Mastering Agency Growth: Insights on Mergers, AI, and Strategic Focus

Hey, hi everyone. Now, welcome to your show, E-Coffee with Experts. This is your host, Ranmay. And today we have Doyle, who’s the President and CEO at Comprise with us. Say, Doyle, how’s it going?

It’s going great. Thanks for having me.

Great, Doyle. Before we take it forward, let’s get to know the human behind the mic. Why don’t you share a bit with the audiences about your childhood? What were you like when you were growing up? And we take it from there.

Well, I think a lot of people who grew up with me might have different opinions, but I actually come from a very small town in Nebraska. So I am a Huster fan, and you’ll never take that away from me. So I did come to school in Denver and fell in love with all things communications. I have a mass communications major from the University of Denver. And actually started my career the summer between my junior and senior year in college. I was hired as an intern by what was then Coors Brewing Company, is now Miller Coors, and just never left. I worked part-time through my senior year that was offered a full-time position. So I did 10 years there in both public relations and marketing capacities. And then I really wanted to get into technology. So I changed jobs, started working with some technology companies. I ran some in-house departments for some data storage companies, and then just always had the itch to found my own agency. So I was able to do that, fortunately. And it’s all come together. I merged my firm with another firm. The founder retired about 10 years ago, so I’ve been running things since.

And in 2022, we were created to comprise because we comprise everything that you need to do in a well-rounded marketing effort in today’s market.

Lovely. Quite a story, I must say. Needing your own agency, Doyle, like we were talking, is not an easy being asked. Starting out, especially, life is difficult. Initially, to keep the lights on, get things going, land up your first client, build a team. There are too many challenges. Build support functions like human resources, finances, and all that stuff. So What were the initial challenges, though, that you faced starting out your own agency, and how did you overcome them?

One of the most challenging things is, and at the end of the day, every company was once a startup, right? Apple was a startup, right? So you have to go through that pain. And one of the hardest things when your goal is to become a professional services company is you’re all by yourself, and so you have to send the bills, do the work, find the clients, Everything. And so there’s still only so many hours in a day. So what I always found was when I was by myself and starting out, I’d sell for a while, I’d get a bunch of really great projects, but then I’d be too busy to sell and those projects would come to an end and I’d go sell, and then I’d get too busy to sell and those projects would come to an end. And it was this roller coaster. One of the things that I wanted to do early on was to not just keep myself busy, but to go sell enough that I can start to have a staff so I can hand things off and continue. And so you can do work and find work all at the same time.

And I think that’s a big challenge. And we’ve been able to successfully do over about 20 people strong now and growing quite well. The only reason I know this number is because I won an award, but we grew 154 % over the last three years. So we’re continuing to do a nice job there, I think. And the real key is to overcome the urge to say yes to whoever shows up with a budget and to really understand what it is that you do well and where you can truly add value and where you can charge a good price for that value as opposed to just… I always like to say I love… We’re here in Boulder, Colorado. That’s the view out of our office there behind me. Lovely place, love it, but I don’t want to build a website for the pizza place down the street. There’s people that do that. They do it really, really well. That’s not what we do. So we stay in our lane. We do the hard stuff, the technology, the telecommunication. We like to say innovation driven organizations. And by doing that, we’re able to truly bring value and can charge good prices for what it is that we do and also show really excellent results.

Lovely. And you also touched upon the merger based it, right? I mean, it’s not that every day we see a merger or talk about a merger. So why don’t you help us understand more about it? What was the strategy behind doing that merger and what was its after impact for you as a not as an individual, but also at a company level, at an odd level?

Yeah, it worked out really, really well. I don’t think it was something I looked to do. It’s just the opportunity presented itself. And I also acquired a company earlier this year. So I can speak to both sides of it. When I was looking at merging my firm, I really was at a place where I either needed to probably go get some funding, anything from a bank loan to a small business loan, whatever it might be. So I had some runway and could run a deficit for a little while. At the same time, another firm that was a little bit larger than me, not a ton larger than me, was looking for… They needed another senior person. I had a book of business, so it was almost a free hire. So So when we put those two together, it worked out perfectly. I didn’t have to go get financing. I was able to strengthen the bench of this agency that I merged into. And then we took off and grew from there, and that worked really well. And then earlier this year, I had an opportunity to to acquire an agency that had come down to, it was just down to two people, and the founder and principal wanted to change her career path.

She has another passion, and I knew the other remaining employee well. In fact, she was working for me part-time as well as this other agency, and our agencies both did the same things. So it was a perfect acquisition. I was able to bring that on. Their current clients were able to stay with their account people, and now we’re moving that forward. So I think It can really be a nice strategic boost and a good way to grow. As long as, I would say this, the culture is so, so important. It worked out really well when I moved in to merge my firm in. We’ve known each other for years. We’ve worked well together. We have the same approach to the business. And same thing here. I’ve known the employee that I acquired for, gosh, more than 20 years and knew that her culture fit was there. Her approach to the work was the same. And I think that’s where that’s so, so important Otherwise, losing people, losing clients, and what looked like a good thing becomes a disaster.

