The Unsexy Work Behind an Enduring Agency - Beyond Spots & Dots

Building an well run agency often relies on mastering fundamentals that many can easily overlook. In this episode, Melanie Querry shares how she built Beyond Spots & Dots by focusing on transparency, operational discipline, and intentional growth. 

Key Takeaways

•  Culture is preserved through clear processes, shared standards, and consistent communication
•  Educating clients builds trust, speeds up execution, and reduces costly rework 
•  Strong fundamentals like listening, transparency, and communication outperform every time 

Transcript

Beyond Spots & Dots

Russel 0:01

Welcome to An Agency Story podcast where owners and experts share the real journey, the early struggles, the breakthrough moments, and everything in between. I'm your host Russel Dubree, former eight figure agency owner, turned Business coach. Sold my agency and now helps agency leaders create their ideal business. Every agency has a story, and this is your front row seat. This is an agency story. Welcome to the show today, everyone. I have Melanie Querry with Beyond Spots Dots with us here today. Thank you so much for joining us today, Melanie.

Melanie 0:39

Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Russel 0:41

Well, glad to have you. If you don't mind, get us started. Tell us what Beyond Spots Dots does and who you do it for.

Melanie 0:48

Sure. So we're, um, we take a multi-layered approach, really act as a marketing department for businesses, for-profits, nonprofits, large and small, and everything in between. We're a full service advertising agency. We do, we started with, um, traditional media, doing media, buying for tv, radio, print, outdoor. And immediately, 20 years ago, started doing website development and also digital advertising as well.

Russel 1:19

Alright, well we're gonna find out all the nitty gritty that goes in behind, your experience and your career and everything you've done so far in your business. But before we get to any of that, I'd love to hear about young Melanie long before she had any dreams or thinking of starting an agency, what was young Melanie doing with her life?

Melanie 1:39

Uh, young Melanie graduated. Uh, I grew up in DC and always wanted to teach or educate or support in some way, whatever that means. When you're young, when you really don't know what you wanna do. I graduated from high school, went to Penn State. And really got a degree in advertising. At the time, it was the only one of five colleges that offered a degree in media buying. Really?

Russel 2:11

Okay.

Melanie 2:12

Yeah. So I know how to do media buying with a pencil and a piece of paper, which. Most people don't even know exists or is available. And so really got to learn the inner workings of media buying, how to place ads out there in different types of media outlets. And the other side of my degree, of course, in advertising was the design side, which I do not do. That is not my forte. I ha I was once told by a mentor, hire those who are better. At certain things, obviously don't hire you. Yes. Uh, so

Russel 2:49

that would pertain to my design skills as well. So I feel this a hundred percent.

Melanie 2:53

Yeah, my designers hate when I'm in a client meeting. They cringe and I watch them cringe.'cause I, Desi, I, you know, draw little stick figures. But anyhow, conceptualization of creating a campaign or coming up with a campaign as far as the concept, that's my brain. My forte is coming up with the concept and then pushing it to someone who's really good at designing it, producing it, and then executing the, the production of it all.

Russel 3:20

Now I am curious and, and without going, probably can't learn it to the extent you know it, but what does media buying look like on pen and paper? What, how does that even work?

Melanie 3:28

Lots of calculations. I mean, really some serious heavy lifting calculations. All I know is I'm glad I, I was good in math when I was younger.

Russel 3:38

Alright. Don't, don't have to do that anymore. How long did it take for this spark to come up that maybe your path might be more entrepreneurial than what it sounds like maybe you were intending or thinking, or maybe you were when you were younger?

Melanie 3:54

Well, no. When I was very young, I decided I wanted to start an agency. I didn't know exactly the structure of it at the time. Certainly, I just, you know, didn't know what I didn't know, and I wasn't experienced in it. I was too young to even work in an agency. But I loved the, like office life and organizing. I'm, I'm very anal when it comes to organizing and creating efficiencies, operational efficiencies. I learned that at a very young age, uh, my dad owned his own business and. I kind of blame him for wanting to own my own business, and I really did wanna start an agency when I was very young. So when I went to college, I really focused on classes that would help me understand. Workings of an agency, and then when I graduated, I went to work for a TV station doing sales, advertising sales so that I could learn really how to put all this together. When I was in college, I did an internship at a TV station. The first. TV station in, in the country, which is KDK TV out Pittsburgh. Um, did, you said the first

Russel 5:04

TV station in the country?

