Hidden Gems: Meet Adam Whitaker of Rank Brain Media

Today we’d like to introduce you to Adam Whitaker.

Hi Adam, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My story is really one of resisting the traditional education and workforce model. I was born and raised in Carmel, Indiana and as I started to make my way through High School, I never had a clear idea of what I wanted to do with my life – unlike many of my friends who seemed to have it all figured out.

Once I graduated high school, I went on to Indiana University. Now, at 18 or 19 years old, you have to pick a major. Decide what it is that you are going to do with the rest of your life so that you can get a degree and find a job. Well, 18 year old me had no clue what that was. I finally decided to become a math major. I liked math. I’ve always been good at math. So why not major in math? But as I just started to dip my toes into the math major, I would field a lot of questions like – “so what are you going to be? A Math teacher?”

Hell no. Teaching is not something that has ever been on my radar. I respect teachers so much not just for educating our children, but because I know that I’d get fired on day 1 if I ever had to teach a classroom of 30 hormone-raging kids. Anyway, I quickly jumped out of that major and switched to – something else. I don’t really remember. I know I played around with a Computer Science major, an Informatics major, and probably several other things in between.

After 4 years at the university and still about 35 credit hours short of a degree, I bailed. And that’s when I started my business for the first time. While at IU, I spent most of my time skipping class and somewhat unintentionally teaching myself internet marketing. I was making 6 bucks an hour at my college job and needed to find a way to bring in more money to support my lavish class-failing lifestyle.

That’s when I learned about affiliate marketing – the concept where you can promote products or services from other companies and receive a commission for any referred sales sent their way. To do this, I taught myself how to make a simple website, how to set up affiliate partnerships, and over time, how to drive traffic to the website from Google searches, paid media, social media and other channels.

So once I dropped out of college, a lightbulb came on. I know how to make websites – businesses need websites – how about I just sell website design services to those businesses!

Great idea… at first.

My first go-round with the web design business was a failure. I had zero business experience, zero corporate life experience. I had no idea how to talk to business owners. I sold my services for very cheap prices to ensure I could close deals – which left me scrambling to complete work while also scrambling to keep the lights on at home and put food on the table for my family, which I also started at a young age.

After essentially crashing and burning, I jumped into the corporate world for a steady paycheck. I hated it. But at least I had some stability. I worked my way up at one job, moved to another company, worked my way up, moved to another, and so on over the course of the next 10 years. The corporate life sucked my soul, stole my happiness, and gave me the fire to re-start the business, but the right way this time.

I now had more experience in digital marketing (all of my jobs were in this field), I now had the business acumen, and I at least had some sort of financial security, though that was still pretty limited. With the full support of my wife, I quit the corporate job and put all of my energy back into the digital marketing business. And what do you know – the business has grown quickly with the majority of new clients coming from referrals (a testament to the true quality of work being delivered).

Shortly after all of this, we decided to make one of our dreams come true – so we packed up everything and moved to Apex, NC! We’re still a very small business and somewhat new to the area. But as we continue to grow here in the Raleigh area, we will be looking to bring on some local talent to the team in 2022!

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
The biggest challenge that I faced was this traditional model of going to school, getting a degree, get a job. My DNA is just not wired for that. I wish that schools offered more support for entrepreneurship.

I wish that more resources existed for aspiring business owners in a young life. I do see more of that these days, especially with all of the opportunities on the internet and the shift to a more hybrid or remote workforce, but the system is still very much designed for you to follow this ‘get a job’ path that is certainly not right for everyone.

As you know, we’re big fans of Rank Brain Media. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
Rank Brain Media is a digital marketing agency that offers full-service marketing services for its clients. We provide website design services, SEO, paid search, email marketing, account-based marketing, and much more. We can be your entire marketing department or an extension of your existing marketing team.

We have a proven track record and follow a very data-driven approach to deliver results in the form of profit-generating KPIs, not just vanity metrics.

Have you learned any interesting or important lessons due to the Covid-19 Crisis?
Don’t always follow the beaten track. Don’t worry about what other people think about you. Happiness and peace of mind are more important than money. Sometimes you do have to play the game though.

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Website: https://rankbrainmedia.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rankbrainmedia