Look Who’s 18!

It’s Estound…my company…we’re 18! It’s hard to believe that I have a company, something I started by myself, old enough to be 18—but I do. And like many things we do for that length of time, it’s taken a lot of work and sacrifice to get it to a point where it’s got some real grownup representation.?

But let me back up and take you to the beginning–Estound’s origin story if you will.?

It was the summer of 2006, Twitter (now X) had just been created a few months earlier, Blackberries and slide phones were all the rage, and Myspace was the coolest social media platform on the planet.?

It was a different time. A time of change and a time of possibility.?

And that’s when I got the idea to start my own marketing agency.??

That June I gave three weeks notice at my job, bought a MacBook Pro, and started a business. At that point, I had verbal agreements from two potential clients but no actual contracts, no actual money coming in, and no actual idea of how I was going to pull this off.?

The office that I worked at basically shared a parking lot with North Point Mall in Alpharetta, Georgia, about 20 miles north of Atlanta. During those three weeks, I would go over to the mall at lunch with my laptop and sit in one of the comfy chairs directly outside the Apple Store, well within range of their free WiFi, trying to figure out how the hell I was going to start a marketing firm.?

It was actually over the July 4th holiday that I launched my business, so my agency is officially 18 years old now. We can make jokes about how it was my personal Independence Day, that my business is now old enough to vote, smoke, or enlist in the military–we’ll just get that out of the way now….ok, back to 2006!

My business had officially launched and I was ready to go. I had two potential clients with very different needs.?

Potential Client #1 - An IT company in need of strategic help, market positioning, messaging, brand direction, and a way to express their differentiation in a way that was meaningful to their customers.?

Potential Client #2 - A construction company that needed something tangible made, their first website— remember it was 2006 and a large number of companies, especially small/midsize businesses, were completely unrepresented on the web.

These are very different needs, but in 2006 I didn’t fully understand the fundamental problem I had created for myself. I now know that I had started my business at the middle of a crossroads between delivering value through creating strategy and delivering value through executing deliverables and assets.

The dichotomy between these two clients is actually a good representation of the tug of war that I have felt internally for the last 18 years.

The dichotomy between these two clients is actually a good representation of the tug of war that I have felt internally for the last 18 years.

At the time though, with zero experience in actually running a business, and overjoyed to be in a position where I was making a little bit of money straight off the bat, I just said, “that’s cool, I can do both of these things.” And, on paper, I could.?

Perhaps it was a blessing? Perhaps it was a curse? But, I was competent, especially at the time, in a variety of marketing disciplines. I could do design, write copy, plan, produce a photo shoot or a printed catalog, and build a website. I was like a one-stop-shop or a Swiss Army Knife, capable of doing a variety of things. I was up to the task, whatever it was.?

But the funny thing is, looking back, as my business grew and I had people helping me, it was no longer necessary for me to personally be a Swiss Army Knife, but the business continued to act as a one-stop-shop. At varying moments over the last 18 years we have:

• Built websites
• Designed logos
• Created brand and marketing strategies
• Did market research
• Produced TV commercials and bought airtime (one time we actually produced an infomercial for a guy who invented a product in his garage)
• Developed class material for an international marketing training group
• Sourced printing and promotional items for clients
• Served as expert witnesses in a lawsuit about online defamation
• Ran a blog content creation service
• Managed cold calling/email outreach campaigns
• Did SEO, social media marketing, digital advertising
• Developed and sold a WordPress-based marketing automation solution
• Designed direct mail campaigns, catalogs, trade show booths, billboards, and consumer packaging
• Helped hire and mentor employees at client companies
• Offered fractional executive services

And in the middle of it all, I wrote books, delivered marketing speeches and workshops at events, and became a college professor because there obviously wasn’t enough on my plate.

My experiences with all of this have taught me a couple of lessons:?

1. Being everything to everyone is both exhausting and impossible.
2. Some of the items on the list above fill my cup as a professional and as a person, and some definitely do not.?

This year I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what my business should be now that it’s technically a grownup, and about what my highest contribution to that business should be–where my strengths are and how my best qualities could better serve my clients and grow the business.?

For me, I’ve come to realize that there are a lot of companies that can competently provide a lot of the items on the list above; the capacity to create marketing work is more widely available now than ever before, with options to produce materials internally, externally, nearshore and offshore. Many people are even hiring robots to get it done.

Companies, in my experience, don’t fail because they can’t produce enough marketing material.

Companies, in my experience, don’t fail because they can’t produce enough marketing material. The companies I talk to today aren’t leaving money and growth on the table because they are missing the marketing agency that will make them successful, they are leaving money on the table because they don’t have agency over their marketing success.

What this means is that they are missing the ability to connect budget with outcomes, the ability to connect business goals with the campaigns their agency produces, the ability to draw a line connecting marketing effort with recognizable value.

It’s 2024, and I’ve repositioned Estound this summer as a marketing leadership agency because I believe it should be our job to close those gaps.?

Marketing Leadership looks like:?

• Installing a sound strategy
• Prioritizing work and investments to deliver value quickly
• Coaching executive leadership
• To mentor and up-level the internal marketing team
• Ensuring that the right vendor relationships are in place
• To plan for the future based on the realities of today.

It’s not necessarily going to be our job to produce marketing work, but instead, be stewards of marketing and revenue success. I think that nearly two decades of experience has shown me that of all of the things my company could do or has done, this will truly be the best way we can help our clients succeed in 2024 and the years after.

It took me 18 years, but I feel that I’ve finally left the crossroads behind and chosen a path. Maybe it would have saved me a lot of frustration and anguish if I could have figured it out in June 2006 while I was planning my future outside the Apple Store but I wouldn’t know what I know now.?

The road is open before us and it’s going to be an interesting journey.

Erik Wolf is the Founder & CEO of estound, a Denver-based marketing agency. He has also written three books, taught as an adjunct professor at Metropolitan State University, and is a speaker with Vistage Worldwide, a coaching and peer advisory group for CEOs. Connect with Erik on LinkedIn.