As a 22 year old tech veteran, having started and led a successful digital agency for going on 9 years now, I am used to a certain kind of reaction when people find out the story behind Epsilon Concepts and my personal adventure in this fast-paced digital world.  In a nutshell, I started Epsilon Concepts at the age of 14 (not including freelance “bitch work”, of course, as that started much earlier) and have simply worked hard since then to continue to grow, personally and professionally. Let me give you some background: when I was 14 I was already very entrepreneurial and I also realized at a young age that though money isn’t everything, it certainly helps and provides freedom and leverage.  I also thoroughly enjoyed working.  I guess I should be more specific: I didn’t really enjoy physical or mental labor in_the_act.  I think saying I relished the actual work all the time would be a lie.  But I did certainly love the way it made me feel and I loved the relationships that good, hard work helped create.  I experienced what it felt like to be able to buy your own things and the sense of freedom and security that money can bring.  I felt pride when I tried really hard on a job well done, and felt gratified when it was a thorough, professional project completed.

I realized early that your reputation, your personal brand, was everything.  It could also be tarnished as easily as an exotic car can be dented by one careless driver (or shopping cart).  I started Epsilon Concepts by learning-on-the-fly and building websites for real estate properties, training elderly people on using the Internet, and building websites for the local car dealerships, photographers, furniture companies, travel agencies, and pretty much the entire small town of Chardon, Ohio after moving on from Redding, California, where I started my work.  I had a knack for sales and marketing and understood business and relationships very well.  I was meticulous about my services and tried to be as fair and and friendly as possible, frequently sending out birthday cards, client gifts, and receiving numerous testimonials, references, and friends in the process.   I built the company website and I started getting very good positions on the search engines and building up a strong lead pipeline.  I have since revamped and relaunched the company website 8 times. I started working with contractors and have expanded ever since over time, even internationally.   I was diligent in approaching everyone I could and following up with people for months and even years, in a polite and personable way, in order to get their business.  I developed a very nice client list over time, met many amazing people, and learned so many lessons along the way.  Not to say I was perfect or didn’t make mistakes.  Far from it, my mistakes were critical to my growth and the growth of Epsilon Concepts and I was fortunate to have started the company in an almost incubator-like environment.

My age also proved to be mostly an advantage.  In the minds of most of those older than me, I “grew up on the Net” and especially social media.  Sure, I’ve been to more than a few meetings since I started where I noticed eye brows raise thanks to their perception of my youth, but 99.9% of the time those looks were erased after they realized that my company and I were just as legitimate as the next guy, even if he was twice my age. I’m 22 now, having run Epsilon Concepts and other businesses for the past 9 years during a very fun ride of a decade for the Internet.  I sold my age to clients by explaining that I had the energy, the passion, and the time to really blow their socks off with my work.  I explained that even though I didn’t have a portfolio (then), because their piece was such a critical piece for me in that moment, it meant the world and they would get the best end-result imaginable.  And, for the most part, many people trusted in me and I know I didn’t let the majority down (you can’t make everyone happy, it’s not possible).  I worked really, really hard, intent on investing in the future personal brand equity I’d have and hoping to watch it and the company snowball.  Over the past years, it’s really paid off as I now have an amazing business partner and we lead a diverse team of twenty specialized web and marketing experts, we’ve completed well over 250 projects, and we have some great brands and compelling examples to our name.  Our project management (the weak point of the web development industry) is now extremely high caliber, our processes highly optimized, and our overhead minimized.  We’ve mobile, connected, and specialized.  We offer a suite of web services from strategic consulting to branding to web development and production to social media marketing.   We are launching shortly our Marketing Agency arm, Moon Berthume.  With this addition and with our existing experience with SEM/SMO, we will offer the full range of services to those start-ups and companies looking to differentiate.  We’re now headquartered in downtown Los Angeles and are well connected with industry press contacts, investors, organizations, events, experience, and human resources.

