He Couldn’t Give Marketing Away For Free… Now His Agency Makes $18 Million/Year | Eddie Maalouf

Learn from the millionaires and billionaires we interview on calls every week. Sign up for our community here: https://www.skool.com/schoolofmentors... Eddie Maalouf is the founder of Bad Marketing, an agency doing roughly $18 million a year — but at the beginning, he couldn’t convince businesses to let him run their ads for free. Before building the agency, Eddie became the number-one sales rep by volume across Lifetime Fitness, learning a skill he believes means he can never truly go broke: selling. He walked away from the safety of a high-paying career path, went to work for his family for $2,000 a month, and helped generate an additional $1 million in profit. From there, he built his agency from his mom’s house, reinvested aggressively, mastered client acquisition, and eventually landed massive opportunities including working with Yeezy. Then he took the same mentality into acquisitions — negotiating a struggling restaurant concept from a $1 million asking price down to a $130,000 deal. Today, he’s rebuilding Scoville, expanding locations, running multiple companies, and still treating every dollar like a resource that needs to produce. In this episode, Eddie breaks down sales psychology, marketing, hiring, agency margins, negotiation, acquisitions, organic content, and the mistakes that quietly destroy businesses. 00:00 Intro 01:07 Introduction and BAD Marketing’s $18 Million Agency 03:03 Why Most Marketing Agencies Fail and Building Credibility 07:09 Eddie’s Lifetime Fitness Sales System 12:23 Learning Marketing, Mastering Sales, and Leaving His Job 16:01 From 4Media to BAD Marketing 20:35 Landing Major Clients Through Relationships and Content 23:37 Hiring, Delegating, and Replacing Yourself 27:53 Building a More Profitable Marketing Agency 30:35 Buying Scoville Hot Chicken for $130,000 35:16 Fixing Scoville’s Product, Menu, and Profitability 39:23 Push vs. Pull Marketing and Creating Your Own Demand 43:18 Using Money as a Tool for Growth Find Eddie Maalouf here: Instagram:   / eddiemaalouf   BAD Marketing: badmarketing.com Scoville Hot Chicken: scovillechicken.com Enjoyed this video? Please leave a like and subscribe! - ‪@TheSchoolofHardKnocksPodcast‬ Follow our main YouTube channel here: ‪@theschoolofhardknocks‬ Subscribe to our newsletter: https://schoolofhardknocks.beehiiv.co... Check Out Our Merchandise Here: http://shophardknocks.com Our Equipment and Books We Recommend: https://www.amazon.com/shop/theschool...