Company: Citizen Advertising
Owners: C.J. Ogle and Brent Matthews
Year Started: 2008
Employees: 1 – 10
“An Agency Story” is a podcast series that delves into the trials and triumphs of running a marketing agency. Each episode explores different facets of agency life, from client relationships to creative campaigns, making it a treasure trove for marketing enthusiasts and professionals alike. The episode titled “Benevolent” stands out as it offers a deep dive into the origins and operations of Citizen Advertising, featuring co-founders C.J. Ogle and Brent Matthews.
This particular episode, “Benevolent,” journeys through the evolution of Citizen Advertising, beginning as an in-house agency and blossoming into a prominent figure in the industry. The episode provides rich insights into the foundational values of the agency—passion for small businesses, commitment to authenticity, and a culture of creativity. The lively banter between C.J. Ogle and Brent Matthews, seasoned with humorous anecdotes from their rock band days to unexpected challenges during shoots, not only entertains but underscores the authenticity and human touch they bring to their work.
Listeners will be captivated by stories such as their last-minute successful hiring of a crucial team member and the serendipitous client meetings that spurred significant growth. A standout moment is their recount of a hilarious incident during a commercial shoot, proving that humor often accompanies hard work in building a business.
Ending on a note that ponders the ongoing challenges and future aspirations of Citizen Advertising, the episode encourages entrepreneurs and marketers to reflect on their paths and the impact of nurturing a supportive and innovative business environment. For those intrigued by the grit and grace of agency life, particularly in the small business sphere, “Benevolent” is not just a listen but an experience that inspires and educates.
“An Agency Story: Benevolent” is more than just a recount of business beginnings and marketing strategies; it’s a heartfelt look at the personal and professional growth of two entrepreneurs who continue to leave a mark on their community. Tune in to be inspired, to laugh, and perhaps, to see the world of advertising through a lens of impactful storytelling and genuine passion.
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Show Transcript
Welcome to An Agency Story podcast where we share real stories of marketing agency owners from around the world. From the excitement of starting up the first big sale, passion, doubt, fear, freedom, and the emotional rollercoaster of growth, hear it all on An Agency Story podcast. An Agency Story podcast is hosted by Russel Dubree, successful agency owner with an eight figure exit turned business coach. Enjoy the next agency story.
Russel:
Welcome to An Agency Story podcast. I’m your host Russel. In today’s episode, we’re joined by CJ Ogle and Brent Matthews, the creative minds behind the Citizen Advertising in Knoxville, Tennessee. This episode explores the serendipitous transforming of a simple in-house marketing effort into a full service advertising agency. From their tales of the rock band days to unexpected sewage issues during a commercial shoot, CJ and Brant share the unconventional paths and pivotal moments that have shaped our business philosophy. Discover how Citizen Advertising’s commitment to local businesses and their unique personable approach to marketing continues to foster deep connections within their community. Enjoy the story. Welcome to the show today, everyone. I have CJ Ogle and Brent Matthews here today with Citizen Advertising. Thank you so much for being on the show today, guys.
CJ:
Thanks for having us.
Russel:
Excited to learn more about your guys business, but let’s get going. And what does Citizen Advertising do and who do you do it for?
CJ:
We’re a small advertising agency. It’s full service advertising agency based in Knoxville, Tennessee. We’ve been serving, pretty much the Southeast for going on 15 years now.
Brent:
We focus primarily on, small to medium size local businesses. That’s where CJ and I came from and that’s what we love. We’ll be able to work with, not so small businesses from time to time, but our focus is on that local business.
Russel:
I love the Knoxville area. You guys got a pretty cool town there. Want to certainly learn a lot more about your agency and the overall business, but before we get there, let’s go back in time for a second. Before you started agency, before you even thought about starting the agency, coming out of high school, or even before that if you want, what were you guys thinking you were going to do, or who are you going to be when you grew up?
CJ:
That’s a good question. We still don’t know what we want to be when we grow up. We may figure that out one day. We kind of fell into advertising by pure chance. Brent and I go way, way back. Known each other since freshman year high school, I believe.
Brent:
Yep.
CJ:
As any good young man growing up in the nineties, we were in rock bands and played, played music all over the Southeast. We had an opportunity to play in rock bands and travel and have a great time in our younger years and, enjoy the creative outlet. But you know, obviously as is the case, that’s a tough business to be in.
Brent:
If you like making a living.
