Company: Saber Marketing Group
Owners: Amber Gaige
Year Started: 2013
Employees: 1 – 10
In the latest episode of “An Agency Story,” titled “Spirited,” listeners are treated to the fascinating journey of Amber Gaige, the visionary behind Saber Marketing Group. This episode nestles perfectly within the series’ commitment to unraveling the heart and soul of marketing agency narratives, as host Russel Dubree delves deep into Amber’s transition from an opera singer to a marketing mogul.
Amber’s story is a rich tapestry of love, art, and strategic business acumen. She shares how her initial career in music, with performances in grand venues across the globe, serendipitously led her to the world of marketing. The episode shines a spotlight on Amber’s unique insights into the symbiotic relationship between passion for art and the science of marketing, emphasizing the power of storytelling and data-driven strategies in crafting compelling brand narratives. Her journey through personal and professional growth, underscored by a captivating love story and the eventual founding of her own agency, is both inspirational and educational.
Listeners will find the discussions on the impact of StoryBrand on Amber’s career particularly engaging. As a certified StoryBrand consultant, Amber elucidates the framework’s efficacy in clarifying marketing messages, ensuring they resonate deeply with audiences. This episode also touches on the challenges and triumphs of entrepreneurship, with Amber candidly sharing humorous anecdotes, like her son’s unexpected appearance during a video call with clients, alongside powerful quotes that highlight her resilience and dedication to servant leadership.
What sets this episode apart are the raw, unfiltered insights into the highs and lows of the entrepreneurial journey, the importance of mental health and personal well-being in business, and the transformative power of love and passion in driving career changes. Amber’s narrative is a testament to the unpredictable paths to success and the beauty of embracing change with open arms.
As the episode draws to a close, listeners are left contemplating the balance between personal fulfillment and professional achievement, the essence of creativity in business, and the ongoing quest for freedom and flexibility in entrepreneurship. “Spirited” is not just a story of business acumen; it’s a heartwarming saga of finding one’s true calling amidst life’s twists and turns.
Tune in to “An Agency Story” for this compelling episode with Amber Gaige. Whether you’re an aspiring entrepreneur, a seasoned business owner, or simply someone who appreciates the confluence of art and marketing, “Spirited” offers a refreshing perspective on navigating the complexities of life and business with grace, humor, and unwavering determination.
You can listen to this episode of An Agency Story on your favorite podcast app:
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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.In this week’s episode,we have Amber Gaige,founder of Saber Marketing Group,a data-driven marketing support team based in the Dallas,Texas.Amber’s passion for music turned her from opera singer to eventually bring her into the world of agency work.Her life has been characterized by transformative experiences,including a captivating love story,nomadic living and transitioning into her family’s business before establishing her agency.Amber shares insights on love,art,private equity,and the impact of StoryBrand and her career in this episode.Enjoy the story.
Russel:
Welcome to the show today everyone.I have Amber Gaige with Saber Marketing Group.Thank you so much for being on the show today,Amber.
Amber:
I’m thrilled to be here.Thank you so much,Russel.It’s a pleasure.
Russel:
My pleasure as well,equally thrilled.Start us off,what does Saber Marketing Group do and who do you do it for?
Amber:
Saber Marketing Group is a passion-based,data-driven marketing support team.We help entrepreneurs and business owners who lack capacity to implement cutting-edge marketing tactics backed by good technology.We serve a plethora of customers all around the globe and do it with a commitment to technology and analytics.It’s a lot of fun.
Russel:
With authority,love it.Going back in time a little bit before you owned your agency,it seems like you may have had a different path in mind.What did you go to school for and what were your plans back then?
Amber:
Yeah,very different path in mind.I love the idea of how naive we are in our youth.I was a music nerd growing up.I loved to sing,loved to play the piano.Very much enjoy community theater and all things music.I actually studied music performance,vocal performance at Baylor University.Hey,sic’em Bears.
