Scott Harkey is President and Chief Revenue Officer of OH Partners, one of the nation’s fastest-growing independent advertising agencies. OH Partners has experienced tremendous growth over the past three years adding clients including Armor All Brands, Wynn Resorts, Virgin Hotels, and more.
Harkey leads marketing and strategy efforts for the agency’s robust account roster. His extensive experience in media, as well as traditional and digital marketing, uniquely qualify him to spearhead integration initiatives for brands on a local and national level. The agency has landed on Inc. Magazine’s list of the fastest-growing private companies for the past six years.
This Cast Covers:
- Scott’s stable of agencies and how OH Partners was built (02:02)
- Several factors that lead to an 80% dissatisfaction rate for the people working in the agency space (03:34)
- Why Joey advises against being an incredibly wide generalist if you’re just starting out as an agency owner (06:19)
- Scott’s beliefs on specializing more in an industry or horizontal niche rather than in a specific offer or service for different markets (07:08)
- How Scott realized he wanted to become an agency owner while working in radio (10:05)
- Scott recalls how he started OH Partners 13 years ago (14:24)
- How Scott discovered acquisitions which led to OH Partners being known as one of the Fastest Growing Companies (16:14)
- What it was like taking on Nomadic Agency and having to experience working with Tim Washburn (22:23)
- What does Scott Harley’s chaotic day-to-day look like? (28:02)
- How to bring two or multiple companies together who have completely different cultures and systems (32:02)
- Scott shares his insights on why there is a 40% churn of employees and agencies post-COVID and why ad agencies struggle with more turnover than other business segments (37:02)
- How OH Partners bounced back from these challenges in culture, employee satisfaction and how to solve that lost social cache (40:46)