How a last-minute detour to Traverse City changed the course of Fernando Meza’s life.
Featuring: Fernando Meza, CEO of Oneupweb.
43’30”
I’ve never been on mushrooms I've only heard about it but I remember feeling like I was in the centre of a storm where everything was very peaceful. I felt like I could hear ants walking outside and just thinking holy shit did you really just ask me to do this?
There are some moments in life you never forget …
For Fernando Meza this was the moment …
Being asked to take over the marketing company he was working for.
Fernando had wanted to be a boss since he was 7 years old.
8’25”
Money was always this thing that we always worried about in our house and I never wanted to have to worry about it. I just always noticed that the people that were in charge they were in some kind of a business. And so early on I just said you know what I wanna be that. You know whatever that is i wanna be in business and i wanna make money.
At just 34 Fernando realised his dream …
Not in East LA where he grew up or in New York City where he spent his 20s …
But somewhere he would never have imagined …
Traverse City, Michigan. Population: 15,000.
I’m Tommy Andres and this is Creative Coast …
THEME MUSIC POST
In this podcast we look at some of the entrepreneurs who are making the small town of Traverse City their home and who have brought with them exciting new ideas, interests, inspirations, and innovations.
Fernando Meza grew up a world away from Traverse City …
in California’s San Fernando Valley.
5’35”
Blue-collar family … My father worked in catering and my mom got a job at a turkey factory and was on the assembly line where they would pluck feathers out of turkeys.
(THEME MUSIC SHOULD BE FULLY FADED BY HERE)
Fernando’s mom and dad emigrated to the US from Mexico.
And as the eldest of 4 boys it was his job to help the family navigate this new world.
6’20”
when you’re the son of immigrant parents you’re always having to educate your parents … just because they don’t know how to speak the language ...I was the English speaker in the family … If my brothers wanted to go on a field trip or sleep over they had no concept of the culture of what that was … You know whenever something came in the mail esp if it was a different colour it was like yo what does this mean what do I do with this this looks serious and always the expectation of well you go to school you can figure this out.
There were lots of things to figure out.
Like this incident Fernando remembers when he was 7 or 8.
10’18”
Right at the beginning of the first gulf war the economy was in the shit and my father had remembered in one of his first jobs there was money taken for his account for his retirement he just didn’t know what that was and what it was for … I remember working with my dad calling his old employer talking to their bookkeeper and going through these series of questions and tasks of me having to pull old tax returns and he would literally walk me through go to line 43a and tell me what this number is go to line 101b and tell me what this number is just so we can get our hands on cashing out that immunity prematurely. I’ll never forget meeting this dude in the parking lot of that company and him handing me an envelope and looking at me and saying you’re gonna be alright man. That was when I realised I wanted to be in business.
But first there was school …
WONDER YEARS THEME
… a really cool school.
(FADE SONG AFTER “Would you stand up and walk out on me”)
9’08”
I went to John Burrows high school in Burbank shout out to Wonder Years if you remember that sitcom it was filmed there. It’s a really cool high school in Burbank which is the studio capital of the world.
And luckily for Fernando that school had a business academy …
So by the time I graduated from high school I had a biz portfolio. I was actually the president of the biz academy which is not something that helps my social life …
But it did help him get into a really prestigious college internship program.
The Emma Bowen Foundation promotes diversity in media.
It partners students with big companies like ABC, Disney, and Universal.
That company sponsors the student all the way through college.
There was just one problem:
12’30”
so I didn’t know how I was going to pay for school so I hadn’t applied anywhere…and then I went through the interview process got accepted and then I realised oh crap I need to go to a school they were like so where are you gonna go where have you applied?
And in true Fernando style he sorted it out.
I talked to my cousin who worked at Cal State Northridge in the admissions office and we went together and he had a friend there and this woman came out of some back office and said so just tell me what your sat score and give me $50 for your application free and you’re in so that’s how I ended up going to Cal State Northridge.
(START MUSIC)
Fernando spent the next 5 years at school and working for ABC in the department that produced commercials for the network shows.
He was also given some other responsibilities.
16’10”
one of the oddest things was when I was in charge of herding Mary Kay and Ashley Olsen twins when they were still very young … it was for a tgif special … they gave me a mic with the walkie talkie and said just make sure that when we call you you bring them to this place and just thinking how stressed out I was to just get that wrong for fear of the whole production just being shut down … but I remember that was one of the early experiences that I had just thinking to myself where the hell am I right now and what the hell am I doing.
