When people search for “Tim Schmidt,” “Ice Cold Marketing,” or “Website Rescue,” they are often trying to answer a deceptively simple question: who is the person behind hundreds of high-ranking websites, a portfolio of scaled-and-sold businesses, and one of the most quietly prolific digital marketing careers in South Florida? The answer is Tim Schmidt — a Minnesota-bred, Fort Lauderdale-based entrepreneur who has been earning a living on the internet since 2001, long before most people understood what that even meant. Today, as founder of Ice Cold Marketing and Director of Partnerships at Reputation Pros, he sits at the crossroads of two of the most consequential disciplines in modern business: search engine optimization and online reputation management.
This profile looks at who Tim Schmidt is, how he built his career across three distinct chapters, and why he has become one of the most well-rounded digital marketing operators in the industry.
Who Is Tim Schmidt?
Tim Schmidt is a serial entrepreneur, Amazon bestselling author, and digital marketing veteran based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He is the founder of Ice Cold Marketing, a digital marketing agency and holding company that builds, invests in, and scales online businesses, and the founder of Website Rescue, his client-facing SEO consultancy. He also serves as Director of Partnerships at Reputation Pros, the Miami-based online reputation management firm, where he builds high-revenue channel networks connecting agencies, law firms, and marketing firms with industry-leading ORM solutions.
Over more than two decades, Schmidt has founded and exited multiple businesses across e-commerce, skincare, and financial publishing — including SkinPro International, a 40+ SKU anti-aging skincare brand he built from scratch and sold after 14 years, and a portfolio of gold IRA and precious metals research sites that have made him a quoted source in outlets including CNBC, Business Insider, USA Today, and Yahoo Finance. He is also the author of Amplifying Average, a motivational guide for aspiring entrepreneurs that reached bestseller status on Amazon in 2019.
In plain terms, Tim Schmidt builds things on the internet — and has been doing it longer, and with more consistency, than almost anyone in his market.
From Minnesota to the Front Lines of the Early Web
A graduate of St. John’s University, Tim Schmidt was hired by Accenture out of Chicago weeks into his senior year, reportedly earning the top offer in his graduating class — not just for his academic record, but because he already understood the commercial potential of the internet better than virtually anyone his age. He had been generating income from his dorm room while most of his peers were still studying for finals.
That early edge was not accidental. Schmidt had immersed himself in the mechanics of search and online commerce during the late 1990s, when the rules were still being written. After relocating to South Florida, he joined one of the first search engine optimization companies in the world and watched it scale from six people to more than eighty in under two years. That experience — seeing what a disciplined, early-mover approach to SEO could produce at scale — shaped the philosophy he has carried through every business he has built since.
He has been self-employed since 2001. That is not a coincidence. It is a conviction.
The Entrepreneur Who Builds Differently
What sets Tim Schmidt apart from typical digital marketing consultants is that he has never just advised from the sidelines. Every major principle he teaches, he has first tested on his own businesses — and the results have been commercially verifiable.
SkinPro International is the clearest example. Schmidt founded the anti-aging skincare brand during the 2008 financial crisis, at a moment when banks were refusing loans and most entrepreneurs were retreating. He launched with a single hero product — Elite Serum, formulated around Argireline, a clinically studied anti-wrinkle peptide — and spent the next several years scaling it through affiliate marketing, SEO, and digital PR. The inflection point came when a national television program featured an ingredient Schmidt had already cornered online: his team held eight of the ten top Google results for that ingredient before the episode aired. When it did, orders exceeded 300 per day overnight. He scaled from 8 products to over 40, grew international sales by 150%, and eventually sold the company after 14 years.
The lesson he draws from that story is not about skincare. It is about search. Control what people find when they go looking, and you control the outcome.
A Second Area of Mastery: Gold, Silver, and Retirement Investing
Few digital entrepreneurs have made the pivot Tim Schmidt made in 2012 — from e-commerce operator to recognized authority in precious metals investing — and made it stick for over a decade.
The pivot was personal. Schmidt had suffered significant financial losses during the 2008 economic collapse and spent years studying what he could have done differently. His research led him to self-directed IRAs, physical precious metals, and the wide gap between what most financial advisors recommend and what sophisticated investors actually do. Starting in 2012, he began publishing educational content on gold and silver IRAs — not as a financial advisor, but as an investor and entrepreneur who had done the homework.
That portfolio now includes GoldIRACustodians.com, BestGoldIRACompany.org, SilverIRACustodians.com, IRAInvesting.com, and Gold401k.com — a network of research and review sites that attract retirement-minded readers and rank for some of the most competitive terms in personal finance. His expertise in this space has led to media citations in CNBC, Business Insider, USA Today, and Yahoo Finance, among others.
The through-line between his digital marketing career and his precious metals publishing is the same: build authoritative, well-optimized content on topics that matter, and let the search results speak for themselves.
