[Top Agency Series] Creativity and Strategy in Digital Marketing With Chad Hason of Agency Atlas

Chad Hason is the CEO, Co-founder, and brand strategist of Agency Atlas, a Calgary-based company specializing in brand storytelling and innovative marketing solutions across various industries. Under his leadership, Agency Atlas has earned a reputation for delivering strategic and creative marketing campaigns, significantly impacting their clients’ brand visibility and engagement. Chad’s journey in brand strategy has seen him navigate diverse sectors, from cannabis to energy, bringing his expertise in storytelling to the forefront of marketing.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [03:37] Agency Atlas’ unique all-in-one service approach
• [07:13] How Chad Hason ensures employee motivation and happiness
• [10:42] The profit-sharing model Chad plans to launch
• [17:08] How Agency Atlas’ operations differ from other marketing agencies
• [22:49] Hiring based on talent and cultural fit
• [24:28] How Chad fosters a creative culture
• [29:40] Agency Atlas’ powerful branding process
• [38:07] Common brand strategy mistakes and how to avoid them

In this episode…

Are you curious about how innovative marketing agencies tackle challenging projects under tight deadlines? Imagine transforming a mundane brand into something extraordinary within just 72 hours. How do they achieve this feat — and what strategies do they employ?

Chad Hason of Agency Atlas demonstrates how his team rebranded S&P Global within an astonishingly short time frame. Chad’s approach involves meticulous understanding of brand documentation and utilizing his team’s creative prowess to develop ideas that resonate deeply with the client’s objectives. Their success with S&P Global not only solidified their reputation, but also led to a lasting partnership — illustrating the importance of an in-depth, tailored strategy in marketing.

In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz welcomes Chad Hason, Co-founder and CEO of Agency Atlas, to showcase the essence of their company’s philosophy of blending creativity with strategy to deliver compelling storytelling for various industries, including cannabis and energy. Chad discusses the importance of having a unique and well-considered strategy, the pitfalls of skipping this critical step, and how his team’s collaborative environment fosters innovation. By focusing on both talent and genuine investment in client success, Agency Atlas ensures that every project exceeds expectations.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Chad Hason on LinkedIn
• Agency Atlas
• The Great Game of Business: The Only Sensible Way to Run a Company by Jack Stack
• Wait: The Art and Science of Delay by Frank Partnoy
• Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don’t Know by Malcolm Gladwell
• S&P Global Campaign
• Taboo Show
• Boxcar Cannabis
• Peloton

Special Mention:

• Robbie Gilchrist on LinkedIn

Related Episodes:

• Building a Great Team and More Helpful Insights with Jason Swenk Host of The Smart Agency Master Class Podcast on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• [Top Agency Series] Unlocking Sales Potential With Video Case Stories With Ian Garlic on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• [Sweet Process Series] How to Save Hundreds of Hours a Month Using Top Productivity Tools with Adi Klevit of Business Success Consulting Group on the Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable Moments:

• “I like to provide some security for talented people and then inspire them to win with me.”
• “We’re all adults here. Everyone starts with a wage they can be proud of and live on.”
• “Leaders eat last, and transparency allows them to show what’s left at the end of the day.”
• “Hire slow and fire fast — the fit within the team is just as important as talent.”
• “I’ve stopped hiring strangers — I typically only hire people that I know or come highly recommended.”

Action Steps:

1. Invest in understanding brand strategy: Ensure all marketing efforts are aligned to ensure your brand resonates with your target audience.
2. Foster a transparent and inclusive company culture: Involving team members in key decisions can significantly improve morale and productivity, creating a more cohesive work environment.
3. Adopt a profit-sharing model: Implementing a profit-sharing system that ties employees’ contributions to the overall success of the company can foster motivation and commitment among team members.
4. Encourage flexibility and creativity: Respect individual work styles and creative processes by allowing employees to work flexible hours to accommodate their personal productivity peaks.
5. Hire for fit, not just talent: Focus on hiring individuals who align with your company’s culture and values, rather than just evaluating their skills and experience.

Episode Transcript

Intro 00:15

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz.

Jeremy Weisz 00:22

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, founder of InspiredInsider.com, where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders. Today is no different. I have Chad Hason of Agency Atlas. You can check them out at AgencyAtlas.ca and Chad, before I formally introduce you, I always like to point out other episodes of the podcast people should check out. 

