Company: Bear Icebox Communications
Owners: Bob Spoerl & DeAnna Spoerl
Year Started: 2016
Employees: 1 – 10
Welcome to “An Agency Story,” the podcast that dives deep into the journeys of agency owners and their unique stories. In this compelling episode, we feature Bob Spoerl and and DeAnna Spoerl of Bear Icebox Communications. Their narrative not only sheds light on the intricacies of running a PR agency but also offers an inspiring testament to perseverance, collaboration, and growth.
In this episode, Bob and DeAnna discuss the evolution of Bear Icebox Communications, a PR agency specializing in brand amplification for B2B clients. The conversation explores how they leverage their backgrounds in journalism to provide comprehensive communication solutions. They dive into the changing landscape of PR, emphasizing the importance of adapting to new channels like influencer marketing, even in the B2B space.
A significant part of their discussion centers on their personal and professional journey, highlighting the challenges of starting an agency while navigating the ups and downs of entrepreneurship. From their early ambitions to their diverse career paths, Bob and DeAnna share how their unique experiences have shaped their approach to business.
Bob and DeAnna’s story is rich with insights and personal anecdotes. Bob shares his unexpected path from seminary student to PR professional, while DeAnna talks about her creative writing background and the critical role of understanding clients’ voices. One particularly engaging moment is when Bob reveals the origin of the quirky agency name, “Bear Icebox,” derived from a name generator blending the initials of the original co-founders.
The couple candidly discusses their failed venture into the home care industry, describing it as a formative experience that taught them invaluable lessons about communication, partnership, and resilience. Their transparency about bankruptcy and starting over provides a powerful narrative on overcoming adversity. A humorous anecdote that stands out involves DeAnna mistakenly editing a shared document with snarky remarks, thinking it was only visible to Bob, only to realize it was shared with an entire organization. This light-hearted story underscores the importance of checking document permissions and adds a relatable, human touch to their professional journey.
Bob and DeAnna’s journey is a testament to the power of partnership, both in marriage and business. Their story, filled with authenticity, humor, and hard-earned wisdom, is a must-listen for anyone interested in the realities of running an agency. Tune in to this episode to discover how they balance their professional and personal lives, maintain a strong work-life balance, and continue to grow their business with integrity and passion. Don’t miss out on the inspiring story of Bear Icebox Communications and the ongoing themes of resilience and adaptability that will leave you contemplating your own entrepreneurial path.
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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 this episode, we’re joined by Bob and DeAnna Spoerl. The dynamic duo behind Bear Icebox Communications based in Chicago, Illinois. Bob and Deanna share their inspiring journey from journalism and creative writing to founding a PR agency. They discuss their significant turning points, including an early venture into a failed home care business and a lighthearted origin story of their agency’s name from a hip hop name generator. One of the most inspiring parts of their story is how they’ve navigated the many facets of the relationship in and outside of their business. Tune in to discover how their unique blend of skills and resilience has shaped bear icebox communications into a thriving agency. Enjoy the story. Welcome to the show today everyone, I have Bob and DeAnna Spoerl with Bear Icebox Communications with us here today. Thank you so much for being on the show today, Bob and DeAnna.
Bob:
Thanks for having us, Russel.
Russel:
I’m excited to have you, right out of the gate. What does bear ice box do? And who do you do it for?
DeAnna:
Who are we as a company? Bear Ice Box, we we’re a primarily public relations, agency, under the umbrella of so many other things that we can do that some people might not think is PR related. Bob and I both have background in writing. He was a former journalist, and with Bear Icebox, we’re able to use our total communication skills to reach different audiences for our clients primarily in the B2B space. That’s really who we serve industries in manufacturing and supply chain and logistics, and kind of anything that’s branching off from those industries.
Bob:
We look at it like brand amplification. PR is one of those words that people always think of, like, New York Times or Wall Street Journal. We’ve had clients in those publications, but a lot of what we do, I think, increasingly, Russel, is, looking at people’s owned channels, working with influencers and there are B2B influencers so we work with them too. Just looking at amplifying a brand.
