The founder and current Managing Director of Urban Media is Elton Boocock. Entering ‘business’ at the age of 24, Elton says he simply ‘fell into it’. He soon made his mark and instinctively knew what made a good business. Sticking to high standards both in terms of the websites he built and the customer service he offered, it wasn’t long before Urban Media had a string of blue chip clients.
Despite the ‘status’ of having such clients, this never meant as much to Elton as it did to those around him. He had achieved a level of success, but wanted something new. Three years in and he was about to hatch a plan to launch the haulage industry’s biggest website (uk-trucking.net). Moving from website builder to website owner, the site was a phenomenal success with over 5 million visitors per month using the site to find various information, news and services. Advertisers on the site included the major truck manufacturers, fuel companies and tyre companies. The site was being quoted regularly in national press and trade journals, but it was also about to prove a huge learning curve.
After 3 years of running the site, the £250,000 personally invested was gone despite a lot of high profile advertisers on board. Elton was about to make what he calls his first and biggest entrepreneurial decision. Realising that Urban Media was ‘propping up’ the massively popular, but sadly unprofitable uk-trucking.net, Elton pulled the plug and made the decision to stop any further time or money resource being put into the failing website. He later said “it may seem philosophical, but it’s true, I couldn’t have learnt what the experience taught me for anywhere near that amount of money. Yes it was a lot, it was everything I had, but it was the catalyst to everything I now know”.
Undeterred, Elton took on board what he had learnt and made it his mission to find out what actually made a website successful. Not the hype; not the fad, but what really made a website a financial success. Over the following years, Elton studied everything from business books, to sales and marketing. He became a master of asking the difficult questions that usually allow a website owner to spend valuable time and money on unproven ‘tricks’ to success. He refused to follow the fashions, instead looking for real results. This no-nonsense approach and a solid passion for helping others was a key factor in Elton being awarded the prestigious National Education Business Partnership ‘Best Business Partnership Award’. This was a huge achievement as Elton competed against many Blue Chip companies to take the top award.
Elton has won various accolades and in recent years he has become an author, regular event speaker, mentor, and is even producing Internet Marketing DVDs! When you talk to Elton, you get a real sense that much of this is history and it is the future he is more interested in. This is a future where he believes he can help even more people and this certainly comes across when you meet him. Whilst Elton still provides strategic direction to Urban Media, he is also available on a one to one basis for internet marketing strategy and consulting. He is one of the most experienced people in the industry and his troubleshooting alone saves and makes thousands of pounds for his clients.
