I was born in 1994. I’m still young, but trust me, I’ve lived and experienced a lot. Let me bring you back in time. I started to feel entrepreneurship inside me at a young age. I had this urge to do and learn everything by myself. At 5 years old, I learned violin by myself. At 8 years old, I wanted to become an actor, I took acting classes and did several plays. This was the beginning of everything. No, I haven’t become a famous actor. But it just proved to myself that I could become anything I put my mind to.
At 10 years old, I started to sell postal cards at my mother’s hairdressing salon. Since then, I never had a real job (what’s a real job anyway?). At 13 years old, I learned how to code by myself and I coded my own search engine. I started a small website developing business, I was earning decent money for a 13 years old.
In 2009, at the age of 15 years old, I decided to leave my comfy hometown to go play basketball in Michigan. I did not know anyone there so I started emailing schools to know if they were looking for summer basketball players. I did not really speak English. I was using Google translate to properly communicate by email. They accepted my request and they found a family where I could stay. That’s how I learned English. I stayed there for 6 months, and then I went back home.
At 16 years old, I started to do music. Long story short, I used all my money to buy recording equipment and a video camera so I could film video clips. 2 years later, I had over 1 million views and I was doing music shows across the province. I was also using my recording equipment to record other artists. That was my new venture. At this moment in my life, I really started to realize I was an entrepreneur. I started reading everything I could about business and marketing.
In parallel with marketing my music business, I started a club promoting business. That’s where I started to use in practice what I learned about marketing and advertising. Some of my parties were generating 3 000$ per night.
Yes, I dropped out of school pretty young, so I will be honest with you: I don’t have that fancy degree some consultants have. But I probably know more about marketing and business than any students graduating from top ivy colleges. I learned everything you learn in college by myself, and I learned things you don’t learn in college by working hard.
Quickly I said to myself: if I can market my own projects like this, why not using this creativity and strategic thinking to help businesses better market themselves? I started with one client, then two clients, then three; I quickly built a large client list. I learned marketing the hard way. I am still learning; if someone says to you he knows everything about marketing, don’t hire him. Marketing is an ever-changing concept. It changes every day.
Some of my start-ups clients saw 400% in growth after two months working with me. I had the chance to work with brands ranking $40 000 in annual revenue up to 30 million. I worked with some of Canada’s top brands and lately I started to work with clients all over the world.
Quickly, I built a huge following around my personal brand. With this type of following, I started to invest myself as an equity partner and endorser for some projects. One of the project I invested myself as a partner was a small iPhone game and it reached 300 000 downloads with a 1000$ advertising budget. That’s huge, and I am proud of it. If you want to download it, just look up Squid Up in the app store.
In 2012, I invested myself as a partner in a small clothing brand called Wuup Clothing. I was seeing the potential and I jumped into this adventure. One year after I started to work on this project, the brand went 2400% up in monthly revenue. I sold my shares last year to focus on my consulting business and other future projects. But I learned a lot from this.
If you are looking for a strategy consultant with a fancy degree, a bad fitted suit from his dad and the same haircut as all his classmates who thinks he knows everything, you can click that x button on top of the screen and go search for someone else. (Oh and by the way, Harvard, I read all the marketing books you give to your students) But if you are searching for someone that will grow your business and that know which strategies are working for real or not, you are on the good website.
Cheers,
Follow my journey on Instagram! @julesmarcoux