We recently connected with Christy Hiler and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Christy thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

In addition to owning an advertising agency, I co-founded an initiative, Own It, to shine a light on the lack of female agency owners in the advertising industry. Less than 1% of agency owners are female. When I discovered that 2 years ago, I set out on a mission with another female agency owner to track and significantly grow that number. What started as a website to make it easy to track the number of female owners has grown into a very active community, podcast and annual summit.

Website: https://www.untilyouownit.com
Podcast: https://www.untilyouownit.com/podcast

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?

Hi! I’m Christy Hiler, CEO and owner of Cornett, an independent, female-owned, full-service advertising agency in Lexington, KY. We are proud of our long partnerships with LEGOLAND, A&W Restaurants, Busch Light, University of Kentucky, GE Appliances, Tempur Pedic, Keeneland and VisitLEX. Cornett is known for layering big, sticky ideas on top of creative campaigns so that paid media investments are multiplied by earned media pickups. We help brands—and the people behind them—play bigger. Recently we were named an Ad Age Small Agency of the Year. The third time receiving such recognition. We are really proud of that because to be an Ad Age Small Agency of the Year you have to be doing the best work in the business and be a great place to work.

Let’s talk M&A – we’d love to hear your about your experience with buying businesses.

After 20 years working for Cornett, I purchased 100% of the agency. I started at the very bottom as an Account Coordinator, but very early on knew the agency could grow from a local shop to being a fierce competitor on the national stage. That big vision was easy to rally people around. I took over as President 4 years before purchasing the agency, giving me the opportunity to prove I could not only lead the agency in a way that felt right to me, but also see greater success for the agency.

The acquisition process was very smooth. We both wanted the very best for the agency, and each other. We had an outside party do a valuation of the business and looked at the average multiples for agencies like ours within the industry. That helped us set a price we both felt was fair.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

Cornett has a fantastic reputation both locally and nationally for doing the best work in the business, and being one of the best places to work with, and for. 40 years ago we planted our roots in Lexington, KY. We’ve grown to become one of the nation’s best independent agencies.

From the beginning, we have been deeply involved in, and committed to the city we call home. In addition to our leaders serving on dozens of boards, we have been the agency of record for the University of Kentucky and Lexington’s visitor and tourism bureau, VisitLEX for decades. In that time, we’ve made VisitLEX one of the most talked about tourist destinations in the world.

We are equally as committed to driving positive change. Cornett is one of the founding agencies of BLAC—an independent agency internship collective designed to bring more young Black people into advertising, preparing them to survive, thrive and lead. And when the freedom of self-expression was being attacked by local lawmakers with anti-drag legislation, we instituted ‘Work is a Drag,’ an official workplace policy welcoming any employee who wishes to dress in drag at the office the ability to do so. The policy is a natural extension of Cornett’s commitment to being a workplace open to everyone and goal to produce original, boundary-pushing work.

I’m personally passionate about seeing woman-owned ad agencies. Currently, less than 1% of advertising agencies are owned by wormen. To help increase the number of women and non-binary owners I created Own It, a podcast and initiative recognizing female ad agency owners and sharing the stories of how they came to be.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.teamcornett.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/teamcornett/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christyhiler/
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@teamcornett