Tommy: Yeah like having those billion dollar twins under your guard has to be a little bit stressful!
MUSIC POST
After the internship Fernando went on to work as a courier at a production company in LA making his way up through the world of TV.
He eventually gravitated to post production and... like many before him... decided to move to New York.
17’30”
it was a little tough in the beginning to be a freelancer in ny but if you work in advertising or marketing any opp to go to ny I mean that’s the show so you definitely want to get your ass out there.
Fernando made New York work for him … with what some people might describe as a marketing dream job.
20’10”
our job was to throw parties outside music festivals so Smirnoff Johnny Walker brands and we would travel the country and do these different activations across the country with some really interesting music talent so that was really cool.
Tommy: Sounds like a tough job drinking and hanging out with rock stars!
LAUGH
And that job was about to take Fernando to Michigan for the first time.
one of the culminating events was a Madonna event ...in Detroit at the Filmore … big 2m 3m dollar gig and she ended up blowing us off the day before … I had a whole weekend to figure out what to do in Michigan … and that’s when a friend of mine told me I should come up to TC …
(START MUSIC)
So Fernando arrives in Michigan and luckily for him it’s just emerging from winter and spring is in the air.
21’40’
a lot of the cherry orchards had started to blossom already … it was like a coming out party for TC and me … a friend of mine came up and showed me around. She lived at the time in Cadillac with her boyfriend and she was actually someone I went to highschool with. I couldn’t fathom where I was.
Fernando’s TC visit happened to coincide with a personal crossroad he had hit.
26’30”
You know you get to a point in your life and you you’re like ok what the hell am I doing you’re not really happy with anything you built around yourself .. for me it was coming to the realisation that I’d let things happen for me instead of making these things happen for myself and finally realising that I am a product of my own environment and I can curate the environment that I need. And so when that switch was flipped there was no going back.
(MUSIC POST)
And so back in New York Fernando set about changing his life.
I never stopped looking for job openings in tc and finally this one for this place oneupweb popped up and upon inspection I was like oh this is an agency that’s actually doing cool stuff.
Fernando applied for a job at OneUpWeb and got it.
Later on they told me they were suspicious of this person that was applying with my background and my pedigree … My old boss at the time said why are you applying for this job … and I was like I just really don’t want to go back to la or stay in ny so why not here?
(START MUSIC)
But there was also another reason Traverse City appealed so much to Fernando.
Maybe that friend of mine I told you about earlier had something to do with me relocating to TC but this is not that kind of a podcast so we can talk about that later …
This is totally that kind of podcast!
29’49”
OK so this friend that shows you around … who you mentioned had a boyfriend who she was living with at the time … so we can’t just yadda yadda that story tell me what played out there!
30’30”
I mean we went to high school together … you can imagine that from a cultural perspective growing up in socal and then finding yourself in nm that there was a lot of alignment in our background ... we just became really good friends … so when I moved it took about a year for her to decide she didn’t want to be in Cadillac anymore and that she wanted to come to tc.
(DOUBLE MUSIC POST - POST 1)
Fernando and Arminda are now married and have 2 beautiful daughters.
(DOUBLE MUSIC POST - POST 2)
But let’s rewind ...
REWIND FX
It’s October 7th 2012 and Fernando arrives in Traverse City with 3 suitcases knowing no one.
The next day he starts his new job at OneUpWeb.
He learns that it’s a digital marketing company that had begun small...
in a basement...
but had grown to a full-scale agency of around 50 people with some pretty big clients.
And Fernando arrived at a pivotal moment for the company.
38’50”
I was part of this wave of oneupweb reinventing itself to act more like a trad agency … and I worked in the ceo office along with a creative director and we were this core team within the business development team that was trying to be this new version of oneupweb as the old version of oneupweb was still there trudging along as normal.
Fernando worked hard and was promoted.
He also let his ambitions be known to the then boss.
42’30”
she asked me what do you want to do at ouw what’s your goal and my answer was ceo because why not right. What do you want to do? Top position.
Outside of work, Fernando loved living in Traverse City.
But it was a pretty big change from LA and New York.
