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Get to know Dave with his first episode: I am a Father, Husband, CEO in that order.
Finding balance isn’t that what we all are striving for?
Let me share a secret. Stop trying to find the perfect balance. It’s not gonna happen.
Hi there and thank you so much for joining me to listen to my podcast, Agency Balance. My name is David Snyder (Dave). I am a marketer, tech n3rd, and a collector of anything collectible. A Pennsylvanian who has spent the last two decades as an agency leader who has found his balance.
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Finding balance isn’t that what we all are striving for?
Let me share a secret. Stop trying to find the perfect balance. It’s not gonna happen.
Hi there and thank you so much for joining me to listen to my podcast Agency Balance. My name is David Snyder (Dave). I am a marketer, tech n3rd, and a collector of anything collectible. A Pennsylvanian who has spent the last two decades as an agency leader who has found his balance.
Think of all the things you do both personally and professionally in a given day. It is balanced?
Should it be?
Maybe somedays it’s all work and no play.
Other’s maybe it’s all fun.
How do you measure balance?
Think of a scale. A scale measures weight.
I am a libra. My sign is a scale.
Sometimes the scale tips to the one side when too much in weighing on it. And if it tips one way too much we feel off balance.
I think in our minds we try to be 50/50 all the time.
What I have found is do the things that make you happy. Everyday.
Weather it go for a walk with your dog. Watch a sports game. Turn a wrench. Be with your kids. Read a book. Whatever it is make the time for that and do it every day.
Once you start to inject the things you like to do more often in your schedule. Your balance will change.
Throughout the coming episodes we will dig into this. But first I wanted to share a little bit about me.
When I got the idea of starting a podcast I was like what the heck I am going to talk about.
I am Father. I am Husband. I am CEO. In that order.
I said well why not talk about those things.
Many of us are now virtual. Meaning our home is our office, our restaurant, our movie theater. Some recent studies have shown that it’s no longer a 9-5 work day or even a Monday to Friday work week. Things will come up on a given day. And work and life are blended and sometimes off-balance.
I thought about some of the highlights of my life.
My kids. I can still remember the day when each were born. Fast forward now they are teenagers. Time is flying. But nothing makes me more happy to see them become their own. To grow up. Sure there are tons of challenges like all parents face. But at the end of the day they are great.
I married my best friend. I met her when we were 15. Bought our first home at 20. Married at 21. Fast forward to now we are still best friends. Even co-workers!
Became CEO of SmartAcre in 2019. It was always my goal to lead a company. I knew I was made to create, grow and lead a company. What I wasn’t prepared for…and what nobody will teach you how to prepare for is – Winning and losing business. All of the back office mess you have to do to run a business. Hire, retain, fire, repeat and rinse people. Deal with office dynamics. Not having an office. Even the death of a business partner. Then have a brother die a month later. Try to lead a company through that.
Father. Husband. CEO. In that order.
I live in Pennsylvania.
I am Father of 2 amazing teenage boys.
A husband of 21 years to my beautiful wife. Yup you just did some math. I married my high school sweetheart.
And a CEO of a marketing technology company. Where I spent the last decade helping lead and grow the company from 3 people to 30 across 5 states. Ranked Inc 5000 and best places to work in back to back years.
My dream was always to be an automotive designer. I would sketch cars as a kid and in my teenage years. Futuristic cars, aerodynamics were always interesting to me.
My high school years I thought I would just be messing around with paint and working in a hardware store. My girlfriend, now wife at the time said you should go checkout this new design program. You will learn 3D animation and design.
So that is what I did. I went to art school and got a business degree in Visual Communications and specialized technology.
I thought for sure I was on my way to Pixar and be an animation designer.
Nope.
The dot com boom hit.
And I started designing and developing websites while still in school. Companies locally were paying me under the table 500 bucks here and there to build them sites.
I learned SEO.
I was buying and selling domain names.
I built my own automotive dot com and brand sold that too.
Got married in 2000. We were young and perfect for each other. We are completely different. She is introverted and I am extraverted. She likes to play it safe. I like to go all in. But what makes us perfect is we balance each other out. She is my best friend.
Mid 2000s. I moved into Project Management. Then account work at some pretty big agencies. I got the taste to travel and lead big accounts and I like it. I was learning a lot.
My first son was born in 2006. He was a preemie, born 2 weeks early. He was born with syndactyly and craniosynostosis. His 3rd and 4th digits were fused together the skin and the bone. His frontal skull was also fused together. This kid had surgeries before he was 2. Today he is in high-school and is doing great. He is smart, kind and probably would kick your butt in any video game.