Russel:
I mean, not that all marketing hasn’t changed a lot over the last 10, 15, 20 years or more, but it seems like maybe PR would take the cake and that its changed the most. I’m sure we’ll have more conversations about that as we go further into the discussion today. But before we get to that, I’m curious what were young Bob and Deanna thinking their life has headed, you know, go back to when you were in elementary school or whatever it makes sense to the early days of your journey.
Bob:
I can start with that. I did kind of want to be a journalist, but I also wanted to be a lawyer too, when I was a little kid, and not quite a lawyer, but I definitely run an agency that, in the professional services space, that’s, like billable retainer hours. I feel like I’m living a bit of a legal and I work with a lot of layers to on projects. That kind of evolved. When I went to college, I started in journalism. Went to a college seminary for two and a half years at Loyola University. I was studying to be a priest, which is a little different than journalism or PR. Came back to that. Met DeAnna and realized I didn’t want to be a Roman Catholic priest. Couldn’t date her and do that. The rest is like history for our relationship, but then also for my, for my, professional life. I did journalism for a little bit and then transitioned over to PR and been doing that for almost 15 years now.
Russel:
All right deanna now. I’m very curious. You must have really blown Bob off his feet here. What does your young life story look like?
DeAnna:
I was at Loyola studying creative writing. I was really into anthropology and in some form of my life, I thought I’d be excavating ancient sites and studying and researching. I still like to, read up on those sort of things. But I would say, like, when I would think about what I would do, I’d be at the Oscars, accepting an award for best screenplay. I love writing. I love creative writing. I love poetry. Actually, one of the struggles writing for other people or I guess writing more formally with, air communications is, I like to do my own thing, and really use my voice in my writing. I know that for a lot of professional writers, being able to identify with your client’s voice is it’s priceless. That’s a skill that people will pay for because when you’re able to understand what this person is saying better than they can, that’s something that’s worth a lot. Over the past few years we got married young. We were 23 when we got married, within a few months, we were pregnant. Had our babies pretty young, which at the time, for me, that was like, that’s what you do. You get married and you have kids. What came with that though was a lot of different directions and like career paths. I worked as a financial aid counselor at Loyola, actually, and then I got into a couple of sales positions. Eventually when I came on full time with Bear Icebox, I wanted to use a little bit of that sales background to, help the business grow, so that we can both be comfortable.
Russel:
Sounds like a match made in heaven and that there were some ambitions there that you might’ve strayed away from, but it sounds like you guys ended up right where you’re supposed to be both have a passion for the journalistic aspects of what you do. I’m curious how this all came about. How did your past lead to actually starting Bear Icebox? What led up to day one?
Bob:
Bear Icebox started, I, I was one of two other co founders. Everybody asks, like, where the name came from, but my two founders were Eric and Alex and my name is Bob, so we scrambled our names up into a name generator. I think it was like one of those, like, hip hop name generators and like Bear Icebox came up. I don’t know where like the L went, but it’s, it wasn’t in the name. We started in 2016. It’s a funny story. I had worked with 3 different agencies. Thought I could do better, which everybody does when they start their own business, but also Dan and I had purchased a home care franchise that same year. I’d worked with a number of franchises on their PR marketing and being 28 thinking we knew what we’re doing, like we bought a franchise and then started a PR agency at the same time. One of them failed miserably the homecare franchise despite our best efforts. But Bear Icebox, which kind of started as a bit of a co op I can freelance here. Within six months I was working full time. Over the course of some years partners went other ways, but I stayed in it. DeAnna came on four years ago, to really jumpstart the business. The last four years, it’s been our family’s bread winner. We employ about 10 people too, which is great.
Russel:
Absolutely amazing. Well I’ve got a lot more questions around just your formative journey, but we’ll stick to the storyline here for a minute. It sounds like an evolution of circumstances that pushed you into a direction and then just slowly evolved to where I own an agency. And now what? It seems oftentimes in a lot of folks, I talked to the biggest struggles in the early days, or maybe all the days is clients and sales and that aspect of the business. How was that part for you?
DeAnna:
Here’s the thing. In the beginning, it was, we were really fortunate and blessed because when Bob branched off not having really any contacts and having, just left agencies, folks who learned that Bob was doing his own thing liked him so much that they made their own decision to follow. Those first few clients and actually one of them.
Bob:
Well said DeAnna from a legal standpoint. No, it was past clients.
