The Promotion That Paid Less and Sparked an Agency - Adsquire

Company: Adsquire

Guest: Anthony Higman

Year Started: 2021

Employees: 1-10

What happens when a mailroom clerk discovers Google Ads and turns it into a multimillion-dollar advantage? In this episode, Anthony Higman shares his journey from corporate frustration to building Adsquire, a digital marketing agency for law firms. You’ll learn what it really takes to bet on yourself, build a high-performing team from scratch, and create momentum through bold, unconventional moves.

Key Takeaways

• How to get your team invested in learning
• Why bold experimentation is important (and fun)
• Why everyone should appreciate working in an agency 

Transcript

Adsquire

Russel 0:01

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. I have Anthony Higman with Adsquire with us here today. Thanks so much for being on the show today, Anthony.

Anthony 0:38

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Russel 0:39

Well, I want to get right to it. Tell us what Ads Squire does and who you do it for.

Anthony 0:44

Absolutely. So we do digital marketing for law firms.

Russel 0:49

I mean, does it need to be any longer than that?

Anthony 0:51

Yep.

Russel 0:53

You might have set the record for the shortest and sweetest, uh, description of a company, which I'm saying is a very good thing. But while short and sweet in how you describe it, we'll get into all the nitty gritty detail of how you perform and do that in your business. But before we do that, I want to hear about Young Anthony. Where does his story begin?

Anthony 1:12

Uh, sure. All the way back.

Russel 1:14

I mean, tell us Yeah. Far back as you want to go.

Anthony 1:18

Um, yeah, so I grew up in Westchester, Pennsylvania. Went back there for college. I studied journalism in college actually. Graduated around 2008 when the great recession had hit and I was looking for a job at all, like the local papers, national papers, different magazines. I probably had like 30 interviews ish. And then I would follow up with these people and every time they would say, Hey, yeah, we really liked you, um, but we're laying off half the staff or we're folding up. So like really just was kinda frustrated looking for a job, excited to get into journalism and kind of just kept meeting, um, these different issues. So to pay the bills, I took a job in the mail room of this really big personal injury law firm in Philadelphia. And

Russel 2:18

now I'm picturing, hold on real quick. I mean, is this like, uh, what's that movie, uh, elf where it's kind of a, a dingy, dirty, dark basement room?

Anthony 2:29

Exactly. That's actually the perfect way to visualize this. It looked exactly like that. Like we started out, it was like on the third floor of a big, like fancy skyrise, but the mail room had no windows and looked exactly like the elf. Scene right there. Um, so yeah, I was delivering mail to all the lawyers in the firm and like, it was cool. I was getting to know people, but I quickly realized like I hated that. Because I had just gotten outta college. That's

Russel 2:59

fair. This is not how you saw your life going.

Anthony 3:03

Exactly. Like, you know, I wanted to be a gumshoe and hit the streets and report and, um, I was stuck in the Elf mail room, like making copies all day and deliver a mail

Russel 3:13

without Elf mind you too. One thing if you had Will Ferrell dancing in the basement with you

Anthony 3:17

had no booze, you know, just so it was cool and everybody was really nice. And again, it was like a huge sky rise. There was like 13 floors full of lawyers. But again, I was stuck in this windowless mail room making copies and quickly grew bored of that and decided, all right, well let me like see what I can turn this into. So just like every chance I got, I would network and like talked to. Lawyers like be like, Hey, is there anything else I can do? It took a long time actually for me to even like get a shot at Anything else besides the mail room probably took me like a year and a half to even like get that first opportunity.

Russel 3:57

And I mean, are you still applying for jobs and trying to. Get out of the mail room or,

Anthony 4:01

yeah, and it was, again, it was the beginning of the great recession, so I literally must have applied 200 other jobs during this time. Like in the mail room?

