About
Hi! I’m Andrew.
I am the CEO of INDMND, an SEO-focused content marketing machine; this is how I created it.
To give you a bit of context, I’ll take you back to what got me started with content in the first place.
I grew up in a middle-class family in the UK — my dad worked three jobs, my mum worked too, and they did everything for their children.
Like a lot of kids, I loved playing and building with Legos. Long story short, playing became an obsession, I kept building and designing, and I ended up in university studying engineering.
I followed the traditional education path, went to university, got a job, and thought I would work until I was old and grey. However, something incredible happened to me along the way, and I suddenly couldn’t see myself “working for the man” anymore — and that’s where the real story begins.
2011-2014: Between keg parties and final exams at university, I was extremely fortunate to get the opportunity to work for the Red Bull F1 team. Yeah — from Legos to race cars. It was fascinating and nourished my engineering soul, but it required long hours. Unfortunately, my contract ended, and I returned and finished my degree. But that’s where the problems began.
2014-2015: My next job was working for Ford Motor Company, which sounds great on the surface but was far from it. I became miserable and couldn’t see a way out — quite the contrast from the years before.
After about 18 months at Ford, I knew I was about to break.
I hated my job, had few friends in this new place, and felt I was missing something. I felt like I had so much more to give to this world.
This brings me to the phone call that changed my life.
My sister’s boyfriend had a business out in New York. He had tried explaining what it was and how it worked to the entire family about 1000 times, only to see us scratch our heads perplexedly.
But here is the one thing I knew, and it was the only thing I needed to know: he made a “shit load” (actual unit of measurement) of money.
One day I said, ‘fuck it, what have I got to lose?’ and messaged him asking for a chat — wholly unaware that the proceeding conversation would turn my life upside down.
We jumped on the phone, and I remember saying these exact words to him like yesterday: “I know you make a shit load of money. If you teach me how I’ll work for you for free.”
There was a pause, and he finally said, “Yes, ok, get ready to work as you’ve never worked before.”
That was it. My life changed.
Over the next few months, anytime I was not working at my engineering job, I was educating myself on his business and improving my position. I was only sleeping 6 hours a day to fit everything in, but I finally found some joy again. I felt like I was taking back control.
After months of grinding out this dual lifestyle, I was ready to commit to the next step. I would go to New York City and work full-time in the office.
There were only two problems: I had a full-time job that paid me well and only about £1000 in total savings.
I spoke with Chris (my sister’s boyfriend in New York) and asked if I could come out. He said yes, but getting entangled in the business and team would require me to stay a month or longer.
I spoke with my boss at Ford and said I needed five weeks off for personal reasons, and if that wasn’t possible, I understand entirely, and I’d therefore be resigning. To my surprise, he said yes!
New York City, here I come!
Flights booked (£880), bags packed (free), and I was heading to the largest, most intimidating business mecca on the planet.
I landed in New York and went to my sister’s house. I’d committed to come out to New York and work for free, but in trade, I needed food and a place to sleep, so my home was a small L sofa in a 1-bed apartment in the height of summer in New York.
But I didn’t care. This was NEW YORK CITY! And I had a job there. I would get to learn about this business from the front lines and what was the business of content arbitrage.
What did I do?
Essentially we ran ads to a news site (scribol.com). The difference we made between the click costs and the number of ads a user saw was the business profit. Simple once you understand, but slightly more complex in practice.
The following month I spent learning as much as possible, living for free, and honing my craft.
As our time together wrapped up, the knowledge I had gained about business was invaluable, and I was ready to go back and do something for myself. And that is when something unexpected happened.
Chris and I chatted on my final day’s walk back to the subway.
He asked, “How much do you make engineering?”
I said, “About £36000 ($47000) a year.”
“I’ll pay you that, and you come and work out here with us and join the team.”
I just about fell out of my chair.
And that was it. My direction had officially changed, and the bigger adventure had begun. (2015)
I moved out to New York as a part of the team, and my first role was uploading ads to Taboola, Outbrain, Yahoo and Facebook. My initial excitement had turned into boredom. I was doing everything they wanted, but it wasn’t challenging me, so I started to take an interest in the company’s data, specifically the media buying.
Remember the Legos that got this whole adventure started? It soon became apparent that my love of Lego and engineering was a passion for data and problem-solving. This media-buying stuff was just data and a problem; let me at it!
Within three months, I had gone from knowing nothing to being the head of media buying for Facebook, Outbrain and all the agency Clients we were servicing.
For the next 15 months (18 total), the company grew from 18 million to 25 million to 40+ million per year, directly resulting from increased media buying. I felt pretty good.
But as the saying goes, all good things must end, and after 18 months, I felt like I had learned everything I could. It was time to step out into this world alone. So I did just that.
There was only one slight problem. The original plan was to learn content arbitrage and then go out and do it for my own company.
However, in late 2016, the platforms that place ads on your sites (the good ones) changed their rules and set a minimum amount of traffic needed before they would work with you. That was a 6-figure investment and money I didn’t have.
So what now?
I arrived back in the UK, moved in with my girlfriend, and had no clue what to do next. All I had known was content. I had a plan, and now it was gone because I didn’t have the cash to play the game. It was like being raised in a high-stakes poker game and having to fold, even though you know you have the best hand.
So I did what everyone else does and Googled “How to make money online.”
The top search result was “affiliate marketing.”
So here’s a sneak peek inside my brain at this time:
I know how to buy media.
I know I can sell products.
I can use those skills to make millions.
Simple, right?
I’m pretty sure most of you reading this thought you could just instantly make millions by what you read online.
However, as you can imagine, it didn’t go as planned.
My biggest mistake? I signed up for eBay and Amazon affiliate programs with tiny payouts (don’t do that!)
The result? Months of work where I spent $2500 on ads and made $250 in commissions.
Then came the era of drop shipping.
This time things went a little differently. Over the next year, I made around $200,000. My top product was a set of grooming gloves for horses which I made a niche site around called the ‘Hand Curry Combs.’
But as will become apparent, my constant desire for scale and growth became my downfall. I ended up hiring staff, testing more products, and launching more stores, which stressed me out and made me no money.
However, amongst these latest hardships, I found something significant: I not only have a passion for media buying and lead generation, but I’m actually very good at it.
This realization led me to my next adventure of starting my first agency focused on D2C Ecommerce brands (2017). Starting and growing my agency was my ‘jam.’ I scaled to over $20k per month within 30 days of committing to this business, which I still have today.
Then in 2019, I built my second agency, which focused on real estate, specifically lead generation and conversion for real estate agents in the USA. This agency scaled quickly and was sold in Q1 of 2022.
Now this might seem crazy, but amongst the growth of my real estate agency, I launched a SaaS company focused on review management in the SMB space. (2021)
All of these experiences have led me, finally, to this business, content creation and SEO for SaaS companies.
Over the last 7+ years, I’ve driven over $100 million in trackable revenue to clients and helped sell over $1 billion in real estate for teams across North America. I have personally scaled two agencies, with over 26 people working for me remotely.
With all that experience, I’ve learned a lot about scaling businesses, making money online, hiring people, systems, and SEO-best practices.
My goal is to help people find success much faster than I did.
I look forward to speaking with you.
Best,
Andrew Dunn