3rd December, 2020
“The biggest challenge for someone starting their first business is usually a lack of the right relationships,” Brett Knutson explains.
“This is why relationship building is so important.” After starting multiple seven and eight figure companies across several industries, Brett knows a thing or two about what it takes to achieve success. As a serial entrepreneur, he has taken the lessons learned throughout his previous ventures and applied them to his current role as a founding partner of Monopolize.
Monopolize is a marketing agency that offers brand promotion, paid media, creative strategy, e-commerce, and production. Brett and his team have worked with several Fortune 500 companies, becoming one of the leading marketing agencies across the country.
“We run large-scale influencer marketing campaigns for brands and help with the growth and monetization efforts of personalities and brands,” Brett says.
“Due to my past with Hive, we are also the only agency I know of that does both growth and monetization for personal brands. This allows a personality to justify the cost of growth because they are seeing a return on investment.”
Hive, a social network recently valued at $22 million, was Brett’s first major success story.
He notes, “Hive was grown exclusively through influencer marketing, so it was a natural transition to help other brands to do the same thing I did for Hive. By working with hundreds of influencers, I also saw the benefits of having a personal brand and began to build one myself. It wasn’t long before we began helping others build their personal brands, too.”
With an emphasis on personal branding and relationship building, Brett has made a name for himself scaling several companies to multi-million dollar success.
However, things weren’t always so easy for the serial entrepreneur. “I failed my first business and it was a very public failure,” Brett explains.
“I had a lot of “I told you so” moments from loved ones. I almost gave up trying to be an entrepreneur after that. My decision to keep going anyway, despite the fact that almost no one believed in me, was critical.”
Now, Brett is passionate about sharing this journey with other aspiring entrepreneurs. He plans to launch his first book in early 2021 with the goal of helping others fight the fear of judgment that he faced early in his career.
He says, “Fear can either work for you or against you, depending on whether or not you are using it to drive you or letting it prevent you from taking the risks necessary for success. Use fear as a tool.”