebook finds out they gonna come and show it. So with that said, I, I'm trying other things. All these other black hat tactics, I ended up 30 on my credit card. I couldn't pay my bills. My mom, I needed to get a job. So I ended up working at an agency, but now I think I was paid 30 grand a year. With that said, you know, you said, hold on, wait, 30 grand a year? Yeah. 30 grand a year level. Right. That wasn't for me. You know, when I did that, my mom was, I told you, you shoulda done this in the beginning. You shouldn't had to do what you're doing. In my mind, it was always. This, it wasn't end, it was just a means end because I always knew I still wanted to run company and do my own. I was an entrepreneur, so I started working there. I really built up, um, I guess my network. I was doing well. I was the fastest person. They, me not to, after about four or five years, I the timeframe. Now I left, you know, and I, when I was leaving, my mom was like, Hey, you're making a lot of money right now. Are you stupid? Why are you leaving? This isn't what I wanna do. So that's basically where X Agency came on board. Right? The moment I left, everyone wanted to come with me. So I think within our first year we were already at seven figures and, uh, we've just been growing since last year was the first year that we've been stagnant, so we're trying to fix that. But yeah, that's it. Yeah.

Russel:

So how do you look back on, I mean, you're just definitely giving off that kind of entrepreneurial vibe from the get go. It's like, how do I work smarter, not harder, or whatever. When obviously as you shared, you kind of engaged in some black hat type tactics, but when you reflect back on that, how do you think about those? About your start situation?

Darwin:

Yeah. You know, and. I was never afraid of stuff I actually never cared too much about. For me. It was always skirting the rules. I mean, I used to skip school all the time. I honestly think when you're growing up, the people who have straight A's that follows all the rules that they're meant to be a worker because they're being trained to follow all the rules. And I think if you're able to kind of skirt, not rape them per se, but kind of skirt the rules, that is a great foundation for becoming entrepreneur. You know, so that's, I've always had the, the mentality that's me personally, even as a kid. And I was selling cards, you know, baseball cards, but yeah. It's always gonna be an entrepreneur. I do think there's a difference between an entrepreneur and A CEO. So I do have a, there are that, I do, I hate being a CEO. Right? But yeah, entrepreneurship is a mindset.

Russel:

I think is very common for a lot of entrepreneurs. Right. This is, you know, mean, just kind of how you're describing, right? Innovation is at the boundaries of status quo, or the rules, if you wanna say, and that's what makes entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs. But that doesn't. Innovation has occurred. That's not always necessarily the best use of your time, skills, talents to maintain that thing. It's to go explore and find more boundaries to push. I run into that quite a lot. So that's, I guess, I dunno is the word, but how do you look at that?

Darwin:

Just to touch upon that point a tad bit. There's a lot of studies out there. I'll say that. Entrepreneur. There's a lot of entrepreneurs who fail at the company because once they hit a certain point, they don't know how to scale. The whole problem is, and which is what I alluded to earlier, being an entrepreneur, the mindset is different than being a CEO and unless entrepreneur can actually change, you know, their thinking to be a CEO, you can't continue being an entrepreneur and running the company as an entrepreneur because as an entrepreneur, you, you wanna try crap, you wanna throw stuff at the wall, you wanna see what works. And as the company grows and scales, which is where we're getting to, into now, put on the CEO hat, it's all about building structure, building processes, uh, being more efficient and putting in hr, putting in this and putting in that. And those are two different things, right?

Russel:

So you're saying you're not an HR guy? No, I,

Darwin:

that's my whole thing. Yeah. I do have adhd, just, I don't. Me naturally. I do not like processes. I can't follow my own processes. I can't do this. I am my own workplace and I'm really trying to, you know, switch my thinking to being the tructure and processes kind of guy. But yeah, I absolutely agree.