CJ:
Exactly. We had to grow up at some point, so we got, we grew up and got real jobs, whatever that means. For us, it meant working at a mattress retail business that had, multiple stores here in the Knoxville area. While we were in bands and working and starting our families, we had the opportunity to, work on the marketing side. For this particular mattress retailer, who is still a client, by the way. One thing led to another and the owner of that company encouraged us to start an in house agency, to handle the marketing. We were already handling it, but to more formalize it and create a company within a company, we did that and the rest is history. There’s a lot more details in that story that I skipped over, but that’s pretty much the hotspots.
Russel:
I want to get to some of those, but first we got to go back to this band phase that, uh, you know, clearly was such a strong part of your guys’s kinship, or I guess not kinship, but, uh, friendship. What was the band’s name?
Brent:
It’s Hospital.
Russel:
What is it, Hospital?
Brent:
Yeah.
Russel:
Hospital?
Brent:
You act like you like you never heard of us?
Russel:
I’ll have to go dig out some old tapes out of the attic and see if i’ve got you guys’s album.
CJ:
All right. We’re going to send Russel a care package. You like vinyl?
Brent:
Yeah.
CJ:
We’ll send you some t-shirts. We actually had our final show last year, believe it or not.
Russel:
Oh, wow. That’s really cool.
Brent:
First show in 20 years and then the last.
CJ:
First show in 20 years, but it was our last one.
Russel:
Wow. That’s awesome. That’s a story within a story right there. You decided to work at the same place and as you said, started this in house marketing agency for this business. Was the idea at the beginning of that, that you would service other types of businesses? What was the real goal at the time of actually creating this in house agency?
Brent:
As I remember, CJ was a little more involved, so he may see, remember it differently. But as I remember, we had a hard time getting on, we did a lot of radio and print and things and TV was not really within our reach for a long time. And then suddenly it was when things went south in 2008 and 9, and a lot of the car dealers and local business pulled out of TV, it became affordable. The owner of the business we work for is, he decided to roll the dice, take a chance and get on TV when everybody else was getting off TV, but we had to get a spot produced. We had trouble then finding someone in town that we could afford to produce a good looking spot and didn’t want to just use a TV station. I think that was the catalyst to us saying, let’s just figure out how to do this. We can go get the equipment ourselves and learn how to produce video, start making commercials ourselves. I think part of that deal was to create an agency in the store, in the place we work for and then, you know, make that the 15 percent on the buys and that would cover the cost of the equipment. We were kind of rolling, but I don’t know that, I didn’t anyway, have any grand plans to grow it into an agency, anything like what we are now.
CJ:
We had the, the grand old statement that so often gets people in trouble. It says, how hard could it be? That was our first mark, that was our first tagline at Citizen. How hard could it be?
Brent:
Yeah. Ignorance is probably the real catalyst.
CJ:
Yeah, no, no doubt about that. That is absolutely true. I definitely don’t think we saw beyond kind of that, that first initial effort that we put in, you know, it was a unique time in the economy, 2008 was a difficult time for a lot of people, but it created a lot of opportunity, you know, as the debt got resolved and we saw it as an opportunity. Thankfully, our mentor, the owner of The Bed Store in Knoxville, Tennessee, that’s the name of the retail chain. He was very forward thinking. And again, as Brent said, took the opportunity, when that seismic shift happened in the economy to take advantage and take market share. Much to our delight and maybe a little bit of our surprise, it really worked. The business quintupled in size over the next three years and, um, that afforded us more opportunities as people took notice of what we were doing. It really helped us hammer out, because I’ll be honest with you. We didn’t know what we were going to be. We did that and it was almost like a year experiment to sort of figure it out. We thought maybe at first we would just be straight production and just do video production only and not do any of the strategy or media buying or anything else. And that’s where we landed on that small business focus and, just so happens if that’s what we happen to be the best at.
Brent:
We did have one rule when we started off, no weddings.
Russel:
No wedding.
CJ:
No, absolutely no weddings. That was a hard rule. Yep.
Russel:
That’s very fair.
CJ:
And the video production, that’s a very tantalizing temptation for a lot of them cause it’s easy money, but we said no way.
Russel:
I can appreciate that. My brother owns a wedding events company out of Tulsa and, I’ve heard a story or two about what that looks like. Might be a good choice on your side. Obviously you’re already going down the path of sharing how this idea came to fruition and how it started to evolve, and you were hinting at that, right? That this eventually became a lot bigger idea than you could have ever imagined. What was the real impetus for that transition to start to happen? Just share what actually led to starting Citizen?
