Company: L&L Collective
Owners: Beth Romer
Year Started: 2021
Employees: 1 – 10
“An Agency Story” illuminates the journeys of marketing agency owners, exploring their trials, triumphs, and insights. Hosted by Russel Dubree, a seasoned agency entrepreneur and business coach, this series taps into the raw emotions and experiences that shape the marketing landscape.
In this captivating episode, Beth Romer, founder of L&L Collective, shares her personal and professional evolution—from a budding fashion designer to the head of a marketing agency driven by creativity and flexibility. Disillusioned by the frantic pace and rigid structures of corporate life, Beth’s journey is a testament to pivoting towards one’s passions and creating a work-life balance that supports both her family and her business ideals.
Beth offers a wealth of anecdotes and insights, from her early days at Condé Nast to her strategic shifts in the world of agency marketing. She candidly discusses the challenges of maintaining creativity in the industry, particularly when dealing with small businesses, and how these challenges fuel her agency’s innovative approach. Notably, her story of an awkward business interaction with a sex company provides a humorous yet insightful look into maintaining business integrity and boundaries.
Listeners will find Beth’s story particularly inspiring, as it not only covers the inception and growth of L&L Collective but also dives into the complexities of balancing entrepreneurial drive with personal life. The episode leaves us pondering the dynamic and often blurred line between personal convictions and professional decisions in business.
Tune in to “An Agency Story” to hear Beth Romer’s full episode on “Fervor”. It’s a compelling tale of ambition, adaptation, and the art of thriving in both business and life. Discover how small businesses can ignite massive creativity and why sometimes, the biggest professional changes stem from the most personal reasons.
You can listen to this episode of An Agency Story on your favorite podcast app:
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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. Welcome to An Agency Story podcast. I’m your host Russel. On this episode, we are joined by Beth Romer owner and founder of L&L Collective, a marketing agency that brings flexible, creative and innovative solutions to businesses of all sizes with a particular soft spot for the small ones based out of Dayton, Ohio. Disheartened by rigid settings and unforgiving deadlines, Beth and her team are a group of creatives who left the agency world to take matters into their own hands. Driven by a desire for increased flexibility and quality time with her family. Beth set out to support small businesses with effective marketing strategy and execution. Beth shares are big goals and dreams and inspiring ambitions all on this episode. Enjoy the story
Russel:
Welcome to the show today, everyone. I have Beth Romer with L&L Collective. Thank you so much for joining us today, Beth.
Beth:
Thank you for having me. I’m so excited to be here.
Russel:
If you don’t mind, start us off with a quick overview. What is L&L Collective? What do you do and who do you do it for?
Beth:
L&L Collective is a marketing agency and we bring flexible, creative, and innovative solutions to businesses of all sizes. We range from small to large and we love that.
Russel:
You got that nailed down. I can see maybe some practice.
Beth:
I’m working on it. We just did a rebrand, so it’s easy for me have it down hopefully at this point.
Russel:
Fresh on the tongue. Love it. Let’s go back in time, everyone loves a good origin story. What did young Beth, coming out of high school into college, think she was going to be when she grew up?
Beth:
A fashion designer living in New York City. I am not that, I live in on a farm in Ohio. It’s the complete opposite of what I thought, but I’ve always had a real passion for retail fashion, product development and coming out of high school that’s what I thought I was going to do. I actually did an internship in New York City with CondéNast working for Women’s Wear Daily and quickly realized that wasn’t where I wanted to go. Switched things around a little bit.
Russel:
Oh, where the wind takes us. We’re going to hear a lot more about that, I’m sure. How far did you go down that path in terms of fashion retail world and what were some of the lessons you were learning at the time that eventually decided that wasn’t going to be your path? Tell us all the nuggets in that.