Russel 4:09

No,

Anthony 4:10

and nothing. I didn't even like get a call back because again, it was just super competitive at the time. You know, the problem was like, I was a college graduate, I had no experience in anything. Right. And then like my brother got me the job. It was like through a temp agency that he knew a contact at. I was a year and a half in and I'm like still applying jobs. And he is like, yo, you gotta get outta there. And I was like, yeah, okay. Good point. And again, just like networked, stayed late, did anything. I could carry people's bags to their car. Like every shot I could get to like talk to somebody, I would. And like be like, Hey, can I help you on anything else besides the mail room?

Russel 4:49

I mean, I'm liking this. I mean, it shows something, right?

Anthony 4:51

Yeah. So eventually I got that first shot and it was like a help desk assistant for the IT department and you know, it was stupid stuff literally. 90% of the time it was like, did you unplug it and plug it back in?

Russel 5:06

First rule of tech support, yes.

Anthony 5:09

But it was a lot of like fixing printer issues and stuff. It wasn't hard, but it was different and I liked it and it was like a new team and then I kept getting like pulled back into the mail room because like I did a good job. Like that opportunity again was like a part-time, but like then my mail room boss would be like, no, we need you down here. And would kind of like sabotage me a little bit because like I did good work everywhere I go. But it hurts you in certain ways, like when you're a shining star because people are like, oh no, we need you. Right.

Russel 5:40

This reminds me of another movie. Have you seen The Secret of My Success with Michael J. Fox? Have you ever seen this?

Anthony 5:46

I feel like I have, but it's probably been forever.

Russel 5:49

Yeah. This is like almost, I mean, not exactly like the situation, but Right. He works in a mail room and then he is daylighting as this executive, and so he is just constantly navigating, trying to go pull down to have to do the mail room job while secretly doing the executive job that he found his way into.

Anthony 6:07

Exactly. Yeah. I, I have to re-watch it now or watch it.

Russel 6:10

Yeah.

An Opportunity Opens

Anthony 6:11

But yeah, so. You know, then I got a couple other like side gigs over there. One was like sanctions where I was helping like. Make really like PowerPoint presentations for the trials that the attorneys would go on. And that was another cool one'cause I would get to go to court and network with like other people there that were like involved in like the production of trials. Um, I like saw some cool stuff, was involved with some cool stuff there. And again. Kept getting pulled back down to the mail room, so like, was just super frustrated and then like the firm's owners noticed me. Right? And the marketing department needed help with Google ads because like they were spending a lot of money. And the guy who was managing everything really, like couldn't pay attention to it. And I had no idea even what Google Ads was at this point. You know? Like I was aware of it, I guess, but like I didn't really know what it was. Yeah. And this is like 2010, I guess. 20 10, 20 11. And I learned about Google Ads. The guy was like, Hey, we need help with this. Like, can you take a look at it? And help us do this part-time. And I was like, yeah, that sounds great. And I, I always kind of wanted to be in advertising even though like I didn't know it. Maybe

Russel 7:31

I'm just fascinated by, I mean, we know this now and probably to the 200 10, it wasn't as commonplace, but this really complicated, almost scientific. Construct that is tied to can be a lot of money and whatever. That's like, Hey, go take a shot at this.

Anthony 7:46

Pretty much, actually it was like he couldn't pay attention to it. It was kind of growing outside of his area of expertise. He had a ton of other stuff to do. He was doing like PR and he was a journalist and like waiting for, for the firm and there was like one other person on the marketing team, but they just did like website stuff. So, yeah, like I just kind of caught the attention of the right people to get this opportunity, but like it was a grind to even get there, right? Mm-hmm. And he was like, yeah, check this out. Like, let's see if you align and it could help us out part-time on this. And I learned about it and I was like, whoa. Like my mind was blown. As soon as like I got into like the interface, I was like, wait, this is how it all works. Like, are you kidding me? Like, yeah.

Russel 8:33

Why did that, why did that speak to you? Like what grabbed you about that do you think?