Melanie 5:06

Yeah.

Russel 5:06

In Pittsburgh. Of all things. No one. Now that is some trivia for today.

Melanie 5:11

Yes, it's, and. When I did my internship during school, during college, my internship was with the production department, creating the news clips, the news teasers, the news videos, and also creating client videos. So I learned the TV side, um, from a production side very early when I was literally in college and, kept sniffing around in the sales department to learn what they were doing because that was the side where there was. An opportunity really for growth for me to start out right outta college.

Russel 5:47

For, first off, I don't even know if you would've asked Young Russel what if I even knew what an agency was. I've heard all sorts of origin stories here, but very, probably very rare, the category that someone at a young age said, yep, this is what I'm gonna do and here's going to be the path that I'm going to do. I mean, you, you described what, why an agency appealed to you. I just find that fascinating.

Melanie 6:09

Well, it was definitely learned. I mean, it wasn't something that I just woke up one day and said, it's an agency I wanna have. It was the teaching in me, the giving in me. I love to give and to see others succeed. To help others succeed. And I think at a very young age, just talking to people, talking to adults, and really looking at colleges and different programs that they offered, and it's one thing to graduate with a degree, but what does that degree mean? And at the time there weren't that many colleges that offered advertising as a degree with respect to the media buying and the design all in one, and PR is in there as well. So I learned pretty early on, it was an agency that I wanted. I loved the multifaceted approach. I loved the opportunity with an agency to be able to take it to business owners and. Offer them different things, not just one thing.

A Cold Turkey Quit

Russel 7:09

Gotcha. Okay. It was a culmination of passion and interests that revealed themselves to you in the form of an agency. That makes a lot of sense. Okay. So when is the big audacious moment where you said, you know what, I'm starting this thing. What did that look like?

Melanie 7:24

You know, I feel like it's like having a baby. It's never the right time. You know, people feel they're dating and the next step is they have to get married, and then the next step is they have to buy a house, and then the next step is they have to have a baby. And there's like so much pressure. To do that. And it's, if you know you've had a baby, you understand it's never the right time. There's always something and you might try to plan for timing and that's just like all out the door. At least for me it was. So

Russel 7:54

you can't plan for throwing your life completely outta balance.

Melanie 7:58

You cannot. You cannot. Yeah. I worked for KDK tv as I mentioned, when I first got outta college. I fought my way for that job, by the way. I wasn't just handed the job. By any means. And so once I worked there, I really wanted to work in TV when I graduated because it's the most complex media of them all. And learning how to create the TV commercials was one thing, but learning how to actually air them and where they aired and how they aired and the Nielsen ratings and all the research that goes behind all of that was really intriguing to me. So I went to Katie k. TV first because I had a relationship with a lot of the coworkers there, the workers, the employees. And I believed in the station. I believed in it. Having done research when I was an intern. After that, I went to Comcast and tried to learn and learned the cable side of tv, which is a whole different ball game and a whole different operational structure, of course. And from the client standpoint. A whole new ball game. So I did wanna learn both sides of tv. I mean, now we have many sides of tv, and at the time, those were the two major pieces of tv, cable and broadcast. So I was at the Comcast and worked on the cable side for a couple of years, and then. Just decided it's never the right time. I have to just do this. So I resigned. I gave my two weeks. They asked me to stay for four. I was one of their top selling salespeople, taking my$50,000 budget a year to 500,000 in revenue on, behalf of Comcast. And, I was making some serious money and I banked it as much as I could. I quit cold Turkey. I mean, I didn't bail on Comcast. They did ask me to stay longer even. And once my last day was over, I started the agency. The next day I started making phone calls feverishly. How do I start a business? What do I need to do to start the business? I had an attorney who is still one of my attorneys, he's my contract attorney, and he helped with like the registration of the business and understanding, you know, an SC Corp Incorporated. You know, LLC, what's the right thing? And I immediately secured an accountant. I was told, you know, for all these professional services, you need to have professionals to do the work. So I had mentors in that respect where I was able to ask them questions and rely on them for things that I had no idea how to do. But I just picked up the phone and started calling and asking, what do I do?

