To many, it looked like I had my dream job. I was working at the social media giant, Facebook, one of the largest and best companies in the world.
I’d consult with fast-growing eCommerce brands in the Asia Pacific, advising them on the latest Facebook strategies and how to implement them. I’d even get paid to fly home to New Zealand every few months to visit clients and catch up with family and friends too.
But here’s the thing. Working at a large tech company affords you a glimpse of the future. You get an incredible overview of the market and trends, what’s happening and what’s about to happen. I started to see the opportunities to do things differently to help brands scale faster.
One thing that really stood out to me was the way social media agencies were working - or not working. They were taking too long to change systems and processes to catch up with Facebook’s offering. Their business models were (and still are) too rigid to keep up with the market disruptors. And that meant their clients - businesses like yours - weren’t getting the results they deserved.
I was working with business owners who had just started eCommerce brands. They were hungry for growth, and Facebook was giving them what they wanted. The rapid adoption of Facebook’s new products was helping them make their name as huge market leaders in the online space.
At Facebook, I could help them to a certain point, but I wanted to do more - to take my knowledge and use it to grow these brands like never before.
After months of late nights spent thinking and planning, I took a huge risk. I left Facebook to build ROAS Media, a performance marketing agency that at least in the early days, focused purely on Facebook and Instagram advertising.
My idea was simple: take the best social media strategies I was taught at Facebook, add in some new ideas, create a near 24/7 service model and find clients with a good product that can be scaled globally.
It sounds easier than it was. I had spent my entire career safe in the knowledge that there would be money in the bank every month. After two weeks on my own, I realised I was out of that comfort zone. It took a full 2 weeks for me to feel the shift from employee to entrepreneur. After that time, the penny dropped, I understood all too well that there was nobody except me in charge of ensuring I receive a paycheck each month. I’m not a Plan B kind of guy - this was it.
So there I was, working up to 18-20 hours a day, seven days a week, at the dining room table, cold calling businesses and writing articles in a bid to get that first client. Even when I signed my first client, and then my second, I couldn’t slow down. With clients across all timezones, I was on call 24/7 and sleeping only four hours a night (that’s if my sleep wasn’t interrupted by a call in the middle of the night).
Thankfully, it paid off. As ROAS Media grew, I built a team, learning quickly how to pick out people who were genuinely excited by the vision, the growth, and plans for the future.
After a few hurdles, we found our feet. We helped to grow one of the largest Facebook advertisers in Australia, who told others about what we can do. Word of mouth is a powerful thing and the large advertisers we were working with, operating in small circles together.
Today we are a team of 20+ people across 5 countries. But we won’t stop there - our vision is to become one of the largest and most disruptive independent media buyers globally.
Rich Burns
Founder and CEO
