Meet Liam Haskett | Founder of LPH Media – Digital Marketing Agency

We had the good fortune of connecting with Liam Haskett and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Liam, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
Coming out of high school, I planned on playing Division 3 basketball in LA. My family had an emergency that summer, and I wanted to stay close to home. So, I transferred back to USD in San Diego and had to take a gap semester before I started. During that gap semester, I quickly learned I do not enjoy working for others. It’s hard for me to buy into something that isn’t mine. So, I researched ways to make money online and discovered digital marketing. I’ve always been a great writer, so I started selling copywriting services to online businesses and influencers. It let me stay close to my family, make money without a huge amount of capital without a college degree, and have nearly unlimited room for growth. Since, its grown into a full-service marketing agency that I run myself now.

In hindsight, the thought process just makes sense. I’ve always been great at persuasion, so teaching myself sales/marketing came naturally. I love working for myself and setting my schedule, and love having personal relationships with my clients.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
In the agency space, the thing that sets me apart from others is the same as the thing that I’m most proud of, which is how young I started.

I started building LPH Media at 18 years old, and I’m proud of the discipline that it took to get it off the ground. I would spend hours a day doing cold outreach before I landed my first client, and there were plenty of times when I could have quit and found a regular job or gone back to school.

I am also extremely proud of how I’ve grown LPH Media despite also being a full-time student. I know exactly how much room there is for me to grow, but in my time at USD I’ve grown my clientele from just a few clients to now where I have worked with dozens, and I’m proud of this. I’m excited about everything else I have to learn, both at school and in the agency space, and I can’t wait to see where the future takes me.

As I mentioned earlier, the growth process for an agency centers around a LOT of networking and cold outreach. It took me nearly 5 months to land my first client, and that process was brutal. Overcoming the feelings of failure and disappointment during that time was still a big achievement for me, and I landed the clients that I landed because I stuck to my process and trusted myself and my work.

Once I did land these clients, prioritizing personal relationships and quality work was huge for keeping them and landing more. I like to keep LPH Media so personal that I do not have a website. I only accept clients through word of mouth and those that I am personally interested in working with. I trust the quality of my work.

Again, this is where discipline comes into play because it is VERY easy to produce low-quality work. The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is just “Extra”, and that extra work will make all the difference. I think of my agency as part of me, and since I want to be the best possible version of myself, my work needs to reflect that.

I want the world to know that everything that is truly meant for you will come to you as long as you put in the work to make yourself ready for it. Everything takes work, whether it be a business, relationships, a certain career path, or even good mental health. So, if you want these things, the process starts with making yourself the kind of person who deserves them, after that, it’s all up to your dedication. But, if you don’t truly believe that you’re somebody who can achieve what you really wanna achieve, you’ll never do it.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
San Diego is SO beautiful.

The best part is the amount of different things you can do. If you want to go out, Gaslamp and Pacific Beach are great for barhopping. We have so many different spots for thrifting/shopping, beaches, and hikes. Even skiing and the Glamis dunes are less than 3 hours away.

My personal favorites are Windansea Beach in La Jolla and Garbage Beach in Point Loma. I love to go to Kobey’s Swap Meet, as well as the Little Italy and Ocean Beach farmer’s markets. Hiking Cowles Mountain is a great way to see the whole city from above, and Three Sisters Falls in Julian is my favorite hike in the city. If you love cliff jumping, definitely check it out. 🙂

For food, Harumama in La Jolla has amazing sushi, and the Knotty Barrel in Rancho Penasquitas is my go-to gastropub for family friend food and drink. If they’re into baseball, I’d take my friend to a Padres game and head to Gaslamp downtown for the bars after. Breakfast spots like Kono’s Cafe in Pacific Beach and Caroline’s in La Jolla are some of my personal favorites too. Some of the more touristy spots at Sunset Cliffs and Belmont Park in Mission Beach, but even these are great spots if you’ve never been.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
There’s a bunch.

To start, my high school community was my biggest supporter during my gap semester. I went to St. Augustine in San Diego, and before my agency ever started making money, I received so much support from them. My high school basketball coach, different teachers, and even some alumni all reached out to me and offered advice, help, or positive words about what I was doing. It meant so much to me at a time when I felt very alone because of my gap semester between high school and college and was one of the biggest reasons I pushed through with starting my agency.

Once I landed a few clients, one of the teachers invited me to come back and speak about my experience taking a gap semester at a sophomore-level “Life Skills” class. It felt great to be able to share what I had learned during my gap semester and during the process of starting LPH Media.

My parents were pretty tied up with a family emergency during my gap semester, but they also played a role in getting me where I am today. They gave me the freedom to work at something that had no guarantee of making money at all and raised me in such a way that made the transition possible. I was blessed with great time-management skills, competitive drive, and care for the quality of my work because of them, and they are a big reason why I have been able to grow as a person the way that I have over the past couple of years.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/liam.haskett

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liam-haskett/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@Liam.haskett