Company: Fortibus Marketing
Owners: Michael Paul
Year Started: 2005
Employees: 1 – 10
“An Agency Story” delves into the heartbeats of marketing agency owners around the globe, narrated by Russel Dubree, a former agency mogul turned mentor. This episode welcomes Michael Paul, a seasoned veteran from Fortibus Marketing, exploring the tapestry of his professional and personal life, which is as rich and varied as it is inspirational.
Michael shares his unconventional journey from military service to marketing magnate, detailing his pivot from various careers, emphasizing the unplanned paths that often lead to fulfilling destinations. The discussion pivots around the genesis and evolution of Fortibus Marketing, highlighting the resilience and adaptability required to steer a company through turbulent times, including a dramatic COVID-era business model shift.
The episode is peppered with humorous anecdotes and profound insights, particularly Michael’s candid recount of the early challenges and strategic pivots that shaped Fortibus. His story of acquiring the agency while deployed overseas adds a layer of intrigue and underscores the theme of commitment—both in service and entrepreneurship.
Listeners will find the conversation about the synergy and occasional friction between Michael and his wife, particularly in their professional collaboration, both relatable and enlightening. Michael’s reflections on their dynamic adjustments to roles within the company offer valuable lessons on partnership and growth.
For those intrigued by stories of resilience, transformation, and tactical innovation in the business world, this episode of “An Agency Story” is not to be missed. It leaves you pondering the balance of life, work, and the unexpected turns that lead to new horizons. Tune in to discover how navigating change with agility and foresight can set the stage for renewed success and deeper partnerships in business.
This overview aims to capture the spirit of the podcast and the compelling narrative of Michael’s journey, encouraging potential listeners to dive into the full conversation for deeper insights and inspiration.
You can listen to this episode of An Agency Story on your favorite podcast app:
Listen to other episodes like this one…
- Benevolent – Citizen Advertising with guests C.J. Ogle and Brent Matthews
- Communicate – Method and Metric SEO Agency with guest Alex Jesse Ringer
- Progressive – Mighty Fine Design with guest Frank Rodriguez
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 this episode of we’re joined by Michael Paul,, the dynamic co-founder affordable marketing based in Charleston, South Carolina. Michael takes us on a riveting journey from his unexpected departure from college and subsequent military service to a serendipitous leap into the world of digital marketing. Discover how a deployment overseas and a fortuitous offer transformed his career path, leading to the birth of a unique agency that thrives on deep partnerships and strategic pivots. Especially during the tumultuous times of COVID-19, which solve Fortibus lose 93% of its revenue in just six weeks. Tune in to learn how resilience and adaptability can redefine success and the ever evolving landscape of digital marketing. Enjoy the story. Welcome to the show today, everyone. I have Michael Paul here with us today with Fortibus Marketing. Thank you so much for being on the show today, Michael.
Michael:
Thank you for having me. It’s an honor
Russel:
I’m excited to get into this. So many unique points about your story. Can’t wait to hear more, but start us off. What is Fortibus do and who do you do it for?
Michael:
We’re a full service digital marketing partner, primarily helping service based companies that are in growth mode and we help them scale.
Russel:
Sweet and to the point, love it. As I understand it, we always like to go back to origins here and it doesn’t seem like the path you’re on is where you thought you might have ended up today. What did you do coming out of high school, Michael?
Michael:
Right after high school, I decided to try college during the summer after graduation, which was probably a huge mistake. I tried taking chemistry class, which is way outside of my my scope and it turned into a train wreck and I decided college wasn’t for me. I ended up joining the military, about a year and a half, two years later. That was where I had a lot of fun, a lot of growth and a lot of challenge there. I did aircraft maintenance. I was a firefighter for seven years there and I was a paralegal for three years. I kept jumping around different fields and, yeah, it was great.