Absolutely. And talking about your company or agency, and such a crowded marketplace, How does Comprise as your agency, differentiate itself from other PR and marketing agencies out there?

Absolutely. We do that every day. First of all, we like to stay in our lane. We have an exclusive focus on innovation-driven organizations, not even necessarily companies. We work with nonprofits as well. But that’s why we don’t do traveling tourism. Great opportunities out there, but that’s not what we do. We don’t do consumer package goods. Again, huge market, not what we do. So we Absolutely are very particular about the clients that we both approach or even agree to work with. And that’s so important, not only from an external position, but it starts with the hiring, right? I believe that natural curiosity about what it is that you do is critical in communicating something. I’ve got to be excited about the story. My staff gets crazy. I listen to podcasts in the shower in the morning, and I’ll get out and I’ll send them a quick Slack message like, Hey, I just heard this about our client, whoever, or this is part of their market. Here’s an idea. And if I was listening to, let’s say, a travel podcast, which I do from time to time, I do have obvious. But if that was my passion, that the minute I left the office, I couldn’t wait to go look at different markets it, I would be less effective as a technology communicator.

And so I really want to hire people. I joke that one of my interview questions is if you’re not looking forward to getting home tonight and watching the Apple keynote while you’re downloading all the new apps on your iPhone and at the same time upgrading the software on your iPad, you might not fit in here. We really pride ourselves at being geeks, and that’s a really core differentiation. We work with so many clients who one of the first things they say to us is, We’ve worked with a couple of agencies, but they just didn’t understand our market. And we’re able to come in and say, Well, we might not know everything right in the market, but we have a pretty high technology bar here, and we can learn and understand that very, very quickly. And in our core, we just believe that innovative organizations deserve innovative partners, and we strive to be that partner.

Since we’re talking about technology, what is your take on AI? And What is the best use of AI that you’re making? How are you using it on a regular basis at Comcast at your agency?

Yeah, we are. We actually, we very early on started to find how we wanted to do that because we want to not only use it appropriately, but we want our clients to call us to say, Hey, what do you think about this? And so AI is such a broad term, and we’ve been working with AI since 2017. But when you think about, I think a lot of people are thinking about ChatGDT and some of the graphic programs. I read the other day, I would give attribution to this, but I can’t remember who said it, but they said, I’m not worried about losing my job to AI. I’m worried about losing my job to the person who has mastered AI. And I think that’s a really important point. I think it’s for our purposes, it’s a great brainstorming partner. It’s a lot of fun to have them take a quick look at things. Am I worried that somebody can… And I actually did this experiment. I went and got a spec sheet for an electronics product that was available public on the internet, federed in the ChatGPT instead of writing a press release. And it was 10 seconds later, I got a C minus D plus effort.

That said, it wasn’t a bad starting point. It might have allowed me to take 15, 20 minutes off of actually doing the work right. The analogy I like to use is this. If you decide to buy a car from me and I agree to sell it to you, and we go to ChatGPT and we say, Write us a contract for selling a car, it will do that. I’m assuming you’re not an attorney. I’m certainly not an attorney. So we would look at this and say, It looks like a contract to me, and we’d sign it. And then three months later, we’re mad of each other and real attorneys say, This contract’s terrible. Yeah, you have the quick words, right? And so I think it can be a really good starting point, and we use it that way. One of the things we’re very, very careful about is we do not use it in any of our graphics programs yet. I think we will get there. We’ve used it for some like, Hey, here’s an early sketch, those things. But we are continuing to be concerned that as it’s learning and it’s pulling things in, the worst thing I could do is to put a graphic on my client’s website that we used AI to create It turns out it grabbed something and broke a copyright, and now we all look silly.

So we’re really being careful in the areas where we use it, in the areas where we don’t.

I’m talking about clients, 11, 30 plus years, a lot of client stories there. What is your favorite one?

Oh, they’re all my favorites. I’ll tell you something. They stand out that I think we’ve done some really good work for. We have been with a company out of Helsinki, Finland, called Vaisal for a number of yours, and they are a measurement company. They’ve got a number of different divisions. They have weather measurement, they have industrial measurement, which could sound like a snoozer, but it’s not. It’s a lot of fun. They’ve had a sensor on every Mars rover that’s gone up, and we’ve been able to work on that. They’ve had just sensors in places you wouldn’t think about, but clean rooms and their lightning work is really interesting. They have the world’s largest lightning detection system. So if lightning strikes planet Earth anywhere, Vaisal knows where it was, what stroke it was, everything that happened. And so I like to tell this story about one of the things that you and I talked about earlier was we like to tell complicated stories. And so the world’s or just lightning detection system that could be, I don’t know what that means. And when we first started working with them a number of years ago, they did a report every year that said there were this many strokes and this many what happened, and didn’t get a lot of attention because there was no context for it.

And that’s one of the things that we really believe is you need to have a story that puts context together. And so when we first took it over, we said, Hey, let’s look at which state has the most strokes. Let’s look at the top 10 national parks for the most Let’s look at and let’s put some context. Are there more or fewer strokes this year than last year? And why do we think that is? And all of a sudden, next thing you know, we’re on the front page of USA Today, and we were able to establish that. But we just really believe that you can take things that might at the surface appear dry and turn them into really compelling and relatable stories that can help move our client’s business forward.