CJ:
Brent may different from me on this a little bit, but I really think it boils down to, we have never, we don’t really go hunting for business. I would love to tell you, what’s the old adage? Don’t tell the truth, tell the legend. Cause we’re not smart enough to really craft a great legend, the truth is we just were blessed with really good opportunities. We, I think as best as we could, when we had an opportunity, we took advantage of it, but that led to other opportunities. There was no grand plan to create an agency that did that serve small businesses. It happened because when we created work that is successful, tends to feed itself, right? It feeds the system. If we do a good job with client X, client Y is paying attention and that’s how you get that introduction. We’ve been really blessed in that area that if we do a good job for a client, they are very happy to recommend us. Or somebody sees our work in the marketplace and tracks us down. That’s where we had the first of our few biggest clients that we work with tracked us down based on some of the TV advertising that we’re doing. They wanted to know who made those spots or who made this campaign. Knoxville is not a big town, so they just rolled down their window and yelled and they found us. That really is the long and short of it. Brent, do you have anything to add there? Did I miss anything?
Brent:
I mean, I don’t know that it’s as simple as boiling it down to one point, but there was one particular point, where, as he said, we were at a football game where one of the stations had invited us out. We met another guy there that, um, his family was in the car business and he was starting to open a dealership. I started talking to him and he said, oh, we’ve been trying to find the agency that did the, Bed Store commercials. He loved him. A few months later, he, he got our information a few months later, called us back and started working with us. We really didn’t know what we were getting into the car business. If you’re familiar at all, it’s an absolute beast. And it was right around the same time that we were looking to hire our first full time employee, and landed on him. He’s still with us today. VP of strategy and has played a very crucial role in helping us grow. All of that kind of came together within a matter of maybe 6 months. And I know, for me anyway, that’s where I started thinking, I don’t know that I can keep doing both of these, work in The Bed Store and then continue to run this as it’s going. That’s where we started to plan on how we were going to go full time in it.
Russel:
Just talk a little bit about that dynamic of, you know, obviously you’re starting a business inside of another business and just how that process actually looked like from right around the time or the day that you eventually separated from The Bed Store and became Citizen Agency. What did that world look like?
CJ:
First thing I would say is it was a very long runway. Number one is we were feeling our way as we went. Number two, we didn’t, we were too afraid to make any major moves. We had very good jobs where we were. We were pretty happy. It wasn’t like something we were looking to get away from it. and our owner who is still again, to this day, our mentor was always encouraging. It’s not lost on us what an absolute incredible opportunity that we had and how unique it was, because I don’t think that would be common in most companies. We just happened to have an incredible boss that really helped and encouraged us along the way, but he, we had the opportunity to really start slow. the first few, two, three, four years, we had one, two, maybe three clients max, you know, and then when things started to ramp up heavily, exactly that time Brent was talking. I think 2014, 2015 somewhere in that neighborhood, really took off. And that’s where we started adding clients by the handfuls at that point. That’s where it got, it got to be intense because we would come in the mornings and work from five a. m. to, you know, nine a. m. on our Citizen work, and then work, then have to transition and focus to our other day job, so to speak, and then work night. We were really pulling some long hours to make it all work when it was just the two of us. To Brent’s point about when we realized we needed a new employee, it was right around that time, and we really, really needed him. We desperately needed him. That was a huge, pivotal moment for us. From there, it’s just been, you know, this growth where we try to stay ahead of it. There was the moment that it really was hard, when it came down to separating, but we’re really not separated. We’re our own business and we’re completely, separated from The Bed Store proper, but we still do so much for them that probably most advertising agencies don’t do. Things from consultation and, we go on business trips with them and we’re still very, very close.
Russel:
I will say, I’ve heard many, many agency origin stories. I can’t even keep track of how many folks I’ve talked to over the last few years here, and this is probably, the most unique, origin story that I can think of. Most all others fall in one of a handful of categories, but to have this very long evolutionary path from within an in house marketing agency to your own businesses, pretty cool.
Brent:
The quick version of our story is, is whoops. Here we are.
Russel:
It just sounds like too, there was never even just this, there was never this kind of major moment as you’re describing that. It just started at a hundred percent part of Bed Store. Then as you think you said nine, 10 years later, it was down to 1%. Then you guys were off on your own as you’ve hit this, sounds like this really just kind of have to growth peak in the business. Very fascinating. And then, I don’t know, tell me, this seems like it might been another benefit going through that process is because you did not have to have some of these other clients to survive or pay the bills when you were part of Bed Store, that that gave you the opportunity to really hone and practice how to deliver effective results and all the other things that can kind of cause chaos in an agency. When you think back about that, is that how it felt, and in terms of how you guys look at it?