Russel:
Gotta get the Baylor plug.What specifically were you involved in as it relates to your music path?
Amber:
I sang opera.I enjoyed doing the German and the Russian operas.I did a lot of coloratura soprano roles,sang Queen of the Knight,which is one of the highest lyric coloratura repertoire that you can do.Spent several summers overseas,sang in Florence,Italy,sang in Budapest,sang in Rome.I’ve even sung on top of the mountain of Beatitudes in Jerusalem.Spent a lot of time traveling internationally and loved it.Was a lot of fun.
Russel:
That sounds absolutely amazing.The only opera,I think it was an opera,that I’ve been to was actually in Berlin.Sad I missed some of what I imagine were amazing performances.How did you transition from music to the marketing world?And then we’ll get into even where you started in the marketing world here in a second.
Amber:
That was an interesting twisty twirling path.I fell in love with an east Texas cowboy who I refer to as the last cowboy nerd.I met my college sweetheart.We had just finished a run of Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi and opera singers have a reputation for living by the book.Preparing for a performance and not living by the book after a performance.When you’re done,you’re like,hey let’s let down our hair and have a party like all the good Baptist college kids did or didn’t do.I’m at a party one night and in walks this tall drink of water.I look at my best friend from my studio and I said he’s not an opera singer.I can tell you from looking at him that’s not an opera singer.She said,oh no,he’s roommates with one of our buddies.I said,I think you need to go find out what his name is cuz I’m gonna marry him.She looked at me and she said,are you sober right now?I said,yeah,because I had just heard God tell my heart,this is the man I have for you.He walked in the door and unfortunately I had another boyfriend at the time,so I couldn’t actually go talk to him,but that was the start of a fun dating relationship.When we got serious and decided to build a life together,it was continuing opera and the nomadic lifestyle or find a traditional route where we could support ourselves and build a family.That’s what led us to the business world,what started down my path of taking a job for a marketing agency there in Waco that specialized in doing marketing for car dealerships.I took an entry level position in sales and marketing and that was the first taste of direct mail and PR and doing marketing for car dealerships.
Russel:
Love brought you to marketing.That’s a great story.How long were you doing that career?I know you got into the family business at some point and especially in the marketing realm a little bit.Can you share a little bit about that entry into that point and what your family’s business is and how you became involved?
Amber:
Like all good second generation entrepreneurs,we swear we will never go back to family business.We grew up in it.We’re like,nope,I’m good,thanks.I’ll go do this other thing,and then God has a sense of humor as I like to say.I was working away in Waco,waiting for my fiance to graduate from college,and the boss calls me in one day at this marketing agency and he says,hey I don’t like you,so I’m gonna fire you.That came out of nowhere.I didn’t even know what unemployment was in those days.I was a,young,dumb college grad.I said,okay.Took my desk plant,went back to my apartment,sat on the couch and cried.I was like,what am I going to do now?I am an unemployed,trained opera singer who’s trying to plan a wedding and figure out what happens next in life.I called my father,who at that time was the CEO of the Lawton Group.They have multiple entities that specialize in home services and construction trades.Now they have B2B and B2C plumbing,HVAC and electrical.I sent him an email and I said,daddy,I just got fired.He responded back and he said,sorry to hear that baby girl.It’s not a matter of what you do now.It’s a matter of how you react to this situation.Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.What are you gonna do?It was not an olive branch.It was not a so sorry for you.It was like,okay,what are you gonna do about it?Tough love.What happens to you grow up in a blue collar family.About two days later,I got a phone call from my mother and she said,your dad told me you got fired.Yes,ma’am,I did.She said I got a job for you and you’re gonna hate it.Thanks.She said I’m gonna throw you to the wolves and I’m gonna give you the worst job in our entire organization.If you move home,you can run our call center.I thought,this is the greatest thing ever.I am hungry,I am desperate,I’ve got to have a job.I said,but I have a fiance and we had planned to stay in Waco.Wonderful man that he is,he said,Dallas has a bigger job market.Let’s move back.We moved back and ultimately they gave him a job as our IT director.We joked that for our family businesses,we either needed a lawyer or we needed an IT director,and I just happened to marry the IT guy.We did that and we ended up working in the family businesses for many years,and I worked harder than I’d ever worked in my life and redid their call center and that’s what brought us back to entrepreneurship and family business.
