How I Started A $600K/Month Ecommerce Development Agency That Offers A Guaranteed $10K/Month Revenue
Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?
My name is Keith Lynch and I am the Founder and CEO of Qwantify, a digital development, and marketing agency based in Miami, Florida. We develop, market, and monetize profitable e-commerce websites for aspiring entrepreneurs and business owners worldwide.
Our Qwantify Partner Program is a complete ‘Done for You’ online business development service that Guarantees that each website we build earns at least $10,000 per month.
Since our launch in late 2016, we have continued to grow and scale to become the professional, full-service provider that we are today - a multi-millionaire dollar per year digital development agency.
What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?
I have been involved in digital marketing since the early 2000’s - long before it was cool to brag about.
Immerse yourself in whatever your niche is!
With dozens and dozens of successful (and plenty of unsuccessful) websites under my belt, I began to get requests from colleagues, family, and friends asking if I could develop profitable websites for them, too. Fast forward to 2015-2016, after launching a small agency with a small team to build our own online businesses, I finally began offering our services to others.
After further improving and perfecting our process, we had the confidence (and results) to launch what has become our Partner Program. In fact, we had so much confidence in our model, that we decided to include something unheard of in our industry, a Revenue GUARANTEE. That was and continues to be, our Unique Selling Proposition (USP).
I knew that we needed to have something that really set us apart from the competition. And today, our Guarantee, and our entire approach really, has become our claim to fame.
Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.
I had been creating websites, based on ideas that I thought of, for years - since the very early days of the internet. In fact, I began building sites way back when there was only dial-up internet access. Ugh.
So, the proof of concept had been years in the making with probably near 100+ different (crazy) ideas that I had for websites and online businesses. One of the business models that were easier to launch and replicate - rinse and repeat - was, and still is, e-commerce.
The funny part was that, like most startups that are bootstrapped, I started for probably just a few hundred bucks. However, I may have started with nothing but I probably lost hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years on bad marketing, inexperienced advertising, etc, etc. That’s the true cost of experience -vs- start-up expenses.
Describe the process of launching the business.
Launching Qwantify was relatively easy because I already had the knowledge, experience, skills, and resources. The challenge was client acquisition. That’s where I really had to develop our USP and then think outside the box in terms of finding (and selling) the clients.
Ultimately, I realized that thinking of clients as just “clients” was the first issue. Then, asking them to blindly trust us was the 2nd. That is when I really took a deep dive into our client demographic or avatar - I quickly realized that what we are really selling is success, money, and trust. By combating those 3 primaries ‘drivers’ within our business model and culture, we could overcome that fear and convert prospects into clients.
That is when I decided to refer to our clients as Partners (and treat them like Partners) -and- to include our now famous $10K monthly revenue Guarantee. Don’t get me wrong, our attorneys sometimes lose sleep at night over our Guarantee but, since we are a results-driven company, it’s the right thing to do for our Partners.
We provide a complete, end-to-end DFY solution and partnership.
Because it’s a partnership and because we work closely with our partners, we’ve learned to become selective when it comes to acceptance. Beyond the financial qualifications to work with us, we also look for:
- Willingness to learn
- Availability (at least 10 hrs per week)
- Friendly, respectful, and kind
- Strong work ethic
- Passionate about online businesses
- And general compatibility
The beauty of this approach is that it eliminates traditional competition.
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?
Ok, here is the crazy part. We don’t advertise. Well, not conventionally anyway. We are listed on only 4 or 5 main websites and those sites result in more Partner inquiries than we can handle each month.
Funny because we manage millions of dollars in ad spend for all of our Partners’ websites but spend very little on promoting our agency - kind of backward but what is the old saying. “The cobbler’s children have no shoes” or something like that. In short, we focus primarily on our Partners’ success more than promoting our agency.
We continue to receive hundreds of new Partner inquiries every month, and that number has gone up during COVID, but we choose our Partners carefully (less than 20 new selected each month) and we remain focused on the success of our existing Partners.
How are you doing today and what does the future look like?
With an amazing team of over 20+ full-time awesome people, we are growing steadily (and carefully). I often joke that we are growing but in denial. We are focused on managed growth - not scaling too fast. Because we are a family, we prefer to limit our growth to remain close and focused. With that said, Qwantify ended 2020 at just over $7m and is set to cross the $10m mark in 2021 - bigger than I could have imagined just a few short years ago.
Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?
Definitely! Lots of lessons learned. Isn’t it funny going into a business that you might think you know all there is to know about your industry or vertical? The BIG (and sometimes painful) takeaway is that, no matter what you are selling, you are still in the service business.
Serving those who trust you enough to compensate you is really what it's all about. I guess the lesson is, at the end of the day, we’re all in the People Business. Another big lesson is to stay on top of overhead - overlooking even small expenses can hurt!
What platform/tools do you use for your business?
Wow, too many to list but here are a few of our main tools:
- Zoho Suite (recently moved from Hubspot, Trello, Slack, etc)
- We build our Partner sites on Shopify and Wordpress
- Loom
- Google Workspace
- Clickfunnels
- And a handful of other secret tools
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?
Anything by Russell Brunson, Frank Kern, or Perry Belcher. Ryan Deiss has a ton of resources and training for someone just getting started in digital marketing.
One of my favorite podcasts is Entrepreneurs on Fire with John Lee Dumas. I try to stay on top of all things digital development and marketing from various experts but the above are my current main people to pay attention to.
The first book to really inspire me (25+ years ago) in a general way was Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting?
Immerse yourself in whatever your niche is! Don’t just scratch the surface with just enough information on your business. If you take a very deep dive into your vertical, you will likely know more about your topic than 95%+ of the population, which makes you an expert. Once you are an expert, charge accordingly. Whatever you think you can charge starting, double it because you are probably undercharging. Final thought. Don’t overthink it! Just STFU and get started.
Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?
Always! However, we take the hiring process very seriously. As I mentioned, the Qwantify team is like a very close family so if you don’t fit in our world, culture, or overall vibe. We’re not interested. Currently, we’re interested in finding some awesome people who are:
- Partner Success Managers (to support our Partners and help manage their progress)
- Digital Marketing Experts - If you are experienced (and I mean REALLY experienced) with DM, we should talk
- Shopify + WordPress Developers - We need more awesome people to build awesome sites for our awesome Partners. Noticing the theme?
If you’re interested, send us an email at [email protected].
Where can we go to learn more?
If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
