The Outliers: My Personal Story of Success

Having just finished Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, Outliers: The Story of Success, my head is spinning once again. As Gladwell has done in the past with The Tipping Point and Blink, he managed to get me thinking about whole new ways of living and doing business. In that vein, The Outliers successfully argued that we must fully understand the impact of environmental factors like our birthday, cultural heritage and geographic location.

In The Outliers, Gladwell discusses the impact of date of birth of hockey and soccer players, as well as American industrialists and software tycoons. Applying similar logic, I realized that my initial navigation point towards being an outlier was my date of birth. As an Internet marketing professional, my success is due in part to the fact that I was born at a time that put me on the leading edge of the Internet revolution. Had I been born earlier, I would have been securely sealed in a mid-level agency account management role with a new family and unlikely to jump into the relatively unknown World Wide Web back in 1996. Any later, and I would not have had the unique opportunity to be a trailblazer and early Web marketing expert.

Another key factor in determining your ultimate success as an outlier is your cultural history and genetics. While I come from a Caucasian middle class suburban background, my parents (an architect and non-profit sector executive director) offered me a balance of personal creativity and professional savvy that has inarguably helped me along my path. My inner-city high school education at Garfield in Seattle also gave me a unique perspective and invaluable communication skills. More importantly, my mother introduced me to a senior executive at a Seattle-based agency that resulted in my first career internship (and experience with the Internet).

After my Seattle internship ended, I moved to Portland for an entry level position at a boutique high tech PR firm.  A few months into my job, the agency decided to spin off a Web development firm. I took the initiative to help conduct research and provided pro bono PR for the fledgling interactive agency. My early support earned me the respect of the senior sales executive and an opportunity to move to Vivo Media as Marketing Manager. In the next ten months, I studied the Web intently, determining new ways to market Vivo and our clients (which included Tektronix, Microsoft and US Bank).

After nearly a year at the interactive agency, I realized in-fighting among executive management was likely bringing the company down, so I looked around for another company that would appreciate my new-found Internet marketing & PR skills. Ryan Wilson, who was then leading the largest PR practice group within KVO, contacted me about a position as an Online PR Consultant, which was a new position and a tremendous opportunity. Wilson offered me my real break when he allowed me to build an online PR & marketing team within his group. In less than a year, I’d built a $500K practice group from within the agency, gaining invaluable experience under his guidance.

My next big break came once again from Ryan Wilson, who offered me a new opportunity: to help build a new kind of PR firm, where Internet marketing was integrated into PR. After turning him down initially, I realized it may be my only opportunity to get involved in a startup, so I took it. We built Wave Rock into a $3.5M agency from scratch in less than 2 years, but the wheels came off with the 2000 high tech bubble burst. The ride was wild, and also extremely humbling, as Wilson died the following year from a heart attack.

My next navigation point came nearly 2 years after leaving Wave Rock and starting Anvil Media as a search engine marketing (SEM) consultancy. A good friend, Ryan Buchanan, and I were discussing the need for an affordable but robust email marketing platform for our clients. Having not found an ideal partner or solution, we decided to build it ourselves. While I did bring agency and email marketing strategy to the table, I was not strong with operational aspects of running a business, nor the key email and related software technologies. Buchanan had experience in both, plus a small Web development team. I spent a year as President helping build the foundation and agency infrastructure for emailROI (now eROI), before electing to stick to my core expertise of SEM and returning to Anvil Media.

Armed with the necessary agency and entrepreneurial skills, knowledge and experience, I decided to dedicate my efforts to building Anvil Media into the most respected SEM agency on the planet. I was able to leverage deep relationships with previous clients, employees and partners to get the company going in the earlier years, but to build a real business; I needed a special right-hand person. Having my choice of a handful of gifted SEM experts, I asked Hallie Janssen, a former client and coworker, to join forces as my first hire. The key navigation point in that situation was Janssen saying yes.

A few other key navigation points throughout my career include taking the opportunity to teach as an adjunct professor at Portland State University, which unintentionally aided in employee and client recruitment for Anvil. I also agreed to help co-found SEMpdx, a trade association for Portland SEM professionals, thanks to the initiative of Scott and Blu, two of the other initial co-founders. My initial role as President led to the development invaluable relationships with other local SEM professionals, both locally and nationally. Lastly, my involvement with Entrepreneur’s Organization (EO) has been invaluable in filling my skull and my Rolodex with business-changing insights and individuals.

Success takes many forms, and means different things to different people. To me, success is having a healthy family, rewarding business and opportunities to give back. While Anvil Media continues to grow and I’m still involved in local charities like SMART, I’m particularly excited about my latest venture, Formic Media, an SEM agency for small business and continuing to speak and teach the gospel that is SEM and emarketing to clients, partners, students and anyone else who will listen.

The point of Gladwell’s book, Outliers: The Story of Success, is that the typical rags-to-riches entrepreneurial success story involving hard work, determination, intelligence, elbow grease, gumption, etc. is somewhat misleading. Your birthday, cultural legacy, living environment and people around you are the true predictors of your success in life.  My birthday gift to you is the fact that we are all Outliers if we spend the time to understand the influence of our environment on our current or potential success.