Meet Nelson who plays match maker with businesses and marketing agencies

It all started with a goal to chat to entrepreneurs over 60. Then out of curiosity we decided to talk to entrepreneurs under 30. We believe these two very vast generations can learn and grow from each other. 

This week we visit the United Kingdom and chat with Nelson Jordon  who founded Agency Match which pairs small and medium businesses with marketing agencies, including those that offer services like PR, social media, and Search Engine Marketing. 

Can you tell us a little about what you do?

As Co-Founder, I’m in charge of the direction of the business, as well as heading up our marketing efforts, and ensuring profitability.

What were some of the struggles you faced when you first started?

Getting the first few customers was a struggle. Although we were driving people to the website, the website itself was doing a poor job of converting visitors into leads. Ultimately, we had the website redesigned, and now its far more cost effective to gain new customers than it was.

What do you like most about having your own business?

Probably the ability to make decisions and know that the success or failure of the business rests on the quality of those decisions. I also enjoy that I get to have an outsized impact on what happens; I’ve worked in large organisations before and felt very much like a cog in a machine.

What advice would you give to your younger self?

I would tell myself not to worry about wasting time. Before marketing, I worked in recruitment, and before that, in sports. At the time, I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to settle down and find a career or even a job that suited my personality, and ways of working. Now, that seems foolish, and completely unnecessary.

Who is an older person that you admire and why?

I hope he doesn’t take it the wrong way, because I think he’s only 10-15 years older than I am, but I really admire Shane Parrish from Farnam Street. His whole ethos is about slowing down and understanding the mental models that carry the most weight. He is a great writer, and his ability to see what really matters has impacted my own life heavily over the last few years.

If you could jump into a time machine what era would you visit and why?

I’d love to visit the future, in about 100 years or so. I hope that I’d see that everything worked out in the end. That we managed to counter global warming, social media didn’t ruin everyone’s brains and that we had made it without another World War!

Anything else you would like to add?

To end on a light note, here’s one of my favourite quotes, from the ever-so-slightly fictional Ron Swanson: ‘Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Don’t teach him to fish and you feed yourself. He’s a grown man. Fishing’s not that hard’