Over the last year, Paideia senior Trane Levine has worked tirelessly to build a marketing business from the ground up. Levine started his business endeavors in Sept. 2022, creating a dropshipping business. Dropshipping is when someone sells goods or a product on their website which they do not hold in stock. When a customer orders something from a dropshipper, they send the orders to another company, who then ship the goods directly to the buyer. However, over the last couple months, Levine has moved on to marketing for other international companies. These companies sell numerous items, including shirts, jewelry, and online photography courses.
Currently, Levine is managing his own marketing company which goes by the name of Blast Digital. Clients who want to request Levine’s marketing skills and outreach can go to his website and file a request. This action is as simple as filling out a Google Form linked on his website. After taking a client on, Levine works on developing a website for them, handling shipping and ordering, customer service, and marketing. His main form of marketing for other businesses is posting short clips on TikTok. These TikToks are made to demonstrate why a customer might want a product.
In return for his services, Levine gets paid on either retainer or through a percentage of gross sales. Retainer means that there’s an agreement set up where Levine will work for a certain amount of months and gets paid a set amount each month. For example, one of Levine’s newest clients sells T-shirts and just signed with Blast Digital for 12 months. This means that Levine will market and run their website for one year, being paid in 12 different installments for his work. Blast Digital currently has four clients. “Less is better,” Levine says, because fewer clients means the ability to guarantee satisfaction for all his customers.
Levine has been able to become so successful at a young age because of the countless business seminars he has attended, as well as from learning from past mistakes. Levine works between three and six hours a day on both school days and weekends. As for the future, Levine feels like he has all the tools he will need to live a successful and fulfilling life, meaning that he will forgo college, at least for now. He plans on moving to Asia and starting his own brand while continuing his marketing agency.
