I’m a digital advertising strategist and copywriter who is best known for helping digital brands get more customers with advertising and email.
I don’t have a massive social media following. I don’t have the endorsement of “big names” in the industry. I do, however, work with an exclusive list of private clients who know what it feels like to see a consistent (and HEALTHY) return on investment.
I’ve worked with all types of digital brands, including software companies, mobile apps, eCommerce shops, SAAS products and local small businesses. I’ve also worked with enterprise brands like eBay, LendingTree and CreditKarma.
But if you rewind to 2007, I didn’t have any of that.
I always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I wanted the things that come with success, but more importantly I wanted to support my family and love what I was doing.
I wanted the freedom to choose how I spent my time and who I spent it with. I wanted to do something I enjoyed while making enough to provide a rich life for my family.
After trying to start all kinds of businesses including two blogs, an eBay store and a Shopify business, I discovered digital advertising.
I remember working at a golf course in Florida, I was getting up at 5 am every morning. Spending 15 and 16 hour days hauling golf bags and washing carts. By the time I got home my legs were rubber and my back was on fire. It was brutal.
One night I came home and my roommate’s dad was sitting at the table with his laptop open. He was visiting from NY.
I saw a bunch of numbers on his screen so I asked him what he was working on. He told me about the business he’d just started. He was providing marketing and consulting services that helped hair salons get more clients and grow.
I said, “Woah, that sounds interesting. How’s it going?”
He waved me over and pulled up his email. As he scrolled through I saw a screen full of payment notifications. I caught a glimpse of the numbers, too. They were huge. Like, huge huge.
I remember thinking it would take me a month to earn ONE of those payments. And here he was with a whole screen full of them.
“Are those your new clients for the month?” I asked.
“No, these are my new clients from the last three days.”
Jaw. On. The. Floor. It was incredible.
Here he was making more in three days while on vacation than I could make in three months doing physical labor for $13 an hour.
I had to know more.
“How are you going to serve all those clients without killing yourself?”
“Simple. I created a program I can sell over and over again. It’s designed to be repeatable so it’s easy to fulfill.”
That was the moment I realized I HAD to be a marketer.
Because if I wanted financial freedom…
If I wanted to have time to spend with my kids…
If I wanted to be able to buy a house and provide for my family…
Then I had to be a marketer. It was the best way I knew how to make that happen.
So I left Florida and moved home with my fiancé to figure it out.
I spent the next few months of my life trying to figure out how to become a world class marketer.
It took me a while. A few months turned into a few years.
I had a lot of failures along the way.
I had to get a job at another golf course making minimum wage just to make ends meet.
I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be able to quit my job and become a full-time marketer.
Then my wife gave me news that would change our lives forever.
I was laying on the couch one morning when my wife came running towards me. She leaned in, put her nose two inches from mine and said, “I’m pregnant.”
Things got serious. With a little Kev on the way I had to figure it out, fast.
Then people started telling me I was crazy. They started wondering if this marketing-thing was just another one of Kev’s crazy ideas.
They started telling me I should give it up and go stick it out because… “What about your wife and your family and your future… are you going to risk all of that for your silly dream??”
Little did they know I was on the brink of a major breakthrough…
I hate to do it, but I’m going to brag for a second.
What nobody knew was that I was spending 60-hours a week mastering the ins and outs of profitable marketing and advertising.
I was running experiments every day, tracking every detail.
I was spending thousands of dollars on marketing and advertising courses. I was getting mentored by the best in the world (and paying A LOT to be around them).
And it was starting to pay off.
The first ads I ever ran for a client did $612,704 in new revenue with a 10.9x return on ad spend. I remember when they saw the numbers they were shouting at me like, “Kev! We want to do more! How can we do more!?”
I was so used to struggling that it kinda took me a minute to realize, wait a second, this is actually working.
Then I built and implemented a digital marketing strategy for an e-commerce shop in Sweden – and it added more than $500,000 in new revenue in 12 months (which doubled their business).
It felt good. All those years of experimenting and studying and putting everything on the line was finally starting to pay off.
But then things started to get even more exciting…
I started signing long-term retainer clients.
I was leading customer acquisition campaigns, running the entire funnel top to bottom. Every piece from ad to landing page to email to sales page.
And some cool things happened:
I wrote the ads for a campaign that generated $1.2 million in revenue. It was for a small group inside the largest financial publishing company in world. It turned out to be their biggest campaign to date.
I helped one of the biggest digital brands in personal finance increase conversions on their 4 million visitors per month. We saw an 87% lift in some cases. Less than a year later they were bought for $7 billion.
I even helped other consultants and agency owners get clients and scale.
A music promotion expert cleared $44,000 in four days from a brand new course we launched from scratch—clearing $600,000+ in less than 12 months.
I helped a leadership consultant launch a new group coaching program that did $31,000 in less than three months.
And I helped a PPC expert build and sell a more scalable offer that put him on track to do $180,000 in 12 months.
I started building funnel after funnel after funnel.
I was managing $500,000+ per month in ad spend for my clients.
I wrote and tested more than 1,000 ads on Facebook, YouTube and Google.
I wrote hundreds of landing pages, sales pages and email campaigns.
I tracked and analyzed more than 300 marketing experiments.
Then one night I was eating burritos with a marketing friend…
He was an account manager inside one of the “big brand” marketing agencies downtown.
He was leading strategy for some large brands, but when I told him about everything I was working on he almost choked on his queso.
“Kev, WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU?! You’re getting all these big wins for clients, but barely anyone knows who you are. You have to start sharing this stuff so other people can learn it.”
What I didn’t realize at the time is most people who teach marketing don’t actually do marketing.
They’re teaching outdated stuff that worked one-time four years ago.
Or they buy a course and watch a few YouTube videos then start blasting your newsfeed with the same rehashed stuff.
So I tested the waters by writing an article on my process. I sent it to a few marketing friends to see what they thought.
Within three days I had 544 email notifications from people who read the article and wanted to learn more. I started getting invited to do guest webinars. I was getting interviewed on podcasts. Prospective clients were blowing up my inbox inquiring about working together.
And so GrowthBoks was born.
Now I…
1. Create campaigns for my clients (and my business).
2. Test ideas.
3. Measure how it worked.
4. Report on my results right here.
So if that sounds interesting to you, then I invite you to stick around.