Overview

Meet 3 Media Web, a digital marketing and website development agency that provides services and support to B2B companies in a wide range of industries. 

Over the past five years, company leaders Mary Novick and Jess Hennessey found themselves more and more engaged in working “on the business” rather than in it, and eventually moved into C-suite roles. When the former CEO decided to step down from ownership, it felt right for them to pursue purchasing the company themselves.

The Problem

Buying a company is a big deal: it’s not something many of us do every day, and when you’re doing it for the first time, it’s hard to go alone. There’s so much to consider that impacts both your business and your personal life–and it can be difficult to know what those things are, or even what questions to ask! 

Mary and Jess, like many hopeful business owners, needed support and knowledge to make it happen. Enter: the Blumer Team.

How Blumer CPAs Helped

Mary and Jess were familiar with the Blumer team because the former CEO had been a coaching client. Since they’d already had a great experience with our team, reaching out on their own was an easy decision.  

From day one of the transition, Jason and Julie were there as pillars of support and guidance. They rolled up their sleeves right alongside Mary and Jess: together, they dove into the complexities of refining processes and improving the way things flowed through the company (think: financing and improving cash flow).

But more importantly, they were also there to provide encouragement and support for the decisions Mary and Jess were making as new owners. After all, they were doing a lot of incredible–and challenging!–work, and having someone there to validate the choices and changes they were making empowered them to keep going. 

When the time came to sign the dotted line and officially make 3MW theirs, Mary and Jess were equipped with all the knowledge and tools they needed to move forward, initiate the purchase with confidence, and ensure a smooth transition to ownership. 

The Outcome

During a time that can feel turbulent and even a little scary, Jason and Julie helped 3 Media Web find answers, rhythm, and confidence.

It’s now been a year since the successful shift in power, and the result? No losses, no major hiccups. As Jess proudly puts it, “The company didn’t miss a beat, no employees left. Jason and Julie made the process a lot less scary for all of us.”

Overview

Stoked is a global design company based out of Nashville, renowned for its expertise in fostering healthy work cultures, guiding teams through transitions, and providing organizations with tools for sustained positive impact.

At the head of the company stands CEO Anna Love–a sort of accidental business leader. 

The Problem

Anna and her cofounder found themselves starting a business without really meaning to. In her words: “Neither of us had the business prowess that is probably needed to be wise business leaders.”

And a big part of leading a successful business is having a firm grasp on accounting and finances. But, like most creative founders, the numbers game wasn’t really where Anna could focus her time.

So they did the logical thing and chose to outsource their accounting. However, they just couldn’t find the right fit. Three firms later, they were still unable to find an accounting team that seemed to get them: each team they’d worked with just couldn’t seem to speak their language, understand their challenges as a creative agency, or get a big picture view of the company.

How Blumer CPAs Helped

Stoked’s strong suit is helping companies humanize and innovate, and they were looking for partners who could do the same for them.

As they evolved, the team grew tired of the traditional, stuffy accountants and wanted partners who not only spoke their language, but could wrap their minds around the type of business they had. Blumer’s specialization with creative agencies made the perfect fit. 

When they sat down with Jason and Julie, Anna and team were upfront about their previous challenges and shared what they hoped the Blumer team could do for them. 

Stoked was struggling with faulty systems; they needed insight into day-to-day processes that could reflect the human-centered approach of the firm. Immediately, they felt like the Blumer team showed dedication to the creative vision of the company (and bonus: no one showed up wearing a suit). 

The Outcome

Since their partnership began in 2019, the relationship between Stoked and Blumer has only gotten better with time. Anna affirms, “they’re one of our most trusted business relationships now…that is the sign of a strong partnership, not perfection, but growing together.”

Where they once felt overlooked, Stoked attributes the Blumer team with solutions they’ve never experienced with other firms. And while no partnership is perfect, the partnership between both firms has thrived under open communication and healthy collaboration. Both teams have learned that growth truly stems from learning from mistakes and moving forward with solid partnerships.  

Overview

Kade Wilcox has been on a journey. From building teams to leading worship to running for office, he’s got a lot on his resume. He’s worked with Blumer CPAs before, but when he reached out within the last year, he was at a low point. It’s something you don’t typically put on your resume, but Kade has embraced it wholeheartedly in an attempt to squeeze every ounce of learning from the experience. 

Kade was leading a multi-million dollar marketing agency. Then, he wasn’t. 

The company failed, plain and simple. 

Through an extremely difficult, introspective process, Blumer CPAs helped Kade work through this situation to find out what went wrong and how it could be avoided in the future. 

The Problem

Kade was struggling with tough business partnerships and a core uneasiness: was he currently doing what he was meant to be doing? Focusing on anything work-related while questioning vocational placement adds a ton of confusing thoughts to an already tricky situation. 

Kade just needed direction.  

How Blumer CPAs Helped 

Through months of 1-on-1 coaching with Kade, Jason & Julie began to peel this story apart, layer by layer. It took an incredible amount of humility for Kade to open up and objectively share what was happening in his life. 

