We recently connected with Kelly Smith and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Kelly, thanks for joining us today. Coming up with the idea is so exciting, but then comes the hard part – executing. Too often the media ignores the execution part and goes from idea to success, skipping over the nitty, gritty details of executing in the early days. We think that’s a disservice both to the entrepreneurs who built something amazing as well as the public who isn’t getting a realistic picture of what it takes to succeed. So, we’d really appreciate if you could open up about your execution story – how did you go from idea to execution?

I built my career in small- to medium-sized design firms, ad agencies, and hybrids of both across Mississippi, Alabama, and North Carolina. Though I’m a designer and illustrator by education, I’ve always been a writer. Creative and business strategy just made sense to me, so I seemed to get a lot of those assignments, too. Lastly, my dad was a career salesman, and everyone in my family was taught that understanding selling was critical to business.

I moved to Cincinnati, OH, to join a branding agency that was experiencing meteoric growth largely due to its connection to Procter & Gamble and that company’s own massive growth in the early 2000s.

Throughout my career, I collected ideas of what worked in the agency business and what didn’t, what people inside the businesses preferred and didn’t, and what clients responded to or complained about. The list wasn’t all that complex. As it turns out, people tend to like and dislike many of the same things, regardless of the size of the agency.

Throughout 2017, the agency I had been with for 14+ years took steps under new leadership to go in directions that didn’t match with my ideals or personal standards. They said I wasn’t “drinking the punch” and let me go in late October of that year. I had known that I wasn’t a great fit there for at least two years and had used that time to put many of my thoughts into a rough business plan that I might use if the time came.

I was let go at 9:30 in the morning. By 11:00 I had contacted many of my longtime clients—which the agency allowed because they didn’t want to do the kind of work my teams did—and had verbal commitments on potential projects. I filed for an LLC a week later and received confirmation a couple of weeks later. So, I went from laid off to LLC in three weeks.

I wanted to start an agency and put some of the ideas I had gathered into action. I thought a fully remote agency could work for many reasons, but needed more data before committing. First, I contacted former clients and prospects and asked them if they cared if we had a building. Every one of them said “no”. They said they didn’t want to come to our building, they wanted us to come to them. That meant no need for a cool, expensive building for client meetings.

Next, I contacted a number of people I liked working with who were out freelancing. I told them what I was considering and asked if they wanted to be on staff or if they’d prefer to work on a contract basis. Almost all of them said they were tired of being hired and then laid off at agencies and wanted a different approach. They all wanted to work together but not on staff.

With no building to worry about and no permanent staff, our overhead was nominal. I knew of many creative agencies that were under water financially from the start because of Class A buildings, foosball tables and canoes in the lobby, free beer on tap, a ton of computers and specialized equipment, etc. All of these things add incredible stress to the agency and force them to focus on cash from day one. I wanted to start with almost no overhead and build from there. With low overhead, we could search for clients that were a match for us and where we could make a difference. We wanted to be good stewards with every dollar spent, versus always trying to squeeze every dollar out of every day. Clients and contractors were on board with the concept from the beginning.

I knew from past experience that having a great core team was critical to the concept. My first call was to a good friend and creative director, Doug Knopp, who had been my creative partner off and on for almost 25 years. After describing what I had in mind, Doug said he was in 100%. My next call went to Courtney Humphrey, an acquaintance I’d known from my previous agency who had her master’s in project management. Courtney had left the original agency because she wanted more flexibility in her schedule to spend time with her active boys while they were young. That agency had declined the concept. I said she could have all the flexibility in the world. While we would maintain regular hours for clients, work could be done whenever needed. Since we wouldn’t have an office, there would be zero time spent driving to and from work. Courtney was in.

After that, it was simply a matter of connecting with the many talented strategists, writers, namers, designers, art directors, production artists, videographers and many others I’d worked with in the past to make sure our stable of talent was full and would give us the ability to scale as needed.

I used the money from my severance package to finance things like software purchases, a couple of new computers, etc., and figured I’d have up to six months before I really needed to take a salary from the new company.

I ended up getting my first client and contract the day after I was laid off and before the LLC officially went through. By the end of December 2017, we had our first five clients needing everything from strategy to graphic design, naming, packaging, and advertising.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I built my career in branding, design, advertising, and packaging in agencies across Mississippi, Alabama, North Carolina, and Ohio. I always felt that being well-rounded would help me as I climbed the career ladder and had more interactions with industry leaders on the client side, so I made a point of gaining experience across a variety of disciplines. Over my career I’ve been a writer, designer, illustrator, producer, art director, strategist, creative director, and agency executive.