Since this is part of the top agency series, I had Jason Swenk on. Jason, you’ve heard me talk about him before. He started an agency, built it to eight figures, then sold it, and then he started buying up agencies, and he runs a group of agency owners that mastermind together to help each other out — Agency 360. 

There’s another good one, Chad. I had Ian Garlic on. He runs videocasestory.com. He really only specializes in collecting customer stories for companies, right? So they hire him, goes in, creates a nice, you know, customer story, case study. He talked about growing up in an entrepreneurial family. His dad had a restaurant and they had live dolphins in the restaurant. You know, that which was kind of strange in itself. I got the creative juices flowing. But their restaurant, he lives in Orlando now, was in Milwaukee of all places. So imagine going in a restaurant, having live dolphins in Milwaukee. Pretty interesting.

And then Adi Klevit was another good one. She focuses on SOPs for companies, done-for-you SOPs. You know, all the non-sexy stuff that makes things run properly. She goes in, we geeked out on our favorite productivity software tools and all that stuff. 

So check those out and more on InspiredInsider.com. And this episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25, we help businesses give to and connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. We do that by helping you run your podcast. 

We’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast. We do the strategy, the accountability and the full execution. So kind of Chad, we call ourselves the magic elves that run in the background and make it look easy for the hosts so they can create amazing content, create amazing relationships, and most importantly, run their business. 

You know, for me, the number one thing in my life is relationships. I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships, and I have found no better way over the past decade to profile the people and companies I most admire and share with the world what they’re working on. So if you’ve thought about podcasting, you should. If you have questions, go to Rise25.com or email us at [email protected]. 

And I’m excited to introduce Chad Hason. He’s the founder of Agency Atlas. He’s been working. I’m not even going to. I won’t age you at all, Chad. But working agencies for a long time. But he’s had his own agency for over a decade. And, you know, really, they take an approach to full service, strategic and innovative marketing solutions. They have clients from cannabis to vodka companies, to IT, to energy and many, many more. He’s been doing this a long time. Chad, thanks for joining me.

Chad Hason 03:23

Well, thank you very much for having me.

Jeremy Weisz 03:25

And he’s got, if you’re watching the video, he’s got a pin for every occasion. So maybe we’ll talk about that too. But just start off and tell us about Agency Atlas and what you do.

Chad Hason 03:37

Sure. So Agency Atlas is a mid-sized, full service strategic agency. We have everything from marketing to communications to advertising. We build tech and SaaS. We develop websites, but primarily we’re here to tell stories. 

So we’ll typically, you made mention to all the different industries that we touch on. The one unifying factor for all of those is they had an interesting story to tell. I’ve spent the last 25 years in brand and brand strategy. So everything we do is driven by that initial understanding of what they’re trying to accomplish and what makes them different. But we’re also pretty talented on the creative side, and we feel like those are two sides of the coin of what most people want from their marketing agency.

Jeremy Weisz 04:23

I know you worked for other agencies in the past before you started your own. So I’m curious. We’ll get into how you do things differently. But what did you learn from some of those other agencies that you worked in?

Chad Hason 04:38

Yeah, well, when I started in marketing, I actually graduated with a public relations degree and did some PR and events. But in one of the companies I was at, they went through a major rebrand and I thoroughly enjoyed the process. I thought it was awesome, and I felt like I had a little bit of ability in that regard. So after my first marriage, when we separated, I moved to Argentina and I spent a year trying to figure out exactly what I wanted to do. And I decided that that most recent experience of rebrand was a wonderful fit for me, and it appeared to have a lot of future for it. 

So when I came back, I started working in inhouse and agencies. I got hired locally here in Calgary for an up and coming agency with some big clients, Honda Canada being one of them. And so I got a bit of a crash course over about a five year period, but I also got a crash course on everything I did not like about big agencies. Yeah, well, you talk about scaling from 7 to 8 figures, which is, you know, a challenge, but it also comes with the need to hire a lot more people. 

And I find that the talent pool in the biggest agencies typically get diluted. It gets very difficult to properly manage and be available and accountable to a list of 200-300 clients. And I also found that things that I thought should be part of the business development and relationship building process, like telling them about strategy, learning about their brand, figuring out if we’re even a good fit for each other shouldn’t cost upwards of 30-40 grand just to get in the door. 