Russel:
Sounds like a win-win,he took win for the team and found the right hire they need by marrying them.I’m sure there’s been others that have tried that business strategy out as well.I don’t know what the timing is,but I know eventually you left the family business,but then were involved some other things.Tell us a little bit more about that journey before what eventually gets us to doing what you’re doing today.
Amber:
We spent over a decade working in the family business,working together,playing together,eating together,eventually worked our way up the ladder over that decade.I went from24hour call center manager,trainer,script writer,recruiter.To doing the marketing for the franchise,which was one of my parents’businesses.Ultimately ended up developing a marketing team,developing a marketing plan,overseeing the marketing budget.That responsibility rolled over into marketing for their other entities as well.I’m condensing about a10year history into a quick explanation.One day,in typical entrepreneurial fashion,my dad called me into his office and said,I’m gonna start a marketing company and you’re gonna run it.I went,okay,sounds good.But by that point in time we had realized the benefits of having different entities and different ownership structures.We sat in a conference room together as a family and my older brother,who is actually10years older than me,he said,if Amber’s gonna run this business,I think she should have some equity stake in it.My family was willing to let me own this marketing company.It was a startup company.We did not run the marketing dollars from my parents’businesses through Saber Marketing Group,but that is how Saber Marketing Group was born.It was out of a direct mail licensing agreement.It was generating direct mail leads for contractors in Colorado and Minnesota.I had to develop a team.I had to have a due to due from my parents’companies,and I had to develop a business,$0to what it ended up being.In five years,that direct mail company scaled to the point of private equity calling and saying,we like what you’ve done.We wanna buy your business,and we want to buy the other licensees underneath this brand,and we wanna interview you for president of this new entity.Condition of sale was that I go with the business and consolidate multiple branches of this license underneath this private equity group out of Atlanta,Georgia.That was a very painful endeavor.It was a very stressful endeavor.It was the first time I had sold a business,but ultimately it opened up awesome doors to work in private equity,work in a enterprise level environment.I ended up not only consolidating those businesses under one business unit,but then being promoted to the VP of Marketing over an entire business unit with multiple businesses underneath it,specializing in SaaS,specializing in home services,specializing in digital media.It really developed a great platform of a well-rounded experience of marketing that I wouldn’t have had otherwise.
Russel:
What a great case study for aspiring opera singers out there that may not know exactly how their path might end up.Where did that actually lead to what you’re doing today in terms of how you decided to start Saber Marketing?
Amber:
Private equity is a wonderful vehicle for many businesses,but what I found is that when I decided to turn my intentions of motherhood to be forefront for our family,it was not a good work-life balance.Having had many connections with marketing professionals and executives in the franchising world,there was an opportunity for me to exit private equity and work from home.That led to a great foundation for me to relaunch the LLC that had been dormant,to step into some consulting roles,to step into some strategic roles and ultimately bring Saber Marketing Group back full force underneath my own brand,whereas previously it had been a DBA.Create a team again,but create it in a fashion that I had come to realize was missing,in my opinion,in the marketing world.There’s so many agencies that focus on a niche like branding,a niche like web dev,a niche like digital media.What I found in my experience of working with startup companies,blue collar companies and enterprise level companies and private equity,was that the common denominator missing was the ability to trust someone else in the instances of decision fatigue and the ability to outsource comprehensive marketing needs when your group was understaffed or inexperienced.That became the catalyst for Saber functioning as a100%remote,diversified vehicle.For businesses all over the world who needed not just branding,not just copy,but they needed that guide.They needed that strategic implementer.Most of the time the strategy was not enough.When we build the strategy,they said,can’t you just do it?We said,sure.We’ll just do it.