Beth:
The biggest thing after going to New York that I realized, and nothing about bad about New York, I actually love visiting there. My whole family’s from New York. I do love it there, but it is so fast paced. Everybody that I met was so excited to get to the next level, the next step in their career. I just kept looking like, why aren’t we all just happy with where we’re at? I quickly realized that wasn’t for me. I like to be very present in my moments and enjoy my life as it is, and I didn’t vibe with that. I told myself I wanted to have a job that sent me to New York to travel so I could still experience it, but I didn’t want to live there anymore. I studied fashion, retail, product development and business in college and after college, got a job at Abercrombie and Fitch headquarters, had the best of both worlds. I was working in retail, had that creative side that I loved with the products, the customers, I was on a team that traveled all the time. I actually traveled to New York City for my job a lot as well as internationally, opening up all of our flagship stores and merchandising that way. I still got to have that travel that I wanted from that New York City lifestyle, but actually from Ohio. I was in Columbus, Ohio, and I was working at Abercrombie Fitch for probably for four years before I switched. That’s where my career started.
Russel:
Every time I go to New York, I ask myself, could I live here? And I’m not entirely sure if I know the answer to that, but I enjoy a small town atmosphere as well, so maybe I’ll listen a little bit to the words you’re saying there. As I understand it you eventually got into the agency world, moved away from fashion. What were you doing in the agency world and how did that actually eventually inspire you to start your own?
Beth:
Truthfully, actually, after Abercrombie, I went to Speedway. I don’t know if you ever heard of Speedway, it’s a gas station in this area. They used to be owned by Marathon, now 7-Eleven owns them. I started there thinking that I wanted to still be in the retail side of things, but from a buying perspective. I did that, was the coffee buyer for all of the coffee for the convenience store, the cups, everything. Wasn’t for me. It was a great experience, but I quickly realized how much that I was craving creativity. That was lacking in the buying role. That’s when I had an introduction to somebody at an agency and she asked me if I was happy and I was like, no, I want something more creative and I never thought about working for an agency. I didn’t know much about it, coming from the fashion side of things. After interviewing, I was like, yeah, I want this. It was funny because in Speedway, I was the client. I was excited to have a client because I got to see what I loved and what I didn’t love about how people treated me and how they acted around me. I was ready to translate everything I learned there and become the person who has the clients. I transitioned to the agency world and I was a account director there and had a team and just hit the ground running on things.
Russel:
You spent some time there. I assume it was after that experience that led you to your own agency. Tell us how that thought process evolved.
Beth:
There was a lot of personal reasons for wanting to start my own business as well as professional reasons. The personal reasons for me, I am a mom, at the time of two boys, now a mom of three boys and needed some sort of flexibility. With the agency world it’s really hard to find that. Hard to find a company that’s not full of fire drills or jumping on a client call at five o’clock at night. I needed to have some more work life balance in my life. Personally, I kept thinking, there’s got to be more than this. There’s got to be something where I can win as a mom and win as a woman in business and be able to marry the two together and not give less of myself to either. That was my personal reasons for wanting to start my own business. Professionally, as an agency gets bigger, it’s very easy to only want bigger clients, and I get it, just from now being a business owner. I totally understand that. Budgets are bigger, you have more people and you want to make sure you’re doing the right projects. But there was such a lack of small business and the creativity that small business can bring to an agency. I think a lot of times with larger clients, we get so caught up in doing the same things for them over and over again. Designers get bored, copywriters get bored, account managers get bored because you’re doing the same thing. With small business, it gives you a diverse creativity for your business, and so that’s. where I wanted to go. We also weren’t doing much social media. I love social media. I’m like sitting here working with my life coach at one point and I’m like, there’s gotta be something to this social media, small businesses, flexibility for my family. What if this actually worked out? That’s how I started L&L Collective.
Russel:
Fascinating. Three boys and running an agency. That has to be so exciting and so terrifying. I can only imagine.
Beth:
Yes. It is.
Russel:
Y you eventually got to where you made that switch. Was that kind of no reservations, no looking back? Was there a lot of hesitation, angst? What were you feeling at the time?
Beth:
A lot of hesitation, a lot of fear, which I think anybody can relate to. A lot of the feelings of what if it doesn’t work out? What if I lose a client? What if I can’t get any more clients? All of that goes through your head, but then I’m a very positive manifesting type person, so I can’t help but think what if it does work out? What if I get the right clients? What if I lose the right clients so that more of the right clients can come in? There was a lot of trusting in myself, but I did have to just go for it. My husband’s also an entrepreneur, so there’s that too. I was leaving a consistent salary, all of that, and so it was like, okay, but he pushed me a little bit too. You can do it. I went for it and yeah, it was scary, I’m not gonna lie. It’s still scary. You have those moments as a business owner, I always say the highs are so high, but the lows are so low. You’ve got to make sure when you’re in a low spot that you remember that high spots coming back.