Director of Partnerships at Reputation Pros
In January 2024, Tim Schmidt added a role that brings his two decades of search expertise into direct alignment with one of the fastest-growing disciplines in digital marketing: online reputation management, with his long time business associate Scott Keever.
As Director of Partnerships at Reputation Pros — one of the most recognized ORM firms in the country — Schmidt builds the channel relationships that extend the company’s reach into the agency ecosystem. His focus is on identifying marketing firms, law firms, family offices, and digital agencies who serve clients whose online presence is a business-critical asset, and structuring partnership arrangements that generate meaningful, recurring revenue for both sides.
The role is a natural fit. Schmidt has spent 23+ years understanding how search results are built — and, by extension, how damaging they can be when left unmanaged. He does not approach partnership conversations as a vendor. He approaches them as someone who has lived on the front lines of SEO long enough to understand exactly what is at stake when a client’s name returns the wrong results.
For agencies considering adding reputation management to their service portfolio, Schmidt is positioned to be exactly the kind of partner who can explain not just what Reputation Pros does, but why it matters — and what it costs a client not to have it.
A Career Defined by Consistency, Not Trends
What the arc of Tim Schmidt’s career reveals is not a series of pivots — it is a series of applications of the same core skill set to different markets. SEO is the thread that runs through every chapter: from the early agency work to SkinPro’s domination of search results for its key ingredients, to the precious metals publishing portfolio, to his current role extending the reach of one of the country’s leading reputation management firms.
That consistency is rare. Most people in digital marketing specialize early and stay narrow. Schmidt has spent two-plus decades stress-testing SEO principles across wildly different industries — health and beauty, financial publishing, e-commerce, and professional services — and the result is a practitioner whose expertise is both deep and unusually broad.
He has also built through difficulty. He launched SkinPro during a financial crisis. He lost his son, Timothy — who had been working alongside him in the business since age nine — to a senseless mass shooting in Orlando. He has kept building. That quality of persistence, more than any credential or case study, may be the most defining thing about him.
Recognition and Body of Work
- Founder & CEO, Ice Cold Marketing — Fort Lauderdale digital marketing agency and holding company
- Founder, Website Rescue — SEO consulting for small-to-medium businesses
- Director of Partnerships, Reputation Pros — channel development and agency partnerships
- Founder & former CEO, SkinPro International — scaled and sold after 14 years
- Publisher, Gold IRA portfolio — GoldIRACustodians.com, BestGoldIRACompany.org, IRAInvesting.com, Gold401k.com, and more
- Author, Amplifying Average — Amazon bestseller, 2019
- Media contributor — CNBC, Business Insider, USA Today, Yahoo Finance, HuffPost, Entrepreneur, Inc. Magazine, Tech Times
- Self-employed entrepreneur since 2001
Tim Schmidt — Quick Facts
| Full name | Tim Schmidt Sr. |
| Nationality | American |
| Based in | Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA |
| Known for | SEO, affiliate marketing, e-commerce, gold IRA publishing, ORM partnerships |
| Founded | Ice Cold Marketing, Website Rescue, SkinPro International |
| Current role | Director of Partnerships, Reputation Pros |
| Books | Amplifying Average (Amazon bestseller, 2019) |
| Education | St. John’s University |
| Career start | 2001 |
| Featured in | CNBC, Business Insider, USA Today, Yahoo Finance, HuffPost, Entrepreneur |
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Tim Schmidt? Tim Schmidt is a Fort Lauderdale-based serial entrepreneur and digital marketing veteran with over 23 years of experience building, scaling, and exiting online businesses. He is the founder of Ice Cold Marketing and Website Rescue, and currently serves as Director of Partnerships at Reputation Pros.
What is Tim Schmidt known for? He is best known for founding and selling SkinPro International after 14 years, building one of the most comprehensive gold IRA publishing portfolios on the internet, and for a career-long expertise in SEO that predates most of the industry’s current practitioners.
What does Tim Schmidt do at Reputation Pros? He serves as Director of Partnerships, building channel networks that connect agencies, law firms, family offices, and marketing firms with Reputation Pros’ online reputation management services — creating long-term, recurring revenue relationships for both parties.
Has Tim Schmidt been published or featured in media? Yes. He is the author of Amplifying Average, an Amazon bestselling book for entrepreneurs. His commentary on gold, silver, and retirement investing has been cited by CNBC, Business Insider, USA Today, Yahoo Finance, HuffPost, Entrepreneur, and Inc. Magazine, among others.
What businesses does Tim Schmidt currently run? His primary operating entities are Ice Cold Marketing (his holding company and agency), Website Rescue (his client-facing SEO consultancy), and his portfolio of gold IRA and precious metals research websites. He also holds the Director of Partnerships role at Reputation Pros on a contract basis.
Tim Schmidt continues to build, advise, and invest across the digital landscape — bringing to every engagement the same conviction that has defined his career since 2001: that the businesses which win online are the ones that understand search, control their presence, and never stop outworking the competition.