2008 I worked for a large eCommerce company. I traveled. I worked on some of the biggest big box brands. That is when I realized bigger is not better. Son #2 was on the way I needed to be back closer to home.
I went back to small agency life and started to plan my road to ownership. Again gaining more experience leading teams.
Number two was born in 2009. He was late, was walking by 9 months and always active. So active we noticed he couldn’t sit still. A loud room he would struggle. He was diagnosed with ADHD. We battled with whether we should medicate him or not. We waited until he was 12 before giving him his first medicine. Today he is doing amazing, bright, still full of energy, in clubs and theater.
Kids are the best.
Being closer to family was my goal.
2012 I met 3 guys. I applied for an AE position. My cover letter went something like…
I am more than a AE. I would like to eventually partner with you.
I worked as that AE selling and executing the work.
During that first year I said we need to expand. We are just another dime a dozen web shop.If we wanted to grow we need to add services.
I said marketing automation is the future. Ever hear of HubSpot, Pardot or Marketo? They didn’t but quickly knew this could be our differentiator.
2013 I made partner. We added a designer and an intern.
The next few years we started to add a few team members. We went from 3 employees to 6…7…8. Honing our skills in marketing automation and all things inbound marketing.
We were ready to continue to grow. But sometimes you have to take a step back before you can move forward. Our founder stepped down to retire.
I moved into VP. My other business partner Mike moved into President.
I was Mike’s right hand man.
We taught each other a lot. How to sell, how to close. What clients were right for us and ones that were not.
We rebranded.
We opened our 2nd location in Denver, CO. in 2017. We now have around 20 people.
Our goal was to service the west coast and continue to scale the Marketing Technology focus.
About 18 months later we decided replicating what we were doing in PA was NOT working. Partly because we grew too quickly.
But mainly we were not mature enough.
We didn’t have the right leadership in place yet. We knew the right move was to not try to replicate mini franchises across different time zones. But to shift to be more independent contractors.
Find self-managers and self-starters.
It worked!
2019 is rolling along then September 14th 6:13am my phone rings. It’s Jeff, my other business partner.
Jeff never calls me. I knew right away something was wrong.
I think I even said “Jeff, what’s wrong?”
Thinking like the office caught fire or something.
Jeff said. Mike our partner was in a really bad accident.
Still groggy after being awoken from an early call and not quite processing I said what happened.
Jeff replied, he cracked up his Porsche bad.
Mike and I both loved cars. I own a Porsche and was with him the day he bought his. Mike was a race car driver on the weekends. We went on many spirited drives together. It was one of my favorite things to do with him to go to a spot in the middle of nowhere and just talk.
Mike died a week later.
From that moment on I knew things would be different.
I will share more in the coming episodes how I decided at that point how things would change.
Change for the better.
See when you get dealt a 2…7 off suit you can either fold or go all in. We went all in.
A few weeks later my brother died.
Yeah. I can’t make this up.
He lost his battle with addiction. I’ll probably save some of that detail for a future episode as well.
But what a time in my life. 2 people die. I have to be a Dad, Husband and make sure a company doesn’t fall apart.
OK…big breathe.
2020 Pandemic.
I learned a lot in that time period of my life. I will share more about what I learned in the pandemic till now in the coming episodes.
Changing topics.
This show is not just about business. But everyday real stuff.
I am a passionate car enthusiast. I like to restore, make my cars shiny and grab attention. If you like cars check me out on IG @dbspeed
I said I collect anything that is collectable. I collect sports cards and memorabilia. It has been a hobby that stuck since I was 6 years old. I can remember trading baseball cards on the elementary recess grounds. I when I mean trading…I mean riping the other kids off. Hahaha. I used to read sport card price guides from front to back. To this very day I can tell you that Cal Ripken’s rookie card is 1982 Topps #21 is horizontal and pictured with Bob Bonner and Jeff Schnieder.
I found a new passion for collecting like most during the pandemic. It allowed me to escape the day to day crap that was going on. And shuffle through stacks and stacks of cardboard. I may have made a buck or two during it as well.
Father. Husband. CEO.
A lot happens in a given day. Planned or unplanned.
I really look forward to sharing this all with you more in the coming weeks.
Agency Balance will have guest’s on the podcast to share the things that have helped them achieve balance.
I hope you enjoyed getting to know me a little and please subscribe and on our next episode I talk more about my journey.
Thanks for listening and have a beautiful day.