Russel:
Probably the most accurate statement made in the world today, right there, folks, you heard it here. You mentioned you had a life coach. Was there a defining moment or the magic words they say to make you make that transition or was it more of an evolution of a process and a conversation?
Beth:
I think more of an evolution, but I truly don’t think I would own a business if I never had a coach and I think I would have still be wanting to own my own business. I would still have idea after idea. It was her that kind of helped me put those ideas into action and believe in myself, trust in myself. When I first started talking with her, I was maybe going to open up a pillow shop. I’ve always been like thinking of entrepreneur ideas. I thought of a business idea the other day that I texted somebody. I was like, you guys should do this because I need to focus on my current business. But I’m always thinking of ideas and she was the one who helped me act on it and believe in myself. If you are thinking about starting a business, get a coach. You will literally never, ever not have a coach. It changes your life in so many ways.
Russel:
I might carry a little bias, but I couldn’t agree more. We had a business coach for many years in our business. So impactful, so valuable. The first thing I did when I started a new business, to your advice I went right back to the same coach again and it’s been absolutely instrumental in my own growth and success. We’ll double down on that for sure. One of the things you mentioned before is being this advocate for small business and that being such a passion and a driving factor for you. Why is that the case? I know you mentioned creativity, but why do you love small businesses so much?
Beth:
I love small businesses so much because of the hope that small businesses bring. I think for a small business owner to do it, I’m going to go for this. I’m going to open my own business, I’m going to pay my taxes. I’m going to do this. That takes a lot. It takes a lot of guts, it takes a lot of drive. It takes a lot of belief. And I love what that kind of business owner brings to an agency, but I also love working with people like that because people who open their own business, they have to have a trust in the bigger picture of life. They have to eliminate fears at time and they have to have this belief that it’s going to work out or they wouldn’t be doing it. Those are the kinds of people I like being around. I like being around people who believe that everything’s going to work out. I love what they bring to our agency.
Russel:
Gosh, love that as well. Could get that whole statement tattooed on my left forearm. But maybe for another day. I think a lot of businesses love all the things you said about small business, right? Sometimes it also comes with some alternatives or cons in terms of budgets and things like that. How have you been able to either navigate or embrace some of those maybe less than stellar aspects of working with small businesses?
Beth:
We have set some very big boundaries with small businesses and I was bad at that at first with my agency because at first when I started it was just me. I didn’t have employees. I was doing anything and everything because I wanted it to succeed. But at the end of the day, we can only do so much for what we’re getting paid. We have set very big boundaries with our clients of, here is what you are going to get for that cost or here’s what we can deliver, but we are happy to get creative. If they also need a blog post done, then maybe one week we eliminate what we’re doing for your social media to be not as strong, and we’ll work on that blog post for you. We try to communicate and be open and honest with them of okay, great. We’d love to do that, so here’s what it’s going to look like for the remainder of the month. It keeps us safe. It keeps them safe. It’s worked well, but for a while I didn’t have boundaries in place and that kind of got messy real quick.
Russel:
Imagine we can all understand why, and I think most agencies have been through that regardless of the size of the clients they serve, a good lesson learned there as well. You mentioned having a passion in social media and there’s knowing the skill and the trade and industry, and then there’s the art of delivering that to the client. Beyond boundaries, how have the services and what are some of the key lessons you’ve learned in the art of delivering social media as a service?
