Company: Cobble Hill
Owners: Austin Dandridge
Year Started: 2012
Employees: 26 – 50
Embark on a captivating journey with “An Agency Story,” a podcast series that delves into the heart and soul of marketing agency ownership. Through real-life tales from agency owners worldwide, this series explores the rollercoaster ride of emotions and experiences that shape the marketing industry. Episode “Union” shines a spotlight on Austin Dandridge, the mastermind behind Cobble Hill, a digital marketing agency that’s making waves from Charleston, South Carolina. This episode is a treasure trove of insights, featuring Austin’s personal and professional voyage from aspiring chef and musician to digital marketing visionary. Discover the innovative strategies and community-focused approach that propelled Cobble Hill to success, including a memorable encounter with Reese Witherspoon that encapsulates the highs and lows of agency life.
In this enthralling episode, Austin shares his evolution from culinary arts to the forefront of digital advertising, offering an inside look at the complexities and triumphs of agency partnerships and the strategic narrowing of focus that has defined Cobble Hill’s path to excellence. His story is peppered with humorous anecdotes, like the nerve-wracking website presentation to Reese Witherspoon, and powerful insights into the importance of resilience, creativity, and community in building a successful agency.
Listeners will be intrigued by the unique blend of personal stories and professional wisdom, including the challenges and rewards of working alongside a spouse, the dynamics of partnership within a business, and the pivotal moments that have shaped Cobble Hill’s journey. Austin’s reflections on entrepreneurship, growth, and the art of focusing on a niche market are not only informative but also deeply inspiring.
Tune in to “An Agency Story” for this compelling episode on “Union.” Whether you’re an aspiring agency owner, a seasoned professional, or simply a fan of intriguing stories, Austin Dandridge’s journey with Cobble Hill will leave you pondering the essence of innovation, partnership, and the ever-evolving landscape of the digital world.
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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’re joined by Austin Dandridge, the visionary behind Cobble Hill, a digital marketing agency based out of Charleston, South Carolina. Austin’s journey is one of creativity and resilience, blending personal anecdotes with professional milestones that highlight Cobble Hill’s unique approach to business from tales of a 40th birthday getaway to significant turning points that shaped the agency. Austin’s narrative is a testament to the power of innovative thinking in the digital world. His story, not only captivates, but also offers valuable insights and the many nuances of agency partnerships Hear how Austin sheds light on the essence of Cobble Hill’s success and the importance of community and connection in building a business. We even have a celebrity site reveal at the end. Enjoy the story.
Russel:
Welcome to the show today, everyone. I have Austin Dandridge with Cobble Hill with us here today. Thank you so much for being on the show today, Austin.
Austin:
Thanks, Russel. Thanks for having me.
Russel:
Excited to have you, sir. If you don’t mind, get us going right out of the gate. What is Cobble Hill do and who do you do it for?
Austin:
Digital advertising agency in Charleston, South Carolina. We’ve been around for 12 years and we started off as a design, web development, photography, video, branding agency. We’ve since narrowed that down to doing digital advertising and email marketing for e-commerce brands and hospitality brands, usually in the luxury and I run the agency with my wife, Carter.
Russel:
How’d you come up with the name? That’s a somewhat unique name. What’s behind the story there?
Austin:
I started the agency with another partner, a girl who I had worked with at a previous job, and we had both lived in the neighborhood in Brooklyn called Cobble Hill, and starting an agency was easy. Naming the agency was the hard part and we toiled with so many different ideas and landed on Cobble Hill and it stuck. To us, it felt high class and there was these other agencies like Gin Lane and stuff like that, and we liked the name Cobble Hill. We’re based in Charleston but also New York as well. Wanted to bridge the gap between the two.
Russel:
Okay. So Cobble Hill was a cool sounding word that you put together or coined? There’s no special Cobble Hill place in the world or anything?
Austin:
Yeah, there’s a neighborhood in Brooklyn called Cobble Hill and we had both lived there. That, that was the impetus for it.
Russel:
Now it all makes sense. Lots to go over, but we’ll take a ride in the time machine first. What were you doing long before you started the agency? What was young Austin going to do with his life?