Russel 10:45

Yeah, which, which is, a very smart approach. I can imagine where that's probably helps you in so many more facets in, in your story, but especially cold Turkey. But the next, you know, best thing you can do is know where you need to get help and now you're off and running. I mean, was that scary for you at all? Or like, if you can remember what was going through your head and just emotionally at the time

Melanie 11:07

it was very scary. I had actually just gone through a divorce and I was very young and so, you know, I was making a lot of money. So the divorce was really tricky because. I handed over a lot of money through that divorce, so I decided just like anything else in life, big moves, you have to just do and take the risk. And I did. And I felt like I could only go up. I mean, I wasn't broke, but. Certainly a lot of the money that I had made through the few years that I was out of college and working went towards the divorce and towards my ex because I was the breadwinner, and that was very, very scary. But I decided, you know what? If there's gonna be a. Good time. This seems like as good a time as any,

Russel 12:00

Obviously quite a rough thing to go through, but I guess on the part of that, and I've never been personally through divorce, but I hear a lot of this it's a time to reinvent yourself, I guess. How much of that situation was motivation for you to make this major leap in the next phase of your life?

Melanie 12:15

Absolutely. I took it as motivation. I used it to power my motivation instead of focusing on the negative because you know, no matter what, it's never a fun time to do, to go through a divorce. It's not, yeah. I don't wish it on anybody.

Russel 12:31

Yeah.

Melanie 12:32

But I did. I used it as momentum and getting my feet back on the ground as a single woman and really figuring it all out again, you know? So yes, I used it absolutely was my motivation.

Russel 12:45

Okay. Well, it's worked out really well as I'm sure we'll get more into, but I don't know, do we need a pause for like a screw you or a thank you moment to your ex, or

Melanie 12:53

nope.

Russel 12:54

We'll just leave it be okay. Fair enough. Yep. So, all right, we're off and running. We're using this situation as motivation. One of the things that I know he is, you had a, a big client relationship that landed that seemed like it was very pivotal for your business somewhat early on. What was that and how did that change your business?

Melanie 13:13

So, I opened the business in 2006 and when I, literally the last day of my job at Comcast, the next day I started making phone calls to clients that I was working with, and the first two clients I called said immediately, absolutely, we wanna be your first client. And I had to figure out what that meant. I had to create a contract and make sure that, I knew what the heck I was doing moving forward. Right? And so I quickly learned about immediate revenue and cash flow. And so those two clients really allowed me to be up and running and have a business. And I'm honored that they were. One of'em is still with me. The other one was

Russel 14:00

with, that's, that's unique to, for 20 years later, to have one of your first clients.

Melanie 14:04

Yes. And the other one that was literally like the same day who signed my contract, they were with us a very long time. They were a county, so it was a government entity. And you know, as you can imagine, there's new commissioners in there making decisions. And we only lost it because of that. I mean, things were really good with them and we had a great run, probably boy, for, I don't even know, I'd have to look maybe 12 years, 13, 14 years.

Russel 14:31

That's a good run for sure.

Melanie 14:33

And so those two allowed me to get that jumpstart. I, I needed, I wanted, I so desperately worked for, and worked hard for, and planned for, and then. Two years in, I secured a very large client. It was a car dealer. They have, typically they do spend a good bit in advertising and back then they didn't have so many requirements to spend money through the manufacturer. They were required to spend money on their own. And so I learned quickly how to manage that. And again, it was cashflow. The problem is. Sort of sold myself to the devil. Yeah. By taking them on as a client because the profit margin was not there.

Russel 15:19

Yeah.

Melanie 15:19

I was working my tail off to keep the client, once I got it. And the good thing is they were so big and 20 years ago, 18 years ago anyway. Things were evolving in the advertising world in a major way with websites. I know that sounds crazy, back then I know.

Russel 15:38

Yeah, I, I totally know it. The wild, wild west of the, the web era.

Melanie 15:42

Yeah. And so a lot of companies back then had a website but really needed a new one because the website they had was a year old and they didn't know what the heck they were doing. So there were services that I was able to roll into and immediately offer to. To them, the big client and other clients as well. So it gave me an opportunity. I really utilized the revenue as straight up cash flow so that I had some money coming through the business. It was unfortunate that the profit margin was hardly there. No. So I really didn't like make. Money off of them. But I was able to utilize that as an opportunity for the structure of the company, hiring new employees. And I was very smart about the money, making sure I didn't spend it,'cause it wasn't really mine except for the small profit we did make. So it was very challenging, unfortunately. 2008 hit,

Russel 16:41

uh oh. When you hear that number, we always know, what's coming after that.

