Seth Rand co-founded Wizard Digital Marketing in 2019 and is the company’s present CEO. As chief executive, he also takes up the mantle of chief marketing strategist for several of his clients, where he supports their efforts to optimize their Google Ads campaigns.
At Wizard Digital Marketing, Seth Rand and his team provides many marketing services to their clients. They deliver “responsive website design and development, search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (Google Ads), social media marketing, email marketing, display advertising, video advertising, online content marketing, online reputation management, graphic design,” as well as graphic design and support for website on different hosting platforms such as WordPress, Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce.
Prior to starting Wizard, Seth Rand founded Rand Marketing in 2010 and was its CEO until 2017. During that period, Rand Marketing became a Premier Google Partner and was named part of the Inc. 5000 list for growth. In 2016, Seth was also named by the South Florida Business Journal as one of its 40 Under 40.
For 16 years, Seth Rand has worked with over 1,000 businesses and managed more than $50 million in Google Ads as he devised digital marketing strategies to help his clients achieve and surpass their respective companies’ profit objectives. He has worked with major companies such as Bean Automotive Group; the Florida Panthers; Invicta Watches; SwissGear; Kaplan University; and SweetWater Brewery.
Seth Rand also belongs to the Entrepreneur’s Organization and Young Entrepreneur Council. He is also a published author and public speaker, who focuses on topics such as “entrepreneurship, business development, marketing strategy, and search engine marketing.”
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Jerome Knyszewski: What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
Seth Rand: Being partnered with an award-winning branded merchandise agency allows us to handle a broader and more complete scope of work than most digital agencies. Our flexibility with our minimum term and scope of our agreements also sets us apart because it is small compared to other agencies with a leadership team of similar credentials to ours.
Our lack of minimum requirements also ties into our unique strategy. With many digital marketing agencies, if you are not a full-service client, then you will just receive support for the specific services that have been engaged. But at Wizard digital, we pride ourselves on putting the same amount of time and research into every client’s strategy that many boutique agencies don’t have the experience or bandwidth to provide.
It is important to me to be involved with each and every sale to make sure that a well thought out strategy is created, and personalized proposal is submitted. I will conduct a discovery call as well as invest time into our independent and competitor research for each and every prospective client prior to creating a personalized proposal.
Jerome Knyszewski: Which tips would you recommend to your colleagues in your industry to help them to thrive and not “burn out”?
Seth Rand: I think it is important to have a work/life balance. For everybody that means something different, whether that is exercise, travel, entertainment, family time, continuing education or something else. It is easy to become consumed with work especially if it is your passion, which I know about all too well. I appreciate spending time outside of the office with friends and family, doing activities that take my mind off of my responsibilities.
I used to joke with my wife that variety is the spice of life. For me, the opportunity to work with a variety of clients in different industries means there is never a dull moment, and it allows me to continue learning even while running my agency.
Jerome Knyszewski: None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
Seth Rand: Hands down I have my parents to thank for making me the man that I am today. They have shown me unconditional love, forgiving my transgressions and supporting my riskier choices. And they have really stepped up over the past four years to help me with my kids after my wife passed.
I am also eternally grateful to my brother Robert, who started working with me back in 2007, without which my prior agency would not have reached the heights that it did. Marketing was my passion and he followed me into it. I remember calling him up in October of 2007 when he was working in Cleveland for a travel agency at the time. I said to him, “Robert, give your two weeks’ notice, I’m coming to get you.” And the rest is history. You can see how special he was by the success he is having in his career now, and I am very proud of him.
Jerome Knyszewski: Ok thank you for all that. Now let’s shift to the main focus of this interview. Delegating effectively is a challenge for many leaders. Let’s put first things first. Can you help articulate to our readers a few reasons why delegating is such an important skill for a leader or a business owner to develop?
Seth Rand: Understanding the importance of delegating and doing it effectively is a necessary skill as a business owner. Doing so opens up my schedule for more high-level tasks, and ultimately improves productivity and time management for my company. I have also learned in my career that by delegating effectively, you build more trust and improve communication with your workers. Trust plays a critical role for a company’s success.
Jerome Knyszewski: Can you help articulate a few of the reasons why delegating is such a challenge for so many people?
Seth Rand: I know for me I can struggle with delegating because it’s hard to trust others to get something done as well as I know I can. The concern that who you are delegating to will not complete the tasks with the same level of quality and experience that you would bring to it. Another concern is whether the task will be completed in a timely fashion ahead of deadlines and in an organized way.
Jerome Knyszewski: In your opinion, what pivots need to be made, either in perspective or in work habits, to help alleviate some of the challenges you mentioned?
Seth Rand: The first step to help alleviate these challenges is to hire well. If you add smart, hardworking, responsible and fast-learning team members, that will increase your confidence in delegating tasks to them. The next step that helps increase my confidence in my employees having a solid training process. Investing in advanced training for newer team members will allow you to put trust in assigning tasks to them. The final thing that I have learned to invest in to help with delegating is project management tools, or other workflow/task management processes. This helps immensely with streamlining your process and ultimately increasing efficiency.
Many entrepreneurs in early stages will hire what they can afford, as opposed to hiring someone who fits the culture and can grow with the organization. I certainly made that mistake earlier in my career. But once I assembled my key senior staff and trained them to complete tasks at a similar level as I would myself, I gained the confidence to delegate on a more consistent basis.
Jerome Knyszewski: Thank you for all of that. We are nearly done. You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
Seth Rand: When it comes to doing good, I really admire Bill Gates. You have a genius who has dedicated billions of dollars to identifying and resolving some of the globe’s most critical issues, like clean water, sanitation and healthcare, including vaccinations. He has the money to take riskier bets, and he leads by example, uses his own money as much as other donors. And instead of spending his time making more billions, he’s spending everyday trying to change the world. Leading by example and trying to get others to do the same.
For me, I have multiple causes that I am passionate about. Personal to me is finding a cure or a better targeted treatment for cancer. My wife Lauren passed away with T-cell Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2016. This extremely rare cancer typically only affects those who are older with autoimmune diseases. And for a 34-year-old women with no auto-immune diseases, I would estimate it was a one in a million chance.
My father has a saying that “someone who graduated first in their class, and someone who graduated 400th in their class, you don’t know which one your HMO sent you to”. That is why I sit on the board of the Leukemia-Lymphoma society. To support their efforts towards a cure and make my children proud.
Jerome Knyszewski: How can our readers further follow you online?
Seth Rand: You can keep up with Wizard Digital Marketing at https://wizarddigital.com, as well as on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram.
Jerome Knyszewski: This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this!