Russel:
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your service as a fellow Air Force veteran. I appreciate your service. I guess we, all us grateful Americans can thank chemistry for the time you spent there. You had a career in the air force where you, when initially were you thinking that was where you were going to spend your entire career, and you know, you’re going to do the retirement thing or how were you looking at your longterm military prognosis?
Michael:
Yeah, initially, I had such a good time. I did plan on staying, for the full 20, or 20 plus if they would let me. But as it turned out, it, it just wasn’t in the cards when I started, wanting to have children.
Russel:
Very similar reason for why I chose to get out does did not feel like it was going to be a good environment to move the kids around every two or three years and be gone all the time. Totally empathize with that. You get out of the Air Force and I mean, you know, it sounds like you had some interesting career fields while you were in the Air Force. What’d you do after that?
Michael:
I went to work for a friend of mine’s dad. He had a, a European auto repair shop. Everything was a mess and they were trying to grow and he just needed some structural stuff set up as far as, you know, parts management and kind of helping with a couple of things around the shop. So I did that for about a year and a half.
Russel:
I’m sure you’ll tell us here in a second, but somewhere there’s an agency, you came upon which is more on the unique side of how someone gets into the agency business. How did that all come about and tell us how that got started?
Michael:
While I was working, for my friend’s dad at this shop, I was I transitioned out of active duty into an IMA program. Which basically meant instead of the traditional reserves where you would go two weeks a month, or, yeah, one week in a month, two weeks a year. I just got to pick 30 days a year that I would go. While doing that, I ended up being deployed, and my wife was working for, some friends. They had started a marketing agency and they were building these programs for hospitals. She was just hanging out and decided that she would help them. And then they just felt like God said, hey, it’s time for us to move out of town. They wanted to go home and be with family, but didn’t want to take the company. So while I was deployed, they offered the, to sell the company to us. Trying to maneuver that while deployed was, very different, especially with time zones and only being able to communicate for short periods of time on the phone and then everything else was via email, that was a lot of fun.
Russel:
Can’t tell if you’re being, sarcastic when you say fun, but, I’m sure there was some fun mixed in there but I imagine that had to be pretty stressful. Is this something you were, like, a hundred percent on board with. Were you hesitant about it or was it just like, hey, honey, let’s do this and no, no looking back now?
Michael:
I was probably more hesitant of between me and my wife. I am the more, I would say grounded. She’s more like, that sounds awesome. Let’s go and jump. That’s kind of how she approached it. We looked at everything and decided, hey, let’s go for it. She was going to spearhead everything. She was going to do it. I kind of felt like, okay, well, I’ll still have the safety of this job when I get back. Plus I’m, you know, have military backup too. We’re good in case something goes awry.
Russel:
You come back, what’s the time period from when you finished your military career, and then you were doing the auto shop, work? Where did that fit into as far as chronology in all this?
Michael:
She ran the company for about two years while I was still partially, in the military and working at this auto shop. Before she had grown it to a point where she said, hey, I’m going to hire someone, I would much rather it be you and me doing this. I just need to know, do I need to go hire someone or are you coming home to help me? Are you leaving that job? I decided, after some stressful nights, honestly, it was fear. There’s a thing with entrepreneurship that you, you’re in a different economy. Over here I’m trading time and effort with the auto shop and with the military, but over here it’s all results driven. That was a little scary for me, but after thinking through that, praying through it, we just decided, let’s go for it. I quit everything else including the military.
Russel:
What did the business look like at the time you acquired it?
Michael:
When we initially acquired it, she was primarily the only one, but had a couple of sales contractors working. That worked out for a short period of time. It was kind of hit or miss with that. And then she just buckled down and did the whole thing herself, everything from sales. She eventually brought on a designer to take care of that side. A couple other people for sales, that came on full time as well. She kind of slowly started to step back into a different role.
Russel:
Was the process all pretty smooth from the acquisition to the, you know, first, let’s just say a couple of years, or was there any hiccups that you ran into during the early days?
