Today we’d like to introduce you to Aaron Henry.
Aaron, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
Born in Abilene and raised in Austin, I eventually found myself attending Texas A&M University at College Station. After graduating, I started out as a Project Manager and later became the Director of Accounts for a small web design firm in College Station. The position offered very little in the terms of any direct training or salary. However, I was surrounded by a few knowledgeable people in my close network that provided me the direction and professional development I needed. While the firm was small and did not have what most agencies would call a true budget, it afforded me the opportunity to figure out many aspects of digital marketing for myself. Slow development queues and angry clients were a real motivator for me. To quell our clients concerns, I relegated my position in order to figure out marketing, business development, email hosting, mobile development, coding, SEO, server management, and sales. For both the clients’ and firm’s benefit.
Over the course of a year or so, I helped the firm get projects and sales organized and brought on several enterprise level projects and accounts. This provided the firm the ability to grow and earn a reputation in the local market as a solid provider of quality work. As the firm grew in revenue and employees, a rift opened internally between the firm’s leadership and the direction the enterprise clients wanted to go.
On July 4, I came into the office to catch up on backlogged work and get ahead of the upcoming week. I lived an hour drive away from the office at the time. The leader of the firm was away on a 40-day vacation and had left myself and the rest of our team to deal with the fallout resulting from lack of communication and company direction. At the time, I was earning commission only and couldn’t afford my bills. I was essentially working for free and unable to bring in new accounts due to the way the firm was handling business. I still remember that day very clearly and the feeling of being underappreciated, how my concerns were being met with deafness, and the growing hostility the firm had towards current clients.
I quit and turned in my notice. I had nothing. No prospects, no job interviews, money, not even gas to get to any interviews. Upon my resignation, the firm immediately threatened with a lawsuit intent on keeping me out of the advertising and marketing industry. With the advice of my attorney, close personal friends and my family, I bit the bullet and started my agency, Foundry512, then called LIIRA MEDIA. I used the lessons I learned from that experience to guide me in the early days of my new agency and made sure I did not repeat the same mistakes.
That tough time showed me that I could not let up on the hustle. I had nothing more than my own rapidly aging personal computer that was only a dual core with 2GB of ram. I wasn’t going to get a whole lot done with such little horsepower, but I pressed forward anyways. Within the first 45 days I was able to acquire my first client and received my first invoice. Not too shabby considering that I didn’t even have business cards. Sheer dogged perseverance helped me get the project done ahead of time and I caught up on past due bills.
I kept taking on small projects because that was all I could get my hands on at the time. But I quickly realized scaling was going to be a challenge since we had no real line of credit. This forced us to remain cash flow positive and pay our bills. It is liberating when you don’t have to make payments on debt. I slowly saved up $600 and made my first real purchase for the company. I ordered the parts I needed for a custom PC and built it myself with experience I gained from my tech job in college. Building out our own infrastructure to accommodate our specific needs was and will always be the way we go. That PC is still in use today.
After drudging in the trenches for 6 months we landed our first Agency of Record client. This gave us runway and the ability to increase the team from just myself to 5 people. Because our runway was short, we had to get scrappy with our creative process. With our approach, we helped our clients receive numerous awards and have generated over $300M in revenue online to date.
Our steady growth has also given us the opportunity to expand in new markets, niches and industries. In addition to our small Houston office, we have a satellite office in College Station, and a new office in Round Rock, TX. In the past 2 years, I’ve become a guest speaker, a column writer for several large publications, and a contributor to Forbes.com. I still build each PC we use by hand and we are completely debt free.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Agencies know the road is never smooth. We’ve had to deal with all sorts of difficult clients. Those that payed slow or extremely late, clients that didn’t value our expertise or experience, and demanding and impatient clients. We have worked through internal client politics, had contractors disappear, and met with antagonistic competition. Even the USPS lost our client’s retainer payments several times.
One of the biggest struggles we are facing is acquiring new facilities for our growing team. At every corner, we are confronted with rising rent costs and reduced benefits. A few years ago, our Houston-area rent doubled at our renewal time, forcing us to relocate off of I-10.
Through it all, we learned our lessons and adjusted our processes. We started to target new clients that value us and paid on time. We also migrated to an overnight or online payment system, brought our team in house, and found new facilities that gave us space to work and host our clients.
Foundry512 – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
At Foundry512, we specialize in traditional digital marketing such as website development, search engine optimization, social media marketing, and paid placement. Over the past year, we’ve expanded our capabilities into exciting new industries with Virtual Reality and weather satellite tracking. We have integrated paid placement campaigns that are activated automatically any time there is inclement weather in the local area based on weather satellite predictions and local warning systems. This gives our insurance and roofing clients a huge advantage in lead generation, taking up value real estate on search and social platforms.
We also leverage the Oculus and Vive for the travel, medical, and real estate fields.
We recently ventured into the medical industry and provided a platform for doctors and hospitals staff to interact with a patient’s 3D volumetric data from CT or MRI scans in real time. This technology allows doctors to visualize a patient’s body without any exploratory surgery. It also helps them create a strategy for treatment and can be used as tool for patient outreach and education.
For our international travel agencies, we leverage VR to help them show off venues from around the world and give their clients a taste of what the trip will be like before they go. This includes full virtual tour experiences and real time interaction with onsite tour guides.
Finally, for our real estate related clients, we have leveraged VR to allow personalized home tours and rendered CAD/Revit files so potential buyers can experience their homes first-hand. It’s proven to be a wonderful way for potential buyers to visualize their new home or addition before any construction begins.
We take immense pride in being able to pivot and leverage emerging technology for our clients. Our technical and marketing prowess allows us to turn some of the coolest technology, like project mapping, into creative marketing campaigns that drive serious revenue for our clients. And because of this, we are always looking for ways to set ourselves apart from the competition. If you’re looking for the usual and mundane, our competition will work wonders for you. But if you’re looking to watch your bottom line grown, increase your brand awareness and explore innovative ways to reach audiences, and have some creative fun in the process, then we are certainly the agency for you.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
It’s really hard to narrow our proudest moments down to just one, especially when we’ve continued to hit our client’s revenue goals. I think our favorite has to be when we worked with our roofing client, Schulte Roofing. In addition to winning a Guinness World Record for building the World’s Largest Gingerbread House as part of a fundraising campaign for a local hospital, the client was also tied to a completely organic multi-generational campaign at Texas A&M University.
The pride we felt working with them was a culmination of many factors. They arguably have the biggest target on their back with some very aggressive local and regional competition. One of their competitors was paying a large fee to Texas A&M Athletics for in-game advertising opportunities at Texas Aggie baseball and softball games. But because it has been reinforced through continual brand building efforts, any time a ball hits the back wall at Olsen field or the Aggie Softball Complex, the crowd and student section sings our client’s signature jingle.
Here’s an example: https://www.facebook.com/schulteroofing/videos/1579350242082796/?pnref=story
This bothered Schulte’s competition so much that they complained about the student section and the free advertising for our client. I said to Schulte Roofing and our team, “We’ll take it as it wasn’t paid for, it was earned.” Our client is now part of Aggie Baseball tradition at one of the largest universities in the country, ensuring new generations of loyal customers. Thanks, and Gig ‘Em!
Contact Info:
- Address: Main Office:
2601 La Frontera Blvd
Suite 4108, Round Rock, TX 78681 - Website: https://www.foundry512.com/
- Phone: 512-593-2403
- Email: inquiry@foundry512.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Foundry512/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/Foundry512
- Other: https://www.linkedin.com/company/foundry512
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