Today we’d like to introduce you to Austin Lovell.
It’s an honor to speak with you today. Why don’t you give us some details about you and your story. How did you get to where you are today?
My name’s Austin Lovell and I’m the Founder & Head of Growth at T-Minus. We partner with ambitious online brands to create direct response video ads that strike like lightning and skyrocket conversions. We are based in Adelaide, Australia but serve brands around the world.
My time in video advertising started behind the camera – shooting, editing, curating content from start to finish. First for my own projects, then for small freelance jobs and then larger corporate projects with much larger budgets. After finishing high-school in 2018, 2019 was my first year in business full-time – it was challenging, exciting and surprisingly addictive. I was hooked, and finished up 2019 having worked with large Australian and international brands including Spotless, Zagame Automotive, Ray White, PwC, Audi and Mercedes-Benz. It was a rollercoaster of a year, but a mere merry-go-round in comparison to 2020. COVID hit my business hard. In a matter of weeks, it crumbled. Crashed, burned, was chewed-up and spat-out. Something had to change. And as many businesses did, we pivoted. We focused solely on creating video ads for e-commerce brands.
Within 3 months, we had brought on 6 clients, and that quickly jumped to 9. Now, we are a team of 7, all of whom are contractors to keep costs low and pass on those savings to our clients. Our ruthless (and obsessive) focus on direct-response advertising and speed has allowed us to break into a market typically dominated by larger production companies and agencies.
I’m sure your success has not come easily. What challenges have you had to overcome along the way?
Apart from COVID, and the changes in business as a result, we’ve faced rejection – LOT’s of it. 1,000’s of emails that were never opened. Hundreds of unanswered calls. And we are still challenged by rejection today. But to be honest, I love it. It’s the feeling of pushing the boundaries when others would have given up, when others may have thrown in the towel. It’s going out there every single day and believing that it’s just day one, and we’re only 1% done. It’s brutal out there if you don’t approach the startup phase with an open mind and a willingness to not give up. And I think that’s something you’ll find in a lot of success stories in any field. It is the sheer stubbornness and extreme determination not to give up or stop pushing that propels people to achieve incredible things.
Let’s talk about the work you do. What do you specialize in and why should someone work with you over the competition?
In principle, we turn $1 into $4, $5, $10. In reality, we create high-converting video ads for D2C e-commerce brands. We specialise in creating direct-response video ads for Facebook and Instagram.
Our approach since we have focused 100% on e-commerce ad creative has been simple – we need to create every single video ad is if there is a knife to our throat. Pardon the visuals, but the underlying message rings true. We create every single video ad is if it absolutely must convert and perform at the highest level possible. There’s no other choice. For us, successful video ad creation is literally life or death. From pre-production, through to filming the content and in the editing room, it’s all about the results. It’s about the ROAS, it’s about how much it costs to acquire a new customer using our video ads, and it’s about ROI.
Why should someone work with us? Because we live and breathe results. We live and breathe high converting video creative. We live and breathe growth.
What’s your best piece of advice for readers who desire to find success in their life?
Whether this initial growth is ‘success’ and ‘hard-work’ or just sheer luck, either way I feel very fortunate that things have panned out how they have. The best advice I can give to anyone who truly wants to find a deep level of joy and purpose in the work they do, and is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve incredible things, is to focus on one thing. That goes for all of life’s distractions. Get rid of social media, stay off your phone, only spend quality time with people who bring you joy and make you a better person and shield yourself from all the negativity out there.
Give yourself every opportunity to do your best work, and be grateful every step of the way. If you want to find success, you need to define what success is for you, and then pursue it with everything you have.
Speaking of success, what does the word mean to you?
Success is something I feel when I move closer to my goals. It’s a feeling of alignment, of working on and pursuing a worthwhile mission. I don’t see success as an end-goal, to just ‘be successful’, but rather an element of the process, just as failure is.
When you put success on a pedestal, as something that is beyond you and beyond your capabilities, then it will always be so. I want to feel success at the end of each day, knowing that I’ve done absolutely everything I can to move closer to my goals.
What’s next for you?
Going from 9 clients to 90 and then 10Xing that again. Improving our service and the effectiveness of our video ads beyond what the market believes is possible. Delivering the highest-converting video ad creative in the world. And then launching our own internal brands.
And also, something to do with space.
Finally, how can people connect with you if they want to learn more.
If you’re a growth marketer interested in how to turn $1 into $4, $5 or even $10 and skyrocket your Facebook ad performance in just 21 days, head to www.t-minus.com.au/free-report to learn the exact video ad formula responsible for tens (if not hundreds) of millions of dollars worth of e-commerce sales online, and how you can use it for your brand.