Russel:

It makes sense and. A lot times when folks I talk to and work through it, it's always like, look, we can try to come up with a solution that's, Hey, go be a completely different person. I'm generally not a fan. You know, you have skills, talents, abilities, and where in the world should those be placed and where can we backfill? Gaps. Gaps or what needs to be otherwise, but we might come back around to this idea and concept. You're absolutely

Darwin:

right on that part. Right Russell too. And that's actually been a thought that's been floating in my head, which is, should I just hire a CEO and continue doing entrepreneur things? You know? So that is always something that any entrepreneurship really think about, which is if this is something you absolutely hate, if this is something you actually suck at, and if the budget allows, find someone to run your stuff. Find someone who can basically. What's that word? I can't think of that word, but complimentary to your

Russel:

skill sets. Yeah. The yin to your yang or the P to your pod, or, I'm sure there's all kinds of other analogies of that. You know what, let's just run down that track and what we can get back to some of the agency story. But it's funny, you know, I think. Had a similar type mindset of discipline, that visionary and not always really wanting to sit down and do the nitty gritty process. I kind of forced it over time, but we ended up bringing someone into the business that that was far more their forte. And I'll say it was the dream. I got to live in my best place and you know, do what I do best, and they did what they did best and it was one of those things that's like I always had the back of my mind to write the business book. His name was Shyam actually. And I was gonna title the book, find Your Shyam, and just stop fighting and just find the person that's gonna compliment you,

Darwin:

you know? And I would say, damn Russell, tell me how you did it. Because I tried three folks to help me do this. I've had different populations. CI still can't fucking get, get it right. And maybe it is the nature of our business, it's a marketing business, so everything changes so fast. It's been very hard to build our marketing processes, you know, that has. Face my business. Maybe you can help me with this piece too. The other hardest part is, at least in my industry, the everyone who does marketing is say, understood. And there's a different work ethic there. There's a different way of managing those folks versus certain older folks and maybe me and you.

Russel:

I mean, it's funny going back to how, and I don't know, I won't be so confident as the definitive answer on this per se, but in my own lived experience that I learned how to make good hires in business, I should say, and I never really was able to pinpoint when someone was gonna be great and. I get the sense a lot of kind of similar attempts that folks say when they have a failed leadership path is that it was a little more forced than just letting it naturally develop or you know, like, we gotta hire and fill this position, so we're gonna go find somebody. And I just. To a little bit the amount, experience, personality, mindset that someone really has to have to succeed in that role is rare or has to be grown and built. And I guess maybe the best thing there is it just can't be forced. And our particular case, I think it's also just putting out your ethos and that's going to attract. In the world of, hey, this is the type of company, right? And make it not about transactional. I think that's ultimately true. There's all kinds of people that can put on the glitz and the glam and wanna chase attractive opportunity and that can fool us into thinking they can be successful. And we need someone that still has, they have this entrepreneurial belief and mindset. They just don't have the risk. It's. Of mind top fluid thought, kind of thinking on it as you're describing this challenge and how it worked in my own journey and that's

Darwin:

good to know too. And I guess maybe then what would you suggest for me? Right. Continue looking basically is what I think I should be doing. Finding someone who can really come in to do this for me. Dude, I try multiple times. I kind of stop for now just running this the way it is. But you did, you know, just the fact that we're talking, I makes sure you wanna continue going on trying to find something to run this. So thank you for this, this answer. Yeah,

Russel:

absolutely. They're out there. Yeah. And it's almost like, I always think of this thing too, and I got married very young, so I didn't really ever live a strong dating life kind of thing. But I can imagine if I was going out every day and trying to force some type of relationship like that, that it would be, it'd be a very interesting process versus I just went out in the day, you know, was out there, put myself out there. But you know, let also let of. Try to,

Darwin:

I think that's a perfect analogy and I, I,

Russel:

no, no, but great conversation. Let's get back to your agent, Jeremy, because you said something pretty fascinating there, that within a year you're at a million or seven figures in revenue. I mean, imagine a lot of people gotta be sitting here saying, what the heck did you do within a year that allowed you to do that?

Darwin:

Yeah. So, uh, a couple things, right? When you're starting as an entrepreneur, you wear every single hat out there. You don't have folks who can really help you out. So for me, you know, the biggest currency in life to me isn't moving this time, right? And I think every entrepreneur understands that. So I tried to maximize my time. For me, it was okay, if I am gonna spend X amount of hours selling, where do I spend my time? I spend it on cold outreach to set clients. Happens. So I planned that out. If I were to reach out to clients and try to, you know, sell them after each successful client, it's a brand new cold sale. So I, how do I actually, at the end of the day, there lose opportunity, cost of time there. How can I actually maximize my sales? So for me. What I did was, my sales process was getting as many partners as I can do that I one, obviously we had great results and we had a great system, which is the most important part. But the next piece was, I'm assuming all these partners got get reached out to folks. How do I make myself stand out a bit? Right? They probably get a hundred emails giving them an offer, right? One is proving your result with the case studies. Two is saying, Hey, we'll give you 10% of the revenue for a good year if you actually refer us. So with those two, I really built up. Partner? Network. Network and our partner. And the great thing about partners is it's a warm lead. You're not coming into a call with them hating you. Right. So yeah, that was the goal, which is build up as much partners as we can and we're still doing that. We're continuing to build partner so we can have them continue to leads. Okay.