Michael:
During the early days, I remember one of the biggest challenges was leads, and finding leads, getting leads. There were nights that were, uh, they were almost sleepless nights, you know, full of stress and anxiety and digging through anything and everything that we could find, to get leads. This was what, 2005, 2006, we didn’t have the lead gen systems, that are available today.
Russel:
I think that’s a challenge for probably any business, but not indifferent in the agency business for a lot of people when they’re starting up. Depending on how they started and all kinds of different factors. You mentioned, certainly some stressful period in these early days. When did you get to the point where like, okay, maybe this thing isn’t so stressful anymore. Now we got our feet under us and we know what the heck we’re doing.
Michael:
I would say when, as Dana and I, my wife, learned how to navigate working with each other, as we got better at that, I think that’s when most of the anxiety and stress subsided. We think so differently. The more that we got on the same page, the easier things became. She would have an idea about let’s go get, let’s go try and do this. I would just have to either get on board or we were having a conversation through it on finding that middle ground where we could do this together. That seemed to be when everything kind of, okay, we were getting the hang of this as we got the hang of working together. Once we get over the initial piece of how we’re going to get leads, and then obviously there’s always the challenge of finding good people, you know as far as sales people’s, any position. But I think that she’s always been really good at that. That wasn’t so much of the challenge. It was more working together.
Russel:
I’ve heard good and bad partnership stories and generally speaking, at least in when I’m talking, I’ve never heard any bad stories with spouses, when it comes to agency partnerships. I imagine there’s, there’s something to be said about that, but is there anything specific that you had to, focus on and do to, as you said, kind of improve your working relationship together? Do you do like wine strategy nights or anything like that, that, helped make that whole process easier?
Michael:
I would say two things, really. One, defining our roles, who was gonna lead what? We were butting heads, and neither one of us was acknowledging who was going to lead. Once we figured that out, then it was a lot easier to work together just in that, okay. You’re the one that has to make the end decision. I’ll give you what I think and then we’re going to go with what you decide. That took a lot of trust. Ultimately, when I was deployed, we put the entire company in her name. So she was the leader. That was a very different dynamic of, I’m the leader at home and she’s the leader at work and having to navigate that. The other piece I would say was that when we were not working, we were not working. We did not discuss work at home. We made sure that we guarded that relationship and guarded our marriage and our family time together, instead of always injecting work in the middle.
Russel:
That’s some great advice. I think back to my own partnership journey, I think that would have benefited us a lot in the early days is we treated our ownership structure, like how we ran the business, right? We were 50/50 partners, that didn’t define, roles and leaders. If I could go back to that’d be good advice I’d take back to my younger self. I imagine the business itself evolved in terms of the types of service and work you’re doing when you started to what you guys are doing today. What did that evolution look like at a high level?
Michael:
At a high level we, in the beginning, we were working with hospital systems and local businesses and just building bridges between them. Then, around the time of covid, everything shifted. The entire market shifted, everything was shifting. We lost 93 percent of revenue in six weeks and it was a tough time. We just really had to sit there and look in the mirror and say, okay, what are we going to do? Are we going to close this down and go pursue something else or? Do we want to keep running an agency and kind of make it a full on agency? We decided to pivot and, some great people to help us turn this into a full on agency so that we could work with the same companies that we were, but help them on a much bigger scale.
Russel:
93 percent of your revenue in six weeks. I’ve heard some bad COVID hits, when it comes to the agency business, but you might be in the number one spot. How were you able to deal with that just emotionally? Or was it you were just trying to survive, you just weren’t even thinking about it?
Michael:
I read a book a while ago called Culture of Honor, and the guy that wrote it, I don’t remember his name off top of my head, but he talked about building a safety net. We were intentional about building a safety net so that it wasn’t so chaotic, as it could have been, as far as fiscally. We were able to sustain and it really helped us during that pivot. But as far as the, anxiety inside, yeah it was intense. It was intense watching sales come to a screeching halt, and now what used to be a bank balance climbing is now declining. There was nothing in sight. No light in sight at the end of the tunnel for that, you know, until we decided to pivot. Then we started to make change. That new change brought on a new level of excitement and hope.