So I left after about five years and I started a sole proprietorship, which I was a brand strategist, and then I started meeting a lot of agencies in town because inevitably when I was done with my strategy, I had to hand that strategy over to the designers and developers that could execute on it, advertisers and such. So that’s what I did for about, you know, ten years and then finally decided that sending all this extra work out the door after I had done all the hard work and selling just for them to get, you know, monthly retainers for a few years, executing what I planned was, was really leaving a lot of money on the table. 

So I reached out to some of my most trusted partners, designers, developers, advertisers, copywriters and said, hey, do you guys want to form a company that can be, you know, exactly what we want, exactly how we work now, but in a way that allows us to keep everything kind of in-house. And every single person I approached agreed. So we created Agency Atlas, and it’s been going pretty good.

Jeremy Weisz 07:13

I want to hit on a few points that you bring up there. One is, you know, I want to talk about how you did things differently for this compared to the other agency, but you’re the brand strategist and I totally agree, like the most important thing we talk about this too is the strategy. Right? And if you have the wrong strategy, you can execute on the wrong things for a long time. It’s not going to, you know, result in ROI or whatever the result is for that company. 

How was the structure with your partners, right? Because like part of me sees okay, that’s smart. I mean, he’s really the expert in the strategy, he could bring on these partners. Were you just referring it? Was there some kind of like, partner commission that the companies would typically give you? Because I could be like, listen, I don’t want to deal with all this other headache, just give me some kind of referral commission and I’ll keep referring them over to you. Right? 

And maybe all the deals are kind of different with the different partners, but how should someone be thinking about when they’re structuring, you know, partnerships with people? What worked, maybe what didn’t work?

Chad Hason 08:25

Yeah. Well, I like to provide some security for talented people and then inspire them to win with me. So we have several things. First of all, when we joined, out of the four people that came together, only one really had interest in business ownership. He is currently my partner. Although I am the majority owner and director. And the rest of them really came to me saying it’s been hard. Understand coming, you know, through Covid and all that, there’s a lot of insecurities with contractors and businesses of all shapes and sizes. 

The ability for me to pay them a salary that they could rely on and then incentivize them for exactly what you said, hey, you’ve got contact. If you bring in a client, then we provide you with payment for that referral, you know, over the course of the first few months of having that client. As well, profit sharing is something that we’ve started to introduce. So in the first few years we did bonuses. But now that we’re getting a little bit bigger and our processes are getting a little bit tighter, all of our employees are connected to profit sharing. Whether you are the most new and most junior or the most senior, we connect everything that you do to success that can be measured. Everything from billable hours to attitude to, you know, employee or client feedback. And that all feeds into a profit sharing model that we’re actually launching in 2025, which keeps everybody motivated. 

The reality is, I’m not a big business. I bootstrapped this. I went into, as any new business owner will tell you, that isn’t, you know, sons of a multi-millionaire. I went into significant debt to get this out. I’ve been very transparent with my team. They understand exactly where the money is and how much comes in. They understand that I’m not saving for my second beach home or my third Bentley. And we all rise together. So I’ve found that that’s the best way to keep talented people motivated and happy. And that’s been my model.

Jeremy Weisz 10:23

Talk about the profit sharing. Because I know before we hit record, you’ve thought long and hard about this and you mentioned a few of them. But what are some of the factors that go into this? You mentioned hours, attitude. What are the other factors that you’re thinking about when you constructed this profit sharing?

Chad Hason 10:42

Well, the factor that I thought about was how do I motivate for success that doesn’t just come out of my pocket right out of the way? I’ve had enough experience in business to know that giving somebody a huge bag of money right up front is not a motivator. It might be a reward for them to come over to you from somewhere else or to, you know, inspire to come join you in the first place. But the real motivators are a reflection of the successes that you have. 

It took us a while to to figure out the metrics and measurements, but again, if I have an employee that I’m paying, you know, let’s say $100K plus their benefits, plus their share of the rent, plus the snacks, plus the parties, plus everything, that number isn’t $100K, it’s more like $150K. And when you realize that you have to work backwards to explain to them, If I’m going to pay you $150K, I’m not running a charity. I need to make, you know, standard businesses to make at least double that off of you. I can show them what we build them. 

