I’ve always been fascinated by the question of why some digital marketing agencies struggle to gain traction and success, often struggling to break through the noise of endless global competition, while others seem to grow into six figure, seven figures, eight figures and beyond, enterprises. Let’s face it. If you’re launching or running a digital marketing agency in 2020, the competition can seem fierce. There are more so-called digital agencies now than ever before in the history of the industry. And every year, more and more enter the market place.

So, whether you’re an agency that’s focused on live events, digital advertising, brand storytelling, or something completely unique, in this episode of Innovators, where your future is now, we’re going to be joined by the CEO of INVNT, Scott, who has successfully grown his agency into an international juggernaut with offices in eight countries around the world, and with revenue almost topping nine figures; that’s 100 million dollars per year.

So, if you’re the owner, or if you work at a digital marketing agency, or you’re a brand interested in learning some of INVNT’s secrets when it comes to live event brand storytelling, then sit back, relax, and let’s get started.

To get started, I decided to ask Scott how he first got interested in starting a digital live events marketing agency, to begin with.

Yeah, yeah. It’s an interesting story, actually. So, I kind of grew up in the live event space. My father was the 13th employee at an agency called Jack Morton, which is now owned by Interpublic Group. So from the time I was a very — at a very, very young age, four, five years old, I was tagging along with my dad as he was designing and producing. Back in those days, they called it industrial theater, which was basically, you know, live events brought to audiences of corporations and trade associations in a creative fashion.

And so, I got the bug at a very, very young age. I graduated from high school, went to the University of Richmond, graduated with an economic and business degree, although I always had this sort of creative sense about me. And two years after graduating, I went to work for his agency. He had left Jack Morton and founded an agency called Williams/Gerard, which unfortunately, is no longer in business. And I started off with that agency and went up through the ranks over about an 18-year period, during which time I was transferred to New York, which I am now living in. And I was the vice president and general manager of their agency in New York. And so, I’ve really had this idea of live events and experiences in my blood since I was born.

So the way to change that perception is to be daring. Regardless of what your product offering is, you’ve got to be bold and you’ve got to stand out, because the general customer or consumer isn’t going to make a change, unless there’s an incentive for that. Now, a lot of startups will go to the opposite value proposition, and they’ll dive on price. And I actually think that’s a mistake, because you can’t compete with the larger organizations on price. Like, I can’t compete with Amazon, nor can many of the retailers, right, because they’re so big, that they have the advantage of scale. So, price, I think, is the wrong value proposition. So I would say be daring.

Number two, I think that you have to create a footprint for yourself that makes you look bigger and stronger than you really are. So one of the things that we did very early on, is we invested in PR and marketing, and we invested in doing things that got us exposure. So, and there’s a lot of inexpensive things that you can do: apply for awards, industry awards, go to speaking engagements, get on Philip Lew’s podcast, you know. There’s a lot of different things that you can do to actually increase the footprint of what you really are in order to gain attraction. So, those are the first three things that I would suggest.

The first is cost. So, when you start your own agency or start your own business, you’re doing everything. You know, we were the CFO of the company. We were the chief operating officer. We were the CEO, we were the executive producers, we are the graphic designers, we are the creative directors. We did at all. So, and we had to because we had no real resources, and much like any other entrepreneurs. So, there comes a point where, as an entrepreneur, if you want to grow or if you want to build a sustainable, scalable business, you have to make an investment in resources that will allow you to move away from working in the business to working on the business. So that’s one thing.

The second thing is our expertise. You’re eventually going to outgrow — the business, as you continue to scale, will outgrow your ability or your expertise. And so, by demand, you’re going to have to find people that are better at right what you used to do than what you can do now. And then so that’s a must.

And then the third thing is ego. Entrepreneurs say, “I have a pretty healthy — I have a healthy ego. We have healthy egos.” You’ve got to check your ego at the door and let other people take responsibility, take control, give them autonomy, let them have a certain level of decision making, if not a lot of decision making in the business. And that means that you’ve got to set your ego on the table, you know. And it’s even 12 years into this and, you know, we’re almost a 100 million-dollar business, you know, we’re in five different countries. We have to check our egos at the door all the time because we have an amazing team of people that can actually do the job better than we can do. We just have to let them do that.

As the interview ended, I began to realize that with Scott, the more he spoke, the more I seem to learn. And at the heart of his success, it became apparent to me that hiring great teams and thinking of your company as already being a large enterprise was at the center stage between event and all the rest. After the interview, Scott and I finished the segment by speaking about the idea that a moment of certainty will never come. So sometimes, the best thing you can do is simply take action in the present moment in the direction of your goals.

And as we wrap up this segment of Innovators, that is ultimately my message to you, the listener. Regardless of the size of your company or what your ultimate goals may be, there is no such thing as certainty, only opportunity, so seize it. Seize it now.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Innovators, where your future is now. To learn more about Scott and INVNT or to book his agency to do brand, storytelling, and live events, make sure and check out his website at www.invnt, I-N-V-N-T, www.invnt.com.