Melanie 16:45

Yeah. And so car dealers weren't selling in cars and, there was this recession and I had to pivot big time because I lost the client. They decided, they weren't gonna advertise like they were. And so at the time I was also working on new clients and other clients. You know, you just, you learn, you, they say fail first. That was definitely, it wasn't a failure. It was completely outta my control, but I viewed it as a fail first. You know? How do you now pivot? So,

Russel 17:19

okay. Wow. Yeah, I, one, I, I just have to call this out for the younger folks, that the, when we talked about this wild, wild west era of web that, I remember creating content back then of trying to convince people they even needed a website. So this is still where we're at versus, right. That would sound so archaic today. Any business that doesn't have a website or some sort of digital presence. That's right. You know, it, it makes a lot of sense. You're just saying Not even necessarily failure, but hard times sharpen and make you more resilient for the future as even before, you know, sounds like 2008 hit with just high volume, low margin client and is having to be efficient and really intentional about, your growth and how you're looking at things. But yeah. Now I'm really curious about how coming out of 2008, how you took all of that activity, lessons learned and everything from, and what did that look like in your business?

Melanie 18:12

That was a actually a growing point. I decided I was fully up and running and I decided to utilize that as a springboard. I was full steam ahead on how do I. Expand my office space because my office initially was in my home. It was a beautiful home office, but it was in my home,

Russel 18:36

but still at home. Yep. Hard to bring employees into your home.

Melanie 18:40

Exactly. So I learned or looked into and researched, office space and what does that mean and what does that look like and what do I need? And, and I really used. 2008 as a springboard to grow, even though at the time the revenue was not great and I had clients still pending coming on board as clients, but they were pending. They weren't signed contracts yet. And so it was very scary. But I've always been good with money. I decided if I had to, I would rely on credit cards and just do what I needed to do and pay myself back and that sort of thing. So. I talked to my accountant about expanding at that time, and can I hire an employee? I, I'm not the finance person, most business owners are very good at what they do, but not good at operations or finances or, other facets of business. And so obviously immediately I learned how to become a finance person and I had to figure out how to expand and what did that mean? Yeah. And that's what I did.

Staying on Top of Things

Russel 19:45

And we're in some interesting economic times. And for some folks that have recently experienced COVID, the ones that survive are the ones that stayed lean enough to, to survive for the most part. But that actually you can afford to make investments in tough times. That is actually a great catalyst and key for success, as it sounds like it's represented in your story. Fast forward from there. I mean, you've grown quite a bit over the years. When you just look back upon that journey, what do you feel like are the one or two just keys to success that you've learned over that time?

Melanie 20:18

You know, we're what I would call a boutique agency, and I call us a boutique agency because. From an owner standpoint, I'm still very hands-on with clients and I think we've lost a client or two, um, or not a client, but a, like we've lost out on an RFP because they view that as us being a small agency.

Russel 20:39

Mm-hmm.

Melanie 20:39

However, we're one of the top 10 agencies in all three markets where we reside Columbus, Ohio, Baltimore, Maryland, and in Pittsburgh. So. I like to fly under the radar and I think, just being a boutique agency allows us to have more of a hands-on approach with particular clients and, having that opportunity to service them differently and make sure that the quality of what we're putting out there are deliverables do have the highest quality because my name's on it and I view. The work we do, of course as a team effort, it absolutely is a team effort. It takes a village, but it's still my name on it and it's still beyond spots and dots and I want our whole team to be proud of work that's being put out there and pushing anything that we push out of our doors.

Russel 21:30

Okay. I'm hearing the underlying theme there is quality first, and that is, sounds like maybe your, maybe your number one focus in the business. Is that fair to say?

Melanie 21:39

It's really as a company. We are very transparent. I think, two of the things that have made us very successful is being very deliberate in what we're putting out and making sure that we do it right the first time so that we're not scrambling or spent wasting time or wasting clients' time. I don't know. I think that's. What everybody endeavors to do, but the transparency that we hold, I mean, anything that's billed is shown to a client upfront so they know exactly what their bills are gonna be. Accounting departments love us because what the client has signed off on is exactly what they've been billed. The transparency that we have in educating our clients on what we're recommending and why the education we do, even from a creative side to say, here's your website design that we recommend. We call those mockups. Here's your mockup of what your website's gonna look like. Here's why we created it this way. Here's why we used the fonts, here's, compliance issues that we might hit if we, go a different route. And, and so I think being very transparent in educating clients so that they know what they're getting from us is really important. And from the financial side, so they know exactly what they're paying for. There's no questions asked with us. That's one part of it. And then the other part I would say in really the success of the business and continuing that success would be like the operational side. Before COVID, I had 31 employees and. Post COVID, I had 12 employees and double the revenue.

