How We Built A $480K/Year Business Helping Companies Grow Their Social Media Audiences

Trey Christensen

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Published: December 25th, 2022

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Trey Christensen

Founder, VastGG

$40K

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

VastGG

vast.gg

from Nashville

started April 2017

$40,000

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

Discover what tools Trey recommends to grow your business!

Discover what books Trey recommends to grow your business!

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Want more updates on VastGG? Check out these stories:

1. We Started A $300K/Year Business Doing Giveaways For Pro Gamers (2021) ➜

This is a follow up story for VastGG. If you're interested in reading how they got started, published over 2 years ago, check it out here.

Hello again! Remind us who you are and what business you started.

My name is Trey Christensen the Co-Founder and CEO of Vast. Our primary agency offering and service is our giveaway campaigns. For five years we have specialized in organic social media growth and strategy in the Esports and Gaming industries.

Businesses and start-ups contract Vast to help them grow their social following and develop an engaged audience around their product, tool, or brand. Vast has a massive reach through our email list, social following, and the brand trustworthiness we’ve built that helps clients achieve their goals.

Goals range from app downloads, new followers, email subscribers, website traffic, completed surveys, game downloads, and much more.

We’ve worked with many prominent influencers and brands in the space, even recently launching campaigns for NFL’s Gaming Tuesdays and NFL’s Rivals NFT project.

Here’s our original story where I share how we started a business organizing giveaways for pro gamers.

We had a mentality of “do everything ourselves” but ultimately, saving a few $$$ and losing hours potentially each day started adding up as a net negative for the business. We have paid for more tools and new processes this year than ever before and our efficiency as a team has quadrupled.

Tell us about what you’ve been up to. Has the business been growing?

Vast is continuing to grow and scale rapidly for an all-cash business. We are generating $40,000 per month in revenue and don’t plan to slow down our growth any time soon. We have even expanded our service offering to encompass social media management to further our client’s success.

Additionally, we have launched articles on our site to improve SEO rating for vast.gg, increase our traffic, and establish Vast as a trusted source for where to find the best gaming equipment and deals. This strategy has added to our overall success and given us the ability to help our consumers more than ever before.

We have scaled the team to include a new operations manager, sales associate, and graphic designer so we can fulfill the demanding workload. The holiday season is always the busiest time of the year for giveaways and it’s the best time to give back to as many followers as possible.

What have been your biggest challenges in the last year?

Our biggest learning experience throughout 2022 has been centered around optimization. At a certain point, we realized it’s better to pay to optimize the systems necessary that will save time overall. We had a mentality of “do everything ourselves” but ultimately saving a few $$$ and losing hours potentially each day started adding up as a net negative for the business. We have paid for more tools and new processes this year than ever before and our efficiency as a team has quadrupled.

Some examples of these tools are QuickBooks, Gusto, Sprout Social, Sendgrid, DocSend, Notion, etc. These have helped us stay organized and save a TON of time upfront.

Lastly, expanding the team is always great on paper, but it has to be done by one to two team members at a team. We learned the hard way that hiring too rapidly can severely affect the business's culture and results. So, we decided to hire one employee at a time and commit our time to train them fully so they can succeed. If the employee we hire isn’t better than us, we are failing as leaders.

What have been your biggest lessons learned in the last year?

Over the past year, we have been focused on growing. With our services being dependent on growing our clients, we, in turn, also have to continually grow. Without our ability to grow, we cannot reintroduce our audience to our clientele. Growth is one of the biggest challenges in today’s market, as there are very few truly organic platforms anymore.

We utilize our network of influencers and relationships to continue growing our social following and email newsletter so we stay fresh and top of mind for gaming enthusiasts looking to win free prizes.

What’s in the plans for the upcoming year, and the next 5 years?

We have a platform launching in early 2023 that will change the game for Vast as a business. This will be a SaaS platform centered around giveaways and the discoverability of client and creator campaigns. We are more than excited to share the platform we’ve been working on over the past 2 years.

What’s the best thing you read in the last year?

I have a ton of books that I always intend to read but I would say the best book I’ve read this year was “Do Nothing” by Celeste Headlee. It has helped me rethink what the 40-hour work week means and that we don’t need to force ourselves to “work” if it’s not efficient and achieving a greater goal.

Advice for other entrepreneurs who might be struggling to grow their business?

My number one rule is to show up. Proximity is power and the more people you meet in person and get to know, the more trust and opportunity you will develop for yourself and your business.

Where can we go to learn more?

If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!