Ep180 The Twenty-Dollar Leaf: Jesse Wechter on Bootstrapping a Marketing Agency

About this episode

Jesse Wechter shares his journey of bootstrapping a marketing agency from humble beginnings and the lessons learned along the way.

Jesse Wechter figured out the whole business at eight years old. He was at a Greek festival, his dad wouldn't give him money for food, so he stormed off, grabbed a leaf off the ground by the gate, and sold it to a stranger for twenty bucks. He'd only asked for five. The lesson stuck: people will buy almost anything if you present it the right way. It took him a while to turn that into a company. Jesse came back to Indianapolis after flipping cars in West Hollywood and bartending in Chicago, living with his mom, owing money, and unable to land a job in a brutal hiring market. He had the skills, including email marketing for healthcare and medical device companies and a stretch at Red Bull Media House, but no work. So he started building a logo and pulling leads off Google into an Excel spreadsheet, emailing over a hundred people a day. That became Wechter Media. When Matt runs his standard question, the one about whether you had a strategic plan, six months of savings, and a clear read on what customers would pay, Jesse landed about where most founders do. No savings. A plan that wasn't strategic or detailed. And a customer understanding he had to learn the hard way, after getting…

People in this episode

Host: Matt Nettleton

Guest: Jesse Wechter

Topics covered

• bootstrapping
• marketing agency
• entrepreneurship
• email marketing
• business lessons

Keywords

• bootstrapping
• marketing agency
• entrepreneurship
• email marketing
• business lessons
• Wechter Media
• Jesse Wechter

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Wechter Media, Red Bull Media House

Places: Indianapolis, West Hollywood, Chicago

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