Austin:
I went to culinary school, an event management school and thought that I was going to own a restaurant or be a chef. Didn’t have much of an idea outside of working in restaurants or anything like that. I was also a musician at the time and lifelong career in music. Needed something that was a little bit more sustainable. I decided culinary school sounded good. I was in my early twenties and slowly realized that also was probably not the life that I was meant to pursue. I’d always been in creative things, being a a musician, being a chef, and had always been interested in photography in high school. I moved to Australia right when I got out of college and got a job at a photography agency there. This was pre cell phone photography and there was a company that would essentially be event photographers for high schools. We would go to proms and high school events and do the step and repeat photography there. It was a great gig because I lived in Sydney, Australia, and it got me traveling all around. Probably shoot three nights a week at different schools all around the east coast of Australia. Paid well and gave me a lot of free time when I lived over there, but also got to work with and do event photography and it paved the way, at least in terms of my creative.
Russel:
That’s definitely the theme, you seem like a very creative individual. I don’t know what I’m more fascinated by, wanting to know your whole story behind living in Australia or the fact that they have proms in Australia, I don’t know that I would have occurred to that. I thought that was an American thing.
Austin:
It was very interesting going to them and seeing the different types of functions that would happen at these schools and the different types of hairstyles and clothing that these high schoolers would wear. I wish I still had some of those photos, actually, because they were pretty hilarious.
Russel:
If only. Very cool. What was it like living in Australia? If you could sum it up in like one sentence, what was that like?
Austin:
Australia is probably, outside of the United States, one of the coolest countries in the world. It’s sunny and warm and they’re surfing. I’m a big surfer and it’s pretty magical living over there.
Russel:
Add surfing to your list of skills there. I imagine more will come out as we go. All right, you’re welcome, visit Australia, for the nod here. I’ll expect my, what do they call that, commission or whatever the case in the mailbox. Where is the path that actually led to you starting your own agency?
Austin:
I came back from Sydney, Australia and moved to Charleston, South Carolina with my fiance at the time. Started working for a small digital media agency here in Charleston. At the time they were Huffington Post style news. Realized that I loved the internet and all things. I decided to go back to school in New York City to go to Pratt Institute, which is a design school up there, and get my graphic design degree. When I moved to New York City I was going to school, but also freelancing photographer, working with other photographers and assisting them. Somehow stumbled upon this job opening for a social media marketing agency, which was pretty novel at the time. There weren’t many social media marketing agencies. I applied and hit it off right away with the founder. They were doing work for the Knicks and the Nuggets and running their Facebook pages, essentially. This was right when brands were embracing Facebook and building apps within Facebook. The first app we built was essentially like choosing your all star roster for the Knicks. This was all built within Facebook itself and still got work for this agency that was doing cutting edge the time. My wife, after a couple of years in New York, wanted to move back down to Charleston. She was a Pilates instructor. She still is a Pilates instructor and she got an opportunity to open a pilates studio in Charleston. We decided to move back and I got a job for another agency that was building websites down in Charleston. After about six months, I decided that I wanted to go out on my own, start my own agency because I saw in Charleston that at the time, there were no agencies that were doing what I had been doing for this agency up in New York, which was more creative work that was focused on Facebook or focused on high fidelity websites or anything like that. We were able to find some clients interested in doing, more design focused websites. This was in 2012 and brands were just starting embracing them, e-commerce was starting and stuff like that. I felt like it was the right time to start my own thing.
Russel:
Had that idea been in the back of your head before? Like, hey, eventually I’m probably going to own my own business or something like that? Or did it come out of thin air when you observe the opportunity in the new setting?
Austin:
My dad was always worked for himself. He was a stockbroker. I’d always seen him work for himself and so I had always had this model of being very entrepreneurial or working for yourself. He kind of showed me the way, I suppose on how you can can make a living doing that. I realized that I needed experience. I wanted to work for other companies first, but I didn’t have the idea to start a marketing agency on my own. I started the agency with a partner who was also at the company in Charleston that I was working with at the time. She was fed up with it and wanted to do her own thing. She asked me if I wanted to be involved and I was like, yeah. Let’s do it. She made it sound like it could be attainable. I don’t know if I would have made the leap that early on without someone else encouraging me at the time.
Russel:
It sounds like you were jumping off into somewhat of a unique space, something you said you weren’t observing a lot in that market. Did that make client acquisition in the early days easy? What was that like for you?