Anthony 8:37

Because I guess like I was semi aware what they were, but like I just. Didn't know how it would work before you know something, you don't pay attention to it. You know what I mean? Like I bet there's a million people out there that have really no idea how Google ads works, right. And like all the cool things that you can do with it. And so I just like was enamored. I was like in love with this thing. As soon as I found it and just kind of blown away at like with all the details of it, I was just like, no way. And again, it's 20 10, 20 11, I remember I, I was printing out. Search queries. So I have like boxes of, of printouts of search queries. I was like going through'em with a highlighter and stuff, just trying to figure it all out. Right. And it was a big spend account, so I was like, oh my God. I'm like kind of. In charge of like a lot of this money, again, I took it as an opportunity to literally learn everything that I could. And I had three days up there a week, and I still was working in the mail room two days a week, right? And so. It all just clicked one day. It took me a while. It took me probably like three months, but then literally everything in my brain just clicked and immediately I was like a duck in water with this program. And so I ended up like saving'em a couple million dollars a year and then just really catapulting everything because it just made sense to me. I was like a half creative kind of half analytical guy. And so again, like it was just. The perfect job for me.

Russel 10:05

Okay, so hold on. You just kind of glossed over, you know, you saved them a couple million dollars a year. Yeah. I mean, one did that finally get you outta the mail room and did it hopefully got you a lot more than that. I mean, how big a deal was that?

Anthony 10:20

This actually is a, um. This is a good story too and an interesting thing like that. Again, like I've learned, but it took like pain and the worst things to happen before I learned it. Well, I did get outta the mail room, but during this time Oh, oh,

Russel 10:33

good.

Anthony 10:34

During this time when I was working like three days a week. And it was like right after I'd saved them a couple million dollars a year. My boss from the mail room, like called me at my new desk upstairs, right where I had windows and everything and, and I was just living the dream doing this thing. And he would call me and be like. We need you back down here. And like, I think I went down a couple times and then like eventually I was like, nah, I'm not coming back down. I was like, yeah. I was like, that's fair. I was like, I have too much to do up here. Like I can't come down. So I put a line in the sand. Right. I was like, I'm not gonna come back down. And it, it caused a problem. There was, you know, a series of phone calls. My downstairs boss called my upstairs boss and they thought it out a little bit and eventually then I was able to go up full time. So it had to be like, no, I'm not gonna do that. But it worked. But it did cause some issues, right?

Russel 11:30

No hard times finding mail room helpers. So I would just think, I guess this is just the downside of a big corporate environment, that this is somehow a complicated situation. We've got this guy that's making us, or saving us$2 million a year, which job do we want him doing?

Anthony 11:45

Right. But it, it was bureaucratic and there was like just weird layers of bureaucracy that like, again, I had to put my foot down in order to even get it. And then again, like I did save him all this money, right? And I got a raise going up from the mail room to the 10th floor where I was doing this, but it wasn't enough. We actually made pretty good money in the mail room, believe it or not. I think I was making like. 50,000. This is in like 2010 again. So

Russel 12:13

yeah,

Anthony 12:14

50,000 to work in the mail room. It might be

Russel 12:16

more than I was making in 2010 and running an agency. So

Anthony 12:19

there was a lot of overtime. So when they were on trial, we'd have to stay there almost 24 7 and like print stuff all night, get all the documents ready for trial. So there was a ton of overtime, which is why we made that much.'cause we were always kind of on call.

Russel 12:36

Yeah.

Anthony 12:36

And so I got a raise, but. I ended up making less than what I was making a mail.

Russel 12:42

Yeah,

Anthony 12:42

that was right

Russel 12:44

tracks. Yeah. Save'em$2 million and you get a pay decrease. Okay.

Anthony 12:47

So I was like, wait, what? I got promoted here and I'm making less. I went to my boss then upstairs and was like, dude, like I love what I'm doing here, but I can't be making less. He was like, yeah, I understand. Go to hr. So I went to HR and she was like, oh, well I don't know if we can give you more than this. And I was like, no, it's not acceptable. So I wrote up this two page letter to like give to the law firm owners that was like, Hey, um, I saved you$2 million every year. I fought tooth and nail to get up here and I'm making less. And I was making the mail room and I showed my boss at the time and he was like, you can't say that. And I was like, what do you mean? And I was like, but I did. And he's like, yeah, but. Then it seems like I was wasting$2 million a year. So again, it was like, oh

Russel 13:39

gosh.