Beth:
For us, social media is, what we always say, our bread and butter. We say our bagel and cream cheese people, but we try hard to be creative and ahead of schedule for our clients. We understand, especially even our larger clients, they don’t have time to be looking at posts every day or hey, we want to throw this up or hey, we want to do that. For us, the art of social media has become setting a great schedule where our clients are always a month ahead of schedule for their social media. On top of that, always thinking through design, creativity, and our content and being strategic and how we do it. We don’t get caught up in like a one way approach. If a small business comes to us or a large business comes to us, it’s not like we put everybody on the same schedule or, this is what we think you should do. We always try to look at the industry and think what’s best for your business, and then we adapt to that and change as the platform changes. We don’t say well, okay, this is working so lets just do this forever. We don’t do that. The one thing we do always recommend, though, is that you stay true to yourself. I think there’s a lot of gurus telling you what to do on social media and how to do it. We have found that the best thing you can do is to just be you and stop trying to be somebody else or another business. You’ve got to stay true to yourself.
Russel:
Those darn gurus. I think along those lines, and this is just more of a curiosity question, can every business regardless of the type of industry leverage social media? Subsequently, how do you decide which platform they should be on given whatever who they’re going after, I guess you could say?
Beth:
I think every company should leverage social media. It’s important to understand what are the goals of your business and who is your customer and what platforms are they on? But it’s also being open to the idea that you should be on another platform that you don’t think you should be on and giving it a shot and seeing what happens. It’s funny, we have some clients, more like a smaller, like a coach or something like that might come to us and say, I actually don’t need any more business. Why do I need social media? I’m like, everybody can always have more, but let’s try to have more business, but use it as a business card for yourself. Use it as a portfolio for yourself. It goes both ways from a larger business perspective. Let’s sell your product. Let’s get your name out there. Let’s do it the right way. Here’s what we’re going to suggest doing. But for somebody smaller who might not need the business, it’s let’s just show people what you’re able to do, what you’re capable of. And when you go to that meeting, you can say, hey, check out my social media. Here’s all my reviews, or here’s everything I’ve done. Utilize that for yourself, almost like a website. We try to get creative and figuring that part out for our clients because kind of depends, and what platform people should be on is also totally dependent on the business. We might look and say you should be on LinkedIn and Pinterest or you should be on all the platforms or you should be making videos because TikTok and Reels, let’s go for it. We work with our clients to deliver whatever strategy is best for their business. That’s where, I think a lot of people always say feel we’re an extension of their team, but we do feel like we’re an extension of our clients teams in the sense of understanding truly what your goals are. We’re not going to start doing your social media or your emails or your blog posting without an understanding of what your goals are. We want to understand, where do you want to go in a year? How do we make this all come full circle for you? And we’re proud of that, cause I don’t think necessarily that always happens. It’s yeah, let’s do it. We can give you a strategy, but it’s like, what is your business goal?
Russel:
As long as you don’t tell me I need to be on Snapchat. I just haven’t, that’s for the young kids. Another thing I think that, agencies can be good or not good at, and I think it can oftentimes be a different trade or success in terms of applying their own trade to themselves. Have you been able to do that in your business?
Beth:
We have and it’s funny. That’s been I guess the up and down, like a roller coaster. It was when we were working through our rebrand. We lost sight of everything and coming from an agency It was very easy to see how quickly clients come first and I get that so I always said I was gonna treat my business as a client. Our marketing, everything. It’s very easy to not do that when you have more work coming in. To be honest, social media wise, we meet as a team and make sure that we’re doing that for our own business, but in terms of our rebrand, we worked with somebody to help us with our website because we knew with everything else going on, we weren’t gonna be able to get to it. It was like, no, we’re not going to be able to focus on this website the way we should be able to with all of the other client work, so we worked with somebody else who we love their work and want to learn more about how they do things. We worked with him and he helped us bring our vision to life. It’s very easy to only want to use people internally just from a budget standpoint, but I think it’s important to remember that you also need to treat your business like the business it deserves to be.
Russel:
I will stamp that. What brings you the most joy as an agency owner? What gets you excited?
Beth:
I love the thrill of getting a new client. That’s my thing. I love having client meetings. I love meeting with people. I love building that relationship and the idea of what our relationship can look like for years to come. That is my thing, I love it. With that said, I also love that I have a team that helps run the business the way it should be ran because I am a very idea oriented, creative thinker. Because of that, I’m also very well aware of what I’m not good at. Sometimes it’s acting on a job or acting on a project or acting on my idea that’s this crazy out of the box idea that I’m like, we should do this. And then my team who’s amazing and absolutely incredible at what they do, they take my idea and they do it. I’m like, this is incredible because I’m not great at necessarily getting down to the business in that aspect. The thrill of new clients is my jam.
