Hi, we’re Andrew Pickering and Peter Gartland and we run a company, believe it or not, called: Andrew and Pete! We actually randomly got placed in the same halls at university and became friends, bonding over a passion for one day (ruling the world) running a successful business empire. When we left university we then had a decision to make, do we find a comfortable graduate job or do we try to ma
ke it on our own in the big bad world? We decided to go for it of course, BUT we had a problem...
We were young, inexperienced, and Andrew wanted to move to the other side of the country (Newcastle upon Tyne) to live with his girlfriend, Vicky. This meant we had to start up our marketing company in a city we barely knew, with no money, and no business contacts what-so-ever. Ouch. So we dug deep and invested the rest of what little savings we had in another more expensive web development company...
What could possibly go wrong? Unbelievably they also ripped us off and didn’t give us our money back! We felt the weight of the world come crashing down on us. By this point we had no website, no confidence in web developers, and we had spent all of our savings. Worst of all, it was at the time of the worst financial crisis in decades… and to top it off, Business Link (who funded many websites and marketing investment in the area) had been shut down so no one in the area wanted to spend any money, especially on marketing. Great. So what did we do? How could we compete with all these bigger marketing companies with all their fancy marketing materials? How could we come back from this crushing waste of time and money? With nothing to live on we needed to act, and fast...
With no budget, we turned to blogging, email marketing and social media. Being young and ambitious we thought we'd be global thought leaders within a couple of years. We were wrong. After a few years it was still our networking and referrals where we got most of our business. Blogging is tough! We are living in a 'Content Crisis' whereby there is an overwhelming amount of content out there - most of it boring, most of it just sales messages in disguise. There are over 2 million blogs posted every day. We needed to do something different... we needed to stand out. We got great a reaction at networking when we did something a bit different. Would the same be true with content?? We developed our brand and let it shine through our content. The results were incredible. We started to get fans who loved reading our content... and sharing it!! Now we were going somewhere. Then we started our video channel and OMG it was amazing. Straight away we had more sales, fans, subscribers and shares than ever before. Quicker lead times. People binge watching our videos, and joining our membership site without any lead nurturing. More speaking gigs booked than ever before and many, many other benefits! AT THIS POINT WE KNEW WE HAD TO SHARE THIS DISCOVERY...
CONTENT MARKETING DOESN'T NEED TO BE A LONG-TERM STRATEGY! NO LONGER DO PEOPLE NEED TO WASTE THEIR TIME FOR YEARS ON END BLOGGING FOR NO REASON - JUST WORK ON CREATING REMARKABLE CONTENT AND YOU WILL GO FASTER THAN YOU EVER THOUGHT POSSIBLE. At Andrew and Pete, we never stop trying our best, always learning and always eager to push the boundaries to inspire others. Today, we work with some amazing clients from all over the world, have been featured on some of the world biggest and best podcasts and blogs, written 2 books, won numerous awards and continue to collaborate with world-leading experts. None of which would have been possible without our amazing fans. We've been through thick and thin, but we believe that:
“ENTREPRENEURSHIP IS LIVING A FEW YEARS OF YOUR LIFE LIKE MOST PEOPLE WON’T, SO THAT YOU CAN SPEND THE REST OF YOUR LIFE LIKE MOST PEOPLE CAN’T.” ANONYMOUS. We are on an ambitious journey, coming very far, very fast. We think it is down to our ambition and hard-work ethic… but more importantly, letting our creative juices flow and standing out. Fast forward to now, our signature programme ATOMIC helps businesses double in 6 months or less. We teach the processes, strategies and way of thinking that took our struggling £12k/year business into a multiple 6 figure one, by stopping swapping time for money and instead focussing on how to scale the smart way. We'd love you to check it out at www.andrewandpete.com
Thank you for taking the time to read this, and hopefully we shall hear from you soon. Have a great day! Andrew and Pete
