HCOB: You started a digital advertising agency when that market was well-established, with major players de- voting tremendous resources to this space — what made you think you could succeed there, particularly without much in the way of online experience? Bell : I think it’s important to note that we operated in markets that, from a digital perspective and a technology perspective, were probably five to 10 years behind more progressive markets in major metropolitan areas. What we saw in these markets was that people were curious and when people are curious, it shows that maybe there’s a potential need. So that’s how we got interested in the digital space. To address this opportunity, I went to work hiring experts in the field, including several team members with many years of experience at major digital media outlets. We soon found that the big digital agencies were selling their product a certain way that we didn’t really agree with — that didn’t fit the needs of our customers. We felt that the approach they were using — selling pre-determined packages of services — sets an incorrect expectation from the client’s perspective, one that results in a churned customer. So, we started selling digital advertising in a different way, and I think that is what helped us gain traction over the last four years. Scott Bel l’ s time at Harbert forced him to become comfortable with verbally expressing the nuts and bolts of his thinking. “ When I came out of Harbert, I had already made close to a hundred speeches, and that experience has shaped how I lead meetings and discussions to this day. That was probably the biggest impact of the entrepreneurship program at Harbert for me. ”
us a one hundred percent financing structure because we were creating an asset-based business. It was, in effect, a secured loan at 12% or 13% interest, which gave us enough funding to build a few billboards where we already had the leases and permits in place and start generating revenue. From there we were off and running. HCOB: Can you tell us a little about what you had to do to secure that financing — did you develop and submit a comprehensive business plan? Bell : Not really, we didn’t have a comprehensive business plan, per se, but we had a strategic plan which painted a picture of who we were, what market we wanted to tackle, the economics behind the business and a go-to-market play- book for how we wanted to acquire customers. But we didn’t go through the whole process of developing that 30-page business plan. HCOB: Fast forward seven years to the sale of a portion of your company to Link Media — what did you sell and why? Bell : We sold the outdoor portfolio of business to Link Me- dia, keeping the indoor advertising portion as we decided to move into the online advertising space. At that time, we had built a customer base of some 200 small to medium sized businesses, and we were starting to get questions from these customers about foundational aspects of digital marketing, such as how does pay-per-click work? Do I need to invest in paid search? What is SEO? And that was really the light bulb moment for us as we were selling the billboard company — this is going to be the next stage of our business.
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