Brent:
Very much. CJ has already touched on this, but very uniquely to, I think we learned, not having worked for another agency and didn’t come up in the business, don’t know a lot about how other agencies really operate. But we’ve learned over the years and now those early years, especially. I think we had that unique angle. CJ calls us a small business whisperers. Our experience in the small business gives us a unique, angle to be really able to communicate and understand and relate to the, to those business owners. A lot of other agents that I don’t know that they really can have, they haven’t worked it like that.
CJ:
We often, talk about it, it’s one thing to come up with a creative campaign idea or a strategy that you’re going to use for a client. It’s entirely different when you understand what it’s like, that payroll goes out next week, you know, and the connection to the real effect on the families that it has to work. We just don’t hope it works. This effort that we’re doing, it has to work. I think there’s a desperation in that that we learned early on in a small business setting. We’re like, you know, those dollars, and I know that’s why a lot of agencies don’t like to work with small businesses because they treat every dollar like it’s their last, because sometimes it is. It’s a bigger gamble for them. Then it’s not just some line item on a marketing budget that comes out that the marketing director for that company has, you know, they don’t care. They do care but they don’t. It’s not their money, I guess, would be a nice way to say, there’s a lot of great marketing directors out there that absolutely do care, but it’s a different animal. When you can lose your house over something working or not working, that’s a different proposition entirely.
Russel:
That’s such a great way you can take on that responsibility, having experienced yourselves. I felt the same thing in our own agency journey, right? The farther eventually got in terms of the size or type of company you’re working with that from the person whose bank account you were taking money out of, the less some of those things. I mean, quite honestly, what you’re saying, the less the person on the other end cared, because it’s not their dollar per se. And sometimes it’s not even a bad thing. But can appreciate how you guys got trained and born up in a way that allowed you to, to take that seriously and really even build your practice around to handle that and take that with you after the fact. All speaks to this, I’ve been just thinking a lot lately, just how key the idea of runway is in this whole world of business. It sounds like you guys had a very, very long runway, and that’s allowed you to really be able to achieve what you’ve been able to achieve here once you did break away. Whenever this time period did occur that was official, I mean, it sounds like, and you can say otherwise, that it was just business as usual. Nothing really changed in the business. You just continued to do what you’d been doing all that much longer before. Or was there any, any major new inputs that you had to worry about or deal with because of this, the actual finality of the transition?
CJ:
There was a year transition, I guess, that culminated. I’m bad with, with the years somewhere around 18. The owner of The Bed Store, he, his retelling of the story is, is that he got a vision in the middle of the night that said, let my people go, is what, is what he finally, because I think he struggled with, he struggled with it a little bit because, you know, at the time, I mean, Brent and I, in addition to our marketing responsibilities and agency responsibilities, Brent was running the entire operations department for, uh, an eight store chain, which is, shipping, ordering a product. I was managing, I was the general manager so I was overseeing a sales staff and a sales manager as well as the, the whole thing. We really, um, for, for better or worse, we were running the business, the daily operation of the business. The owner had to, he tells us often is that was the thing he finally, he didn’t want to let go, but he finally goes, you know what, I got to let these guys go do their thing that is growing beyond what they even imagined. He felt like he was holding us back at that point. It was all very good, and it still is good to this day. That relationship is still great. We still, are very thankful for it, but that was really where it culminated, if there was. But as far as business as usual, I think it probably was. What we had learned to adapt as business as usual. We had already had, we were out of the, the corporate building of the bed store and had our own office space. By that time we had four, no, how many, six employees at that point. It had grown kind of independent of us, of Brent and I, and we still had one foot in The Bed Store just to make sure it was, it was keeping it in the middle of the road. And then we just stepped out. Luckily it worked out great. They have great people there to come in and fill our shoes and do a better job than we ever did in those jobs anyways. I think they’re better off for it.
Brent:
It’s working out well for them.
CJ:
Yeah.