Austin:
I’d say right off the bat it was pretty easy to get clients for us because in Charleston at the time, there was no one else catering towards Charleston local clients from a higher level of creative thinking for digital stuff. There was a lot of agencies that were here already. Some good ones, but none of them were focused on the web. We came in as young and scrappy and willing to take whatever we could get our hands on to get experience and money to pay for it. We would do everything from shoot the photos to the branding for these new businesses, so setting up the websites and obviously would do it for much cheaper than some of the bigger agencies at the time. Was a pretty easy sell and I’ve always been able to hit people up make the pitch for the agency and then get them to buy into it.
Russel:
And then as I understand it, that partner that sounds like the reason that even got you to start the agency in the first place didn’t stay around very long. What happened there?
Austin:
She lasted maybe not even six months and I think that poor financial planning on her part, but there wasn’t enough money coming in for it, being able to support her and I think that she realized what an uphill battle it was when she started it. We had come up with a business plan to start and had ideas of what numbers would look like and how big contracts would be to start, and they were nowhere near that big. When you’re splitting it up between two people, it’s less and less than what we had projected. I think that she needed to go back into the workforce, so to speak.
Russel:
Runway is key. I think back upon my own journey, and this may be some similarities here that I was lucky that I was young and didn’t need as much money. It took us several years before making any money that anybody would even consider modest, not even significant, modest. That’s takes a lot of planning. It sounds like you either were a little more grounded or set yourself up. How did that work out for you and not for her, when you look back at it?
Austin:
I think that, like you, didn’t necessarily need quite as much as maybe she did. My wife owned a pilates studio at the time and so we had that income coming in. Her husband was in between jobs, financially I think it was hard for her. Since my dad was somewhat of an entrepreneur, I come from this entrepreneurial mindset where it feels like you’re not going to get something right off the bat, you have to work for something. And even when you work for something and you get it, you still have to continue to work for something, right? It never stops. Being used to working for someone else, the paycheck arrives every two weeks. It’s there. You don’t have to necessarily go out and get it. I had done some stuff, I’ve been in bands. I had known what it takes to hustle. Had some unusual jobs putting things together and doing some stock trading on my own to get by sometimes. I feel like I’ve always approached things from a more simplistic financial way of thinking about things. Was up for the challenge of the hustle, too.
Russel:
Clearly a key part of that. I want to talk more about that band piece you mentioned, but I’ll put a pin in that because the theme we’re going to go down here is partnership and that’s seems like a big part of your journey. As I understand it, your wife came into the business at some point, what was that like transitioning her in? Maybe she will or will not listen to this. Give us the one good and one bad.
Austin:
She came in, her background is in writing. As soon as we started getting more clients I was like, hey, do you want to write some stuff for us here and there? She was owning the Pilates studio at the time and so had some free time, but not a ton and she was writing for us. As we started hiring people, I needed someone to do the HR piece and she’s smart and was beginning to get a little bit more involved and so it was the natural way that things happened. I think that it happens a lot in this space. I’ve talked to a lot of marketing agency owners who are husband and wife, basically because of the same thing that happened to me is, you get busy and your wife can do the HR piece or something else that can help operationalize a small agency. We’ re able to talk about the same thing, offer opinions on scenarios and know what we’re talking about where, for husband and wives who don’t work together, that’s probably a much bigger challenge. But that’s also the downside of it too, right? The pillow talk that you have could be about some sort of employee issue or client issue. The finances are all tied up into one source of income there. I don’t think I could have done it without her, and so I think you take The bad with the good.
Russel:
I’m guessing if you weren’t good at that, the two of you, we’d be talking a different story, but this sounds like an overall positive. My wife never was involved in running the business, but there were some stints where she would come help out and we determined in the long run that probably wasn’t the best route or best dynamic for us in particular, and we get along way better when that’s not the case. To each their own, and if you can make it work, obviously a strength to so many parts of your personalities. Speaking of another partnership somewhere at some point in time, it sounds like you had another partner that came to the business. How did that conversation evolve? What was the scenario at hand that made you decide that this would be a good thing to go down? What did that look like at the time?
