Jeremy Parker: How Swag.com Got Facebook as Their 1st Client

How do you secure a killer domain name like swag.com and land a massive first client like Facebook within a matter of months? Today Jeremy Parker, founder and CEO of Swag is sharing how he was able to do just that and scale to $300,000+ of revenue within their first year.

Jeremy had been working in the promotional products industry for a number of years before he decided to launch Swag, during which time it became clear to him that most promotional products companies were on a race to the bottom. In order to undercut on prices, companies were sacrificing the quality of their products and customers were suffering the consequences.

Meanwhile, Jeremy also noticed that the demographics of the average promotional products buyer was shifting from a middle-aged office manager to a 20-something that wore Patagonia to work. This new consumer was much more quality-conscious and was willing to pay a bit more for high quality promotional products that they would be proud of. Also, these consumers didn't say "promotional products", they called it "swag".

That's when the idea for Swag hit him. There was clearly a demand for high quality swag, but the companies willing to supply products at this level were not out there. So Jeremy decided to start putting the pieces in place for rapid scale.

Through a $1M+ creatively structured deal, Jeremy was able to secure the rights to use swag.com before he had sold a single product. And with a domain name and a few samples, Jeremy and his co-founder decided to swing for the fences on their first client...they were going after Facebook.

Listen to the full podcast for the rest of Jeremy's story along with his advice for aspiring young entrepreneurs!

0:00 INTRO 2:05 Swag Backstory 4:10 Landing Facebook As Their First Client 7:35 How To Get To Decision Makers 9:25 How Swag Fosters Inbound Marketing 11:00 Early Issues Encountered 13:58 Where The Name Came From 16:35 Raising Capital 19:50 Prioritizing Different Projects 25:10 Marketing vs. Product Development 29:45 Advice To His Younger Self 31:35 Jeremy's Businesses Before Swag 35:45 Partnering With Others 37:45 Industry Publications 38:55 What Jeremy is Excited About 40:50 Habits 41:40 Non-Scalable Practices 43:15 Jeremy's Contact Info 44:05 Closing Thoughts

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This episode is sponsored by TONOR. For 20% off the TONOR Q9 Mic Kit, use the code SMARTMONEY20 on either Amazon or TONOR's website.

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