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Arne HurtyArne Hurty is the Founder and CEO of BayCreative, a marketing firm providing support to multiple industries. Arne leverages his background in design and illustration to help B2B companies market to their customer base and streamline internal communication using in-bound, out-bound, and traditional marketing methods. For over a decade, BayCreative has offered a one-stop marketing solution for a wide range of companies, including Adobe, Oracle, Cisco, Hitachi, and many more.

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Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

  • Arne Hurty shares what BayCreative is and how the firm serves its clients
  • What inspired Arne to launch his own marketing agency?
  • How BayCreative has evolved over the years — and how it’s weathered unforeseen circumstances
  • What are the keys to running a successful agency?
  • Why you should market your company like you would a customer
  • Arne reveals his team’s entrepreneurial mindset and their goals

In this episode…

The purpose of a marketing firm is to serve its clients by making the brand known to prospects. Implementing marketing strategies allow your efforts to reach the target audience. But as you work diligently to help build other brands, you may put your own company’s marketing strategy on hold. If you’re not marketing yourself, how will potential clients know you’re available to help their brands grow?

Putting your customer’s needs above your own is admirable — but it’s not feasible for longevity. In fact, there is value in treating your company like it’s your best customer. Arne Hurty advises keeping your brand rooted in your company’s vision and finding a steady rhythm when marketing yourself. Finding a marketing rhythm will allow your brand to stay current while you build your clients’ visibility in the community.

On this episode of the Top Business Leaders Show, Chad Franzen interviews Arne Hurty, Founder and CEO of BayCreative, to discuss the importance of treating your marketing firm like a valued customer. Arne also shares why he launched his own firm, how his agency has evolved over the years and withstood unforeseen circumstances, and the goals his team is working to accomplish.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

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Episode Transcript

Intro 0:04

Welcome to the Top Business Leaders Show. Powered by Rise25 media, we feature top founders, executives and business leaders from all over the world.

Chad Franzen 0:20

Chad Franzen here co-host of the Top Business Leaders Show where we feature CEOs, entrepreneurs and top leaders in the business world. This episode is brought to you by Rise25. We help b2b businesses reach their dream relationships and connect with more clients referrals and strategic partnerships and get ROI through done-for-you podcast. If you have a b2b business and want to build great relationships, there’s no better way to do it than to profile the people and companies you admire on your own podcast to learn more, go to Rise25.com or email us at support at Rise25.com Arne Hurty is founder and creative director at BayCreative for 25 years he has worked with b2b tech companies to help them relate to their customers and communicate better with with each other internally. Hey, Arne. Thanks so much for joining me today. How are you?

Arne Hurty 1:07

Hey, pleasure. Thank you. I’m doing fine. Thanks. Doing fine.

Chad Franzen 1:10

Good. Hey, yeah, tell me a little bit more about BayCreative and what you guys do for your clients? Sure.

Arne Hurty 1:15

BayCreative. We started up with BayCreative 25 years ago now. And we’re a small boutique agency is located in the San Francisco area working mainly with b2b technology companies. And we, we help them we help them with communications internally and both externally with a wide range of services, Strategy and support on asset creation and the like.

Chad Franzen 1:46

You, you found a BayCreative in 1997 Congrats on your longevity? What did you do prior to launching it?

Arne Hurty 1:54

Oh, well, before BayCreative. I was working at Macworld magazine, which at that time was quite a coffee table publication. So it was it was an exciting place to be, we were producing some high quality design. I did design informational graphic design there for for many years. And after that helped get going with the first Macworld online, which was there, back in the days of AOL, and, you know, all that stuff. So that goes way, way back. And, you know, after doing that, for quite quite a stretch had come to meet a lot of wonderful, talented people there, you know, great designers and writers and illustrators, and the like, and thought it might might be smart, might be a good time to start a company. And, you know, kind of draw from those resources as well as our own internally and kind of put together a company to do marketing work for people.

Chad Franzen 2:53

Sure. So you, you launched BayCreative How did that kind of specific idea, Bloom or come about?