Austin:
At the time we were building websites primarily, and we were working with brands to launch their websites, getting paid on a project basis. We would launch these great looking websites that we had dedicated three to six months, and then either we wouldn’t hear from them again, they wouldn’t have any marketing plan in place. I saw an opportunity to include marketing into what we were doing, which hadn’t occurred to me for whatever reason. I’d always been a little put off by stuff like that for brands for whatever reason. His background was in paid media and he was working for agencies in Charleston. I approached him and said hey, I’m looking at adding this service. I’d love to have you on board and I don’t want you to be an employee. I want you to be a partner so you can share in building this with us. Pitched him on the idea and he immediately bought in. He at the time wanted to own his own thing too. He had dabbled with some freelance on his own and so had experience working outside of getting paid for a nine to five. We had actually freelanced some work to him at certain points, so we had already worked together and we just hit hit it off already because we were friends. It was easy to bring him on board and actually work out the partnership pretty quickly. We gave him a piece of the business basically for a salary. He was pretty set up. The way that we pitched it to our clients was hey, we’re now offering this additional service. We had all these clients already that we had built websites for, and we approached them with it and immediately probably like 25 percent of them signed for it. He was basically running all of the ads himself right off the bat until we were able to stabilize it and start adding more marketing team members.
Russel:
Okay. There’s so much to cover in the time period, but fast forwarding to where that sounds like you eventually left the business. Was that on good terms and how did you unwind that whole process eventually and why?
Austin:
He worked with us for about five years and built basically the entire business that we have now, which is primarily digital marketing focused and email marketing focused. We don’t do websites anymore, so we shifted our positioning pretty much to accommodate this new level of service that we provide. I think that the ups and downs of the agency world, from a client perspective, from an employee perspective, he was still doing some of the actual day to day optimizations of the ads in addition to our other team, but still very heavily involved in that a lot. I’d like to go back to a more established business where I can be more of a player on a greater team and not have so much responsibility rest on my shoulders and have to do a thousand different things but can only do one thing. I think that there’s family dynamics at play there. He had just turned 40, so I think there was a lot of reflection on, is this what I want to do with my life? I think to maybe a lesser extent and more subconsciously, he didn’t start the agency and so he was already coming in as a third wheel a little bit to my wife and I. I don’t think there was ever an opportunity for him to feel like he had a greater sway of opinion than anyone else. and It always feel that dynamic that our voice would be louder than his in any sort of decision making.
Russel:
When you look back on the entire process there, what’s one or two key lessons learned or confirmed in terms of how you went about that and anything you would change or do differently otherwise?
Austin:
Biggest lesson that I’ve learned through the two partnerships that I’ve had is that no one is going to care that you started as much as you do. The key is to help craft it into something that is collaborative and the decision making doesn’t happen top down. This is much easier to do when you have 13 people at Cobble Hill. It’s easier to make a flatter organization. When you get to a much larger organization I think it’s hard to have somewhat flat decision making. But every time some sort of challenge like that happens, when a partner leaves, it’s always because they are unhappy and are not willing to invest their livelihood, their heart and soul into something as much as you do, even though I’m always under the assumption that they are. I always feel like we’re in this together. Even with that type of thinking is definitely, I started the agency, she came on board, but a lot of times it’s hey, what does Austin think we should do here? Or, it’s your agency. What do you think you should do? A partnership is challenging if you don’t have the exact same level of dedication to it.
Russel:
Very interesting. It makes total sense. Oftentimes when we talk about partnerships on the show or the notion of, it’s a relationship like any other relationship it seems like we have in the world. And sometimes it sounds like maybe some of the underpinnings of what you’re saying there, it comes down to a lot of times expectations among other things. And as I know, sometimes partnerships have so many benefits and then they have their other side too so thank you for sharing that. Okay, with the little bit of time we have left here, I’m curious, it sounds like you’ve gone through the agency curve of, we were doing everything for everybody and then now we’ve solidified into, this is more our specific line of focus and niche. What was that process for you? I heard there when your partner came on, that seemed like it helped push you into a different direction, but when did that evolution occur for you and how’d you go about it?
