Today we’d like to introduce you to Taylor Cimala.
Taylor, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
The idea for Digital Third Coast was hatched 10 years ago with my partner, George Zlatin. He and I were working together at a large agency and we felt that our output-centric approach to search engine optimization was worth pursuing further on our own. We spent months getting organized in late 2007 while managing a few clients at night to fund the incorporation expenses. In early 2008, we had a website built with our partners at Orbit Media and soon after the launch of the site, it was time to plan our exits and commit to the future we had planned out. In March of 2008, we left our previous positions – we had 2 clients, 1 pregnant wife and a lot of questions about what the future would hold. A month later we had 14 clients and hired the first member of our team. Two months later we hired another person. Both Nathan and Matt are still with us today and leaders within the organization. From 2008 through 2010 we stayed lean and worked from home offices. Seeing the direct impact of poor financial planning both within business organizations and the economy, we wanted to make sure we were making proper business decisions for future longevity, so we never wanted to overextend ourselves financially. We never did take on any investors or take out loans to get things started – we simply reinvested the money we were making to continue to grow and to save for the future. We hired a few more people over the next few years and in May 2010 we moved into our first office. At this point we were by no means a large company, but we had 40 clients and annual revenue of over half million dollars. We took some of the savings to buy all of the furniture and built out our space working with an interior designer to help us stand out from the crowd. We continued to grow and reached the million-dollar mark in September of 2011. Then we hired our director of business development in February of 2012 and let her focus on growing our client base while George and I continued to grow the company. In November of 2012 we knocked down a wall and took over more space in the building. By early 2014 we hit the two million mark and continued to add members to the team. In 2016, we started a search to buy an office building to further invest in our future and our team and made our purchase in November of 2016. This was actually the first time in our business history that we had to take out a loan and rely on outside financing, which is something I’m personally proud of to have built this from the ground up on our own. We worked with a design build group to develop out our vision and in March of 2017 we made the move to our own headquarters. We now have a staff of 18 and are having one of our best starts to any year in our history. I can’t help but think back to dinner at Roy’s with my girlfriend, my partner and his wife in February of 2008 when we had decided to make our exit. I can’t remember what I expected would happen, but I can tell you that it wasn’t quite what it has become!
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Honestly, it’s been a lot smoother than it has been rocky. We hold fairly high expectations of ourselves and the team around us, so some of the struggles are admittedly self-induced. The biggest struggles along the way have been with the team itself, but that’s to be expected when it is ourselves that we are selling. Any agency has to have the right people on the bus at the right times since each person affects the company and everyone else around them. We’ve had great people that moved on and we’ve had people that helped us go from A to B, but weren’t part of the plan to go from B to C. At one point, we tried to develop our own reporting and project management software specific to the way we worked. We got so ingrained in the day to day of building it and making it perfect that it took us probably two years of hiring and rehiring developers to realize that there are tools out there that do 90% of what we were trying to build. Not only did they cost less money, but we also weren’t burdened with having to staff and manage someone that didn’t work with anyone else on the team directly. That was a big pill to swallow that we were pivoting one day and scrapping something that we spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on creating. The other struggles came from Google. After all, Google is epicenter of the digital marketing industry and, at times, we are at their mercy. There have been several big algorithm shifts and changes over the years that affected how we performed our work on a very large level. Not only did we have to redo how we performed our services, but we also had to hire for new specialties along the way. A fair portion of our direct competitors weren’t able to adapt and the competitive landscape today is very different than it was even 5 years ago. In the end, we share a lot of the same struggles and obstacles that every other tenured business has had to endure. We’ve worked with some great people over the years that helped us learn from the struggles and to better equip us for the same struggles in the future.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Digital Third Coast Internet Marketing – what should we know?
Digital Third Coast is a search marketing agency that specializes in search engine optimization, paid search management and inbound marketing. In other words, we drive visitors from search engines to our clients’ websites. We’ve worked with over 300 organizations in our 10 year history and have established ourselves as specialists within the Chicago market over that time frame. From day one, we wanted to be experts at anything that we did and focus on sustainable growth instead of chasing revenue. For that reason, we don’t offer the myriad of complementary services to our skill sets because we wouldn’t be experts at it. In other words, we don’t want to be seen as a jack of all trades, master of none. We are great at what we do and our reviews, case studies, awards and accolades are a testament to that. In the last few years we’ve also received several awards of recognition for our service and our organization. In 2016, we were on the Inc. 5000 list in 2016 and 2017 we were recognized as one of the top digital marketing agencies in Chicago by Clutch and just recently we were recognized as one of the 101 Best and Brightest companies in Chicago to work for. What sets us apart from others is our dedication to measurable results, our client retention, and our visual content driven approach to SEO. Digital marketing is chock full of snake oil salesmen and old strategies that no longer work. We are still one of a small handful of digital agencies in Chicago that have fully adapted to the changes in the algorithms and we’ve been doing it for 3+ years already. Most companies within our space are still working with outdated strategies, delivering misinformation to their clients and in general, continuing to give the industry a bit of bad name. We’ve chosen a less glamorous path of honesty and integrity and it continues to help us stand out from the crowd and allows us to work with companies that share similar values and future outlooks. I’m most proud of what we have contributed to our team and our local economy. Our team has grown over the years and we’ve had team members get married, have kids, buy new houses and provide for their families. The decisions we make have a much larger impact than just to those of making the decisions, which adds weight and stress at times, but it’s something that I’m proud that we have been able to accomplish – to provide a secure and sustainable workplace to ourselves and our team.
Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
We’ve had a lot of help and great people along the way – far too many than we could ever list out or name every one of them. I hope and aspire to be able to make that same impact for other people and other organizations as well! Certainly, our wives and our families are our biggest supporters. Professionally, Andy Crestodina from Orbit Media Studios and Brad Farris of Anchor Advisors have made large impacts on both our organization and for us as leaders of the organization. Andy was in need of a trusted partner within our industry and fortunately we were able to be that resource for him. What he did to help us grow early on by introducing us to his client base is nothing short of amazing. Brad was an advisor for us several years later and helped us go from a couple guys somewhat winging it and doing well to a company that made strategic decisions based on forecasting and data. Most of all, our team from the past, present and future has defined who we are and what we can be, so a lot of credit goes to each of them as well.
Contact Info:
- Address: 2540 W North Ave.,
Chicago, IL 60647 - Website: www.digitalthirdcoast.net
- Phone: (773) 904-2700
- Email: info@digitalthirdcoast.net
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dtcchicago/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DigitalThirdCoast/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/DTCchicago
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/digital-third-coast-internet-marketing-chicago-3
- Other: https://clutch.co/profile/digital-third-coast-internet-marketing
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