Russel:

I'm curious actually. I imagine there has to even be a lot more of that. I mean, I, I definitely Have you read Four Hour Work Week by Chance? Yes. Okay. Yes. Similar vibes to name Tim Ris. Yes, Tim Fer. Right. How look at a problem and how do I time and look at work smarter, not harder, essentially. Which is really cool. It's really cool your process there. You know, one of the things my is right had to make a investment in that effort, right? It wasn't just showing up and putting it out there that you had to do a lot. Actually make those partnerships be top of mind. You said set yourself apart. What did some of those things, what did that look like?

Darwin:

Uh, let's see. So a couple of them. Obviously gonna, events is one big thing, which I hate we have to go to. But in terms of there's, there's multiple things I had to do. One was. I tell this to all the younger folks who are like, Hey, how do you start your own agency? I would say marketing is an important part. You know, people skills is actually the most important part. So I read a crap ton of books, Russell on, on how to talk to folks, how you know books like How to Win Friends and Influence People. I read a lot of sales books and how to sell up insurance with. But a lot of these connection, right? Three subsequent, um, all these things on how to actually become someone who people gravitate towards. That's actually what I focus on. And just so that you know, I'm actually a natural introvert. I like to sit at home by myself, you know, just doing my own thing. I actually don't like going out. I understood the business I was in. I understood that I needed to put people skills to actually succeed. So that's what I put my focus on. A lot of learning on people skills, a lot of time gonna events, a lot of testing. Right. I actually do a lot of tests. By the way, Russell, I'll give you a quick example, which is most folks out there, what they'll do is they'll. If they're cooking chicken in the air fryer, they'll just put it in and guesstimate and say, okay, this is great. I actually love testing. I'll test my chicken on how I cook with the air fryer. I'll say, Hey, six minutes, how does it taste? Alright, let's go to seven. Let's go to eight. So everything I'm doing is maximized, right? So if something, whatever I am doing in terms of a sales process or HR process, I have a theory, I'm testing it. That's actually the how our, you know, our X system works for marketing, which is a lot of folks, they will just blindly do something. They think that they do this, it'll work, but they never truly actually measure and say, does this definitively work? So that's how we approach, that's sort of one of our ethoses, which is everything needs to have a theory, it has to have a concrete, finite answer. You know, it's not just, I think it works. I think this is cool. It's really, let's test. If it works, great. Let's test again. Let's test one more time and if it works, let's put into our process. If it doesn't, we.

Russel:

And just for the folks at home to just make sure they hear what I think is some really great approach to business here is one is taking the time to figure out a strategy and just even vetting different concepts, ideas, what could we do looking at this full spectrum. But once you decide, go all in. Don't just dip your toe in the water, right? You said read tons of books and really kind of forced even something you're saying it wasn't naturally comfortable for you. So going all in on that strategy and then just testing the heck outta it. Not letting hope be the plan or the strategy, and walking the path of giving yourself absolute confirmation that these different things that you're doing, this works. This doesn't. We do that in a condensed enough period, kind of when you're saying go all in. That's how we get results more quickly. But we're just to compound everything faster because we're not forgetting things and we're not, you know, things get in the way. I mean, that's what I hear in some of that approach. You can fill in any gaps or add to that

Darwin:

just, and I'm gonna add, you're actually spot on, right? Just to elaborate on one piece and to add onto it is, you know, I talked about doing something I hated. And when you touch upon it briefly and nowadays, you know, if you're on all these, the Gary Bees and the Tony Robinson of of the world, they'll say, find something that you love or do something that you love. And all these kids nowadays who are trying to be entrepreneurs, think that that is the approach. That said, no matter what you do, there will be aspects and areas of absolutely hate. So if you don't build a muscle to actually be comfortable with the crap you hate, you're gonna fail. You know, and they're sitting here and comment, oh, I only wanna do what I love, but they'll never do something that they, that that's a fast, that's not true.