DeAnna:
Hey we’re in PR for a reason. Having those, first folks come on and we got to do some really awesome work for them. It really became a word of mouth situation where they would refer a business to us and people would see what they’re doing/ oh, who are you working with? To be honest, for the full eight years, it’ll be eight years in September, we haven’t really done any marketing, for ourselves. Which is awesome. But that’s true for a lot of small agencies. Your friends and family and, your colleagues, they all know who to go to. As far as sales though when I came in, I was not exactly hands on. I was doing more like admin things in the early days. But when I was like, you know what, this is what I’m going to do. I’m going to help out. I looked at what was a really sad example of a CRM. There was nothing. I was like, Bob, you haven’t followed up with these people in months. You haven’t even opened this email. How are we supposed to grow this business? You’re not like doing the sales aspect. I came in and cleaned that up a little bit. Organized all our, contacts and info that we have from everyone at anywhere that we’ve collected an email or name. Then I started working on the proposals and updating those a little bit, just make them a little bit more dynamic. It’s been awesome. Wouldn’t you say, Bob, it’s been great.
Bob:
Yeah, of course it is. The first year, we we 4Xed our growth over like a 12 month period. By 2021, we were able to hire full time people. For the first 4 years, it was me. I’d bring a couple contractors on, maybe an intern. But until DeAnna came on, I think it, Russel, it kind of was a really good turning point to say, this can and should be like a full agency, not just Bear Icebox Communications is Bob. That was the thing that, that I struggled with. There was a bit of pride there too, where it’s like, oh, this is my baby. But I think what I’ve realized is I empower people. We’ve brought people on and had them run the accounts. They might not do it the exact same way I do it, but oftentimes they’re more organized than I am or they look at things a different way. It’s been a learning curve because I think especially as somebody who’s always, you know taking a great deal of pride in, like, having really strong work. I was one of those like straight A student kids who like, would be terrified of a B plus. I just realized, it’s okay to be 85, 90 percent for some things, versus trying to be 100 percent because we’re never going to be 100 percent on everything. You become the bottleneck, is what I realized if you don’t allow the thing to grow. Focus on things like development and sales.
Russel:
That’s a great perspective. I have to encourage a lot of folks that, Hey, the B plus that someone else might be doing in terms of quality work, not you as the main principal and leader and grow over the business. Is really a win on the weighted scale for the folks that love their grades in school and whatnot, that’s an A, and that’s a really good thing, but obviously sometimes we have to evolve to that mindset
Bob:
by the way, our, our team does A work.
Russel:
Yeah, absolutely no shade to anyone on the team by any means. And it’s just speaking to that as owners, we have a tremendous amount of skills, talent, experiences. Just given all the instances of things that we’ve had to encounter to be where we’re at. We’re just growing personally and professionally at a crazy rate, especially in the early days of the business, when we are, have to wearing, to wear so many hats and it just makes sense that your average team member isn’t going to be. I always ready to step up at that same level. They just haven’t had those years of experience. And I guess you could say the years of hard knocks university tuition, as some folks like to say that you’ve actually accumulated in a relatively short amount of time.
Bob:
I’m going to say something that I think a lot of people, an old mindset might’ve been, and I have this conversation with other entrepreneurs, whether they own an agency or otherwise. We shouldn’t expect, they don’t own the business. We shouldn’t expect them to, they don’t have as much stake in it. We look at our team, like they’re amazingly loyal. They do awesome work. But at the end of the day, like, it’s not their agency. We believe in a strong work life balance and I think it comes from this idea of yeah, we are going to be the ones putting in longer hours. Our team, we value the fact that they put in their time with us and then they have their time off. The idea that, everybody should care as much as me or more than me to show their dedication. I don’t know. Not to get off topic, but that’s one of those things that I’m passionate about, building that in. I find you get really great work out of people when you are really flexible.
Russel:
Absolutely. Thank you for sharing that perspective. You know, that’s just one of the great parts of an organic conversation and where it might flow. So backing up a couple steps. I’m just curious, Deanna, does that come naturally to you just stepping in and saying, you know, look at this mess or look at this situation, what are we doing here? I’m going to whip this into shape. What experience do you do lean on to do that? Or was it just common sense and natural to you?