Russel 23:17

Oh my gosh. Okay.

Melanie 23:18

So

Russel 23:18

do tell,

Melanie 23:19

just creating, more efficiencies, making sure that some of the duplication. We, we kind of thought in the beginning that, or maybe not in the beginning, but as we grew and grew and grew that. Oh boy, we have turnover because now we have a lot of employees and when you have more employees, there's more stuff you deal with and turnover's one of them. And so just by a statistical value, having more employees means you potentially have more turnover. A lot of young people think that an advertising agency is just all fun and fluffy and creative, and it is, but there's a lot of work to be done, so yeah. We had some turnover and putting processes in place that were more corporate driven allowed us to be able to hire faster train. Harder and faster and to be able to continue to scale and grow while we're training and while we're hiring new employees, new team members, and implementing some of these processes with old team members so that everybody was, doing it the beyond spots and dots way, so that putting our stamp on it or our name on it was really something that everybody was doing and excited to do as well.

Russel 24:32

I'm writing down more things I wanna talk about. I don't know if we'll get to all of them, but one I just wanna do highlight what you shared and, and I think this was a big catalyst for us as well. It was taking the time to educate clients that we have what's, you know, might be called the curse of expertise. And, and we've just done things a thousand times and we, we kinda get in our own. You know, just wanting to move fast for results' sake, and it all comes from a great place. But the value of taking the time to educate clients on what might even be marketing 1 0 1 or just concepts that we're sharing and showing as being is so important to the process to what might feel like slowing down actually speeds it up, was at least it was a case for us.

Melanie 25:10

Yes, that's exactly it. And being when I said, we're very deliberate in projects that we're working on, I mean exactly that. Being slow and methodical and making sure that it's planned out properly and each piece of execution is being managed properly so that the actual deliverable is done in a timely manner. But hopefully with the. Shaving off some time, actually, because we're not reinventing the wheel because the client isn't happy or we didn't hear what they wanted. Communication is key in that as well. Two-way communication, you know? We've, we've had some clients hire us and then. They're expecting that we're doing all of the work in the way that we're providing exactly what they want, and we do that. That's our job. However, it has to be two-way communication to at least understand what's your expectation? What are you thinking? What have you seen out there that you love? If it's a TV commercial or a website, is there something out there that you want, you aspire to be? And so you know that communication is really critical in making sure that the first time we're launching something, it's really the right thing for that client.

Teaching the Fundamentals

Russel 26:19

So I, I'm hearing a, a true measure twice cut once approach to every aspect of your business. And what I love is, right, these might sound like overly simple words we're saying of communication and education and things like that, but. You know, it's just another testament, to what's a very complicated space, in a very complicated world, is the power of the fundamentals. That can go a long way. It sounds like it's happened in your case, if you just get really good at communication and you get really good at transparency, that those are things that are worth investing in and polishing.

Melanie 26:51

Yeah, I think too. It's a shame to say it, but I feel like I have to, is the listening part, you know?

Russel 26:58

Yes.

Melanie 26:58

Listening really hard. I mean, it's interesting when we come out of a meeting and everybody shares their notes, what each person, each team member heard. I find, you know, my role is in that teaching moment and making sure that my team is listening hard so that when we leave the meeting, it doesn't mean we can't call the client and ask questions. But if we're asking menial questions of things they told us in that meeting, that's a problem. Mm-hmm. I'm always educating our team on how to listen better, how to listen harder, and you know, that just goes for like life.

Russel 27:32

Yeah. Oh yeah. No, I, I truly believe we, we had a potential client one time and they, I think they'd written a book and it actually was pretty popular. But they'd been on Oprah and things like that. And it was basically just about communication, which is essentially, listening and communicating back what you're hearing rather than just always waiting to talk. And, and I truly believe, like if we all got really good at that in this world, I think we'd have a lot less problems.

Melanie 27:56

Yes.

