School grades cannot determine someone’s true potential. Mainstream education lacks self-evaluation and follows an age-old technique that hardly works out in today’s digital age. Dave Carroll realized this in high school before pursuing his passion for entrepreneurship. Today, Dave is leading the industry in direct mail and print automation with his company, DOPE Marketing. Starting from scratch, Dave eventually scaled up his career as an entrepreneur with a series of business ventures. He is now looked upon as a thought leader by many budding entrepreneurs in the industry.

Like many kids, Dave was a below-average student at school. He was raised in a middle-class neighborhood and never had enough resources to support his dreams. Dave changed schools 9 times from age 14 to 18 before realizing mainstream education was not his cup of tea. He eventually started in the entrepreneurial space and soon figured out his forte was running business ventures. Over the last 12 years, Dave has been a full-time entrepreneur, and many of his ventures have been quite successful.

He started his journey with Lions Share Maintenance from his mother’s garage. While managing his business, Dave began working hard at a window cleaning company. During this time, he attended a business convention that changed his perspective on entrepreneurship. He discovered that most successful business owners never focus on one-dimensional growth. They keep an open mind to try new things and take on new ideas. This motivated Dave to phase himself out of the cleaning company and start another business venture.

In 2015, Dave launched a software company in partnership with a fresh graduate from the University of Minnesota. The business initially took off with 300 users registering for the SaaS program over the first 6 months. Things started going downhill when Dave tried to convert it into a CRM model. He ended up in a lawsuit with a staffing company but learned a valuable lesson as he was exposed to the world of type-A data. He leveraged this knowledge to start a new business brokering residential and commercial lists to home service companies. This venture began scaling with renowned clients like Nike, TiVo, Golden State Warriors, and Ashley Furniture.

Intending to scale up this brokering company, Dave founded DOPE Marketing, which is currently generating millions in annual revenue. DOPE Marketing helps agencies automate laser-focused direct mail for their clients. It specializes in direct mail services that make life simple by sending automated direct mail with open API, Zapier integration, and direct connection with CRMs like Go High Level. Since its inception a little more than two years ago, DOPE Marketing has grown into a team of 40 employees and has recently launched its Zapier store that can automate postcards from clients’ CRM. The company went a step further with handwriting machines to send personalized handwritten mail. DOPE Marketing also uses Neighborhood Blitz, a tool that allows drawing a shape on a map and sending personalized postcards.

Over the last 7 years, Dave has completely phased himself out of Lions Share Maintenance, but even without overseeing operations, his window cleaning company generates millions in revenue every year. With DOPE Marketing, Dave’s business portfolio has reached a whole new level. The company has served more 10,000 clients via its SaaS platform. As the CEO of DOPE Marketing, Dave is creating a new trend in digital marketing, ending the “spraying and praying” method and replacing it with laser-focused direct mail to highly targeted customers.

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