We recently connected with Hunter Oden and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Hunter thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about growing your team – how did you recruit the first few people, what was the process like, how’d you go about training and if you were to start over today would you have done anything differently?
Our business started with my business partner, Chris Wendel, and myself. Each of us were freelancers, with mutual clients. I did design, he did marketing and web development. Our mutual clients encouraged us to meet several times, but we never took the opportunity over the course of two years. Finally, we crossed paths and enjoyed each other’s knowledge and understanding of the industry, and decided to partner up. It’s been four years now, and we have three additional team members. Making that first hire felt risky, and made us incredibly anxious. Basically putting someone else’s livelihood in our hands was a major milestone, but everything worked out well. Now that we’re a team of five, we can’t imagine doing the type of work we do without our dedicated staff.
Hunter, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
We’ve always been interested in the intersection of design and marketing. No matter the project, there’s always a method to arrive at a solution that feels creative, and ultimately drives business results for our clients. In our primary market (Little Rock, Arkansas) we have positioned ourselves uniquely as an agile team who can take on the types of challenges that larger agencies would usually resolve, but for clients who don’t have the revenue to work with larger agencies. As we’ve grown, we have taken on larger clients with larger budgets, but our core focus remains on diving into the unique challenges our partners are facing, and devising a strategy to resolve their issues.
We work in logo and brand identity design, ranging from fully custom websites, print collateral, digital touch points and overall marketing and advertising strategy and implementation.
We’re proud to have a high retention rate with our clients by solving their problems, and building trust to continue doing so.
How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?
When my business partner and I joined forces, we had two very good leads. Each of them culminated into a combined total of six-figure profit in our first year. We quickly picked up other projects and were able to fund the purchase of our physical office location in Little Rock, Arkansas which added legitimacy and awareness to our business. As a result we didn’t need to put up any capital to get started. From day one we have been fortunate to maintain profitability.
Have you ever had to pivot?
While freelancing, each of us realized we had reached a ceiling in terms of both the types of services we offer, as well as the amount of money we would be able to make annually. This guided our decision to partner up, and build a team that could further expand our offerings.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.unboundcollective.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/workwithunbound/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/workwithunbound
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/workwithunbound/
- Other: https://dribbble.com/Unbound
Image Credits
Sarah Oden, Photographer