Russel:
That’s good. That’s an amazing thing. I’ve heard other, not from a completely, you know, autonomous business from an agency doing this, but I have heard examples of, and probably even my own mindset in the agency business was to support sometimes when people have an idea for another endeavor. Now, regardless of whether that would be within our walls or whether it be something they’re doing outside, but to kind of let, let people take some risk and some chances. I’ve, came across an agency the other day where they let that do that and they ended up spinning up this whole other business within their agency. I don’t know if you can speak to the idea, because I guess, let me give the other counter what I’ve seen as well as, as some people are very afraid of this idea of either encouraging or letting their team kind of branch off, branch out or whatever. But if you could almost put yourself in the shoes of this mentor and the owner of The Bed Store you had, like, how did this ultimately work out well for him just to see the other side of what benefit could be to, you know, approaching business in this way?
Brent:
You say, how did it work out well for him?
Russel:
Like a positive story of like this whole idea of I let CJ and Brent go do this thing. Here’s why this was a good, smart business idea, short term and long run for him.
Brent:
I think it has, and again, we’re very fortunate to have some really good people to, to step in those roles and really not miss a beat from what we were doing. I like to say I would’ve been this way anyway. I had definitely learned this from him being my mentor. One of the things that I love and respected about him so much is that he, he really just wants to create an environment where people can be their best, and that means whatever it means. In our case, it meant going, leaving his business and going full time into our own. At the time that he encouraged us to do so, I don’t know that he knew that it was best for his business, but I think he thought it was best for us.
Russel:
I love, absolutely love what you want to say, and I want to just make sure we capture that of the idea of, you know, running a good culture and a good environment is about what’s doing the best for your team and the people that are contributing to that environment, whatever that may be. That is actually the benefit of the value that they’re going to put in their best for however long they’re going to be there. And even be a champion and ambassador after the fact, even regardless of whether that eventually doesn’t put money in the pocket or even in some degree hurts, right? It hurts losing someone, talented like that. That’s a really great takeaway and insight there.
CJ:
I think at the end of the day, you kind of, you really don’t, and this is a general business principle. I think it applies to every business. I don’t think you can hold on to that. Both good and bad, I think you have to sort of step back and see the, that person, if they are in a good position and they’re thriving there and they’re doing great and you can’t hold them back. Ultimately they’re gonna, they’re gonna feel it eventually, right? You may be able to hold them for a while, but I think eventually they’re gonna spread their wings and fly. Or, I think too, conversely, the opposite is true. If you have an employee that you like but they’re in the wrong position or it’s not working out, you’re doing them a disservice to hold them in that position too, you know? I’ve seen business owners, and I, we’ve been in the position of probably being in that, that position where we’ve held on too long and we shouldn’t have. I know it definitely was in my old role from a management standpoint, um, have held onto employees just cause I liked them and kept them sort of held hostage, but. It’s like 38 Special says, hold on loosely, but don’t let go because if you cling too tightly, you’re going to lose control. Wise, wise words by 38 Special.
Brent:
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Russel:
We might need a Hospital to do a cover of that as your outro song to that.
Brent:
Now we’re talking.
Russel:
Way to keep the music alive in here. You’ve kept and maintain this focus on small businesses, and for some of the reasons we mentioned, right, there becomes this kind of grass is greener aspect, will bigger businesses pay more bigger businesses, or easier to work with because they don’t care as much kind of where the checks are coming from and that sort of thing. But you guys haven’t done that. Obviously there’s a passion there, but what do you feel like has worked really well for you guys in terms of just focusing on small businesses where it doesn’t seem like you’re really inclined to, to seek greener pastures.
CJ:
Well, I’ll speak for me and then Brent can, he can speak for himself, of course. But I think it’s one of the things that has done is it helped, it’s helped us create long term relationships with clients. In the agency model where they’re going after bigger accounts that churn agencies more, you may get a hold of that behemoth for a year max or something, but then you don’t necessarily cultivate that long term relationship. There’s a certain benefit, not only monetarily, but that’s not really why we do it. It’s more of benefiting, really getting to know the DNA of the client by spending lots of time with them, by spending time with their people, by really getting to know them, getting to see how their businesses is, how they handle business in an up economy, how they handle it in a challenging economy. Everything in between there is a huge amount of, benefit in that. I think it all comes from cultivating a longterm relationship. We often say that our goal is to find a monogamous client relationship, right? And then make it the best marriage it can possibly be. That means us serving the client. That’s really what it’s about. Like any good relationship, it’s about thinking of the other person. It’s old timey values really. It’s maybe falling out of fashion, but it’s really about being humble and serving that, that client. Serving them in the best way you can. We often joke and mainly I do, and it gets very little laughs, but I keep saying it is that if you want it, if the client wants us to come mow their yard out front of their corporate headquarters, we’ll do it. We’re probably not the best guys for that job, but we will do it. I think it comes back to that. Those long term relationships really have paid off for us, but we don’t have a lot of client churn at all
Russel:
Love that. And if you’re only half listening in there, CJ was not saying to actually marry your clients, but to think of that, relationship as a long term partnership and all about service. I think that’s a great foundation.