Russel:
As we know, you, you did survive that and got on the other side of it. Love a good, good life, COVID pivot story. But the real lesson, you know, as you’re sitting there sharing that I was writing down is this idea, just been on my mind a lot lately, is how important runway is. Not only just giving yourself more revenue to figure things out and, but in this case, like you’re saying, you’re forced to pivot, but the ability to even succeed in that sounds like, cause you had some good fiscal reserves. At least knowing the personal side, you don’t necessarily hear it as much on the business side often as a rule of thumb, but, you know, have six months of expenses in a bank account, right? So you can make some of those moves without having to shutter your door. Listen to the folks at home, save those pennies, find your piggy bank so if, and when you need to pivot that you give yourself the runway.
Michael:
Absolutely. I love what you said about runway too. I don’t think it’s just the fiscal runway that we need either. I think there’s a level of giving ourselves some room and some grace and some space.
Russel:
Yeah, that’s a good way to put it grace and space. As I understand it, your wife, not part of the business today. What did that transition look like for you guys?
Michael:
Around the same time that things started to get out of control, she just came to me and said, hey, listen, I, I want to be at home with the kids and I feel like this is where God wants me, is at home with the kids. I want to go home and raise them and school them and be with them and enjoy them and I don’t want to be here anymore. Of course, you know, family first beyond everything. We decided, absolutely, let’s go for it. It was almost an overnight thing where she was there one day and then the next she’s not.
Russel:
Obviously she didn’t, she wasn’t going away anywhere else. You still had her, you know, as a resource and someone to bounce ideas off of, I’m sure. But was that a big shift for you, in, in terms of your role and what were you thinking, like, how were you going to step into this role that she previously held?
Michael:
It was overwhelming at the beginning. I felt like I’m now wearing even more hats than I felt like I already was. My wife is more of a visionary, and I am more of an, I guess an implementer so to speak in that. She would come up with these amazing ideas and then I would put them all together, and then we would build it together. I had to fill that visionary role as well as Implement any new ideas there as well. That was a huge tough transition for me trying to wear those two hats together.
Russel:
A lot of transition going on for you at this time, the business itself, and working with your wife and, you know, the home. But again, we know at this point it, it all worked out. How is she involved today in the business today? Or is it out of sight, out of mind to her at this point? What does that look like?
Michael:
No, she still provides insight. We have separate date nights now. We have date nights where it’s just family focused date nights, and then there are date nights where we open the floor for hey, let’s talk about business. Let’s talk about kids, budget, whatever. On those date nights is when we get into the nitty gritty, so she’s still involved and still, has input and still contributes ideas and everything.
Russel:
I need to go on a business date night. I’m gonna remember that. Very cool. One of the fascinating things that you’d shared and one of the things I’d sense about you is that you seem very organized and collected in, in terms of how you approach things. You referred to this, as I hadn’t heard of it before, actually. The Kolbe index, is that right? And how that’s been beneficial for you in the business and maybe even the personal sense. If you don’t mind sharing more about that?
Michael:
This Kolbe, it’s, um, it is more of a, they call it a conative test. It tests how you begin things and how you do things. For us, what I found out was during conversations, my Kolbe is more, my initial way of doing things is I need information. Whereas my wife’s initial way of doing things is to do and then get information. We would be having these conversations where I’m looking for information and she’s ready to go. It would always be some kind of, some level of conflict, but as we started to learn this about each other, and it rang true when I, when we got these test results. When we started to approach everything, I now understood, okay, you need very little information in order for you to, to get going. And she knew that when she brought something to me, that you need a lot more information than I do. I need to bring you more information and then we can get going. I expanded that to my team as well. Everyone on my team has use this Colby test as well, so now I understand way more about how they begin projects, how they function, where their strengths are, and it’s way easier to put the right people in the right seat that way.