Russel:
Makes perfect sense.Imagine a lot of folks out there can certainly align with that.One of the things that I understand you’re a certified StoryBrand consultant and I’m a big fan of StoryBrand.I think it’s such a great concept.What made you decide to use that as a framework within your business?
Amber:
What I’ve come to fall in love with about marketing is that it is this wonderful juxtaposition of psychology,creativity,and analytics,and this intersection of those three important aspects of business do coincide when marketing is done well.But what I found is there are very few marketing systems that allow for an encompass.These very broad aspects of business,StoryBrand does that.StoryBrand not only provides that framework where you follow a proven system of a10x return most of the time,but it is based on the foundation of human psychology.When I became a StoryBrand guide,I think at the time there were only600of us in the world that had this certification.What I loved about it was that it allowed me to have a framework of communicating with clarity.It allowed me to have the freedom of bringing in high quality graphics that liaisoned well with branding,and it also spoke to the buying decision and the sales funnel that has to be central in a successful marketing strategy.I’m a huge fan of it too.I appreciate the research and the work that Don Miller put into it and it also connects me with this global network of people that are like-minded and just trying to serve their clients as servant leaders.I’m a huge proponent of StoryBrand.It makes your marketing just so much more effective cuz it brings the clarity.
Russel:
I definitely agree.For maybe the few that aren’t familiar with StoryBrand out there,what’s the quick elevator pitch behind what StoryBrand is and does?
Amber:
StoryBrand is a methodology of marketing that eliminates confusion for your end buyer.It provides business owners the opportunity of working within a marketing framework that takes the guesswork about whether or not what they’re trying is going to work.StoryBrand allows you to know,I’m gonna implement this framework.It’s going to make my message more clear from my end user,and therefore my marketing is gonna scale on average of about10x.
Russel:
At this point,you’ve had a very successful career in multiple levels in and out of entrepreneurship,but what are you most proud of thus far on your journey?
Amber:
I am most proud of probably two things.One,I love to create success for others.I do believe in servant leadership.When I have clients that their business scales because of work that we’ve put into it,that’s a feather in the cap,so to speak.I’m also a huge proponent of mental health and personal health and wellbeing,and so to create a business that allows that for our team members,and also provides that kind of relief for our clients.I love that.I love that about my business.I’ve got house slippers on right now,and it’s the greatest thing ever.I get to go do laundry on my lunch break and pick up my kid from school and work in an industry that I’m passionate about.I love the fact that I get to create my own path and help others do the same thing.
Russel:
You look very dressed up.I don’t know if you’re wearing pajama pants as well with your slippers,but from what I can tell,no one would know,which is the awesome thing about working remotely.If you could go back in time,maybe at some point in your career and give yourself some advice,what would that be and when would that time period be you’d go back to?
Amber:
I think a lot of pain can be avoided if we just get over our own insecurities and our need for control.I think as self-starting individuals,we often get in our own way.The advice that I would give myself is,baby girl,don’t sweat the small stuff and everything’s a small stuff.God has a plan.My grandmother always said,God watches over fools and little children.If you have faith in the God-given talents and abilities and you’re willing to put in the work,then there’s a path forward.You don’t have to get so bogged down in controlling all the elements that you think you have control over,that we don’t anyway.
Russel:
It’s such a fine line cuz I’ve always felt that insecurities often can lead to some bad decisions.I heard something recently that also resonated me a little bit,counter to that,most ambitious people that achieve something have an insecurity that’s driving them.I think you’ve referred to it as anxiety.That’s keeping them up at night to push them towards that goal.I’m sure like all things the answer is in the middle,but that’s a great perspective and I appreciate you sharing that.Sky’s the limit here.Where do you see the agency and or yourself10years from now?