Anthony 13:40

It was like all this weird bureaucratic stuff. This

Russel 13:43

is so making me not regret for a second that I've never really worked in the corporate world.

Anthony 13:48

Sounds like again, like I'm so happy where I am, but it's a struggle again, I learned a lot. I took a lot of these lessons. Away from everything that I've been through, but again, always a struggle. So brought it to my dad, me and my dad went through it and we took that out and went back to, hey, I got a promotion. This is the industry average for what PPC account managers are making and I'm making this and I've done really good work. So again, it was a super weird story to even get to where I was, to learn what Google Ads was and then all this other stuff and fighting against. Being stuck in the mail room, but I did. I got out and I did amazing at this firm. And so I was there probably for another four years doing this. And then I just realized I had reached the pinnacle of where I was there. There was nowhere else to go. I wasn't gonna like get something else, right? I was stuck here now and had reached the ceiling of this place because I wasn't gonna be a lawyer. I didn't really have an interest in doing that, and I couldn't just see myself just there in this bureaucratic place forever. And so I made the choice. Then I said, all right, you know what? I'm gonna start my own agency. I had$10,000 maybe and was like, I'm gonna go make a marketing agency for lawyers. And literally was in my house, whiteboarding stuff out, figuring out who I needed to contact. And seven days later my dad got. Sick with pancreatic cancer stage four. And so literally, literally everything fell apart again. I had nothing and I didn't create the agency. I had to end up helping out the family a lot. And so that was the next three years of my life. Uh, my dad really fought and, and, uh. He passed away.

Russel 15:44

Sorry to hear

Anthony 15:46

Then after that I ended up taking a job at a different legal marketing agency, and there I became the director of paid search, like really fast because of my experience. I ended up there like building a team of 10 and training'em up and getting that agency. In PPC revenue to, uh, 1.2 million in annual recurring. And so that was awesome. I really enjoyed that because I got to teach people and tell them everything I knew and we had fun. It was a lot of fun. And the CEO there was a really awesome salesperson, one of the best salespeople I've ever met. So it was really great match. And then I ended up like also taking on director of SEO. Which was a lot. Right. And so, again, kind of like reached the pinnacle of this next thing that I was at. I never really believed in myself, but like each step I excelled and rose through the ranks to get to the tippy top. Mm-hmm. And the owner of that agency, I kept hanging percentage ownership, like over my head, but he wouldn't do it. And I kept bringing it up. I was like, yo, you know, I, I want equity. He wasn't gonna do it. So I, I realized that and I was like, yo, I can't do this anymore. I'm gonna go start my own thing. And so I resigned from there to start at Squire and he was like, okay, that's fine. This happens. He was super cool and we were like friends at that point. And then the day that I left, I was Hey, I'm not trying to like leave you in a bad spot, let me train up this person because I think they will be a really good, um, person to take over what I was doing, right? Let me get them up to speed before I leave. And I did that. And then on the day I left, he was like. Hey, don't forget about your non-compete because I'm gonna enforce it. And I was no. And so again, I was in this situation where I had$10,000, exact same situation as I was in five years earlier. I was okay, I got 10 grand to make this work.

Russel 17:51

Yeah. You know, I mean, clearly, right? The theme here, you're creating all this value everywhere you go, and it sounds like you finally got to the point of, I've got to take ownership. I have to bet on myself. You know, that just notion of just all those obstacles you encountered, was that more freeing when you made that decision to actually start your business, or was that all the more same. Terrifying, because you're now out of your own and there's no guaranteed paycheck.

Anthony 18:18

It was because I'd faced all of these struggles and gotten to the pinnacle, and at that point I was like, I know I can do this. And again, it had always been a dream to start my own business, but all along the way, just like kept getting smacked in the face by life. But I knew I could do it at this point. And then I get hit with like the, I'm gonna enforce or not compete.

Russel 18:42

Yeah. How'd you handle that?