Russel 27:57

Well maybe beyond spots and dots can teach us how to do that. But you're getting into kind of the nitty gritty of what, what I am curious about, and I think this can be a big challenge for a lot of agencies. You said something earlier of beyond spots and dots way. Obviously it sounds like you have a lot of specific ways you like be and have. Invested in communicating and getting the team to understand that, to live that and run that in your business.

Melanie 28:27

In a couple of ways, we, we try to sort of layer that because you never know how someone's gonna respond and everyone's different and everyone takes information in differently. So we have a training track for our new team members and. I'm a believer of doing the work, not just watching someone else do it because you, most people learn faster when they physically do it. It's a lot easier to understand when you're like in it, touching it, doing it, trying it, failing from it. So we do have a training track that we follow for, for team members, and that track does throw them right into the work that they're responsible for. It's, it's not just watching someone for the first 90 days. Sitting side by side with one of the team members to understand fully what that system is or that process is. We've been utilizing more and more, of course, with AI recorded training sessions, so that moving forward and in the future, we have some videos. We've done that for years prior to, to AI launching, but we try to use those videos as an entire, you know. Training deck that we have. And then we have something called Beyond You, and it's beyond university. And in it, it has basically a complete web-based system that we've built. It's a proprietary system and it allows our team members to go in and search for something, a task. And it has, a description of that task and what the details are. And something as simple as specs that. We have to provide to a client. If we're not doing the design work for a digital ad, their designer's doing it. We need to provide that client with specs. And that's not something you do every day. So it might not be something you have in your head, but our beyond you has it. And a team member can just go there quickly look it up and it's, it's just there. So, you know, the training is really critical and important because like I said, it's kind of the beyond spots and dots way. That doesn't mean that we're not flexible or we can't change. I mean, we've pivoted and created new processes and we've developed things internally, proprietary software that we have to help support our team in, in any way we can. So, you know, the Beyond Spots and Dots way completely changed tomorrow, and it has been, and it will evolve as we need it to, as we, continue to go back right into a growth spurt, which, which we're in now. So.

Russel 30:51

I wish we had a whole lot more time to get into that process.'cause I'm very intrigued but I'll limit myself to maybe one more question in that realm is, I mean, it makes sense, right? You've, you've shared at the very beginning of the episode this passion for education communication and sounds like that's just, that's just baked in your DNA and then that, that makes perfect sense that that would now permeate through the organization. So there's certainly, when it comes to training this aspect of. Introduction of knowledge. Right. And this database you have and concepts, and I love even the branding concepts. It sounds like you bring to the table and then there's, how do you ensure retention of knowledge or that it's not only retained but then being used in the wild properly. How have you solved for that, which I'm, I'm guessing you have a good answer for that as well.

Melanie 31:38

You know, it's just more, more training. It's harder training, it's deeper training, and it's making sure that the team is presenting. The tough part is as a, the agency at the level that we're at now, we offer so many different services. All within all of the traditional media and the digital media, and we're one of few agencies or few companies in the country that offers the full programmatic advertising suite, which is nothing more than allowing us to use satellites above us for data and for marketing purposes, which, in the past was illegal, but now we utilize it so. There's a lot of services that we offer. There are many, many services we offer. So the training is really important because there are so many services we can offer and you know, there are some majors that we provide to clients, but there's others that we'd have to make sure our team is in the loop on and, and in the know on. So. It really just comes down to hands-on presentations with our team. Lots of training in various respects with, with the team members as they come on board and not just as they come on board, but even now,

Russel 32:48

yeah, never stops.

Melanie 32:51

It never stops.

Russel 32:53

Good. Yeah, has to, I mean, this whole, the, the pace of our industry is just moving so exponentially fast that that just has to be true. You know what I really love too, about your story beyond just the power of fundamentals is there's a whole school of thought right there that would knock this, wide breadth of services perspective, but it's also an example that you can make anything work if you solve something hard and it definitely sounds like you've. Done that by your investment in training and, and a hands-on approach. You've done business. So there's all, again, proof that there's a billion ways to make this all work. So speaking of that, what do you see the future being where's the next 10, 20, or more years of beyond spots and dots for you?