DeAnna:
It’s some would say middle child syndrome. I’m a problem solver and it’s really difficult for me sometimes to walk into a situation and see what’s going on and have no thoughts. There’s a fine line between overstepping your boundaries and, being officious with your information. But when it comes to like personal things and like the business and, the lifestyle that we both want, yeah, it was like, there, there’s no way we’re going to be able to take a family vacation if you’re not, if we aren’t getting the business where it needs to be. But I do believe that there are like two types of people in the world: problem finders and problem solvers. Problem finder, they’ll walk in and they’ll find a problem with everything. Nothing’s working. Nothing. I can’t do this. Whereas my philosophy is I walk into a room and I’m like, all right, this is difficult but have you tried this? Have you tried that? Let’s look at it this way. Let’s flip it upside down and, rework it. I love working with Bob because, not that he’s just a great husband but often, that can make people feel uncomfortable. When you come in and you’re like, hey, let’s rethink things. People don’t like to be challenged. Bob, from day one was completely open to different ideas, different perspectives that I brought into the business. I really think that’s one of the reasons why we work so well together is. He thinks like Bob. Bob is like on another level. If he needs something written or you just have an idea, I don’t understand how it works, but he’s just just whip things out off the top of the head. So when I come in with an idea, I’m like, hey, we should try this, he’s got a whole plan after that. But it’s the initial idea that we, we like pair them together so perfectly. As far as a business partner, I think anyone who’s listening, if you have a business partner that doesn’t like your ideas or doesn’t want to hear it or doesn’t have time, that’s tough. That’s really difficult. I really appreciate how we can, work together, even when we don’t agree, it’s still really smooth.
Bob:
I’m not sure if you’re familiar with, but you probably are, Russel, like the EOS system. We’ve taken elements of it sort of loosely. We’re not like dedicated disciples of it, but I’m intrigued by it. The thing I’ve struggled with is they say there’s usually a visionary and then an implementer is what you need. I think I’m a bit more of an implementer, but also I have the vision and I think DeAnna is a bit more of a visionary, but she’s also great at implementing. The fact that we have some of those skill sets, combined, makes it really, really good to work with. We’re both not afraid to implement. I would say DeAnna is probably a bit more of the visionary, but also, able to roll her sleeves up too, which is helpful, right?
Russel:
I do think back on my own journey. And I’ve sure I’ve shared this before, but that’s one of the things I do really appreciate about EOS and especially for a partnership type of business, is that it really helps for some alignment and delineation of duties that maybe doesn’t come naturally per se, in some cases or partnerships. And so whether you do it officially or however you look at it, there’s the essence of the model I do think is really important in that honestly, If I could step back in some of my own partnerships that I would have done something similar. So glad to see you guys are doing that. I don’t know if I’ve ever had a set of partners speak so kindly and highly of each other. I’m just so happy and glad to see that clearly you guys have figured out some really good stuff in your business dynamic that I imagine bleeds into your personal dynamics to make this whole thing work. I’m just dying to know. Give us the pro tips here on what you guys have done to sit here and smile and speak so highly of each other in such a chaotic type of world that is the agency life.
Bob:
Step 1 is always listen to DeAnna. Always listen to DeAnna no matter what. That’s step 1. What’s made it work is, yeah, we’ve able, from a work perspective, we’ve been able to divvy up tasks. We intentionally don’t, like, work in the office together. Our team’s like hybrid in the office, three days a week here in Chicago and DeAnna might come in once a month, every now and then, but I think the idea is we’ve, we have that separation. D and I come together, especially on like Fridays for our sessions. But I think that having that, that somewhat of that distance is healthy for us, but also the power dynamic is such, is so equal, Russel. I’m not telling her what to do. She’s not telling me what to do. I’ve heard some spouses, who’ve gone into business together. It’s one sort of follows the other. It might seem given that I’ve been running this thing for four years. When D came on, it became a new company in many ways. It became a company with employees and a growth mindset. Building it together has made it exciting for us. We’re looking to achieve the same goals. I’m not advocating for getting married young, but I think for us, we didn’t have anything when we got married. I remember, D, we actually didn’t live together either, so our first time going grocery shopping and like spending like a ton of our wedding money at Aldi or something, being so excited that we had groceries. You built those memories together from the ground up, you built your vision from the ground up. For us, that’s worked. It’s always been a shared vision.