Russel:
That’s awesome. You’ve learned relatively early on how to best focus on what you’re good at and then how to delegate or manage to what you’re not, and I imagine that’s been a big secret of your success.
Beth:
It has, and it made me hire very early on. That was also obviously a risk as a new business owner to do, but I knew that if I want this business to go where I can see it going, or I want it to go, I needed the right people to help me get there. I can get a new client all day long, but I have to keep that client and I need people to help me keep that client. That’s where the team comes in and they’re awesome at it.
Russel:
There you go. Last big question for you, Beth, are entrepreneurs born or are they made?
Beth:
I think it’s both. I think that everybody is born, most people are born an entrepreneur, I will say. I think everybody has an idea in their head. Everybody. I know so many people are like, oh, wouldn’t that be a great business, but it’s the people who act on it, work at it, and make the mistakes. I think that’s what makes you an entrepreneur. I do think there are some people who are born with the natural gift of going for it in life. But I also think that even if you have that gift, it takes a lot to actually make it as an entrepreneur and to do it.
Russel:
Wonderful answer. Absolutely love it. If people want to know more about L&L Collective, where can they go?
Beth:
Find us on our website, L&LCollective.Fun. We don’t have the dot com. We have the dot fun, cause we like to think we’re fun.
Russel:
I didn’t even know that was a domain extension.
Beth:
Now you do. Yeah. It’s dot fun. You can also check us out on social media, L&L Collective. We’re on Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, we’re on everything. Connect with us. We’d love to meet with anybody. Even just as a business owner, I would say if there’s anybody listening to this, is also a business owner that wants to connect and build that relationship, I would love that as well.
Russel:
There you go, folks, where to go and go get your dot fun domain as well. So many great things about your story. Look forward to watching your continued success, Beth, and I appreciate you sharing everything today and thank you so much for being on the show.
Beth:
Thank you so much for having me.
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.
Beth:
A company reached out to us and we were meeting with them to see if we’d be a fit for all their marketing initiatives, from their ad management to their social media to their actual website, build the whole thing. They were a sex company, which, I am very open to any company. I’ll definitely meet with anybody, I want to see what you have going on. Maybe this might be a fit. It was not a fit. We all were very sweaty on the call. I wish you could have seen our faces. The images that were being shown were very, they think they’re a very classy potential company and they might be, and that might be what it is for that shield. But it was very much chain around necks and very too much for us. We started talking about ad management, we do ad management on Google and Facebook and then they were talking about porn sites. We’re like, we don’t do ad management on porn sites. It not us. I will say as a business owner, it is sometimes hard to be like, no, we don’t want the work, but it was very much, no we can’t, this isn’t for us. We as a partner got them in touch with people that we think that they could be utilizing, that would be better fit for them, that might have more experience on ad management on porn sites versus us. That’s how that one ended quick for us.
Russel:
I can imagine that would be an interesting conversation. I think every agency at some point has definitely had their, should we do this type of client. It was always a juggle of the revenue and doing something that’s interesting that you don’t necessarily disagree with. But what it actually entails to go do the work, the words you got to search for all the things that go into that, I imagine makes a tough decision to make.
Beth:
They need marketing. I get it. I wasn’t against doing it. It was just different for me what I wanted to do.
Russel:
For sure, that’s the great thing about being a business owner. You can make your own choices about what feels good and not. I think we took this one, but we went to our team first, especially our designer’cause to us she seemed very straight and narrow. There’s no way. She’s oh yeah, that sounds awesome. I’ll do that. We’re like, oh, okay okay. If she’ll do it.
Beth:
Let’s go for it.
Russel:
That’s all that matters. It’s always an interesting conversation more in the gray lines. We definitely developed over time, these are the places we definitely won’t touch, but then like more gray ones. There were people on our team that didn’t love the aspect of zoos or we had a client that was like a rodeo fair kind of thing. We were like, look, we’re probably not going to draw the line on that. We appreciate your views. You can opt out of the project, but there’s a gray versus the some that fall more in the black and white.