33’50”
Tc is a pretty homogenous area …very white …
LAUGH! Sorry …
What was it like moving there from LA?
it is homogenous you are not kidding it is the great white north for a reason but I have never felt as proud of my heritage as the way this community made me feel about it when I relocated here. When you grew up in la and you’re Mexican I mean big deal so are 20 m other people. You move to ny and you’re Mexican big deal it is like the melting pot of the world. But when you move to nm and you’re Mexican it’s like oh really and they start to tell me all their experiences with Mexican culture what they love about it ... That opp to be an ambassador of my culture … that was something I was very proud of.
(START MUSIC)
Fernando settled in and made friends.
But at work things were not going well with the reinvention of the company.
Fernando says there was never a commitment at the top to let go of the old ways of working…
which ultimately led to the downfall of his boss.
40’10”
it failed so bad that she ended up raising rates to generate revenue because that was the driver of all this to make more money and when that wasn’t happening she decided she was going to put her entire book of business on notice raise rates and deal with the fallout and she underestimated the fallout on the client side and on the employee side and which was healthy size of 52 healthy book of biz to now you have 20 employees and you’ve lost 40% of clients. In that moment she knew it was time to exit stage left and to write that final chapter the way that she wanted to and I provided an opp for her to do that.
And so she asked Fernando that question.
Did he want to take the reigns of the company?
(ECHO EFFECT)
... holy shit did you really just ask me to do this?
…
I just remember saying can I just get a day to think about it?! She handed me a pack of financial docs and said here you go something to help you with that. I made some phone calls and I said yes.
(MUSIC POST)
At 34 Fernando Meza became owner and CEO of OneUpWeb.
And again in true Fernando style things got off to an interesting start.
1’50”
it was day 1 for me on the job and one of my colleagues rushed down ... and just said there’s smoke coming out of the riser room. Now I had no idea what the fuck a riser room was and so I said ok can you show me where the riser room is? You could see there was a little bit of smoke coming out and I remember my colleague was lightly touching the door and then he just opens up the door … the moment that that door opened the boiler that was in there caught on fire. my colleague was very quick and found a fire extinguisher and quickly put out the fire but the fire dept told us we all had to evacuate … 20 of us huddled around waiting for the fire department to tell us to go back inside. That was day 1 of my ownership here at OneUpWeb.
Since then OneUpWeb has gone from strength to strength.
In 2015 the company relocated to a new office space in the Traverse City Commons, a famous old state hospital turned into a village in the midst of Traverse City.
OneUpWeb’s revenue and headcount have gone up too...
Fernando now runs an agency of 46 creatives.
53’30”
It’s been a healthy company. Even right now we’re in the throes of this pandemic I feel grateful to have this biz that works in helping bizes go online which if you have a biz and it has that as a spoke to its biz you are fairing a lot better than other biz right now.
Fernando credits his great staff for the company’s success....
But believes its location is a big advantage too.
48’20”
being in nm where the cost of biz is lower but you compete on a national scale for business you can see that your margins are better… It’s the internet. We work on the internet and as long as we have a reliable connection we can work from anywhere.
(START MUSIC)
But for Fernando Traverse City is not just anywhere -- and right now it feels like it’s all come circle for him.
my family of origin this person I was growing up… Being put in this position of having to figure things out and having to navigate a unit through something that is unfamiliar is something I felt familiar with. I always knew that challenges were something that were momentary that there was always solutions to a challenge we just needed the right minds to come up with a solution and figure things out and we have an amazing team. Core part of what makes it work. It was a lot of growing pains and understanding how to manage my energy so I could support them and every week is new opp to do that.
51 mins
So did that mentality of being able to adapt and figure things out help when the boiler exploded?
LAUGH
You know what I think all I did was stand there … and just let it all play out in front of me. Whenever it’s my turn to do something I’ll do it otherwise I’ll just support the people that need to feel supported.
Yes lots of people say true leadership is just standing there watching!
LAUGH
That’s actually the working title of my new book!
LAUGH
(MUSIC TRANSITION INTO THEME)
To learn more about Fernando Meza’s company OneUpWeb, visit one-up-web-dot-com.
Creative Coast is a podcast series brought to you by Traverse Connect…
the Grand Traverse Region’s Economic Development Organization…
and is produced by Airloom Media.
This podcast series is made possible thanks to generous support and funding from the Michigan Film and Digital Media Office at Michigan’s Economic Development Corporation.
You can visit Traverse Connect’s website at traverseconnect.com.