Melanie 33:33

Yeah, so we have been on the Inc 5,000 list several times. Many times actually. And when I sat in that room. I think when I had won the fourth award, it was very powerful to see other business owners and to talk to the other business owners and entrepreneurs about growth and growth in business. And I practice what I preach when I'm meeting with a client. I tell them we practice what we preach. We do advertising for ourselves. We spend in the six figures for advertising and marketing. So we're constantly testing, systems and testing it for ourselves to learn what reporting is gonna come outta it. I always wanted to have a six Inc. 5,000 award and we got it. And now I want another one. So, time

Russel 34:25

to retire.

Melanie 34:27

Yeah, right. No, it's not.

Russel 34:29

Yeah, that's what I was say. I didn't, I didn't expect a no coming from that.

Melanie 34:32

No.

Russel 34:33

Yeah. Or sorry, I didn't expect to know. That's what I should say.

Melanie 34:35

We are in growth mode again. And you know, I feel like when you get to a certain level, you kind of plateau out because it's really hard to continue to expand. So retention is critical, but we are in growth mode, and I did just. Bring on a, a new VP of develop business development. And she's very high level and was very high level at PNC bank and total power player and I'm in growth mode again. So the next five, 10 years. Five years for sure. Growth mode, expansion, office location expansion, potential acquisition or acquisitions. I'm back. I'm here and I'm back in growth mode. So. Not going anywhere quite yet.

Born or Made?

Russel 35:20

All right, sweet. Well, I can't wait to have you on again for a round two down the road and hear about what's happened in your business between now and then. So let me just ask you one last question then, Melanie. Are entrepreneurs born or are they made?

Melanie 35:37

Oh man, I. Believe that it's in you, it's innate in you. If, if it's in you. I feel that they're born, but I'll tell you what, there's a lot that a lot of them out there that didn't feel it, didn't think they were born with it, and they, they were self-made or made with others helping them. And you know what? More power to'em. I love it. I think everybody should own their own business. Every time I see someone who has a passion for something they're good at, like a real, true, deep passion. I try to talk'em into starting a business because it's not for everybody. It really isn't.

Russel 36:15

Yeah.

Melanie 36:15

But I would love to support anybody who wants to do it.

Russel 36:20

I love that. That's amazing. Alright, well as sad as I am to wrap this up today, uh, one, one more question for you is just with people wanna know more about beyond spots and dots, where can they go?

Melanie 36:32

Definitely connect with us on LinkedIn. Certainly connect with me personally. Also, the business, we have a Facebook account, please, like us, can't like anymore follow us and the website for our company is literally beyond spots and dots.com with tons of information so they can certainly connect there and reach out directly there.

Russel 36:54

Perfect. Well, there you have it folks. You have the website address, and for those that are active listeners, you can always go to an agency story.com. When we launch the episode, we have all the company information and about, from this episode. So go there. And my gosh, Melanie, thank you so much today for taking the time out of your schedule to remind us of the power of fundamentals from education, communication, transparency, and practicing what you preach. Probably above all, I'm just really pre. Appreciate you taking the time to share that with us today.

Melanie 37:25

Thank you so much. Appreciate your time. Really do.

Russel 37:29

Likewise. Likewise. Thank you for listening to an agency story podcast where every story helps you write your own, subscribe, share, and join us again for more real stories, lessons learned, and breakthroughs ahead. What's next? You'll want to visit an agency story.com/podcast and follow us on Instagram at an agency story for the latest updates.

Melanie 37:53

Beyond Spots and Dots launched a grant during COVID, like the heart of COVID, and actually had business owners, women business owners specifically apply for the grant in all of the cities where we reside, where we have offices, and we were able to. Provide a grant to each of them as a$5,000 cash grant, and it just was so enlightening to be able to give back. So it's not necessarily a funny story by any means, but

Russel 38:19

yeah,

Melanie 38:20

a light story where, you know, you hear so much about COVID and COVID and COVID, and I'm tired of saying COVID. I mean, I, I'm the same. I'm right there with everybody.

Russel 38:29

Yeah.

Melanie 38:30

It was a really nice give back and obviously I was so honored to be able to do it and to do it during COVID, but I met some really cool business owners and I wanted to give so many more people the grant money, but we did, we honored it to one business owner in each market and it. Solely based off of their story and their COVID story and their entire business story really, not just COVID. So that was cool. That was a nice light moment in a really dark space for a business owner, frankly.

Russel 39:03

Right. Yeah. The Beyond Spots and Dots, your own version of the PPP. Yeah. Yeah. So I always love a good give back story.