Austin:
I think I’ve come to realize it, to be honest. In the past I’ve found, the more specific that you can get in offering any type of service, but the level of service that we offer to a very specific type of client, the more that client will trust your opinion. It’s good, obviously, to know things about a variety of businesses. The fact that I have web design experience, photography experience, videography experience, branding experience, plays into our skillset very nicely, but it’s so broad that it’s hard to get deep with a client. What I found was that the more that we can narrow who we work with, we work with the very specific types of services that we offer them, the more that they will trust us, the more benefit we can provide them, the longer that relationship will probably be. The types of clients that we don’t work well with, after narrowing that down, we’re not good at launching brand new businesses. For whatever reason, businesses that are coming out of the gate with that nice website or something, and even maybe a great product. We are not great at launching those businesses. We are much better at taking a brand that has seen organic growth and helping them accelerate that growth through what we’re doing. We’re able to level up with the clients that we work with, which in the end makes it a much more exciting day to day work environment for our team. But I think even more importantly for me, I’m much more excited to work with brands that I’ve narrowed this focus on, because I’m getting better and better at a very specific type of thing. Whereas before I’ve always been like, I told you I’ve been a photographer, a chef, a musician. I’ve done a lot of different things. I wouldn’t say I was amazing at any of those, which is probably why I started an agency. You can provide a very broad array of things, but I think as I’m been doing this for over a decade now, I’ve found that getting more specific about it is actually the exciting part, and interesting for me right now.
Russel:
It’s interesting you say that too, because so many people talk about not wanting to do that because they find the variety interesting, but I don’t often know too if that’s maybe the biggest fear folks have when they go down that path is, who am I excluding versus thinking about who they’re including. But I know you work with some pretty big brands. Did those come before and maybe solidify your thoughts on terms of your positioning or did those come after you made that your focus and that was the reward for narrowing down in that way?
Austin:
Most of them came before, to be honest. It’s great to have a big brand on as we pitch more clients, but the brands that we’re working with more and more now are the ones that people are just starting to hear of that, we’re going to take to become those bigger brands. We’ve worked with Reese Witherspoon’s brand Draper James, but we were doing a lot of stuff at the time. We helped them with all sorts of stuff, from their content positioning to their website to their social media, all sorts of things, but I wouldn’t say that. If we were to work with them again now, it would be on a very small piece of their overall business. I think we would be able to provide them with a much higher level of service now than we did when we worked with them at the time.
Russel:
Definitely would love to dig deeper and ask more. But as we start to run out of time here I’ll ask you the quintessential big question, are entrepreneurs born or are they made?
Austin:
I’m sure you get this a lot, but I think that they are a little bit of both. You have to be born with a absolute resilience to take heartbreak, be a go getter and be able to wait around in the room. I think you’re somewhat born but I also think that the real qualities of good entrepreneurs, those are made through experience and through resilience and actions and failures. Being able to truly turn it into something positive on the other end. One of the things that I think I saw from my dad was being able to wake up and work for yourself and get things done. You’re born with that, but it’s a skill that you have to continue to hone and develop each day.
Russel:
Amen to that. If people want to know more about Cobble Hill, where can they go?
Austin:
They can go to our website, cobblehilldigital. com. They can find us on LinkedIn, Cobble Hill on Twitter, Cobble_Hill and on Instagram.
Russel:
Awesome. There you have it, folks. Thank you so much for sharing all the wonderful, cool parts of your story, all the places in the world you’ve been, all the amazing, cool, creative things you’ve done. Love your journey, can’t wait to see where it continues to go in the future. Appreciate your time on the show today, Austin.
Austin:
Thanks for having me, Russel. This was 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.
Austin:
Draper James, they had brought us on, they liked us because we were based in the South and they were a New York based company, but Reese’s, her personality is from the South. They wanted someone from the South. We designed a website for them and they brought us to New York to present the website to Reese in person. Reese wanted to see it in person. I go into their office and sit down, she’s very nice, obviously, and she’s a huge celebrity and I’m literally sitting right next to her and there’s one other person in the room and it’s, okay, now’s the time to show her the website. I sit next to her and I press the button to pull it up and it’s sitting there loading. It’s just like 1%, 2%, 3%. It says underneath it, loading your experience. I turned to her and I go, it’s loading your experience right now, and she was like, okay, cool. It was a little bit of an awkward silence for about 45 seconds until it loaded, but she loved the website and it was actually a great partnership. Nerves were high during that one.
Russel:
I can imagine that. I can feel, if I was in a similar situation that I’d be like, okay, a website reveal discussion like that is pressure enough and then add, you’re trying to please Reese Witherspoon during the process. That’s a very fascinating experience.