CJ:
I don’t think that’s legal in Tennessee. Maybe your cousins. I don’t know.
Brent:
I think if it’s cousins it is, yeah.
Russel:
Second cousins only. But, um, where to go from there? Um. Some of the things that’s part of that in, in working with small businesses that I think you guys hinted at and shared. You are so close to the business to business owner, the DNA, as you said, and how critical that is. Perhaps a challenge baked into that is bring them along the journey, because they do care so much that they have to understand, uh, probably at a little more intimate level, what and why and how, some of those things are going on has that been a challenge for you guys and how have you overcome that? Or how do you look at that?
CJ:
It has been a challenge because it means sometimes having more patience with a client than most agencies would and having them come along. If we have an idea, you know, tendency in our, in our world is, you know, we’re the marketing experts, right? We’re the guys that know advertising, marketing and how to sell your business, how to sell your brand. Sometimes clients have very hard boiled opinions about what works and what doesn’t work, what they’ve tried in the past that didn’t work. Or certain types of, media or mediums that just do not work for them. They said, I tried that. It doesn’t work. I do this. And so we have to be respectful of their past. They got to where they are somehow, right? We’ve heard and seen, you know, other agencies not be so patient and not be so kind and not be so, deferent to the client there. For us, that’s part of that long term strategy is sometimes we have to say, yes, sir. Yes, ma’am. That’s, we’ll do this, but just consider this for the future, or would you give us an opportunity to try this inside? We’re a sales organization. We’re an agency, but we sell stuff. Part of the sales process is listening to your customer, and in our case, it’s listening to our client. We got to listen to what they’re really saying. They may be saying, X medium doesn’t work for me. But what are they really saying? They’re saying that they just haven’t tried it or they’re afraid to try it or they can’t risk that amount of their marketing budget on it. It could be a multitude of things. But for us, that is probably one of the biggest challenges, is being patient because oftentimes we feel like we have a good beat on what will work for them. And it’s our failure as a sales person, as a professional sales person to sell them on that idea. They’re the first customer, right? Like if they’re selling anything, it doesn’t matter what it is. They’re selling cars, and if we’re going to sell them on an idea, they’re the first ones that have to buy it before we can roll it out to the masses. That can be frustrating at times, but it also is a, we find it, it’s challenging, you know, cause when we do get a victory on something, it feels great. That’s one thing for sure.
Russel:
I think you can boil all marketing down to the idea that clients are paying us money to buy more customers for them or to, you know, as you kind of use the word sell, either, or, but the devil’s in the details of how you go about that process. It just sounds like no matter what corner of the world you’re in, you can’t go wrong with listening and gathering information to provide the best results. I love how you spoke to that. One of the things that I know is very important to you guys is your team and the overall culture of the business. Is there anything you feel like you’ve done that’s unique or whether to bring them this long, right? They don’t necessarily, I doubt in most cases, have the same level of experience and inside knowledge of what it’s like to run a small business like you guys do, but how do you bring them along on that journey to be passionate about the work they do?
Brent:
I don’t know that we make any, any great effort. There’s not a lot of like, we do have meetings and stuff. It’s not like a lot of rah, rah, talking them up into it. An approach we’ve had from the beginning, and again, this comes from our mentor. I remember years ago, him talking about, make sure you take care of everybody. Make sure that everybody’s treated with respect. Coming from the mattress world, the mattress reps, a lot of times, got run over, they could get pushed around trying to win your negotiating deals or whatever. But I remember them always being taken care of and being treated respectfully. We approach our business like that. whether we’re buying media and we’re dealing with a rep or working with a client or whoever we’re working with, actors, actresses, whoever we’re working with, I always try to be very kind and respectful. In doing so, it’s proven to be the case so far that we’ve attracted a lot of really, really good people. People see, they appreciate the way we’ve treated them and then when an opportunity arises and they’re maybe leaving a TV station or whatever it is they’re doing, they come ask us about employment, about, maybe working with us. Even get referrals from, from other people too. We’ve just been fortunate of, I think, of building a reputation of being a place that, uh, a lot of, a lot of people around want to work with, who want to work for. Long story short, we get good people. Thankful that we get really good people. And when you have good people, it’s not difficult to get them to buy in because you know, what drives you is pretty similar.
