Hi, I'm Daniel Doan.

What's my story? Well, I'm an award-winning growth marketing consultant and digital strategist with over seven years of experience building brands, growing communities, and directing marketing strategy for many venture-backed tech startups, creatives, and eCommerce companies worldwide. I've also been described as being one of the top digital marketers in the software industry.

Over the past decade, my extensive domain expertise has granted me the opportunity to spearhead hundreds of growth marketing and customer acquisition campaigns including sales funnel optimization, email marketing automation, media buying, conversion rate optimization, paid acquisition, SEO, and so much more.

As Co-Founder & CMO of Black Shell Media, I’ve worked alongside my talented 10-person team to handle marketing, growth, and publishing operations for dozens of development studios, all of which has fortunately led to a multitude of workshops and seminars on marketing. As of Q4 2018, we've shipped more than 2.1 million copies of games on Steam, and have given talks at TEDx, Google, SXSW, TwitchCon, and numerous industry events on growth, gamification, and digital marketing.

It wasn’t always this way, though…

I used to be a software developer. Developing and designing several massively commercially successful video games for the PC platform. These include the world's first fully ASCII RPG on Steam, SanctuaryRPG, a roguelike adventure game called Overture, a frenetic dungeon-crawling adventure titled Dungeon Souls, and many other award-winning titles.

My creations have been played by hundreds of thousands of players, received worldwide critical acclaim, and have even attracted the attention of industry figureheads such as Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari (famously known as Steve Jobs’ former boss), and billionaire game industry tycoon Markus "Notch" Persson of Minecraft fame, who personally contributed to SanctuaryRPG's production and holds executive producer credits.

This success in the interactive entertainment industry pushed me to further expand my boundaries, and I found myself working as a marketing executive for some of the fastest-growing companies on the planet—helping Fortune 500's, high-growth startups, and world-class digital agencies get more out of their marketing efforts. I've been blessed with the opportunity to work with fantastic companies in the tech industry including Microsoft, Intel, Alienware, Discord, and more.

And in that same amount of time…

I've also grown my combined social media network to over 725,000 followers, and made it a habit to fuel my quirky side: I try to read a book a week on growth marketing, game design, software development, or behavioral psychology, because I firmly believe that constantly learning is the only way to help others more effectively. There's always room for improvement.

That explains why I've also authored a handful of popular game development books of my own on Amazon which have been read by thousands of people including Indie Game Marketing Secrets and The Game Development Mindset.

My life's mission is to help founders, developers, and companies grow in the fastest way possible using cutting-edge digital marketing techniques, growth tactics, and software most people don't have a clue about.

Over the years, I'm humbled to say that I've gotten a chance to advise and consult with executives, directors, and creatives who had previously led teams at mega-brands such as Riot Games, Valve Corporation, Sony Entertainment, and Disney.

The crazy part? I never thought any of this would even be remotely possible.

You see, the start of my career in digital marketing was almost a complete fluke. I was laid off from my near-minimum wage IT job after graduating from college with a degree in Psychology (that I thought was useless at the time).

Ended up struggling pretty hard trying to get my indie game development studio off the ground... bumming it at my mom's apartment and living off of food stamps while eating expired TV dinners from the dollar store. It was pretty sad.

But one day, something changed.

I made a startling realization halfway through development: I needed to focus on marketing if I ever expected any remote chance of success. So, I put software engineering on pause, and pivoted.

I began to study marketing—reading dozens of marketing books, and thousands of marketing articles.

Then, I started to execute...

It was horrible at first (I didn't really know what I was doing for the longest time), but eventually I started to get the hang of things, and found myself building a modest audience on the internet.

Taking the time to build this loyal tribe paid off in a huge way.

It eventually led me deep into the world of eCommerce marketing, where I managed to ship over half a million copies of my first video game, SanctuaryRPG, on the Steam platform. This completely blew me away.

Armed with my newly discovered passion for digital marketing, I decided to put my all into it.

For years, I devoted almost every waking hour to mastering the craft, and doubled down.

I put myself on a personal mission to help as many other developers as I could with their marketing efforts as well.

Helping others changed everything for me…

…and as it would turn out, helping enough people eventually led to so many out-of-this-world opportunities, including:

• Partnering with Office Depot on their #workonomy chats to teach entrepreneurs about digital marketing.

• Hosting growth marketing workshops at universities across the US and receiving industry accolades.

• Getting flown out to give a TEDx talk at one of the most prestigious universities in the world, and so much more.

So, why does any of this matter to you?

You’ll find a lot of value from a growth consultant like me if you…

If you’re nodding your head to any of the above, you’re in the right place.

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