It wasn’t always easy, though, building the company while being a teenager.  I graduated High School early and prepared to enroll full time as a marketing student.  I thought it was imperative to get my bachelor’s out of the way so that I could grow as an individual and also be able to step into a master’s program easily at some point in my late twenties to continue my studies after building Epsilon Concepts into a large, stable and thriving ship.   I simultaneously started taking more and more projects with Epsilon Concepts and I was extremely busy. I juggled many things, was oft stressed, yet I managed to experience a lot and only sacrificed a bit of sleep in the process.   I had special arrangements with professors who understood my situation and were willing to let me leave class if I had an important conference call or business engagement.  I stayed completely connected regardless of which world I was in, and for the most part everything was pretty smooth.  Of course, there were good projects and bad, but I and my growing team learned from our mistakes pretty well I think. I took all that I could handle and then some and was personally carrying the burden of literally dozens of projects.  It was very overwhelming at times, but in the past five years this stress has been reduced as my team has grown and we now only accept a very limited number of engagements per year.  We’re thriving in a down economy because we’re focusing on quality, ROI, and long term strategy.  It’s not just the web production work we provide, it’s how we provide it.  We work with our clients as strategic partners, being proactive and thinking on our feet.  We know how to make money and we know how to build web apps that rock in terms of usability, user experience, and achieved objectives.  We have a team of amazing people that are extremely talented and have genuine personalities.  I’ve had many lessons, mistakes, and some amazingly pain-in-the-ass clients and employees along the way, but I’ve learned that just like in life, the life of a business is made up of cycles.  It’s a process, a dynamic series of changing events.  Problems arise, but so do opportunities.  Duds are hired and fired, but the more duds you get the more likely you’ll get some gems along the way.  Most things in life aren’t easy, but most things aren’t that hard either.  It’s just a matter of riding the days and weeks as effectively and efficiently as possible, so that you are always improving and as ready as possible for the opportunities that will arise. I am incredibly grateful for the problems and opportunities of my youth.

So I got off on a tangent about my personal background, but the whole reason I wanted to write this post in the first place was because I get asked oftentimes at this point in my life how I was able to become this successful at my age.  Of course, there are many people far more successful than I am, regardless of how you measure it.  On a financial level, guys like Mark Zuckerberg obviously take my cake.  I don’t think I’ve gone the easiest routes to make money for the sake of it (that would probably be porn or oil).  I think a lot of people think maybe I’m pretty smart or maybe I just got lucky or maybe my rich uncle helped me out!  If you ask me, it’s because I’m self-conscious about being lazy.  Laziness isn’t an attractive quality to me, when it comes to the analysis of myself.  I’m truly my own worst critic and I’ve always thought of myself as being a lazy person.  In reality, I’m not sure anyone who knows me or is around me would say that I’m lazy.  I work very hard and typically at least 50-60 hours a week and then some, plus other commitments and personal obligations.  But, this “thought attack” pushes me to work harder and stay focused.  My true secret is simply that I visualize the end result and then pursue it with a focused diligence.

This sounds so easy, right?  In theory, it shouldn’t be.  But in practice, apparently it’s pretty hard.  I’ve really heard a lot jibber-jabber from many people around me about what they can do, what they’re going to do, how they used to rock in a former life.  I for one am tired of the lame excuses and the empty rhetoric. Don’t get me wrong, I truly think most people have excellent intentions.  They just fail miserably to execute and then whine about it.

Being successful, in my opinion, means you can’t be a total dumb ass, but you don’t have to be Einstein either.  The biggest factor affecting your success will be diligence.  You will have to work hard, harder than others.  Hard meaning intensity and/or hours and/or stress.  You will also have to work with focus, with vision.  You will absolutely need to zone in on your goals, on that destination to power your pursuit.  I hate to sound like some self-help article or a smart-ass advice column, but it really comes down to how hard you want it.  If there were five things that I could recommend to someone looking for a secret recipe for success (however you define that), I would say:

1. Get off your fat ass.
2. Visualize the outcome.
3. Get off your fat ass.
4. Do the best you can with what you have (be resourceful).
5. Get off your fat ass.

You get the point.  If you think I’m being a little condescending by telling you what to do, I agree.  So tell you what, I’ll get off my high horse when you get off your fat ass. Until then!

@epsilonc