Amber:
It’s probably gonna be multiple places.Having tasted the wonderful blessing that it is to scale a business,I’m not opposed to scaling another one and selling it.I’m also not opposed to creating other businesses that are lifestyle based.I think in10years,the ultimate goal for most entrepreneurs is freedom and flexibility.That’s where I see myself.I want to pursue a path that allows me to raise my son,travel the world,and help other people.Whatever that looks like,whether that is the sale of this business or scaling it to the point that we’re able to continue to be more and more selective about who we work with,I just wanna pursue that path of freedom and flexibility.
Russel:
Last big question for you.Are entrepreneurs born or are they made?
Amber:
The answer lies in the middle.I think it’s both.I think you’re born with a certain passion and a certain drive for whatever that underlying factor is that feeds that passion and drive.I think life circumstances create a wake up call in our souls that says,I can either do this better or I should do this for myself.Ultimately,entrepreneurship boils down to a choice.It’s a tough choice and it’s a rocky road,but what a rewarding one.
Russel:
That’s where most people land is in the middle.It’s always fascinating,the different takes that people have on that.If people wanna know more about Saber Marketing Group,where can they go?
Amber:
Go to sabermarketinggroup.com.You can follow us on social as well.You can email me at Amber.Gaige@Sabermarketinggroup.We’re based outta Dallas and we’d love to chat with you anytime.
Russel:
There you go.And maybe you’ll sing for them.Sing some opera.That can be the incentive to reach out?
Amber:
A good bottle of red wine.You never know what can happen.
Russel:
Right on.It’s been a great conversation.Thank you so much for being on the show today and I appreciate your time,Amber.
Amber:
Thanks Russel.I appreciate what you do.Take care.
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 to5million dollars and more in revenue.To learn more,visit performancefaction.com.
Amber:
There was a time when I was meeting with the client.It was a video chat kinda like this.I had given my husband strict instructions to not let our son come in the door.It was an early morning meeting,7:00AM and my child busted through the door,butt naked,full butt naked.He was like three years old and the clients saw everything and it was just like,oh my gosh.It was just one of those proud parent moments.
Russel:
Oh yeah.Luckily there wasn’t a remote world like that when my kids were younger,although my son’s a teenager now.Who knows.He could still probably do something like that,but this is why my back is against the wall there.There’s nobody more running around to do that.
Amber:
That was a day.
Russel:
Yeah,I bet.My bad Zoom story was,and this was pre Zoom,a long time ago and this is when I was still in the agency.I had a guy that worked for us call us and said,hey,I need to jump on this conference call.It’s in five minutes or whatever.I was up pretty late that night,so I was rolling outta bed and I was like,all right,I’ll be on.I’ll be on.I jump on this thing and it’s some,it was a tool called Blue Jeans.I don’t even know if that’s around anymore,but I never used it before,anything like that.I’m sitting there and I hop on and I started to see these funny looks on people’s faces and then I realized,oh,my camera’s on.I’m sitting there,no shirts.My hair’s all mess.I grabbed the camera on the screen real quick and I had no idea where the button,I had no idea where any of that was,so I was freaking out.I thought I’d pushed mute,apparently I didn’t.I was yelling for someone to grab me a shirt just in case I couldn’t figure this all out.This was our client,this was some other vendors that were part of it.This was a terrible moment for me.But such I survived.
Amber:
Did you get the deal?
Russel:
I don’t even think it was a deal at that point in time.I think it was just a vendor call for the clients,to talk about some subject matter.I don’t even remember whatever it was.I’m sure I blocked out that moment,other than just being able to recount the story in of itself,but I learned a lot of lessons.One,I’m gonna be real careful before I jump on any type of video chat feature without knowing what it is.And then,pretty much never jump on if you don’t want to be seen with what you’re wearing,just cuz you never know how something like that could happen.We live,we learn.