Russel:

Uh, that is such great advice. I mean, get comfortable with doing something you hate. If you're not doing something you hate and actively working to getting comfortable with it, then that might be a good signal. That message does need to be put out in the world because I think I really hate too much of this messaging of, you know, that you know this 1, 2, 3 step and this is how you have success, or something along those lines that we have to be telling folks that it's actually really freaking hard work. The results brings themselves because if it's easy, everyone would be millionaires or billionaires, even.

Darwin:

Yeah. And hey, and while we're talking, and thank you for that, I, one last important point on this sort of entrepreneurship journey, right? Which is people actually also have to understand that failure is actually part of the process. You know, I have a ton of friends who will try something in the entrepreneur world, and the moment that they hit influence's failure. Quit. But what they need to understand is the more you fail, the faster you learn. If you have done this long enough, you'll have a lot of fails. It's not about all the 50 times you failed, it's about continuing getting the one time that works. So that's one thing a lot of folks missing too, which is I understand that you will fail, know that you'll say no, then you fail and eventually just don't fall off the path. But the longer you go, you'll eventually strike.

Russel:

Yeah. It. I mean, we could probably riff on this for a long time, but it makes me think of fans can sometimes get upset when a professional athlete loses and they're like, well lost. I think we don't know, or fans don't always realize is that's all it was, was a loss to them and it's another chance to learn opportunity. They, they gotta where they're at oftentimes because they never got consumed with, did I win or lose today? It's, did I try something new and different and push the boundary or find something to improve upon. Journey. You have to appreciate that if we constantly ourselves every single day by did get to the end's, very tough mentally to stay in the mindset.

Darwin:

I'm butchering this quote by the way, but they, I've seen a lot of motivational quotes about Michael Jordan saying, oh, you've seen all the 30,000 something shots that you made, but you didn't see a 300 that you missed. You know? So yeah, like most as people or as humans, I think all we do is we talk about our successes, but we, no one ever talks about the dark feelings and the stuff that happens, right? So, but people do need to understand, if you are jumping on this entrepreneurial path, you do need to understand that you'll have the dark times. Times what hell.

Russel:

You do occasionally hear the stories, right? I think it's like Steph Curry wouldn't leave the gym until he made, he switched, you know, 50 threes in a row. I dunno what the exact number was, but it was something insane like, and that might take him three or four hours, but Right. That's goes back to the going all in and you know, all the ones that he's failing and stuff like that. It was funny though. I'm curious, your take on this is that's talked about all the time, fail fast and all these words, but I don't always get the sense that we truly embrace that, um, across the board in the entrepreneurial community. It's kind of like the whole thing of everybody has a good plan until you get punched in the face. I mean, maybe just go back to that thought process of getting uncomfortable, doing something you hate, getting comfortable, being uncomfortable. Why do you think you've been able to do that? What do you think is different about you in that sense?

Darwin:

I, for the most part, never cared too much about anything. And I think that might come with maybe my own personal issues. Right? Meaning again, in high school I cut through so much, I got kept back in college. I graduated like a 2.2 GPA. I never truly cared if my mom hated me or if my friends, you know, thought I was doing something ly wrong, right? So for me, I was perfectly fine with it, you know? Now with that said. I did practice or exercise some of that stuff. Okay, so couple of you know, things might be as an example. Going out to the clubs by yourself, which is a very embarrassing way that, uh, you know, walking into a club as a guy by yourself and just getting rejected by every single person. But it was really building my, sort of, my mental capacity to handle, you know, rejection, failure, not getting things I wanted. Right. So for me, I did a lot of those things. I would go to grocery stores, I would load up my car. I go there and I say, I don't have any money to pay for it. It's embarrassing as hell, but at the day, I'm really getting myself used to like. Embarrass. So as I get older, I still don't care at all about almost anything. I think that's both for good and a bad of myself.

Russel:

No, dude, that's so fascinating. I mean, there's so many analog I can think of, but the two that come on one, that's, again, going back to fresh, that's what they say a lot is too, is they don't actually care that much. And we don't wanna necessarily hear that. But there's a freedom almost in that when you kind of, you lose that caring mindset.