CJ:
That’s true. And I think just practically how that works itself out here in our agency is just that we try to, we always say. We want to create an environment where adults can be themselves. You can do, we don’t put a lot of micromanaging rules in place for people. That’s really been our goal from the beginning. Number one, it’s, we came out from where we came from on The Bed Store side. You had to do that. You had to be very strict in your, in the way that you govern.
Brent:
Like retail sales. If the door says you’re open at nine, you got to be there at nine.
CJ:
Right.
Brent:
Not a lot of wiggle room in that.
CJ:
Exactly. We set out with a goal in mind is to say, this is a pie in the sky goal, by the way. It’s getting more and more difficult with 15 employees or 16 in Plano we have now, is to say, you know, our employee manual is 1 sentence. Do the right thing.
Brent:
It’s about to be longer.
CJ:
It’s about to be longer, but that is that the spirit of it up to this point, that is really what it’s been. If you find people that are like minded and have the same kind of goals and are sort of driven you do a good job of the fit that way, it actually makes it pretty easy to sort of give people latitude to somewhat set their own schedules. At the end of the day, we work for the client, the client’s our boss. And there are a multitude of projects going on at any given time in the agency. If you need to come in late today, because you have something, you know, then come in late today. It’s fine. As long as the work is getting taken care of, that’s what matters. Keeping the main thing, and then doing the right thing. When there’s a question, you ask yourself, what is the right thing? And as long as we’re speak the same language, we should land on pretty much, the right thing is the right thing. I know that sounds very, loosey goosey and it is, but it’s served us pretty well. I think it gives people that feeling that they’re empowered to work the way they see fit for the most part, you know?
Russel:
Yeah, I mean, just hearing you guys talk and just the thing that just comes to mind is I think that we could probably, all benefit from taking some of these lessons in every aspect of life. But, I just hear fundamental, simple values that you follow and just ensure that they’re applied in everything you do. And you said respect, you talked about listening, um, caring about success. The one mantra, of doing the right thing is simple, but true. And if you truly live it out, it, it sounds like it, you guys are walking testament to that, that it can work very well for you. I could go, go talk about so many more things, but we do have to start to wrap up here. What does the future look like for Citizen? Are you going to reverse the situation and buy a bed store, um, and go full circle or what are you guys thinking about 10 or more years?
Brent:
I hope not.
CJ:
Something went wrong.
Brent:
Love everybody that runs, that runs those businesses, but I don’t know that I want to get back into retail.
CJ:
Yeah, same.
Brent:
The question comes up from time to time, you know, how big do you want to be? Or where do you want to go from here? I used to say that I want to get as big as we can get, because there’s always a lot of people out there that need to be served and taken care of, and I want to help as many people as we can. I want to get as big as we can get without feeling like we’re like losing touch or losing, you know, the, the soul of what got us here. It’s very, very, fairly similar, but I’m learning it’s still something new for me these days. We have been very blessed to find good people and we continue to find good people. As long as we do, I want to be able to grow to, to continue to support. Earlier this year, we, we had an opportunity to hire a guy, who we’ve loosely worked with for a few years and loved him and knew he wanted to have him on the team someday, but we had that opportunity, but we really didn’t have a place for him. We didn’t have a ton of extra budget to make another full time hire. But we put our heads together and figured out how to make it happen and brought him on board. And that’s working out great. We’ve got another opportunity, I think this seems to be coming up right now that we’re talking through. It’s just finding a way to, make sure that we can keep everything moving to keep all these people funded and well fed and taken care of, and hopefully we keep finding those good people and continue to take care of them and just build a team to, I guess, to just wherever that goes.
Russel:
Sounds like a solid game plan to me.
Brent:
If it goes no further than this, I’ve already been blessed beyond anything I thought I would be. I’m good, but we keep finding good people on it. I want to find good homes for them.
Russel:
I love that. Make more room for good people. As good as a business goal as I might come across. Very cool story guys. Again, would love to ask many more questions, but the last big question for you today is are entrepreneurs born or are they made?
