We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jacques Spitzer. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jacques below.

Jacques, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about your team building process? How did you recruit and train your team and knowing what you know now would you have done anything differently?

The Raindrop that people see today had extremely humble beginnings. I started the business in my room (not even a garage – a garage would have been nice looking back). I just wanted to help business owners communicate and connect with customers.

I think I benefitted from my naivety in not holding any sort of expectations or concerns around whether I would be successful. My goal was never to do just video, or just photo, or just web design. My goal was to solve challenges and amplify stories. It takes many different disciplines and skillsets to do that, and I’ve always felt that the people around me need to genuinely enjoy working together for us to succeed. I was intentional about hiring from the start and am grateful that we remain that way today on a much larger scale. Looking back, I might have put more thought into company structure earlier in the journey to possibly accelerate the growth.

Our ability to attract and retain top talent is our recipe for success. That said, Raindrop is built on both aptitude and attitude. Collaboration happens naturally when we hire not just for skill or need, but equally for character and culture. I love showing up every day, and it’s a joy to be part of a team that partners generously from within. In a recent anonymous survey, we asked everyone, on a scale of one to 10, if they felt like the team has their back. That specific question came in at 9.5 out of 10. We’re fortunate to have Danny Kim, Eduardo Correa and Ashley Desque, who collectively do an amazing job of assembling, inspiring and empowering everyone in our company. They have helped us become world-class in the way we recruit and treat people.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

We’ve been able to make a name for ourselves by growing brands with marketing people love. Many of our clients have grown by millions in revenue in a short time and some by much more. It took us over a decade to find what we’re the best in the world at, and that’s creating great content that feeds the whole ecosystem of a brand’s marketing channels – from web to social to TV to PR. We’re a creative agency through and through, focused on building relationships and changing the way brands reach people. We work with challenger brands like Dr. Squatch, Lume and Manscaped, and also with established brands like Worx and AutoZone. We have amassed over 750 million online views of our video ads, and well over $500 million of directly attributable sales.

There aren’t a lot of agencies out there that have the equivalent of five or six number-one singles from a recording artist. In 2020, we had the top-performing YouTube ad of the year and, considering the anomaly of a much larger audience in quarantine, possibly of all time. We’ve since taken that five-minute video ad for Dr. Squatch and replicated the formula several times over with similar results. We also converted it into a Super Bowl TV ad in 2021 and now, in 2022, we are getting ready to introduce our own ad promoting our agency based on the format’s breakthrough success. I’m proud to brag, but we also remain humble. Everyone on our team is kind, passionate and dialed in to what they do best.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

I’ve known Adam Wagner since we were in college at UC San Diego. He was the lead singer of a band and I just thought he was super cool, so we became friends. A few years after graduating, we reconnected while I was running Raindrop and he was working at a large agency in town. We decided to work together on a few projects and realized we share a lot of values across the board, from people to life to money and even spirituality. I began to see how he had the builder brain needed to create processes, structure and scalability. He was truly building the business, whereas I’m in constant ‘go’ mode.

We had a handshake deal that if we were to hit $1 million in revenue, we would create a more formal business partnership. We made that milestone, and I remember later talking about how unlikely it would be for a San Diego agency to do more than $10 million. We surpassed that, too, and are now doing business nationally with eight-figure revenue. It’s been an incredible journey and is hopefully still just the beginning. I’m grateful for his generous spirit and believe that he is truly brilliant. He’s the biggest reason why we have 100 employees today.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I’ve always really cared about our team members and wanted them to stay with us for their entire careers. Early on, it hurt my heart whenever someone would leave for a new opportunity elsewhere. I realize now that it’s not necessarily a realistic expectation for everyone to be a Raindrop lifer, though I still secretly hold that same hope.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://raindrop.agency/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/raindropagency
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jspitzer5/

Image Credits
Photo Credit: Michael Carr