Darwin:

And just that it's so skin, right? Nowadays we, we care too much about what folks think about us, and you really, as an entrepreneur, you have to swap that mindset because people who don't come from a rich family, all of your friend group or your peer groups, they think differently and you automatically are gonna be this, you automatically are gonna get trapped up. So they just need to understand that part.

Russel:

Now that came back to me. The other thing, right? Nowhere near the level of the Navy Seal, but I was in the military and I have a decent understanding of how they, their ethos and how they operate and their whole thing is right, is have such rigorous training and standards so that when you're probably in an actual battle. It's like, that's so bad. I've already been drowned as part of training and, and all the crazy stuff they do. And so what is hard to us is only relative to the hardest thing we've done or been through. And so it sounds like you just got good at forcing yourselves into situations that were. I don't care if I got rejected, I've been in a grocery store and not had to pay my groceries for fun.

Darwin:

Yeah. I, I actually love getting up on Navy Seals and, and everything that they do. Right. And I think one thing that I, they talk about a lot is something along the lines of like, you don't really rise to the level of your goals. You fall back to level of your habits. So they drill that thing into them so much that. Even when a fire comes, they default to what they've, you know, trained on. So they will just follow the, everything that they've done. Right. So same thing here. I'm really band day, I'm really building my mental habits or my mental muscles to be able to handle something like that versus, you know, setting the goal of, of. Not having the mental muscle to do it. So I think a lot of this really is building the mental capacity or the mental habits, or whatever you wanna call it, to handle everything. Being on the entrepreneur path, because it's way different than working on a job. There's a lot of uncertainty. There's that no one really understands you. You're gonna be all alone for, I'd say, every year of your life for the most part. Right.

Russel:

Yeah, so that's so perfect. I love that notion of habits, right? Again, another foundational layer of what are, your habits are probably gonna be, tell me your habits. I'll tell you probably where you stand and relative to maybe the goals you're wanting to achieve. Uh, that's great insight. Let's go back to the, the agency journey. I mean, it sounds like a lot of the stuff that can be really hard, you found a way to make easy. In your, you've alluded little bit, but where's the cons that've been?

Darwin:

Yeah, so I'll this the right now where? When you first start out in agency life, you're at maybe one to five or one to seven pitch employees. Right. It's actually fun because every day is different. You're trying stuff, you're drawing stuff at the wall. You guys get to build, you know, have fun, do all these crazy stuff, and everything's still gravy. That's actually how you grow in the beginning because you hadn't found that your, you know, your product market fit. Right, but the moment you do, when you get to somewhere around, say, 15 ish employees. Transitional period of. Structured processes, things that people can follow and you know, having these systems where people are actually following the system and doing stuff. Right. And I always tell my team, the moment the company becomes super boring is actually when you know that we've actually hit the next level. Because, you know, I've interned at a bank before that it is the most boring thing that people world. That's so where you have everything planned out, every process, and it's just going and hitting buttons. I want to get to that point because if I can actually get to that point, I don't think said right. But for us right now, the crappy thing I still do hate. It's really this. Process part, which is, especially in marketing, I'm still trying to figure out how to get people to follow it. Right? The second part is people management. When you scale, as you get bigger, there's a lot of people management. And if you can hire full HR department, great. Or use a, you know, HRL source. But for the most part, when you're managing folks, you can't systemize feelings. People feel is people feel differently towards different things you say. So that has always been a sticking point to me. I hate managing people. Um. You know, and that's not something I'll ever be great at, but I'm still doing it.

Russel:

It's so true, and it was maybe a couple years ago, I first heard this term called the Valley of Death. Have you heard this term as it relates to agency, it's kind of centered around the thing that you're talking about. Oh yeah. Right. You can kind of just show up and make it all work. You know, dozen, 15 people in an agency. You know, it's kind of just fun. You just, because you don't need a lot of structure. You just show up and you try to do good work and everything kind of just kind of falls into place. But once you get to that number as you shared, you're forced to systematize some things, get into some layers of perhaps middle management. It's called the Valley of Death for agencies because once you enter that, you're starting to grow and you're probably needing to scale two different things. Create those systems and processes to manage the growing team there, but also creating the system and process to get the business development to feed the beast while you're going through that. And so basically they say that can take, you know, that can take a lot of time to cross that valley and some agencies don't cross it. They go back and they fall back to a smaller size. Some cases fold, very treacherous. But when you get on the other side, then you did figure all that out. Then as you're alluding to, you're naturally gonna be in a pretty spot. Yeah, no, thank you for that. Go look that up after.