Lovely. What is next for Comprise? What are your plans?

World domination, perhaps. Now, we want to continue to grow appropriately. We want to continue to do great work for clients. I would love in five years to look back and be larger than we are now, not just because of the revenue. That’s a wonderful thing, but it allows me to work with more really great professionals, both on the client side and on my employee side, and to tell some really great, new, interesting stories. I just landed a We’re a brand new client verbally a few minutes ago, and it’s another innovation-driven company that’s doing something completely different. I had no idea that was even a thing. Now we get to go out and help them learn how to tell their stories throughout business. That’s just Very exciting.

Lovely. Great. Yeah. Great, Joel. For our audiences, 30 plus years, you wore many hats being on both sides of the table. So what is your advice to the ones listening to us today in terms of trying to make a career in the industry marketing industry or starting out on their entrepreneurial journey, what is that piece of advice that you want to give to them?

I would say this, be open. I didn’t think that I was going to begin my career. The first two or three years I was out of college, I was doing public relations for one of the world’s largest beer companies, and it was a lot of fun. My job was to go to… I put out a newsletter once a month for our and so it was my job to go to bars and go to promotions and talk to the distributor and figure out how they put it together. I mean, what a great job for a single guy straight out of college, right? Never in a million years did I think I would get involved in technology, but with an open mind, I started looking at things I saw where the market was going, and I found that I had a personal interest there, and it allowed me to move over. Had I just dug in my heels and said, Now, this beer thing is a lot of fun, I would be in a different place. My You might be equally as happy, but you never know what opportunity is going to present themselves. So I always say, if people be really, really open to maybe something you didn’t know was willing to be interesting.

And the most important thing is just to be curious. It’s hard to be open if you’re not curious, so look around and see what’s interesting. Look at a company or an agency or even a freelancer. And it’s like, wow, I would love it if my job was to create content like that all day, every day. And talk to them. How many How did you get here? What do you do? What do you need? I think that’s really, really important as you continue to evolve your careers to just listen to what you want to do. And yet not to be so close as, I have a lot of friends that are like, I’m an avid cyclist, therefore I want to only work in the cycling industry. And that’s great if that’s truly your passion and that’s what you want to do. But be open. It could be that you could work in the tech industry, and then you don’t have to do news releases for free bike frames anymore. You can afford to buy your own bike frames because you’re over here. Everybody has more than one interest. So it’s just make sure that whatever it is you decide to do, I would be a complete disaster as an accountant.

I don’t get it. I have people that do that for me. I got the basics down, I can add, but I have no business there. I’m not passionate about it. I don’t think it’s all that interesting. I do it because I have to. So recognize that about yourself. And even within the confines of public relations and marketing, you might decide that advertising creative is perfect for you and writing press releases is not so much. That’s okay. Find your path, find what you’re good at, and find what you… I always say to people, if you can be working on a project that’s truly work and lose yourself in it and look up two hours later and wonder where two hours went, you got a good job. You’re doing the right thing.

Yeah, that is a good one. That is something that we also talk about internally. Great at all. This has been a brilliant conversation. But before we let you go, let’s play a quick rapid fire. I hope you’re game for it.

All right. Ready to try.

All right. Your last Google search.

All right. I’m sorry, say that again.

Your last Google search.

My last Google search was, how big is a grocery store? Because I was helping a client. A client that I work with has a 40,000 square foot lab. And rather than saying 40,000 square feet, we all know that’s big, but how big? Well, I googled it and the average grocery store in America is between 30 and 50,000 square feet. So that’s a whole lot better way to say, We have a lab the size of your neighborhood King Super’s versus a 40,000-foot lab. That helps people understand. So I just happened to have done that. So I knew that one-off the top of my head.

All right. Your next vacation.

I will be going back to Jamaica. My wife and I have a resort that we absolutely love in Ocho Rios, Jamaica, and we are planning our time for early part of 2025. Lovely.

Where do we find Doyle on Friday evenings after office or after work?

It depends. I love to see friends and colleagues. Our office is just a block off the Pearl Street Mall here in Boulder, which is one of the nation’s really only truly successful pedestrian mall. So there’s no cars allowed. Very target-rich environment for restaurants and shops and those things. So I love to meet friends there. However, I’m a massive football fan. So a lot of times Friday evenings in the fall, start to, okay, I got to start watching this game to prepare for this game tomorrow to watch this. So big college football guy. But this time of year, it’s nice wine on nice patios.

Favorite team?

The Nebraska Cornhuskers, without a doubt.

All right. Great, Adalia. I’ve been a sport. We’ll not go a little bit further. Thank you so much taking out time to do this with us. And for audiences, if they want to reach out to you, how do they do that?

They can visit us at www. Comprise. Agency, or my email, I’m happy to give it out, doyl@comprise. Agency, D-O-Y-L-E. If anybody has questions, concerns, comments, or if you disagree with me and want to have a conversation, I’d love to hear from you.

Great. Thank you so much, Doyl. Cheers, man.

Thank you.