I can build their plate with ours. And if they’re able to deliver at a standard that allows me to achieve my goals, well, then I share those profits with them. So they’re not lazy, and again, if I do have some employees that they just want to come in, they love the fact that it’s flexible. They can work from home. They can work here. They deliver the standard of hours that’s been expected of them and, you know, a little bit extra. But they’re not looking to make a ton of extra money or really, you know, grow in the company. They’re, you know, a designer or a copywriter that’s building a family and just kind of has something on the side, and they don’t even know how much longer they’re going to be working. 

So we’re comfortable for them as well. But we recognize the people that also want to learn here. So the profit sharing model allows them to learn a business, understand what goes into it behind the scenes, and it really takes away a lot of the “woe is me. Why am I not making more money?”

I firmly believe that leaders eat last, and that transparency allows them to show exactly what’s left over at the end of the day, but also a path for how they can get more money. So that’s been my approach, and to be very fair, I got this off a book that I read a little while ago that another agency owner told me to read. I was just incredibly inspired by it. So this isn’t new. And I want to be fair, it’s not a model that’s been working for ten years and kicking butt. But in the interest of our culture, I think it’s a wonderful thing.

Jeremy Weisz 13:01

Talk about what was the book and are there any other books that you recommend?

Chad Hason 13:07

Sure. So the book is The Great Game of Business by Jack Stack is the book that I wrote that really kind of breaks this down. Again, this has been around for decades. It’s not anything new, but it’s a great book.

Jeremy Weisz 13:18

Yeah. And I think you could even go to one of their meetings. I think he said in the book, if you go they have like an all hands meeting where they share everything. I think you can actually go to that from their company. I don’t know if that’s still in existence.

Chad Hason: 13:36

I saw that. I mean, it’s the fourth edition of the book, so I’m not sure exactly. Yeah, I did see that.

Jeremy Weisz 13:42

So The Great Game of Business. Fantastic. What other ones throughout your business career have been helpful for you?

Chad Hason 13:49

Oh, man. I read a book called Wait that really affected me. There’s another. And basically the concept of it was just, well, it really drilled down into athletes and how, like a tennis player or a baseball player, two of the hardest things to do is connect on those 100 mile an hour balls spinning in whatever direction coming at you. And what really differentiates the winners from the failures is that ability to wait that extra little minuscule amount of time to deliver properly. 

The biggest failures I’ve had as a leader are reacting emotionally, reacting too quickly. Part of my strength, I feel, or what people appreciate about me is my availability and my quick responses. But there’s a time and place for that. And making big decisions, certainly ones that affect, you know, 15, 20 of your employees is not something that you should take lightly. So it really taught me to take a minute and calm down.

Jeremy Weisz 14:49

Is that one Wait? Is it called The Art and Science of Delay? Is that the right one?

Chad Hason 14:53

It is. Yeah. 

Jeremy Weisz 14:54

Okay, cool.

Chad Hason 14:54

There’s a dog on the front. It’s wonderful.

Jeremy Weisz 14:57

Yep. Love it. Frank Partnoy is the author. Yeah, Awesome.

Chad Hason 15:02

And then I read another one. I think it was Malcolm Gladwell, a little bit and the name of it, I have to look on the shelf here, the name of it. But it was basically —

Jeremy Weisz 15:11

I know there’s blink, He’s got David and Goliath and —

Chad Hason 15:16

No, it was about meeting a bunch of people that you’re going to think are stupid because they communicate in a different way than you do. And so it really broke down, and we’ve all been through —

Jeremy Weisz 15:26

Outliers, Talking to Strangers?

Chad Hason 15:28

Talking to Strangers, talking to strangers. Yeah, I really like that. So I’m in the communication business, you know? But just like any other married man, I have trouble with communication at home, with my wife or with my children or, you know, with my, well, let’s make it a little bit topical, with my Trump followers versus my Kamala followers like, you’ve got to kind of adjust how you communicate with people in the interest of getting anywhere. 

And it can’t just be yelling louder or driving your point home in a way that you do it. So I’m in business development. I’m in management of people. The ability for me to truly understand that just because they don’t communicate like you do, doesn’t mean they don’t have huge value to contribute to your team, even in leadership. So it breaks it down into four. 

