January 2025 will mark 16 years since DS&P first opened ’its doors. It has been an interesting and rewarding journey full of milestones, obstacles, and accomplishments. Today, I would like to share a little bit about my story, what drives my agency, and what gives it a unique perspective on its digital marketing approach. In addition, I would like to share things my agency is looking forward to launching in the near future in order to provide better service and better results to our clients.
I am Danny, the CEO and founder of DS&P Digital Marketing Agency. I come from an entrepreneurial background, and I have been involved in a few businesses in the past. I have also been associated with a wide variety of industries, ranging from real estate investments, printing, luxury cars, and even commercial cleaning services. Some of them have been solo efforts, some were partnerships, and some of them have been family businesses. The idea is always to make a business profitable, sell it at a profit, and move on to the next entrepreneurial challenge. That was precisely my vision when I started DS&P.
In the early 2000s, I also joined corporate America by getting involved in a couple of Fortune 500 companies while I still continued to manage and work my personal business efforts on the side. I first joined Citibank around 2003 in Miami, working in real estate acquisitions, and it proved to be quite lucrative—at least it WAS lucrative until the real estate market in south Florida started experiencing cracks. Eventually it completely collapsed. I was one of the victims when massive layoffs hit Citibank, and I was forced to look for other opportunities.
I decided to move to Texas toward the end of 2006, where I started working for AT&T at a time when a revolution was about to take place: the launch of the first iPhone! I was fortunate enough to join at the right time, and I was an important part of product launches that propelled AT&T Mobility to break all kinds of sales and revenue records—at least, it WAS successful until the banking and financial markets completely collapsed in 2008. Again, I was the victim of massive layoffs from a Fortune 500 company for the second time in 24 months.
I decided I had enough. I was not going to allow a high ranking corporate official in NYC or elsewhere to determine my destiny or earning potential. I resolved to get serious about my own business efforts and determine my own path to success. If I was going to fail, it was going to be because of my own mistakes. No longer was my future going to be decided in a corporate conference room.
I made a conscious decision to pull myself up by my bootstraps and do my own thing. The combination of the real estate collapse and financial meltdown, coupled with corporate layoffs completely decapitalized me. I was going to have to start from square one. Forget that—I was going to have to start from a negative square one.
One motivational quote says, “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” I did not get to choose the circumstances I was in. Nevertheless, I was ready to make something happen, and my previous entrepreneurial experience was a great platform on which to build. I approached one of my ex-wife’s family members who had an existing printing business. I then offered to open a new location under his business name. I was going to run this new location from the ground up.
The business plan did not need him to invest any money on the new location, and I was going to offer him a percentage of my profits as long as he would allow me to use his equipment. Commercial printing is a very competitive market with small profit margins, and equipment is easily the largest investment. Each machine can cost from tens of thousands of dollars, some exceeding $100,000. I definitely did not have the capital to invest in equipment, but this arrangement would allow him to take zero risk. Also, to a degree my risk would be greatly minimized since I didn’t have to purchase equipment. Our only shared risk was reputation. On my end, my other risk was paying the lease for my location, which I was certain I could cover with God’s blessings.
The leap of faith worked! My prayers were answered and my efforts paid off. Within 24 months, my location was outselling his original business that had been running for seven years. Once I left the print shop to pursue my own thing, he transferred his headquarters to the new location. One thing I noticed while I was managing the print shop, however, was that many of the small businesses I was working with kept asking if we could do websites. So I decided to start learning website development and coding on the side and began working under the name D-Sign & Printing. Those were the humble beginnings of DS&P. At one point during the early stages of the business, I was working three jobs. I kept managing the print shop part time, I was selling insurance, and then I would go home and develop websites—70 to 80-hour weeks were my normal.
Another famous motivational quote says, “I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.”
I still work 70-hour weeks from time to time, but now it is different because I’m working on something that I’m very passionate about. Something that’s my own. My business “baby.”
DS&P kept growing, and after developing websites for a few years, my own clients started asking for ways to promote their online presence. We started offering search engine optimization (SEO) and social media management (SMM), as well as branding and paid-advertising options like Google AdWords and Facebook Advertising. In 2017, DS&P started offering mobile app development as well.
We’re proud to offer a gifted and extremely talented team of developers and engineers who can develop your marketing strategy. And right now we're working with a team of MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) staffers and directors in developing business solutions in artificial intelligence and blockchain technologies, providing options to businesses in marketing strategies, operations, profitability and efficiency. We also teach a course at the City of Chicago Small Business Affairs office, titled "Still marketing like it's 1989? A chronological order to digital marketing success", and we collaborate with multiple universities and organizations like the Women in Business organization of the University of Iowa. We are also collaborating with the University of Utah and Northwestern University doing research on how to improve health and promote healthy habits within areas in need in the city of Chicago.
From my previous efforts, I discovered that the only way to achieve success was NOT at someone else’s expense. So DS&P’s approach focuses on facilitating YOUR success without harming others. In so doing, my goal to give superior service is accomplished.
Not only does this make my job so rewarding, but also the fact that DS&P is led by a team of entrepreneurs who know what it is to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and create a business from nothing but a vision, hard work, and hustle makes us a unique agency that can provide your business a pragmatic approach to your digital marketing strategy.
Many marketing agencies have creativity and will boast about how many followers they have, as well as how much engagement they provide. And that’s great. Unfortunately, they don’t know what to do with the engagement or how to turn it into actual revenue. How many times have you heard of a startup that is valued at millions of dollars but has never turned a profit?
We value followers.
We value engagement.
However, our number one goal is to produce revenue for you. After all, the only way we keep growing is by making YOU grow.
If you’re ready to take the next step in your business growth, fill out the following form, and I will receive your inquiry personally. Even if you’re not ready, but you would like to discuss the possibility of working in the future, or have a question or suggestion, fill out the form as well. I look forward to collaborating, growing, and assimilating from fellow business owners. Let’s start a conversation, and you never know—this can lead to a very profitable and rewarding future.