Russel:
I love how you’ve implemented that, you’re right. If we can meet people where they’re at in terms of how best to get them to begin something, then we’ve now crossed the most difficult barrier sometimes. What’s the big goal when you look at the future of Fortibus? What are you trying to achieve here?
Michael:
I’m trying to serve the partners that we work with, um, on a, on a much deeper level than we have in the past, then we did when we were, you know, in the older model, as I call it. Also, build this as a self managing company that I can go and build another company, because once you catch the bug, it’s you just want to build everything and grow it. I just do it a little differently than my wife does but together we have ambitions of growing multiple companies and then using this as an arm to help us do that.
Russel:
You said the words, help companies at a deeper level. What does that specifically mean to you?
Michael:
For us, it’s, it’s a partnership. We don’t even call the people, the companies that we work with clients, we call them partners. We are very intentional about getting to know them, not just on their, not just the business. We want to get to know, we want the full context of their lives and what they want. A lot of the business owners that we work with, if we know what they’re really after, then we can help them in way more, many more ways than just, you know, I’m providing you a service. But we can come alongside you and encourage you and in a lot of cases point the way. I like to get more involved, even on the day to day and provide insight wherever we can and wherever it’s welcome.
Russel:
Sounds like a good recipe for success. As we start to wrap up here, Michael, my last big question for you here is, are entrepreneurs born or are they made?
Michael:
I would say they’re made, based on my own experience. I never set out to be an entrepreneur, but I caught the bug and I got started getting around the people that were other entrepreneurs and seeing a new way of thinking and a new world that opened up wide and it was way bigger than I thought. Just based on my own experience, I would say they’re made. Even as I raised children, I think the natural inclination of what they see on social media and hear from their friends is, they just want their job so they can hurry up, hurry up and make money. But we are constantly talking about, well, if you want to do that, why don’t you build a company around it? Why don’t you do something bigger than what you’re currently thinking?
Russel:
Are you raising some future entrepreneurs? Do you think?
Michael:
Yes, absolutely. They better be, you know, or at least that’s what we keep telling them. But I’m not trying to force them to do anything they don’t want to do, there’s a couple of them that definitely have it in them.
Russel:
are selling old toys or something to you, you know, your first best customer is mom and dad.
Michael:
Yeah. You can tell during the negotiations at bedtime
Russel:
If people want to know more about Fortibus, where can they go?
Michael:
They can check out our website at Fortibus.com. You can find me on LinkedIn.
Russel:
What is the name? Is that the name you inherited? Tell us a little bit more about that.
Michael:
It is the name that we inherited. Is Latin. It means bold, brave, strong.
Russel:
Well, awesome. Thank you so much for being on the show today, Michael. It was an absolute pleasure to get to hear your story. And again, thank you again for your service as a fellow veteran and so fascinating in terms of just how you got into the business and the different things you had to encounter and learn along the way. Really appreciate you taking the time to share that with us today.
Michael:
Thank you so much for having me. It was so much fun.
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.
Michael:
We tend to get so serious about being intentional about growing the business that we often overlook things like this, but I remember one specific time. We had one of our partners that was in our office we were one of my, she was our project manager, she had an idea. This is for an auto repair facility that was expanding their services and everything. She had this idea about hey, we should do a video with this lady stepping out of her car and the camera starts at the bottom and runs up her leg and all this, and the guy, he just stops and he says, listen, he’s like please stop trying to sell sex with my shop. The jaws dropped. Everybody got silent and I knew him really well and I knew he was kidding. It took me everything inside me to hold on and not laugh. But finally he smiled and laughed and then everybody else realized, oh, he’s, he’s not serious. That was a little lighter moment for my team
Russel:
I can just feel the tension in the room, in that moment. Glad to hear, that it ended with a laugh.
