Brad Ormsby

Brad Ormsby is an entrepreneur who has leveraged a career in marketing to launch a variety of businesses in multiple industries. Just a few of the businesses he’s in include local service businesses, blogs, eCommerce stores, a wellness center, and a client facing marketing company named Colorstone Marketing. Brad uses years of online marketing experience to build businesses with an approach that’s different than most. He first builds the customer base and then the business infrastructure to service the incoming clients. His unique approach has allowed him to build multiple successful businesses in a short time without the normal capital output that most business owners are forced into. He parlays his experience in building and marketing his own businesses into helping clients build their businesses in a variety of industries and professions.

Brad does not claim to be a marketing or business guru, but rather a normal guy who serves as a beacon of what’s possible with effort and perseverance. He’s married and his wife, Erica Ormsby, is also an entrepreneur and the owner of Lighthouse Global inc. a next gen publishing and PR company. Together they powerfully disseminate information to help business owners grow themselves, their businesses and their spheres of influence.

Where did the idea for Colorstone Marketing come from?

Colorstone Marketing came from my own experiences in marketing. I started my journey in entrepreneurship by opening a wellness center years ago. I didn’t have a lot of money so I figured out how to build our website and market the company. In doing that, I discovered my love for digital marketing. That started me on a several year long journey of building out affiliate blogs and local business sites that all do well. I had no intention of doing this for clients but as I was talking with other local business owners I figured out that they had no idea how to do what I was doing. Then I started getting call after call from business owners asking me questions about their marketing companies. I quickly discovered that I was better than almost every person they hired for their marketing and so I decided to turn it into another business. I love digital marketing so it organically grew into a small marketing agency and I’ve been growing it ever since. We don’t work with everyone who comes our way and focus heavily on SEO and Google PPC for most of our clients.

What does your typical day look like and how do you make it productive?

My typical day is scheduled well in advance. I use Asana to schedule all of my tasks for the day so when I wake up I can get to work. My goal for every day is to get all of the tasks on my list done. The amount of work to get done is enormous and generally, a lot more than I can actually get done in the day. But by scheduling this way I find that it keeps me moving fast and staying focused. Typically, I’ll work on the most important tasks first. This means I’ll handle client calls, sales calls, and whatever other critical things need to happen that day. From there, I take a quick lunch and get to work on the less critical but still important tasks. These are things like admin and general housekeeping in the business.

How do you bring ideas to life?

This is an interesting question. For us, bringing ideas to life revolves around getting exposure for a business. We aren’t Disney so we’re not focused on the things that you think of when you hear about bringing ideas to life. Instead, we make client sites, pages, and posts the best they can be. This means that we make them thorough, get exposure, and optimize them perfectly.

What’s one trend that excites you?

One trend that excites me is the development of AI. We don’t know how far this can go and what its potential could be in the world of marketing. It may put marketers out of business, Google may start generating its own content and putting content creators out of business, or it may result in great tools that expand our potential. It’s exciting because it’s different. Whether or not it’s a good thing has yet to be seen.

What is one habit of yours that makes you more productive as an entrepreneur?

Scheduling my days so they’re very busy. This doesn’t allow me to sit around or waste time because I’m always racing the clock.

What advice would you give your younger self?

Learn how to focus on one thing for longer than 4 seconds. Do the same thing over and over until you’re really good at it and then build your business around that. Don’t expand too wide from the beginning because it diffuses focus and takes so much longer to get results.

Tell us something that’s true that almost nobody agrees with you on.

I don’t really have anything that nobody agrees with me on. Most of my conversations are around business and marketing so it’s pretty trackable and verifiable. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong.

As an entrepreneur, what is the one thing you do over and over and recommend everyone else do?

Eat healthy. Your energy is everything and it’s what enables you to hit it hard or results in a hard sluggish day. Eat clean foods, cut back on carbs, cut out sugar, etc.

What is one strategy that has helped you grow your business?

Over delivering for clients and being accessible. Clients always have questions so I make it a point to either answer or return calls quickly. This helps us build a relationship and they always refer friends and come back when they need help.

What is one failure you had as an entrepreneur, and how did you overcome it?

I failed with my first partners. 30 days into opening our business they liked the model so much that they asked for their initial investment back so they could open a competing business (the EXACT same business) a mile up the road. They were both morons obviously but that didn’t stop the legal battles that ensued. My wife and I were in the right but we still had to pay significant money in attorney fees. It wasn’t easy to overcome this. We had almost no money and the money we did have was spent on legal bills. It set us back in a major way and caused us to get creative. This is where I started focusing my efforts online and my reverse business approach (in bio).

What is one business idea that you’re willing to give away to our readers?

One business idea I think is decent is mobile detailing. Lots of people need their cars detailed and don’t want to drive to a place and sit there. With mobile detailing, you can start small and people pay good money for the service. It’s far from recession proof though.This is a luxury so to future proof the business you should form partnerships with other businesses that could potentially use your services. Lots of car lots send their cars out for detailing so that could be a good place to start.

What is the best $100 you recently spent? What and why?

I bought an air fryer. I use it all the time for clean food prep. I can toss some chicken in it and it comes out super crispy. In fact, I’m using it to cook chicken as I’m writing this.

What is one piece of software or a web service that helps you be productive?

Asana is my favorite. I use it in the calendar view to schedule tasks/deadlines and then race the clock to get everything done. I don’t believe in complicated “productivity” software. Most of the time it’s anti-productive so keep your software simple.

What is the one book that you recommend our community should read and why?

E-myth Revisited because it’s all about creating processes and scaling your business. Once you read this you will never do business the same way again.

What is your favorite quote?

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” – Lao Tzu

Key Learnings:

• One of the best things I learned was that you can never give up on your dreams. Persevere, persist, and stay humble.
• You have to eat healthy and keep your energy high. Without it you won’t get nearly as much done every day.
• Stay focused on one thing until you’re really good at it and then build out from there.