Anthony 18:43

Yeah, so I had 10 grand, right? The first thing I did was talk to lawyers, right? So I, I took,

Russel 18:49

there goes all your 10 grand.

Anthony 18:51

So, um, I was like, yo, here's the situation. Like, what can I do? And he was like, you can't do anything. He was like, you're screwed. There's nothing you can do. You literally have to wait a year because these are the things that that could happen. Right? And I was okay, I'm still gonna do it.

Russel 19:07

That's, that's also what I would do at this point too. So, uh,

Anthony 19:09

that makes good sense. Well, I, so I stayed under the radar. What the guy said to me was important. He was like, the way you're gonna get caught is by talking on social media about your business. It's the way everybody with a non-compete comes to me and says, Hey, this is what happened and this is the trouble I'm in. And so again, I just made sure to shut my mouth, keep my head down, and. Every day just do targeted outbound to get clients, just get new clients, right? And so eventually I did, I delivered value before I even got hired. Hey, this is what you should be doing and if you did this, then this would happen. And just all these ideas for specific people. I was just finding bad ads and calling stuff out. And it took a while. It did. It took probably Five months to get the first client, but I got'em and little by little again, just kept my head down, kept my mouth shut. And on the day that the year was up, I made noise.

Russel 20:10

I mean, that's really interesting. I mean, uh, this really new exciting thing you're doing, starting your own business, kind of starting to live this dream that had been a natural part of your path. It makes total sense. What were you doing to get clients during this time period when you had to be a little bit quiet about this?

Anthony 20:28

Yeah, super interesting. Um, right before I had left the last agency. The owner of the agency was really big on leadership training at the time and he was like, Hey, we all need leadership training. And I was yeah, okay, cool. And so I was online and I found this thing through the United States Small Business Administration and it was called the Emerging Leaders Program. And it was free if you got in, but the requirements were you needed to be a small business owner. With annual recurring revenue of at least$1.2 million. And so I fit the requirements kind of right. I wasn't the business owner, I was honest. I was like, yeah, look, I'm not the business owner, but I was like. I'm on the leadership team and I'm responsible for these 10 people and I'm really just looking to know what I don't know basically. So I got it right and it was pretty intense. It was four days a week, three hours a day kind of a thing. And I was doing it like after work, I was exhausted, but I was going through this and um, again, like I was a month in when I left, when I resigned. So I was in this program with all these small business owners making at least$1.2 million a year. And all of these sessions, like we have like CEO mentoring groups and all this kind of stuff. And at every session I would passionately speak about. Google ads and internet marketing, right? And how you can do this and this. And I was the only person in there that was a marketing person in this class with 20 other small business owners who were looking to grow their businesses. And so at this point, told the mob, I was look, I, I left the last place and I'm starting my own business. And they were like, great, we wanna hire you. To help us and so I ended up getting my first couple clients from this SBA thing, and we did like crazy stuff with them. The one was a preschool, this tiny preschool, they had 10 kids or something. I ended up getting them like 50 students, one of our first rounds and then they got a million dollar government grant. So it was super cool and that's how I got like my first little batch of clients. And then the rest were like targeted outbound. And then I, we started advertising like right away I got the free$500 ad credit. Oh

Russel 22:51

yeah, there we go.

Anthony 22:53

I had credit card and put that on and I just started running Google ads. It took a while. We really like didn't get a lot off the bat because like you do need to be established. You gotta be other places. You can't like just run Google Ads and expect to just like print money. Like there's gotta be some stuff that backs it up. But over time we did. We got more and more clients and here I am.

Russel 23:13

All right. Well, congratulations on making the leaf. I mean, if no one's hearing the theme or the lesson to be learned here is if you've got good talent, especially in a role like this, that you can measure the output. Take care of them, um, and, look out for them. And generally speaking, I think most small business owners are smarter than that and just a reminder of you, you there, good talent is in such short supply, so take care of them so they don't go start their own business. Um, not that that's a bad thing, but, um, maybe they could be happy in your business for a good long while. Okay. All right. So you've clearly bootstrapped this thing. You're off and running. How have you started to navigate bringing on other people that can also do this very complicated work that you're clearly very adept in?