Arne Hurty 3:01

Really, it was, it was something that I’d always wanted to do, I always wanted to work for myself, I always wanted to start a business, that’s something that kind of, has been something that’s been in me since the beginning, you know, since since you know, I was the kid driving around with my lawnmower in the wagon, looking for lawns to mow was just an extension to that, really, it’s a little bit of a, maybe, for me, personally a little bit of a kind of a rogue or rebellious instinct, I don’t want to be working for anybody. So, you know, I try really hard to be a real good employer, you know, at BayCreative and, and not fall into the same, you know, you know, pitfalls I felt, you know, serving as an employee, in many cases, although, I gotta say, I had some wonderful bosses over the years.

Chad Franzen 3:59

What would you say, based on your experience as an employer and an employee, you kind of focus on trying to do to, you know, be a good leader of the big leader of the ship.

Arne Hurty 4:11

You know, really, it’s, it’s easier maybe in some cases with creative services, we have very, we have very skilled high end people working with us. So our team, our team is already comprised of people who have real experience and background and what they do so we do have a path for people at BayCreative who are who are learning and you know, discovering who they want to become in terms of the business, but a lot of the people at BayCreative are people with a lot of background and expertise. So it’s easy to it’s easy for, for them to contribute in really dramatic ways, you know, to the projects that we work on and you know, we try what we can we try all we can to kind of encourage and foster that, you know, creative exchange between between people there, I think it keeps people very satisfied, at least in our in our line of work and keeps people are very satisfied with their jobs with their work.

Chad Franzen 5:13

So when you first started BayCreative, what were the were the early days? Like, were there any kind of things that snuck up on you? How did you get clients things like that? Oh, I

Arne Hurty 5:22

mean, it was all just kind of, you know, bootstrapped. We were just doing anything to get a customer, my business partner at the time, Barbara, Saudi, she had a lot of, she had a lot of contacts in the business, I had numerous contacts, we were just, you know, fishing around for anything we can get our hands on, basically. And we, you know, we had some really nice early clients that kind of helped us get going, of course, leaving IDG, they immediately became, you know, one of our earliest and busiest customers. So we were doing a lot of a lot of business with them right away.

Chad Franzen 5:55

So how long was it before you kind of had felt like you, you would hit your stride? Like, you know, we found our niche, and we had our processes down. And we’re not just totally figuring it out all the time?

Arne Hurty 6:06

You know, that’s interesting. That’s an interesting question. Because I think we’re still in the process of doing that, you know, we were always discovering more of who we really are, I think, and it comes out of, it comes out of the kinds of projects that you work on, we, we try to find projects that test who we are creatively, we really, we eagerly seek those out. Because, you know, it’s, it’s a way for us to grow and keep interested in what we’re doing. And also have more to offer, frankly, so it’s, it’s, we look for projects where we’re asked to, you know, challenge the norms, and we love customers who are open to suggestions and, and challenges with regards to how they think about things. And that’s really, when some of the exciting stuff happens.

Chad Franzen 7:00

So 1997, you know, it doesn’t seem totally that long ago, but in some ways, it was a completely different world, especially when it comes to technology. What are some of the ways in which BayCreative has kind of primarily evolved? During that time? I’m sure it was, you guys, everything you did was completely different then compared to now.

Arne Hurty 7:18

It was very, yeah, it was very well, some things were very, very different. You know, as far as the tools go, you know, the latest tools have completely changed. So, you know, now we’ve got, now we’ve got completely different, you know, updated or different tools. In some cases, though, you know, Photoshop, that’s still a staple, right. And, you know, some of these other Adobe Suite products are still a staple. There’s other ones, you know, slipping in now that are kind of challenging Adobe’s stronghold and all of that, but ultimately, ultimately, we we, you know, we find ways to execute it’s, it’s never been a really big issue or problem for us to keep on top of the technology, it’s so available and so easy to, to, to assimilate, you know, into our into our workflows. And and I think that the, I think that the maybe some of the more challenging ones are the business processes, ones, the ones that you the things that you plug in to run your company. You know, the Asana is and the HubSpot, so the world, those those products and tools are a little more challenging to integrate and stuff. And that might just be me, I’ve got to, you know, my brain is more of the creative bent. So I don’t I don’t think that way, but we have people helping us with those things, too.

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