Darwin:

See, you know, I can gain anything from, thank you.

Russel:

It's just fascinat because I always had, it's like, you know when you do things and you don't know what you're doing. But, and then someone flies a term to it, you're like, that's the thing I was doing. That was, so that's always a fascinating part. How are you looking at, I mean, is this just a stepping stone to a bigger vision of, that's nothing to do with agency or just how are you looking at your entrepreneurial future in the long term?

Darwin:

Yeah, so, you know, I have been hit up by a bunch of, I'd say 50 plus companies, that what they do is they'll try to buy you at and with bigger groups, right? And I've always said no to, until we hit a sort of revenue threshold. But with that said, with AI coming out. I think the marketing agency game is, at least for the small, you know, under the enterprise level or even up to maybe the five, 10 million mark, the whole game's gonna change. I think this marketing agency model is basically gonna die out for the most part unless you're enterprise level plus, right. So for me, that AI coming in this year has really changed my thought process. I'm most likely thinking of selling this soon, within the next two years-ish. I just don't wanna be, um, you know, the horse and buggy guy carrying the buggy with pork cups right. Do have a lot of other projects. I have like a doggy clothing store. I do a lot with investing with crypto real estate. Um, but what I'm doing right now is also trying to build an AI thought where would be a separate piece. It's a whole different model, subscription based, you know, local based companies can use it and just have it do stuff for them before using agency, right? Using natural language. So yeah, I mean, as an entrepreneur I do think you do need to look at what's happening in the global world and pivot, and that's sort of, I'm doing or thinking of doing that.

Russel:

I mean, you just seem like the type of guy that didn't, you don't just ever have one iron in the fire. You've got your mature iron, your starter iron, and your experimental irons, and keeping those running. I mean, do you ever struggle to find time to just, where do you find the time to keep all those different endeavors going?

Darwin:

Yeah. It's funny thing is I feel like. I did read a study about how there's a bigger percentage of in entrepreneur versus a normal group with mental issues, a d, bipolar, whatever it is. So, and it's a double edged sword, right? I can't sit still. But sometimes I get so much work. I'm working a hundred plus hours a week, so it's never, yeah. You know, do I find time? There are times that I do have some time off, but for the most part I'd say no. You know, I've probably been working at the minimum 70 hours a week ever. But there are many months where I do a hundred hours a week. You know, I'm working day in day, day out, uh, working over the weekends, you know. It's, do I find time? Sometimes I get pockets of time, but generally speaking, no. But I like it. Like I can't just sit still. Pharmac.

Russel:

What does Darwin. Relax or for free time.

Darwin:

Uh, I love hitting the gym when I can. I definitely will go to the gym as much as I can when I come home at night. Sometimes there's time. I love to just veg out on action movies. I don't have to think it helps me sleep and come on my head. So yeah, I'd say those two primarily. The gym, uh, you know what, I forgot one last part. My, I be like, I own my kids, right? And if you make everything you're doing worth, so yeah, my kids gym and then ve on action duties.

Russel:

All right. What's your, I dunno, I wanna say favorite, but when I think of good action movie, that's your go to. What is that for you?

Darwin:

Braveheart? I probably watched that thing about a hundred times.

Russel:

What about you Russell? Oh man. When I was a kid it was commando Nowadays. I end up really just loving Band of brothers actually. Oh,

Darwin:

funny thing you made in the Navy series. Because I am a big military guy, I do love following them and I always tell myself if I can't be, you know, if I fail before I'm 30, then I would do like a, you know, join the military. Eventually, obviously Scandin Navy Seals, right? That was always my two goals that I always told my current one and Entrepreneur thing was working, so I couldn't do it. But I do love Banner Brothers. What other war movies do I love? I love Jarhead, right? But yeah, I love watching War.

Russel:

Yeah. I haven't seen Jarhead. That's one. Put that on the list.