Anthony 24:01

Awesome question. And this is a, an interesting process too. I think that's really hard, especially when you're bootstrapped and you don't have any initial investment, like every step of the way bootstrapped and so made very little money the first year, you know what I mean? I think we made it like.$30,000 or something, something stupid because like I was undercharging had no credibility. I was great at what I did, but it's really hard to just create something outta nothing. It's always extremely,

Russel 24:30

yeah.

Anthony 24:30

And so just kept trying, kept outreach, kept Google ads. And um, little by little I got more clients. One of the people in my CEO mentoring group from the SBA thing. Kept hitting me up, like after we graduated from this program, he was a great guy. He was like, my son does something kind of like this. Like he created like a fashion brand and he markets online. And I was like, oh, that's awesome. And then the next year he hit me up again and he was like, Hey, my son's graduating. Do you know anywhere where he can get a job? And we were making more than, not a lot, but I was like, this is kind of too perfect for me to pick up. Why don't I hire this guy? And so I met him for lunch and talked to him and we had a lot of the same kind of like entrepreneurial spirit and it was super clear that he was a very smart kid and his dad's an entrepreneur, so I hired him for very little money. Because he was just starting out and, you know, sold him on my thing and what I was doing, and he is our top guy now. But he knew nothing. And so I had to teach him everything I knew about Google Ads, right? So again, I'm back to the bottom just teaching kids.

Russel 25:48

I, I think that's fascinating. And, and I know this is always the crux of, you know, up and coming agencies of. There's the talent I need, there's the talent I can afford, and there's the talent that exists, but Right. What we learn sometimes is we can't have them, we can't have cheap and we can't have quality and all that. But what, what you can offset that by is if you can be really good at training and educating, and I mean, for them to still be around today, hiring someone fresh off college or whatever. I mean. How were you able to pull that off? I guess maybe is the question you, are you just really great teacher or how, how intense or how difficult a process that was that for you?

Anthony 26:26

Think? I am actually, it's, it's nothing I've really ever wanted to do to be honest, but, um,

Russel 26:33

that's business ownership too. Things we've become a begrudgingly,

Anthony 26:38

I guess I am so like I got him excited about the thing. And I think part of that is like how much I get excited about the thing. I'm passionate about what I do. You know, I, I, I have a love hate relationship with Google, to be honest with you, because like, you know,

Russel 26:50

it's fair.

Anthony 26:51

They make, they make a lot of moves I don't necessarily agree with, but at the same time, I love Google because they really do create a ton of opportunity and if you can do the thing right and come up with creative things that other people don't think of. You can really propel businesses to like places they never thought that they could go. And that's probably the most rewarding thing for me when somebody's yo, you made us. A hundred million dollars this year. I think that shined through and I just started teaching him and being yo, look, this, and probably his second month in he started coming to me with new stuff or being like, oh hey, so is that thing like why this is like that on social media? And I was like, yeah. So you got excited about it. Yeah. And uh, that's what I did then that I kind of just followed that model. Find young, smart people who are humble and hungry and brain dump everything I know on'em and try to scale up. And again, like I'm not a money driven person. It's like a self-actualization thing for me to reach the next thing that I'm going after. And so I take care of people,

Russel 28:03

lesson. Learned from your own experience.

Anthony 28:06

Great, great. Take care of the team until like, um. You know, I wish I could do more. Again, we're bootstrapped so it is like super hard to like grow the business and everybody else.

Russel 28:16

Yeah,

Anthony 28:17

it's, you're gonna time or you're gonna pay with money either way you gotta pay.