DeAnna:
I’ll add to that by saying one of my pro tips, is to not take yourself too seriously. Take your body and your mind and your, emotions seriously, but everything else it’s look. My philosophy when I came into the business, because if I was going to work, full time as a self employed person, I still want to make sure that our life was first. You said earlier about work life balance, but it’s actually life work balance. All of us, the people we employ and the folks we work with, you have a job for one main reason. That’s to pay your bills, have food and enjoy some sliver of life, if you can. We both grew up and worked in environments where, you know, we were afraid to take sick days or even you’re just not feeling it. I was a migraine sufferer for so many years. You show up to work, you suffer. The lights are blinding you, you’re hungry and you’re irritable. I didn’t want to build that. I did not want to recreate the same environment. Selfishly, not for ourselves, the workforce that we were handed, the, the Gen Z workforce, they didn’t really experience any of that. The pandemic kind of ruined a lot of things. It did ruin a lot of things, but as, as far as their like, work experience, they didn’t get a chance to experience it. I figured if we’re going to start with a clean slate of, worker bees, as I like to call them, why not create something that is, that’s more important that they’re doing well? We’re doing well. Okay, you made a mistake here. You missed a deadline. Sure. We don’t want that to happen, but if you’re sick and if you just need a day, like that’s, that should be fine. It should be fine. Coming into a business that is very important and very serious, and we deal with a lot of C-suite individuals and a lot of, prestige. If we took ourselves so seriously that we couldn’t laugh, that we couldn’t smile or make someone smile. Like even on a call, like we’ll have calls and I have this running thing with Bob where at least once a day I have to make him laugh. Whether it’s like an email response or a text, or I’ll just put something in a document.
Bob:
You have to like, not take yourself too seriously. That is so true, especially when you’re doing like intense work that is like super important. We try to have, even in the office, like getting the team to laugh or just taking a pause and watching like a funny video for a couple of minutes. I think you have to do those sorts of things as you’re building an agency.
Russel:
I just actually sent out an email the other day for talking about this idea that we have to infuse fun into this thing. It is a hard thing to do. It is a hard business and by gosh, we have to smile through it. And it seems like you guys are doing really good on that front. You know, I’m curious something we glossed over and I thought I heard and correct me if I’m wrong that you had other partners in the business at some point. When you think about the success you guys have had as a partnership, how do you look back on that aspect of your partnership experience?
Bob:
For one of the partners that, entrepreneurship wasn’t a good fit. It’s not for everybody. Career ambitions went a different way. And stability of a really strong paying full time job was important and I get that. I’m grateful that I have a spouse that was like, yeah, I, I’m fine with us being self employed, but that’s what it boils down to, Russel. It’s not for everybody. You’re not going to get a consistent, like you’re, even at this day, like I know I could make more as like a senior VP at a PR firm year over year potentially. But I’m building something bigger here that over time will have more value. I think it was a lifestyle decision, or that it wasn’t meant to be for them. But I was the crazy one, I guess that was like, I’ll stay.
Russel:
You know, I do hear that quite a bit. I think all entrepreneurs have just a little bit of a, I don’t know what the actual definition of crazy is, but, I do think entrepreneurs have that. That does take a little bit of craziness to suffer the ups and downs of owning a business. Speaking to which I am very curious because we hear it in the business world all the time. Every successful person has all these failures. Failures is just a rite of passage towards success. You briefly mentioned it earlier about this other business that you had. It sounds like a very formative business experience. When you tell it, if you don’t mind, I guess just start and go a little deeper into that aspect of your journey. I’d love to just hear more about how that has helped form to where you’re at today.
Bob:
I can start, D, and then I’d love your opinion. I heard from a, a wise person who’s been sort of a mentor and a client over the years, you got your MBA by failure. You learned what you shouldn’t do. And it’s not a knock on the franchise we bought from. I think we were naive. I think they were a bit naive. We realized when we purchased a home care franchise, we had no business being in that industry. We didn’t know it. We just were chasing profits and money, ultimately. That’s the real reason. And our heart wasn’t in that model. We work with franchises currently, but I think if you’re going to buy a franchise, like, it should be something that you’re passionate about and that you’re a good fit to operate it. DeAnna, what do you think?