Darwin:

Full metal jacket. Oh yeah,

Russel:

that is a good one. That's a classic. That's the one with Army. Army who set the basic precedent of what a drill sergeant looks like. But to a lot of people say, I guess he was like a drill sergeant or something in real life. I think I, yeah, I heard he was right. They're funny people. I mean, my little bit of experience with the drill sergeants was they, they're the, and I dunno honestly if they're trying to be or if they just have to yell at people so much, so often that forced as think of really unique, funny to what's

Darwin:

did do military. Yeah. I was in the Air force. Joke. You know my call force? Oh

Russel:

yes. That's the greatest part about the military is all inter jokes and everything. I'll a one favorite. There was the notion of there's a spider and a tent and a marine guy smashes it with a boots, but an army guy eats it. I can't remember what the Navy guy does. And then the Air Force guy, you know, calls and says, why is there a tent in my hotel room? And so there's so many good jokes out there. I know you're.

Darwin:

Before. So yeah, obviously there is a lot of interagencies out Marines. My marine buddies, all Air Force are all very smart. And then my army guys, everyone for some reason. But yeah,

Russel:

very different type of people that join the different, different services for sure. That is a very real thing. That well been a fascinating conversation. Darwin, so many great takeaways for this journey and we've been really just talking about so many things. Entrepreneurialism. So no better question to kind of start to wrap this up than to ask, are entrepreneurs born or are they made? That is a loaded question,

Darwin:

right Russell? I honestly think it's both. I mean, at the end of the day, if you are born with sort of all the qualities that is required to be an entrepreneur, you're already all good to go. It's kind of like baking a cake, right? Some people born knowing how to do it, and then others, you can learn how to do it. And they, if you learn, you know, if you actually put in the time and try to figure out what the requirements for being an entrepreneur are and learn how to do it, you can learn how to do it as well. And I've seen folks who learn the process. I've also seen folks kind of like maybe Born who's born entrepreneur.

Russel:

Yeah, which is the most common answer and it does make me think back to, you're kind of alluding to this earlier, that one of the commonalities that gets said a lot and I see a lot and kind of believe a lot, is that we're all just a little bit insane or off our rocker and that we need that element to boot. Maybe that's a little bit of the born part of a little bit insanity, but Very cool, man. Well, if people wanna know more about your journey at X Agency, where can they go?

Darwin:

Yeah, well, I don't have my personal profile. They can visit xag agency.com. Follow our LinkedIn profile, right, xag Agency. You can add me on LinkedIn, be you ever have any questions. Takes me forever to answer, but I'll always get to you before the of the week. You can email me at darwin@xagagency.com.

Russel:

Thank. Wonderful. Thanks for sharing that, and thank you again for time. Your busy schedule and sharings and the different parts you've gone through on your journey. So many good takeaway, the power of going all in, testing and just getting comfortable, getting uncomfortable, doing the unorthodox things and how that's been so critical and pivotal in your journey. Really appreciate you taking the time to share that with us today.

Darwin:

Yeah. Honestly, Russell, thank you so much for providing me on this podcast, by the way. It's been one of the, I've done a lot of these by the way, and I'd say this is one of the ones I've enjoyed the most. It was a very fun, engaging conversation.

Russel:

Well, I appreciate that. You're too nice. Thank you so much, man. Thank you for listening to an agency story podcast where every story helps you write your own. Subscribe, share, and join us again for more real stories, lessons learned, and breakthroughs ahead. What's next? You'll want to visit an agency story.com/podcast and follow us on Instagram at an agency story for the latest updates.

Darwin:

Prior to starting my agency, I actually worked at an agency. When I worked at an agency, you know, they actually paid me to not meet. So for me, in the back of my mind, I figured I could do anything right. Now. With that said, I annually, we get to go to a party in, at the corporate office. So my whole team of Boston will head up to New York and do the office. I mean, do the party. While going up there, you know, and I manage a team of, I'm the worst influence ever. I had everyone on my team do together, party. But that was the, I'd say one of the more funny stories that we've had.

Russel:

I had to be a little bit of an interesting party. Everybody making out alright?

Darwin:

Yeah, it was fine. Obviously me. No, I, I think I went, but you know, it not, they were me, so I didn't much

Russel:

Oh, yes. To be young again. I know, right. Those days are gone.