Russel 28:20

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think that's where folks might sometimes end up in the, where the younger or talent or whatever, but then wanting the bigger things with them, you know, and I love what you even just dropped there, nugget that how important the training process, first and foremost is generate excitement and how far that carries itself in the learning process That. It might be the most important thing in the learning process is can you generate excitement? One, you might need to hire for some excitement that they actually care and want to do whatever it is they're gonna have to learn. But that ultimately, when we are hiring young talent, we're not betting on the skills. We know we have to give them the skills, but we are betting on all the other qualities about them that this is someone we want to invest in because at the end of the day, you have to invest. And it sounds like you've done a good job of doing that. Thank

Anthony 29:06

you.

Big Baller Moves

Russel 29:07

Cool. Well, something else I want to get to, because this is very many parts of your story, is interesting. Um, you kind of do some wacky things for hobbies or whatever, but in terms of experiments or I don't know how you'd even describe it, but you experiment a lot maybe is the way I'll put it. But I'll let you share more about what some of the things you've done.

Anthony 29:28

I call'em our big baller moves.

Russel 29:30

Big baller moves

Anthony 29:33

is internally, that's the phrase. It's like, alright, what's our next big baller move? And kind of like what that means is doing the craziest thing that we can think of. The first one I think was we had gotten access to this digital billboard software and we had worked this crazy deal where we got it like for no money. I think people have to pay thousands a month to like even get access to it. But we had somehow worked a deal with this company and we got free access to it. And so we were just playing around with it, trying to learn it. I like got on a, a bus stop billboard, down the street and, and I thought that was like awesome. I was so excited my first time on a billboard, right? And I was holy crap, this is awesome. Um, and you know, it, it wasn't expensive. We learned how much it cost and. Then I was like, all right, what can I do with this? Just kind of like thinking. And I was what's the biggest billboard is right? And so I thought, and I was like, the NASDAQ Tower and I was like, I wonder if I can get on that. I wonder if that's a thing in, and this is

Russel 30:41

NASDAQ Tower. We, I think we're talking like Times Square.

Anthony 30:44

Times Square in New York City.

Russel 30:46

Okay.

Anthony 30:46

Um, I just remembered it like randomly I was, you know, I was, I was thinking, I was walking and thinking and I was what can I do with this thing? And so, NASDAQ Tower. So I was like, I wonder if that's even like a thing in there. And I came back from my walk, I got back on the platform and I, I found that the NASDAQ Tower wasn't available option in this thing, right? So I was alright, let me just see if I can get on this thing right now. And so I made up a graphic in Canva and I uploaded it. I set up a campaign for Nasdaq Tower on like nothing. I dunno, it was 30 bucks or something. And. I was watching a live stream of it from my computer, like while I was doing this, so the back in the day, they had a live stream of the NASDAQ Tower, like 24 7. And so I'm watching it and, and I show up and I'm like, oh my God. Just I'm on NASDAQ Tower. And so my brother worked in Times Square and I was like, yo, you gotta go, you gotta go out there and get pictures of me. And, and he took a bunch of pictures of me on the NASDAQ Tower and I immediately put them on social media and everybody kind of just freaked out. And so, so I was this is just wild. And, and that, so that was the first big baller move that we did. It cost me 30 bucks to get up there for 20 minutes for my brother to go get, uh, pictures of it. And again, it was just wild. Like how many people called me and came up to me and we're like, oh my God, you're doing so good. And you know, I didn't tell him, I didn't tell him like, oh, it costs$30. That's,

Russel 32:18

you don't need to know the secret sauce, man. They, uh, yeah.

Anthony 32:20

But it, it was super cool. And then again, we just kind of tried to. Top that at least once a year do like one of these kind of big baller moves. So I was like, all right, what else can we do on the NASDAQ Tower? And the next thing we did was we broke the world record for most law firms on a single billboard. So I made this graphic on Canva of a thousand different law firm logos, and we put that up in the NASDAQ Tower. When we went down, we made these social media videos. We ran press releases and we literally broke the world record for the most law firms on a single billboard. Nobody had ever done it before, right? So I was like, what can we do that nobody's done? That was the next thing. Then we sent our little logo guy to space. We did that one. Um, that was a little bit more expensive than the other ones, but still it wasn't a lot.