I look at my career as an ongoing mix of stepping stones covering different industries, clients, and big challenges.

For example, there was an apparel phase where I worked on brands including Wrangler, Hanes, Wonderbra, Bali, Barelythere, etc. Another phase covered financial institutions from S&Ls and credit unions to community banks, national banks, and major insurance providers. Then there was the private label phase, engineering and manufacturing, and major CPG brands. Major milestones include helping lead the private label strategy for Kroger and launching and rebranding some of their major brands, leading a comprehensive rebrand of Sealed Air Corporation, and helping bring the Oral-B brand into P&G’s portfolio after the Gillette acquisition.

I built my agency, Thinkhaus Idea Factory, to be a brand strategy and creative agency. We focus on organizational and brand strategy first and then the world-class creative needed to bring those strategies to life.

Our approach is to leverage subject matter experts in each phase and customize the teams. Instead of relying on the people on staff to solve every problem and matching the project to the people, our general contracting model matches the people to the job so every assignment is managed by people who are passionate about the kinds of work being done.

As a result, we can appear to be a completely different agency to different clients. For example, Kroger knows us for strategy, naming, graphic design, copywriting, packaging, and implementation. By contrast, for J&J MedTech, we manage strategy, design, collateral development, video production, and event management. Kroger doesn’t need the services we provide to J&J, so they never see that side of the agency. J&J doesn’t need packaging, so they don’t see that part of the team.

It seems simple, but I think many agencies still get this wrong. Clients are tired of having six people show up to a meeting when only two will do the talking, and yet still paying for all six in the room. This happens when you have everyone on staff and need to pay them regardless of whether they fit the work or not.

We’re able to mitigate the typical bloat and deliver world-class solutions with targeted teams that are more responsible with budgets.

Have you ever had to pivot?

When I started Thinkhaus in 2017, I had been facilitating workshops of all types for more than 20 years. Many of our collaborators were experienced participants. So we were comfortable with doing them in person all around the world.

Since we are a 100% remote agency, we were already using tools like Zoom and Mural (a digital collaboration platform) for internal brainstorming and creative reviews. We had just begun to explore other options when the COVID-19 pandemic swept the world.

Our first challenge came from a client with an innovation pipeline workshop scheduled in Chicago. It started with a call from the lead executive who said Cook County wouldn’t let people fly in, and since we’re in Cincinnati, that meant the facilitation team would be working remotely. Then, over a very short period of time, no one was allowed to be in the office and the entire workshop needed to be managed remotely.

Our team scrambled to figure out how to manage the workshop with small and large group interactions, group sharing, participation on focused topics in focused pages, etc. We wanted it to work as close to an in-person workshop as possible so people felt they could dig in when needed and still get the benefits of the larger group interactions.

The workshop was a huge success and we ended up hosting nearly a dozen virtual workshops for clients during the shutdown. Clients said they not only liked the approach but also that people could participate in real-time from all around the world.

We still prefer in-person workshops, but virtual workshops are an option we never knew we needed.

One of my favorite bits of feedback came from a happy executive who called back after one of our sessions and said that in her 27-year career, that was the first virtual innovation workshop she’d ever done. By contrast, a young MBA on her team had just joined the company and the first innovation workshop of his career was virtual. We were living a generational transition in real life.

How do you keep in touch with clients and foster brand loyalty?

I think too many people look at business relationships as transactional. They can be, but they don’t have to be.

At a former agency, after landing a few large projects one of the agency leaders asked me if I could share my magic approach with other leaders.

I said I don’t think you’re going to be all that impressed with how I work. You think I’m sending out emails with some magic sales line that closes the deal. I don’t do that. I play a very long game and care about the people first.

So, people get texts or emails from me checking in on them as humans. I genuinely care how their careers are going, what’s happening with their family, what’s driving them nuts, and how I can help them. I’ve rewritten resumes and provided interview coaching, been a reference for new job hunts, coached on issues at the office and how to handle difficult people, and even written obituaries when friends couldn’t find the words through their pain.

I want people to know I care about who they are versus just seeing me as an agency wonk looking for the next project. As a result, I’ve worked with some people for 25 years or more. It’s great when people leave companies and call us back at their new jobs. But if they don’t have work we can do together in their new role, that’s fine.

The sales trainer and motivational speaker Zig Ziglar used to say, “You can get anything you want if you help enough others get what they want.” I think that’s exactly right.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://thinkhausideas.com
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/thinkhausideas
• Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/company/thinkhaus-idea-factory
• Twitter: @thinkhausideas
• Youtube: @thinkhausideafactory