“They have been a sounding board, they have provided counsel, at times they have simply just been friends I could share with as I experienced deep loss.”

Through this coaching, Kade found clarity in his purpose and his mission, and that translated into his new agency, Flatland. 

The Outcome

Things have been healthier for Kade, thanks to the clear path he’s created for his company. Sure, there are still challenges to work through—this is entrepreneurship, after all. But Kade feels that “through the challenges of the last year and great support from family, friends, and Jason and Julie’s coaching relationship, I’m the best version of me I have ever been.” 

Listen to the Businessology Show for more about Kade’s Story.

Challenges

Bukwild is a 25-person design and technology studio based in Sacramento. 

Since its inception in 2001, some of the best-known brands in the U.S. have turned to Bukwild for help—Amazon and Pandora, DoorDash and CLIF Bar, California Olive Ranch and Coachella.

But with the killer portfolio and millions in revenue came major growing pains. 

COO Donald Fierros recalled the challenges with business strategy and keeping everyone on the same page in 2018: 

“As a company, we were trying to be everything to everyone. We had a lot of communication issues as well. People holding different definitions of things in their heads.”

Bukwild was taking on too many types of clients and projects that they didn’t have a process for. Chaotic projects ramped up the stress level. 

Founder and CEO Ryan Vanni remembered the reactive decision-making: 

“The way the organization was running at the time was choose a direction and make decisions willy nilly.”

Meanwhile, big changes were afoot:

• New Leadership Structure. Ryan had promoted somebody to President, a new position within the company. 
• Critical Pivots. The leadership team had decided to change the studio’s brand positioning and service offering. 
• No Outside Perspective. Ryan and his mentor ended their long-standing consulting agreement.

Bukwild had been proudly independent, yet Ryan recognized the risk in having no accountability:

“There’s pride in the independence. But it’s easy to be too independent. It’s easy to believe it’s all good until it’s not all good.”

The studio was consistently putting out world-class work. But how were they tracking with Bukwild’s brand purpose, “creating healthy business with healthy human beings”? Ryan and Bukwild’s other leaders wanted to scale in a sustainable way, but they didn’t have a well-defined growth model:

“We had a leadership team, but no framework in which to manage and measure the growth or success of the company, we would have a vision, but not like broken down into very specific rocks [objectives].”

***

Decision

One day in early 2019, another Sacramento agency owner, Meghan Phillips, made a passing remark to Ryan about a consulting firm in South Carolina. 

Blumer & Associates had helped to turn around Honey, Megan’s food and wine marketing agency. Author Adam Davidson was so inspired by the story that he wrote a few chapters about it in The Passion Economy. 

Megan wasn’t making a referral, per se, but Ryan’s ears still perked up. He was already on the hunt, and hiring outside of California was a plus for him. He wanted to buck the trend:

“All my competitors looked for consultants in San Francisco.”

At the same time, he felt some apprehension about Blumer & Associates.

Were they already working with other agencies of the same size? Did they know the industry? Did they really need to hire more CPAs? 

Bukwild already had a CPA, and they had paid for classes, courses, and various consultants, many of whom Jason and Julie had known for years.

Ryan decided to meet with Jason Blumer and Julie Shipp anyway. He fully expected stereotypical CPAs who dabble in the realm of spreadsheets, metrics, and KPIs. 

Instead, what he and Bukwild’s other senior leaders encountered was multifaceted consultants who had all the accounting clout but who emphasized the human side of business. Numbers alone can’t fix most people and leadership problems.

What ultimately won Ryan over was one of Jason Blumer’s videos:

“I remember distinctly watching a video that Jason had recorded about the need for restraint. As a creative person who’s not like an engineer, I can just float to the moon. Without instruments of restraint in place, things can run ragged.” 

Ryan knew the studio needed growth consulting and discipline. Blumer & Associates had the right mix. He committed to a significant investment with two parts: 

• Accounting and growth consulting with monthly meetings to go over financial metrics and benchmarks
• Growth coaching tied to Blumer’s Prototype Components Model for Growth (PCMG)

Jason and Julie kicked off the engagement with Blumer’s proprietary Agency Assessment and Insights Document. 

***

Journey

Deep analysis of the studio’s financials, operations, and team dynamics confirmed known challenges and provided a detailed picture of contributing factors:

• Small, integrated teams caused obvious production bottlenecks.
• Various departments, or disciplines, within the studio—e.g., strategy, branding, interactive—would be swamped at different times.
• A lingering idealism about how the work should happen had made the leaders slow to adapt and reluctant to improve efficiency.
• For the last four years, sales and revenue had been growing. 
• That top line growth hadn’t produced higher profits. The bottom line was almost flat.
• Skinny profits put pressure on cash flow. The urgent need to sell, in turn, led to too many concessions with clients, including reduced rates.
• Certain leadership styles and other entrenched habits were hurting the studio’s movement and growth. 

