The economy was struggling, the advertising industry was in flux and my son Edmund (the “E” in AE Marketing Group) was just a few months old. So, not exactly the ideal time to quit my job as Senior Vice President at a national agency on Michigan Avenue, right?
After spending a decade inside the ad world, however, I’d seen more than enough siloed business models, legacy thinking and hostile agency-client relationships. So, in spite of the economy and everything else, I sat down at my grandfather’s 1950s-era desk inside a rehabbed 5×5 walk-in closet at my South Loop condo and decided that I would build something different.
The end result: AE Marketing Group, which was incorporated on March 16, 2011 – exactly four years ago today.
Now, anyone, of course, can start a business, but the question I asked myself before launching AE Marketing Group was how does one stay in business? The easy answer is profit – but does anything come easy in life?
To start the company, I decided to forgo logos, business cards, a website and even a corporate email account (Gmail was free, after all) and instead focus on three things:
That same month, we signed our first customer, Health Alliance. I’ll never forget walking into JP Morgan Chase to open a business account with our first check. By July, we were working with four additional brands and had signed contracts totaling more than a million dollars.
AE Marketing Group’s First Customer – Health Alliance
As I look back today on how far the company has come, I think about those three focus areas. In four years, we have donated time and money to 26 local, national and global non-profits and charities. We had 31 straight months of 100% customer retention (until we fired a customer) and have been profitable every quarter.
Our time inside the walk-in-closet was short lived, but not for the reasons you might think. You see, as we grew as a company, Edmund was growing too – and he needed a new place to sleep.