Russel 33:10

I love this. And

Anthony 33:11

then the most recent one was we got on the news for the New Year's Eve ball drop. So we were on, on screen, on national TV for the ball drop. I

Russel 33:21

feel like this is some kind of service you could sell for massive amount. I mean, I don't know, at some point the, uh, the wrong person's gonna come knock on your door here. But, uh, this is pretty

Anthony 33:31

funny. Just do wild, wild stuff and, and try to keep topping it. So I'm not sure what the next one is. We're trying to maybe get on the Super Bowl this year in a weird way. For no money. Like that's the next one.

Born or Made?

Russel 33:43

Okay. All right. Well, I'll keep on the lookout when I'm watching the big game this year, but I love just the culture of experimentation, big baller moves, you know, and well, it might not even equate to an exact business value. I can just see the value it has of the culture you're creating and how it affects the work you're doing and, uh, how you're showing up for clients. That's really neat to see. Um, well, I'm sure there's a lot more interesting stories and, and parts of your journey, but we do have to wrap up so. I really just have one last big question for you, Anthony. Are entrepreneurs born or are they made?

Anthony 34:15

That's a great question. Um, honestly, I think it's both things and I know that's a cop out, but I think it can be either or. Both of my grandparents were entrepreneurs, but my parents really tried to make me not an entrepreneur like my whole life. They told me how bad it was for them and their dad tried to do their own thing and the struggles there. So, I don't know, maybe they are born, maybe it is. Partially in your blood, I guess, because I, I do come from entrepreneurs, but my parents weren't, they again tried to kind of really tried to squash that in me, but both of my grandparents were so,

Russel 35:00

wow. Okay. All right. Yeah. Well, even a more case of the born of you, uh, you had the gene, it got tried to get taken outta you, but it still came out nonetheless. And here you are. Um, well, well, speaking of which, if people wanna know more about ads Squire, where can they go?

Anthony 35:15

Absolutely they can go to our website, um, at squire.com. I'm also pretty active on social media with like finding new stuff on Google and talking about Google updates. Um, and all my social media's just Anthony Hickman.

Russel 35:27

All right, and we might see you on the Super Bowl. Super Bowl.

Anthony 35:31

Yeah.

Russel 35:32

Alright, well thank you so much Anthony, from just reminding us how important it is to take care, invest in of your top talent, especially when you can accurately measure if they're providing good results for you. If you, uh, the power of hiring young talent, investing in them to train them. Generating excitement first and foremost, and then just really having a culture of experimentation around learning new things, trying new things, and otherwise making big baller moves. Really appreciate you taking the time to share that with us today.

Anthony 36:00

Thanks.

Russel 36:01

Appreciate it. 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.

Anthony 36:24

We're a Google partner. We're a premier partner actually, and we don't even know how it happens, but we end up getting all of these crazy amounts of Google points. And again, like we tend not to even like accept a lot of the Google recommendations and the stuff they push, but like for the last two years we end up with 40,000 Google reward store points.

Russel 36:48

Okay. Um,

Anthony 36:50

and so we just have these fun shopping sprees and again, with the team and I'm listen, everybody gets 10,000 points. What do you want? And then we make fun social media content out of'em and everybody just has a blast. And for the last years we were is it broken? Do we have like an infinite money hack somehow? But like, we really can't even figure out how we get'em. But we're just continuously getting these thousands and thousands of Google points, and so we just have these fun shopping. I

Russel 37:19

mean like what's the coolest thing you can get with Google Points?

Anthony 37:21

Yeah. Crazy thing. So we have like two Google bikes here. We have two Google scooters. We have like a million lights. The one person got a treadmill and then this year they started doing um, flight coupons. Flight gift cards. Nice. And then like gift cards for other things, hotels, and other gift cards. So the team got a lot of that stuff. I just got Google Swag,

37:44

I

Anthony 37:44

mean. But yeah, it's fun. Like we still don't know what's going on, but we keep getting them.

Russel 37:48

I mean, if nothing else, at least Google is finally giving you the recognition you deserve.

Anthony 37:52

That's cool.

Russel 37:54

That's awesome. I love that.