CJ:
I’m going to say that they are made. As most, things in this world, it just takes a certain level of dedication and want to, to get to where you want to go. And I don’t care what it is. Entrepreneurship is no different. We live in an age now where you literally can learn quantum physics on YouTube, if you want to, it’s just a matter of whether you want to do it, whether you’re willing to put up with the resistance that you’re going to run into and the difficulties that you’re going to run into. If you truly have it in your heart to be an entrepreneur and you decide you want to do that, then I think you absolutely can do it. We’re blessed to live in a country that still allows that to happen. we’re proof positive that, you know, I don’t even know that we set out to do it. It just sort of, it got foisted upon us. But I think you can make yourself into an entrepreneur. You gotta be willing to buckle up and take the bad with the good because it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. That would be my piece of advice to anybody is get ready, cause it’s a roller coaster. But yeah, I think they’re made.
Brent:
Absolutely the same. There’s no way I was born to do this. The series of very fortunate events. The mentor, CJ partnering with me. Again, keep hammering it, finding good people along the way, good clients. It’s worked out in a way so that it’s given me the opportunity to do it. I’ve had opportunities to learn how to do it, too, and, play entrepreneur before I had to actually be one in the old business. I was not born into this. That’s for sure.
Russel:
I love that. Love both answers. If people want to know more about Citizen Advertising, where can they go?
CJ:
They can check out our webpage at www.citizenadagency.com. Sorry, I get a little tickled at this question usually, um, or, you know, we’re on all the social platforms too. They can see how much fun we have on our Instagram page and our TikTok page. You see Brent dancing. You’ve not lived unless you’ve seen Brent dance, so.
Brent:
There’s some drunken Christmas party karaoke.
CJ:
All of it’s there, the good, the bad, the ugly.
Russel:
Or just drive down Main Street, Knoxville and yell your guys name as it sounds like.
CJ:
Just roll down the window. We’re on Western Avenue. Yeah, just come by and see us.
Brent:
We’ll wave back.
Russel:
There you go.
CJ:
We got a big red bear on the side of the building.
Russel:
All right. Well, there you have it, folks, you know the directions. Thank you so much guys for being on the show today. So many takeaways, but it just goes back to those fundamentals. Basic serve people well, and you can’t go wrong. Key ingredients to success. Thank you so much for sharing all those details about your journey today. It’s a pleasure to have you on the show.
CJ:
Thanks Russel. We appreciate you having us.
Brent:
Thank you.
Russel:
Pleasure is all mine.
We hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of An Agency Story podcast where we share real stories of marketing agency owners from around the world. Are you interested in being a guest on the show? Send an email to podcast@performancefaction.com. An Agency Story is brought to you by Performance Faction. Performance Faction offers services to help agency owners grow their business to 5 million dollars and more in revenue. To learn more, visit performancefaction.com.
Brent:
With the path that we were taking it, it felt, it was such a, you know, bold steps we’re taking to take on the, the big, you know, car dealer client and to make it, then to make our first big hire. We weren’t really taking any money out of the business. He was going to take all of our money to pay for it. At first, he turned us down, and we didn’t have a lot of other options. About, I guess two weeks later, he called us back, said that he was rethinking it. We finally got that worked out, and he came to work for us, and he worked the first day. The second day, he was late. We thought, he’s already quit on us. But eventually, about 30 minutes later, he showed up, and it worked out. That first hire was, uh, was tumultuous.
CJ:
That was a big step for us.,
Russel:
You guys really would have had to question yourselves if your first hire did a one day in and then said, see ya.
Brent:
The two of us and then, uh, Doug is his name. We’ve made it. We’ve said plenty of times since that, uh, he thought we were bigger than we were at the time. We thought he was more experienced than he was at the time. If either one of us actually knew the truth of the other, we would have never done it.
CJ:
Ignorance is bliss, isn’t it? I can think of one quick, funny story that has to do back when we were first starting to work pretty early on in the car business guys, you know, you shoot in the car commercials, which you, everybody’s seen them, we know them, they have all this certain kind of flavor. There’s one particular day that we were shooting for the July spot with one of our car dealers, who is absolutely a character, the GM and the sewer backed up in the dealership. Do you remember this Brent?
Brent:
Yep.
CJ:
Uncle Sam. Yep. We were in the middle of filming the commercial and, uh, the sewage runs out the front of the, uh, of the dealership, flooded the dealership. This particular guy who is a really funny kind of East Tennessee country good old boy says, come on down here. The deals are so good. People are shitting all over themselves. That was one of my favorite memories and we have it on, we have it on tape. That didn’t run on broadcast. Oddly enough. We didn’t run that, but, uh, there’s still time. There is still time. There is still time.
Russel:
That sounds like a good TikTok video.
CJ:
Yeah, yeah. It would kill today in this day and age.
Russel:
For sure.
