OUR STORY

I didn’t grow up dreaming about starting an agency. At 18, I just wanted to make money without clocking in for somebody else. So I launched a dropshipping store. Most first stores are disasters. Mine wasn’t. I figured out how to automate the entire thing so it paid me while I slept. But here’s the twist: I didn’t fall in love with the products, or the idea of passive income. I fell in love with the marketing.

The ads were my addiction. Writing headlines, testing angles, tweaking targeting, watching a total stranger across the country whip out their card because of something I wrote was the hit. That was the moment I realized marketing is the lever that moves everything.

So I threw myself into freelancing. I took projects anywhere I could. E-commerce shops. NFT projects during the 2021 boom. Local businesses who were hustling but invisible online. I ran ads for Highlife Music Studio, Neon Sound Music Studio, Side Hustle Yacht Charters, Connor & Co. Landscaping, and plenty more. Budgets were not always big, but the results were. Every client was another rep, another test, another chance to sharpen the blade.

By 20, I got recruited to Explore Media, a job advertising agency that powers campaigns for platforms like Indeed and Talent.com. They put me in charge of the media buying team. That meant managing hundreds of thousands of dollars in spend every single month and making sure employers got qualified candidates without torching their budgets. At 20 years old, I was handling more ad dollars in a week than most freelancers touch in a year. That was my bootcamp. Sink or sharpen. I sharpened.

After two years of that, I came back to Portland with a new mission: bring enterprise-level media buying to businesses that actually needed it here. And that is when things really started to move.

A Tigard taco truck called Alvaro’s Tacos hit its best sales day in five years, and then followed it up with four straight record-breaking months. Joe Grab Tree Service turned into a go-to Portland name with search ads feeding them steady leads. Fresh Start Now, a bankruptcy and auto sales company, saw their automotive lead volume climb by 30 percent after I rebuilt their ad campaigns. And then there was Thrift Haven. When I first linked up with Austin Possert, it was a small vintage market pulling a few hundred free attendees. After I got behind the ads, it blew up into Oregon’s largest flea market, pulling over 2,000 paid guests every event and lines out the door.

That success led to a bigger realization. Austin and I were not just good collaborators. We were building momentum that deserved its own machine. So we partnered up. His vision for massive events and my obsession with performance marketing became the backbone of what is now Rust Proof Marketing.

Overall, I have personally managed over 5.5 million dollars in ad spend across industries. Restaurants, tree services, yacht charters, landscapers, job boards, music studios, and vintage markets. If it can be sold, I have probably run ads for it. And as I have built Rust Proof here in Portland, I have added a roster of clients like The House Gyms, Back to the Basket, The Fire DJs, Above GRND Coffee, Honey Lily Boutique, Robinwood Acupuncture, Brooklyn Branch Novels, and Potomac Presbyterian Church, each of them growing through the same performance-first approach.

Rust Proof Marketing is not here to look creative or win agency awards that do not matter. We are here to put asses in seats, food on tables, and money in tills. That is what we have done from day one, and that is the story we are still writing.