Zachary Dempsey is a 19 year old Canadian entrepreneur utilizing the power of influencer marketing to drive hundreds of millions of impressions per month to various brands. In this interview, I picked his brain to understand how he does it.<\/p>\n
City where you\u2019re from:<\/strong> Born and raised in Vancouver, Canada<\/p>\n Hobbies:<\/strong> Snowboarding, reading, and videography<\/p>\n Favorite quote:<\/strong> \u201cThings turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out\u201d – John Wooden<\/p>\n Twitter: @zachdemps<\/a><\/p>\n Being an entrepreneur isn\u2019t for everyone<\/a>. I think a lot of people that end up becoming entrepreneurs share the same desire for being in charge of their own life, I\u2019m no exception. Ever since I was young I would always find myself following my own path and doing what I wanted to do instead of what others told me. I was never the type of person to do something just because someone else told me to do it, so naturally I started working on my own projects outside of school. Once I saw the potential in building my own business I decided to become an entrepreneur full time.<\/p>\n I think everyone is just the average of the 5 people they spend the most time with, so personally I think I was mostly influenced by my parents and a few of my closest like minded friends. Ever since I was young my parents always encouraged me to pursue things I was interested in. They never tried to make me sign up for sports or classes that they wanted me to take, instead they wanted me to make my own decisions based around things that I enjoyed. I think being exposed to that level of decision making at a young age really helped push me to where I am today. A moment that really stands out to me is a conversation I had with my parents in senior year of high school. We were talking about what I wanted to do after high school and whether or not I wanted to attend university. During that conversation I told them that I had decided I wanted to pursue my own business instead of going to university, from that moment on my entire focus was on my company.<\/p>\n Currently I\u2019m working on an app that allows influencers on Twitter to track the monetization for their accounts. Owning a large network of influential Twitter accounts, I found myself at a loss for any analytics regarding the monetization of my accounts. After a few months of development we are now in beta testing!<\/p>\n In the world of influencer marketing there are not a lot of services that offer any type of analytics, especially ones that would be available to the influencer. I\u2019m trying create an app that allows the influencer to track how their monetizing their account and give them insight on the amount of impressions they should be receiving. I think my favourite moment so far has been launching the initial beta program, I\u2019ve gotten a lot of positive feedback so far and it\u2019s nice to see my ideas bringing value to people\u2019s businesses. <\/span><\/p>\n Instagram live is something that I\u2019ve been playing around a lot with lately. Utilizing an influencer to get in front of their audience in real time and talk about a brand has been extremely well received. The audience is so much more engaged in a live stream than they would be if they just saw a post. Live video is so personal that the audience feels like they’re having a conversation with the person on screen, when the influencer achieves this level of personal connection with their audience then the followers are much more likely to to be interested in the product that they\u2019re talking about.<\/span><\/p>\n Every entrepreneur experiences \u00a0failure during some part of their career, the way you deal with it really shows a lot about who you are as a person as well as an entrepreneur. It\u2019s very important that you treat every setback as a learning experience, don\u2019t get too caught up on the setback itself but instead look at what happened leading up to it that you might have been able to change to minimize the damage. You need to learn to be flexible when dealing with small setbacks or failure. Nothing last forever and things rarely go as planned so you need to make sure to have a solid plan B!<\/span><\/p>\n Make sure you\u2019re doing something you\u2019re passionate about and enjoy. It\u2019s very important that you like what you do, if you\u2019re truly passionate about your work then it\u2019s so much more likely you\u2019ll succeed. Another thing that I\u2019ve found extremely useful is delegating as much busy and\/or unappealing work to someone else so that you can focus on more important things<\/a>. If you\u2019re not talented at something and you find it taking up a lot of your time, it might be a good idea to hire someone more qualified to do it.