DeAnna:
As far as that business, we, Bob is right. We were not in it for the right reason. Now, as far as our, care for people, we also realized that we care too much, where we weren’t able to, step back and be business owners. We were. putting our heart and soul into it, which is, I’m not trying to say not to do that, but in that particular situation, it just didn’t work. As far as what we learned, oh man. First of all, we learned a key thing in marriage is to communicate. I think there were moments where we weren’t fully expressing, what we were feeling or what we thought. I do tend to lean into my feelings a lot in everything, even when I’m watching sports, I’m like, I just don’t feel it. If I see the players happy and smiling, I’m like, they’re feeling it. Loving it. But we learned that we needed to be comfortable expressing what we felt even in the darkest times. That business, we did end up having to bankrupt, go bankrupt, just in order to stay above water. That was really tough to do as a young married couple with two kids. I think back to those times and, they were not fun. We’re having fun now, but it wasn’t fun going through that. We realized a lot there. Have your assets ready. If you don’t have, like, funds and capital to, to do certain things, you probably shouldn’t be doing it. Or at least find ways to, prepare yourself for that. if you don’t really know what’s going on in your state where that funding is, if your state doesn’t have their money together, you probably shouldn’t invest in it. Being open and honest with, your franchise or, your business partners, whoever you’re working with. Again, it’s not easy. It is not easy to go to someone and say hey, I need to pivot. It wasn’t an easy conversation. But we had to do it. And I think now, there’s not a tougher conversation that we probably will have, knock on wood, like ever.
Bob:
That’s so true, DeAnna. We learned so much all under the age of 30. I’m in Vistage, which is like a CEO leaders group. I have an amazing, shout out to my Chicago area, like coach, he’s awesome. He also had to go through some business failures over the years, which, has made him wiser. He said failing under 30, that’s, if you’re going to fail big, like fail at a young age. So we did.
Russel:
There you go in, in a major way. No doubt. I mean, I just can’t even imagine what that had to be. Like you said, young, newly married, bankruptcy, and just imagine a billion other things that you weren’t able to share today and don’t have enough time to probably even share. It really does just speak to a feel like so many folks that their successes, because not simply because their failure. But it’s everything else is gravy because. You know, knock on wood. The hardest thing that I might ever have to experience. It’s how they look at Navy seal training, right? They put them through the most rigorous of things, nearly kill them in some aspects. And just, to all that, to make it where enemy shooting at you somewhere down the road in your career. And that’s no big deal I’ve. seen way worse.
Bob:
There’s a gratitude that comes from that kind of failure. We’re that much more grateful for the growth that we’ve had and the profits we have, right? We’ve known what that, what the opposite of that is.
Russel:
Amen to that. Well, we’re clearly on the other side of that threshold today where the business is, sounds like things are running really well for you. When you guys are looking at the horizon and what’s in store for the future. How do you describe that? What does that look like for you guys?
Bob:
This has been shaping up to be a really good year. 2022 was our best year yet. Last year was a little treading water, and we’re not alone in agency life. It was just a peculiar year this year, we’re forecasted to, far into double digit growth. We’re looking at, 30 to 40 percent increase, potentially more. Continuing to bring on team members and clients. Our goal, I think in the next three to five years is a couple of things. One, we, we’re not afraid of the the new AI tools out there. As a matter of fact, like we’re actually doing some R&D into like how we can implement this and be even more efficient and powerful for our clients. I think that’s something I’m excited about. I’m not fearful of, I’m actually excited to think like, how can AI help us become a better agency for our clients? Number two is bringing on more talent. We will soon be posting for a account supervisor position, which is exciting to have somebody who is, in that second command position. Number three is we are, we’re expanding office. It sounds a little counterintuitive because I know people are, are on the fence about office, but I think we’re contrarians. We do great work together, as a team. A modest step up, but we’re getting a bigger office in Chicago. I think that’s just, that speaks to like, what we’re growing here as a people business. That’s kind of a couple of our things that are on the horizon for us.
DeAnna:
There’s a first time for everything and there’s a growth and learning from that. We have a pretty solid team and we’re big on rewarding and showing our gratitude for the people who show up and do work for us and, make our clients happy and work well together. I would like to do some sort of, team outing or, just get out of this town a little bit.
