Hanshuk, is an entrepreneur and marketer and has built a successful marketing agency. I asked him multiple questions about marketing, getting started, and much more.

Hey Hanshuk, who are you and what do you do?
I am a blue-collar man making something of myself in the white-collar world. I own a business consulting & marketing agency.
How did you get started in first place?
I worked myself into the Tech Firm where I used to work as a Digital media Strategist. While it was in the Job I had my life-changing. There has to be a better way to live. A better life that I just do not know how to live. After this epiphany, I started my self-education journey with the knowledge of Business and Creative Thinking.
What advice would you give to someone getting into Sales and Marketing?
Learn how you think and learn first. This will allow the understanding to sink in because you are able to connect the dots, allowing you to comprehend everything better. Then dive into how others think and how psychology has stayed the same and how it is changing with technology.
What are 3 key things you’ve done to excel?
Self Understanding / Reflection
2. Gaining knowledge whenever and whenever I can.
3. Execution of knowledge learned
How did your agency get started?
As I started learning about the User behaviour I also started seeing how I could tie this into the business. From there my energy pulled me into thinking about how I would run some companies marketing campaigns so it took the one day that I was not happy with the company I had to leave my job. First, to pay a few bills I started with freelancer and fiver but those small jobs were no satisfaction but that would play out in my macro plan.
What’s one piece of advice you’d give to an entrepreneur just starting out?
Have humility and seek knowledge from those working in the industry at the moment. Not college professors that have never worked in the real world. They have most likely study in academia and have never implemented a single business model.Change your relationship with failure ASAP. Like everything else in life, there will be a lot of trial and error. Especially in the beginning. See those errors as opportunities for feedback to make the necessary changes and take action again. Continue this loop until you achieve the level of success you want. I can assure you, the greatest accomplishments are placed on the other side of failure.
Action. Feedback. Improve. Action.
If someone is looking to compress time and bypass a lot of the failures, seek out a mentor. Find someone who has seen success or is even a few steps ahead of you and ask for their time and assistance in exchange for some kind of value. The value you bring to the table does not always have to be money related, find something they may need and help them with it.
Hey Hanshuk, what made you start a digital marketing agency?
I found online customer acquisition to be a massive problem business owners were experiencing and I knew my skill set could provide them with the solution they needed so it made sense from a business standpoint.
From a personal standpoint, I always wanted my work to provide me with 5 things:
Limitless Impact & Reach
Uncapped Scalability
Time Freedom
Location Freedom
Financial Freedom
Digital Marketing fulfills all the above. Not to mention, the people I work with truly want to grow their business. So the relationships I’ve built and growth I’ve seen along the way has been fulfilling.
How important is going niche?
Very important when it comes to scale.
After working with many different niches & industries, I’ve found the art of marketing and customer acquisition follows the same 3 principals.
1. Find the target audience.
2. Capture their attention
3. Offer of your product or service.
However, each marketing campaign looks completely different when you work with a Dental practice compared to a Roofing Company, compared to a Car Dealership.
This is why niching down becomes extremely important for an agency when it comes to scalability, and building out internal systems efficiently.
With the right systems and resources in place, you can absolutely expand and work with multiple niches down the road, however in the beginning, niching down is extremely important so you don’t run the risk of spreading yourself too thin and having your clients results suffer because of it.
A hidden byproduct of niching down that no one talks about is the huge advantage it gives you over your competition. Once you are niched down, you naturally will develop a deeper understanding of that niche. This helps position you as an industry expert in that niche. Business owners will always place their trust in a specialist over a generalist.
What’re 3 tips to grow your agency?
Focus primarily on 2 activities: Setting appointments and closing appointments
Everything else comes second. These are the 2 activities that actually move the needle forward in your business. I find a lot of people spending time on the color of their logo or the design of their website etc. Those things do not move the needle like setting and closing appointments. If you want to grow your agency, your calendar should never have a lot of white space. Your primary activities should be setting or closing appointments.
2. Laser focus on specialization
Don’t try to be everything to everyone because you will end up being nothing to no one. I see plenty of agency owners offering 8+ different services which in turn require 8+ different skill sets. Doing this makes it challenging to grow and over-deliver for your clients. Get laser focused on one service and go extremely deep with it. Become an industry specialist on that service and new business will start coming to you effortlessly
3. Hire based on “fit” not just skills
As you grow you will need to hire employees to increase company capacity and revenue. However, most agency owners rush the process and only look for people with the best skills, forgetting about company culture. The wrong hire can be extremely costly not only to your revenue but more importantly to your team chemistry and operations. As the leader of my team, I would rather hire someone who is a great culture fit and teach them the necessary skills over hiring someone who has great skills but is not a culture fit for you or the team. Take your time and look for people whose values line up with yours, you can enjoy working with, and are excited to get behind your vision for the company.
Bonus tip — Systemize and automate your lead generation as soon as possible
This will allow you to focus on closing appointments and working above your business to make the larger strategic plays at the top.
Where do you see digital marketing going for business owners in 2020?
If a business is not advertising online, they will soon be put out of business by those who are.
We’ve hit a time where more and more people are using the internet to make larger and larger purchasing decisions. I firmly believe that if a business is not taking full advantage of online advertising and social media marketing, they will be drastically left behind in 2020 and beyond.
I’ve seen countless small and large corporations who have ignored online advertising and social media marketing have to close down because their competition was innovative and went digital. In 2020 digital marketing is no longer optional. It is mandatory if you want to see growth and have the competitive advantage in your market.
2. In 2020 business owners will have to pay to play
In 2020, the most powerful social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, LinkedIn etc will be cutting down organic reach and making it pay to play.
For the business owners who have been using social media to post and attract customers organically, they will see a tremendous drop in reach and customers. We’re already seeing this shift with Facebook and Instagram. To increase your reach, even to your followers and audience, you will have to pay the platforms and run advertisements.
3. Boring will put your business in debt in 2020
I’ve worked with plenty of business owners who throw their entire budget and bank account at digital marketing and tell me “it does not work.” Then when I take a look at their campaigns, I find they are using marketing strategies that are outdated and inefficient.
Consumers are evolving and starting to develop “ad blindness” towards content that screams “I’m an ad.” in the newsfeed. No one goes online to be advertised to so as a marketer and business owner, you have to become creative in capturing and keeping your audience’s attention.
We’ve found the best way to do this is to have an element of entertainment or education in your digital marketing. If you are comfortable on video that’s even better because video creates more familiarity and trust between you and your audience.
What are current websites that you handle?
I currently own Technekronos, News by Technekronos, Undergoing work on labelhs and estatic reality.
I have a clientele base of 80+ clients most of them hiring me for website marketing, Product marketing, Brand Presence and Web Development.