With fresh insights in hand, Bukwild’s executives flew to Atlanta to, in Ryan’s words, “get indoctrinated” in the language and concepts of Prototype Components Model for Growth (PCMG), Blumer’s growth consulting model for service organizations. According to Ryan, that leadership retreat marked a turning point for Bukwild:

“That was a really key milestone, getting everything established. The leadership team all using the same language. Like what’s a ‘grenade project’ and what’s not. We had established the foundation.”

Jason and Julie then facilitated a full-day retreat for the entire team, and in the second half of 2019, they began equipping everyone with shared language, tools for understanding and managing growth, and rules for helping the leaders bring health and consistency.

Jason and Julie began coaching the executives on their journey towards implementation of PCMG, and by early 2020, Bukwild had a framework to measure and manage quantitative metrics. They had a way to know if decisions were good. 

That framework proved indispensable for Ryan when COVID hit in March 2020:

“Had we not set ground rules for how to operate going into a year where fear and anxiety were at a 10, it would’ve been absolute chaos. Rules helped us navigate cleanly.”

During the pandemic, Blumer kept Bukwild’s leaders focused on learning tools, implementing rules, and making decisions based on principles. 

Was the discipline easy? No. Ryan was honest about his resistance to the regular cadence of coaching:

 “We had quarterly coaching in the first quarter [of 2020], and I was like, ‘Man, I can’t talk about growth right now. I don’t have the patience for this. I can’t think too far ahead right now.’ Then, we get on our session with them, and it reminded me of going to church when I was a kid. I didn’t want to go to church. Then, you go to church, and you always feel better afterwards.”

With all the uncertainty and upheaval in 2020 and 2021, prescriptive advice would have been really nice. Ryan might have enjoyed the occasional easy answer. Yet, he couldn’t help but appreciate their level of discipline. They kept encouraging Bukwild’s leaders to lean into PCMG and faithfully put each module to work for Bukwild:

“Every business owner, every human, wants the silver bullet. Six minute abs and whatever else. Working with Blumer is not that. They’re not going to tell you answers. They’re going to point you inward. They want to make sure that when you do grow it, the business is actually in a healthy place.”

As the months passed, the discipline on both sides paid off.

***

Results

Bukwild has transformed into a different studio. 

For starters, all the leaders and people on the team use the same language. Shared language has helped Bukwild avoid major breakdowns in communication and the turmoil that comes from not being on the same page.

With so much on the line during COVID, the executives often used one of Julie’s favorite lines: “Do you want what this means?” They had learned to slow down and analyze the implications. Higher stakes mean greater risks, and greater risks deserve deeper analysis. 

Another phrase that really resonated with everyone was “grenade project,” which Donald described:

“A grenade project is something that the team’s not expecting. They don’t really know how to do it. There’s no process or anything for it. The sales team or whoever just kind of lobs it in and then somebody’s got to catch it, right? We’ve reduced, greatly reduced the amount of grenades.”

With Blumer’s help, Bukwild implemented the EOS Traction framework and now fills out a scorecard during weekly leadership meetings.

They chose overtime as the qualitative metric for the “health maintenance” of the company. Donald wants to keep chaotic projects to a minimum and burnout at bay. An upward trend in the number of people working overtime signals that the studio may be taking on too much work:

“Our purpose as a company is for healthy business and healthy human beings. No human being who’s facing burnout is going to say that they’re healthy or is going to be healthy.”

This commitment to sustainable growth now informs every part of the company:

• Specialization. Gone are the days when anyone could be a client. Bukwild now focuses exclusively on partnerships with innovative DTC brands.
• Process. They now have specific processes for every kind of project and deliverable—ones that are just rigid enough.  
• Tools.  The leaders now understand both the human side of business and how to move revenue through the business. They’re good at both.
• Leadership. Leadership was once sporadic and reactive. Now, it’s consistent and intentional.
• Growth. The growth model now in place ensures that leaders mind all the areas and territories, not just gross revenue.

And where is Bukwild now with PCMG? Donald explained the new tool he’s implementing with Blumer to eliminate friction in operations:

“We’ve been working on this thing they [Blumer] do called capacity bridge management, which is essentially balance resources with incoming sales. As you’re facing growth, one of the bigger issues is, ‘How do I make sure that we’ve got everything in place to open up the faucet of new business? Can our current resources handle it? At what point do we level up? When new business goes down, what do we do then?’ It’s been very helpful going through the coaching with them. These are the tools that we’re able to employ now.”

He wholeheartedly recommends Blumer & Associates to other agencies:

“I would, of course, recommend them to pretty much anybody. I would share examples of the shared language and tools that we use to understand both the human side of the business and how to move revenue through the business. They’re good at both sides.”

Ryan described the timing of the partnership with Blumer as “providential.” He appreciated how Jason and Julie kept him anchored and gave him frameworks for managing his emotions and making decisions based on data, not fear. He admires them both as professionals and as people: 

“They’re good people. Julie is fantastic at being a boss, like a disciplinarian. And Jason is very intuitive, insightful. He’s got enough years behind him that he has the expertise and wisdom.” 

***

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