Russel:
I love that. That’s awesome. The retreat aspect. It’s such a really great experience. If you can pull this off as a company and we had a similar type thing, we actually baked into the work. We call it hack week and went to one of our client’s sites on an annual basis, and everyone got to attend. And quite honestly, and beyond the amazing work we did over that time, it became almost this Rite of passage is very strong bonding event that we had as a company. And, you just can’t match something like that. But definitely some great memories that. come for those love, how you’re approaching the business. Love the excitement, enthusiasm you’re bringing to it. Can’t wait to see how that continues to shape out for you guys. But as we start to wrap up here, one last big question for you. I’m very curious to compare your answers to the next question, but are entrepreneurs born or are they made.
DeAnna:
I think there are some people who they just have it in them. They’re not going to listen. They don’t like authority. They want to make, play their own rules. And I get it. And then I think there’s people like, like myself who experienced, working for someone, having things go down within the company. You’re like, oh, this kind of sucks. If I were running things, I would never do this. That kind of blossoms into, okay, well, I guess I can do this, and create my own, little environment that will be the opposite of everything that I’ve experienced and everything that I’ve, known up until this point. But I think at the heart of it, if you don’t already have that little spark inside of you, I, it might not work for you.
Russel:
All right. That’s a big bar to step up to Bob. That’s a great answer. Do your best good luck.
Bob:
Stars are born, but I think entrepreneurs are made ultimately. You might be, have a seed inside of you, but I think the best entrepreneurs are constantly making themselves better. That’s my answer.
Russel:
Very well said, very succinct. Well, all right. Very cool. If people want to know more about Bear Icebox, where can they go?
Bob:
The internet, sorry bearicebox.com. We’re on most of the social networks, not all the socials, but most of the socials. I think LinkedIn, Instagram, but yeah, bearicebox.com is a good place to start. B E A R I C E B O X.
DeAnna:
Like the animal.
Bob:
People ask us that. Like the animal, Bear Icebox.
Russel:
I will say when I was initially reading it, I was like Barris Barris, and then I read it and more separate and figured out Bear Icebox. Got it.
Bob:
Bear Icebox. I do have a lovely, uh, she’s worked with me for years. She’s done like six projects and she still spells it Beresbox, which is so awesome. I never correct her.
Russel:
That’s fair and very nice of you. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show today, sharing your triumphs, your trials. I just love the grace, the enthusiasm and everything that you’re bringing to your business. Very inspirational. Really appreciate you taking the time to share it with us today.
DeAnna:
Of course.
Bob:
Thanks for having us, Russel.
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.
DeAnna:
We use Google Workspace and you can share documents and everyone can collaborate. Bob shared with me, it was a press release that a client drafted and it was not great. And the contact there was not the nicest person, I will say. I started editing the document like, hi, I’m Mr. Big Cat and I’m blah, blah, blah. It was just so tongue in cheek. I knew Bob saw it so I was like, oh, it’s just Bob. What I didn’t realize was that everyone from that organization was on the document. Bob texted me and he’s like, you, you got to stop. I was like, wait, what’d I do? What happened? I went back and I saw like 13 names listed and I was like, oh my God. Thankfully no one saw it, at least to my knowledge.
Bob:
Covered our trail.
DeAnna:
I don’t think anybody saw it, but I went through the entire document just putting in my little, like, nuggets. I did learn to not do that and to always double check what you’re writing and who, who has access to it because that could have went really south.
Bob:
If we’re going to make snarky remarks, do it on a, like on a word document offline. That’s what DeAnna learned.
Russel:
I’ve heard a story or two that is similar, where the outcome is, where they did actually see it, but they are also like you’re, you know what, you’re actually right. I appreciate while snarky that, uh, you’re being honest and that’s probably true. Thank you for the feedback. But overall, maybe not the greatest experience in the world and it’s that fresh hold that maybe we could all be a little more on the nose when our client relationships and giving feedback. But it sounds like you got to jail get out of jail free card nonetheless.
DeAnna:
Yeah, no, I, it was one of those moments where I think there was some frustrations. But yeah, I definitely, uh, made a, made a little mishap there.
Russel:
That’s all right. We live, we learn.
