Accidental Entrepreneur Now Earns $100K+ Per Year

Jake Ross is the founder of Build You Marketing, a full service marketing agency.

Per a recent interview, Jake has grown the agency to $100K/year revenue in only 2 years 🚀

As a child, Jake was diagnosed with Stevens-Johnson syndrome and had stitches in his eyes to prevent blindness…

One day, my Mom brought in a box of sports cards. I’d open up the packs, and she’d read off the player’s name since I was unable to see.

As soon as I could see again, I would sort these pieces of cardboard every which way. I fell in love with the hobby.

👉 That led to his first online venture…

I started a YouTube channel to show off my collection and grew to over 11,500 subscribers. Through this process, I observed the power of community first hand.

Jake adds…

I am an ‘accidental’ entrepreneur.

I had already built my sports trading card community, wrote a newsletter for an organization and had a year of experience where I learned the agency business model… so I said, “I should try freelance marketing.”

Which led to him starting a marketing agency.

How he got that off the ground…

I approached my first customer and offered to write his newsletter for him. That sales call turned into me also helping him establish a presence on YouTube…

Sounds like Jake knew the newsletter well and felt confident he could do a good job taking over the writing.

I like this approach to finding client work: identify people doing work you admire, figure out a way to help them, then pitch your services 💬

Although even with that approach, don’t expect it to be easy.

As Jake writes…

As in any business, acquiring your first 5-10 customers is a difficult process. And, as a college student, you really do not have much credibility yet.

I was lucky that I found those companies and founders that were willing to take a shot on me. After that, it was a lot easier to grow.

So Jake’s gone from near blindness to building a sports card community to growing a $100K/year marketing business.

And best I can tell, he’s still in his 20’s 💪