Entrepreneurial Innovation

Having come from an entrepreneurial family, I’ve always been a great believer in the value of hard work and a flexible approach in pursuing your dreams. After many years in advertising, I knew there had to be a way to create an agency that leveraged top talent, encouraged innovation and created industry-leading results for our clients. All while promoting a strong philanthropic culture that encourages work-life balance. Having taken that first step over 9 years ago, I now realize that as much as I love advertising, I love being an entrepreneur more. The thrill of trying to build a better mousetrap each and every day is incomparable and tremendously satisfying. And that is why I am thrilled by relatively recent developments in our industry. The rise of online marketing in the early years of my career was certainly game changing and continues to be with the advent of marketing automation, but there is a more foundational shift that I find exciting. Since the ’07/’08 downturn, companies have become more and more open to questioning the status quo—to asking “why” as opposed to implementing the same old strategies, to demanding tangible, measurable outcomes, to being truly disruptive in their space with an eye to rewriting the rules and creating unparalleled results. To a born-and-bred entrepreneur, this is like being a kid in a candy store. We can now engage with clients at an entirely different level. Strategizing how to solve their business challenges and recommending and implementing creative solutions—some of which may involve advertising, and some of which do not. So how does this shift bode well for our industry if we recommend solutions that don’t involve our core offering? I am a firm believer in the adage, “a rising tide lifts all boats.” Our clients’ success is our success. If we grow their business, our agency will grow as well.  This has certainly been true over the past few years as we’ve incubated businesses both new and established and have enjoyed our clients’ successes in everything from radical innovation in the health care space, to billion dollar sale events in software and real estate. We partner with our clients, challenge their thinking, collaborate on game-changing innovations and have recently started implementing pay for performance models and stock purchase agreements in which we aren’t compensated unless our clients succeed. This results-oriented focus has had an unexpected side benefit for the agency as well. We are attracting talent that are interested not only in producing great creative, but in entrepreneurial innovation. And they have proposed new ideas and business models not only for our clients, but for the agency too. I feel more inspired and excited now than I did when I started the business almost a decade ago. It’s a great time to be in advertising and a great time to be an entrepreneur and I’m thrilled to have a job that combines both.