This is an exciting time for all of us at BizCom.
Twenty years ago this month we opened our doors. There were three of us back then. Monica Feid, Dr. John Hayes and I were on a mission to create a new agency that would attract dynamic entrepreneurs, innovative franchise chains and other creative business leaders looking for an agency that could help drive their growth with fresh ideas, flexibility and passion.
We couldn’t have made it for two decades, of course, if not for all the incredible employees and the wonderfully creative designers, artists, photographers and many, many others that have been a part of our success.
But most of all, we wouldn’t have made it without the truly awesome clients that have been a part of this 20-year journey.
To everyone that has been a part of this wild ride, Monica, John and I say, “Thank You!” There is no way in the world we could have had this much fun without you.
The original BizCom team.
The early days
BizCom was actually a spinoff of my previous agency that had been in business for a decade. Monica, who has that special talent of coming up with incredible ideas that deliver huge results for almost any type of business, had been my right-hand at that agency.
I had known John for years. He had his own agency in Philadelphia, which he calls the greatest city in the world (as a long-time Cowboys fan, I tend to overlook that). We were friendly competitors for years and when he moved to Dallas in the mid-90s to focus on a career that would literally take him around the world, I agreed to take over his businesses.
In October of 1999, the three of us decided the time had come to start something new. Fortunately many of our clients at the time were willing to be a part of the move as well.
As with any new beginning, those first few months were a blur of trying to balance everything involved in starting a new business while continuing to meet the needs and high expectations of our existing clients.
First we needed a place to set up shop. Tina Young, a former employee who had started her own agency a year earlier, had extra space available at her office for us to move into.
We also needed a name. As it turned out, Tina and her partner specialized in technology PR and had named their agency TechCom. Since most of our work was in the business-to-business area, we decided to follow their lead and came up with BizCom. It seemed a natural fit then, and 20 years later it’s still a perfect fit for what we do.
Building a specialty in entrepreneurs and franchising
In the agency business, it’s common to have one or more specialties. You can find agencies that specialize in almost any industry or category — technology, food and beverage, packaged goods, politics, environmental issues, and on and on and on.
In our case, we have always been attracted to the people that drive America’s economic engine — entrepreneurs and business leaders. These are the men and women who are the risk takers, the visionaries, the ones who see opportunity where most others only see problems.
It turns out that those leaders are often in the franchising space, creating opportunities for others to become entrepreneurs too, and we have built a strong specialty in that space.
It also seems we are especially attracted to those entrepreneurs who are disrupting their industries through emerging technologies. And we have had the opportunity to work with many of those wildly creative men and women as well.
We could have picked more lucrative specialties, of course, but none that would have been as exciting and fulfilling, or provided us with the opportunity to be exposed to so many dynamic men and women and their creative brilliance. And over the next year, we plan to use this blog to look back and celebrate some of our more memorable moments.
The highs and the lows
As with any business there have been highs and lows.
On the business side, we made it through the downturn following the tragedy of 9/11 (Monica was stuck in New York at the time). And we rode out the Great Recession. At the same time, we’ve been the part of many exciting entrepreneurial launches and we’ve helped small emerging brands grow into multi-nationals, celebrating numerous milestones along the way.
On the personal side we’ve celebrated the birth of Monica’s daughter (it’s hard to believe that Morgan is now in high school) and mourned the loss of John’s precious wife, JoAnn, and a daughter. Meanwhile, I picked up three wonderful grandkids along the way. (As Zig Ziglar liked to say, “if I’d have known grandkids were going to be so much fun, I’d have been nicer to their parents.”)
The one thing we have learned in working with entrepreneurs over the years is that things can change faster than the Texas weather.
Who would have thought when we started out that 20 years later that we would be representing robots that make gourmet coffee or a company growing hemp and producing CBD.
And the pace of change is getting even faster with rapid advances in artificial intelligence, deepfakes and who knows what else that is around the corner.
There is one thing that I am certain will remain the same, however. No matter how much the political, technological or cultural landscape changes, there are always disruptive brands run by dynamic entrepreneurs and other creative business leaders who are coming up with new ideas, products and services to take advantage of these changes and opportunities.
And that is what keeps us excited each morning to get up and do what we do — the opportunity to be a part of this creative, ever-changing landscape. And it’s something we plan to be a part of for the next 20 years!
Happy Birthday, BizCom!
— Scott White, co-founder and CEO
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