I was able to identify who I was. I was able to bring that back to the team. We were able to sit around a table and kind of decide what everybody was and then really just say, and so because of this, this is the type of communication I like. This is what motivates me. This is what shuts me down. Are we perfect? No, but have a lot of the petty disagreements and “she’s just not cool.” Or you know, “I can’t work with this person.” We’ve seen a lot of it go away. 

Having said that, my team, I just can’t say enough about my team, I don’t have a lot of challenges. I’m really just fine tuning and polishing. But again, anytime I read a book and I try to read one every couple of weeks, I bring what I’ve learned to the team.

Jeremy Weisz 16:51

Love it! Chad, thanks for sharing that. I think it’s the only Malcolm Gladwell book I’ve not read, Talking to Strangers, so I’m gonna have to check it out. So thanks for mentioning that. What did you want to do differently from the other agencies you worked on?

Chad Hason 17:08

I wanted to be involved. In every agency that I worked in, there was a leadership team and then there was an execution team, and the disconnect was borderline disgusting. I did not work at an agency where there wasn’t some bloated CEO rockin Prada, driving a Bentley wearing a three piece but then also asking juniors to edit their emails for them. You’d hear them on podcasts talking about how successful they are, but the reality is they couldn’t connect to a single thing they’d actually done. 

Now, having said that, I’ve reached out, since I became a CEO, to four of my previous CEOs and took them out for lunch to just apologize for the fact that I had no clue what a CEO actually did. Okay, so my opinions of their, you know, the disconnect and not doing anything. They were doing a wonderful job of admin. They were doing a wonderful job of well, they were doing a job of people management, which is really difficult, but there was a big disconnect between the people that were selling to the client and talking to them in the room and the people that were executing. And what I found is that disconnect created inefficiencies and a lot of expensive time that was wasted because we’re all in billable hours here. 

I didn’t understand why, as a sole proprietor, I couldn’t be the one to sell, execute the strategy and then communicate to the rest of the team exactly what we were going to do. And that’s exactly how our agency is run. We have three strategists, 2 or 3 of us are in every initial meeting. I’ve got one right after this. Ideal in brand strategy, Brittany deals in PR and communication strategy, and Brett deals in digital marketing strategy. 

Between the three of us, we create everything that’s needed and then execute to the point of something needing to be pretty, because we’ve got designers for that kind of thing. The disconnect isn’t there. Everybody’s aware of all our clients. Everybody feels engaged. And even if you’re not working on that client directly, you’re involved in the client in so much as you’re there for the kickoff. 

You can see the project management, we bring it up in the team meetings, stuff like that. It’s not a siloed agency. I also don’t have a big corner office. I’m taking this call from the boardroom. We have several breakout rooms with couches and screens and phones and stuff like that. 

But if you come to my agency, 1000ft² is dedicated to just my 12 teammates sitting side by side, you wouldn’t be able to walk in and figure out who was the boss and who was the most recent hired, and I find we get excellent work done that way. That was the big difference that I wanted to do was — let’s be a small boutique style agency where everyone’s invested and everyone’s involved, and there’s not a bunch of closed door meetings with leadership where you have no clue where you stand. That’s really the big thing.

Jeremy Weisz 19:46

So it sounds like —

Chad Hason 19:47

One more thing. 

Jeremy Weisz 19:48

Yeah. Go ahead.

Chad Hason 19:48

Can I say one more thing? There was a CEO over Covid that made an announcement that he was going to take like a $5 million pay cut or whatever, so that he could pay every single one of his employees $70K or more. Are you aware of this guy? He was pretty big in the news. They just did an update of him like a couple of weeks ago. 

And surprise, surprise, paying people what they deserve and a wage that they can live on, reduce their sick days, reduce their stress, improve productivity. So I did a similar model at my agency where I ensured that nobody gets hired for a wage under $70k. So that they can, at the very least, live. Now, has that allowed me to bring a big bag of money home for my wife in the first few years of the agency? Well, no, it was a bit of a struggle. 

But is my team ridiculously loyal and committed? Yeah, we have very little turnover. Everybody’s pretty happy here. I think that we check in regularly. So I think that’s something I wanted to do differently too. When you come in here, I do not negotiate to get you down to $45K or $50K to work. We’re all adults here. And you started a wage that you could be proud of and live on.

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