<\/span><\/p>\n Content is very important when it comes to influencer marketing. I think there\u2019s a common misconception with a lot of brands that think because their ad is going to be seen by millions of people that they can just throw together any sort of ad and utilize influencer marketing, this is simply not true. In order to get the most out of your advertising budget it is absolutely necessary that you\u2019re promoting a good piece of engaging content. Your goal is to get people talking about your brand, so it\u2019s very important that your target demographic can relate and will want to share the sort of content you put out. <\/span><\/p>\n I think the single best piece of knowledge I\u2019ve acquired whilst developing my business is the way I manage the people working for me. I think it\u2019s extremely important to build a good relationship with everyone that works for you<\/a>, as well as offer a sense of community. \u00a0The best way to achieve this is by giving everyone as much freedom as you can. For me, this means allowing my staff to choose their own hours and have as much vacation time as they feel they need. If your staff is happy to go to work everyday then they\u2019re bound to work harder and help you build a better product. <\/span><\/p>\n Organization skills are a huge asset to any entrepreneur. Having my whole day\/week\/month planned out is super useful for me because it allows me to focus on one thing at a time without having to worry about forgetting something. Another thing I\u2019ve found helpful is only working when I\u2019m fully rested and am ready to work. There\u2019s no sense working on something when you\u2019re tired and not giving it your all. If you\u2019re lucky enough to be able to make your own schedule, use that to your advantage. <\/span><\/p>\n The most important thing an entrepreneur should focus on is their relationships with friends and family as well as their personal well being. I see a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs claiming to work consecutive 15 hour days for weeks on end, and I really don\u2019t think this is a healthy way to live. Don\u2019t let your health and personal life fail just to get ahead in business. After that, focus on bringing value. Find a problem that needs fixing or a services that is desperately needed and offer a solution. Work on having a good product and the money will come later. <\/span><\/p>\n While I was getting my business up off the ground, the majority of my time was spent networking with people and building a list of connections. I would say it took me just under a year of networking to get my first reliable recurring client. After I got my first client it became a lot easier for me to get more. After about a year of running the business entirely myself I started hiring people part time to take some of the work off my shoulders. Today, about a year after hiring the first person, I\u2019ve built a team of over a dozen people helping me with software development, website development and social media management. Building a good team around me has been extremely useful for my business, it allows me to delegate the less important tasks so I can focus on more important things like decision making and communicating with my clients.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe 80\/20 principle<\/a>\u201d by Richard Koch is an amazing book that I would recommend to any entrepreneur. The underlying message of the book says that you can get 80% of the results with 20% of the time\/effort<\/a>. I think this is a great book for anyone struggling with time management, it really showed me the power of using my time efficiently and gave some insight on the power of delegating tasks that you don\u2019t like or aren\u2019t good at. \u201cThe Alchemist<\/a>\u201d By Paulo Coelho is another wonderful book. I would recommend this to the younger entrepreneurs \u00a0that haven\u2019t completely found their way yet. It follows the story of a boy who defies the normalities of his society and paves his own path. This book really helped me see the possibilities in doing my own thing, it made me feel a lot more comfortable taking my own path. <\/span><\/p>\nHey Zach, why did you decide to become an entrepreneur?<\/h3>\n
Who were your biggest influences? Was there a defining moment in your life?<\/h3>\n
What are you working on? How did you come up with this idea?<\/h3>\n
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How is your service different and unique? What has been your favorite moment with it? What\u2019s the vision? <\/span><\/h3>\n
What types of marketing channels do you take advantage of?<\/span><\/h3>\n
Did you experience failure along the way? What did you learn from it?<\/span><\/h3>\n
Value-add questions<\/b><\/h3>\n
Give the readers the best entrepreneurship advice you have. <\/span><\/h3>\n
Give us some tips about influencer marketing.\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n
While working on your project, have you come across any interesting bit of knowledge that you\u2019d like to share?\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n
What daily habits do you have that allow you to perform at your peak?<\/span><\/h3>\n
What should an entrepreneur focus on?<\/span><\/h3>\n
Walk us step-by-step through the process that you had to go through to get from the early stages to where you are today.<\/span><\/h3>\n
What are some of your favorite books?<\/span><\/h3>\n
Where do you see yourself and your product in a couple years?<\/span><\/h3>\n