Always on his mind

Always on his mind

ENTREPRENEURS by Mark Gordon | Managing Editor

Being laid off was the tipping point for a marketing guru who long dreamed about starting his own firm. A timely run-in with country legend Willie Nelson was the inspiration.

It makes pitch-perfect sense: Rich Odato's life was on the verge of turning into a country music song one afternoon in 2004. He had just been laid off from his advertising job when he ran into Willie Nelson in a Sarasota Holiday Inn parking lot.

Yes, that Willie Nelson. He was getting ready to play a gig in town. Odato was getting ready to go fishing and soul-searching after losing his job at Clarke Advertising, the result of a financial cut back after the Sarasota-based firm lost several big accounts.

Odato and the country crooner chatted only for a few minutes, but the random meeting with the well-known free spirit had a big impact on him. And after an afternoon on the Gulf, Odato decided to finally start his own marketing business, rather than just continue thinking about it and planning it out in his head.

He sold his boat, a 20-foot Grady-White for $1,000 - money he then used to launch Odato Marketing Group, now a four-person firm that is projecting $2.5 million in 2007 billings. Odato says the company has doubled its revenues in each of its three years, but he declined to release specific numbers.

Odato, 39, has a history of making decisions that, at the time, would cause some to question his sanity. Such as when he took a temporary job as a hospital secretary in his native Pittsburgh after he already graduated from college - just for a chance at landing an unpaid internship in the medical center's marketing department.

That move ultimately worked out well though, as it gave Odato the contacts and experience that led him to move to Florida and later open his own firm at 36 years old. That decision, to start his own business in an ultra-competitive field rather than seek out another salaried job, could also be questioned by some.

"It's easy to day dream about having your own business," Odato says, "but taking the chance is the hard part."

The hard and challenging part now, says Odato, is growing the firm without becoming too big to do the things - asking potential clients dozens of pointed questions about what makes their business tick, for example - that made it successful in the first place. The firm currently works out of an office in Sarasota's Rosemary District, space it's likely to outgrow with its next employee.

Odato is also determined to grow the firm without taking on debt, something he hasn't had to do during the firm's first three years.

Branding plan

The firm's niche, says Odato, is in approaching each client in terms of what the firm can do to improve the clients' overall business, not just what brochure it can whip up or what press release it can churn out. The Odato Marketing staff wants to know everything about the client, from sales cycles to pricing plans to the owner's exit strategy, before coming up with a plan.

"Our product is to grow people's business," says Odato. "The design is incidental to that."

To start with, the firm created a branding plan that, according to Odato, uses big advertisers' principles and strategies for clients with smaller budgets and a shorter turnaround time. It's a proprietary system he calls PivotPoint, and it starts by breaking the brand into four categories with one key question in each, including:

• Customer: Who is most likely to find value from the product?

• Category: Into what competitive set should the brand be placed?

• Difference: Why are we the best choice?

• Personality: How does the customer receive the brand personality?

From there, Odato and the firm's staff work with the client to see where the branding plan can be tweaked or pivoted. Or if the plan is already working, the firm promotes what's already there. "We choose to be smart," says Odato, "over spending."

Odato Marketing clients range from local businesses to national accounts and include Sarasota-based boat dealer Well Craft, a national diagnostic imaging center and Sarasota County's Englewood Community Redevelopment Area, a large ongoing project in southern Sarasota County.

After starting with the brand and how it's positioned in the marketplace, the firm provides several other services, including event planning, general public relations and Internet marketing. On the Internet side, one of the firm's specialties is working with clients seeking to improve how often their business is found on Web search engines.

Starting out

Odato grew up in McKeesport, a small steel-mining town near Pittsburgh, where Internet marketing for search engine optimization and brand positioning were far from buzzwords. He was 12 years old when he step-dad was laid off from a steel company, and his family hovered in poverty after that.

After graduating from the University of Pittsburgh in 1991, Odato began a career in journalism, writing crime stories for an independent Pittsburgh newspaper. But the $15 a story he was getting paid didn't provide much of a future, so he set his sights on working in marketing for a hospital.

When Odato couldn't find anything, he literally started at the bottom: He called a temporary employment agency to see if he could be matched with a job, any job, in a hospital. He took one as a secretary at Pittsburgh's Mercy Hospital.

That led to other administrative and filing jobs, until Odato worked his way into the marketing department, where his accomplishments ultimately included developing a Web site and writing a theme song for a hospital promotion.

"I was able to do it all," says Odato, "by starting out as a temp."

REVIEW SUMMARY

Business. Odato Marketing Group, Sarasota

Industry. Marketing, public relations and advertising

Key. Firm uses a four-part proprietary branding system to figure out what part of the clients' brand, if any, needs tweaking.

Be your

own boss

Rich Odato, founder and president of Sarasota-based Odato Marketing Group, offers these suggestions for would-be entrepreneurs thinking about starting their own business:

• Desire, not desperation: Odato says being an entrepreneur isn't for everyone, and becoming one should be for more than just not liking your boss. Odato says the book "The E-Myth Revisited," by Michael Gerber, is helpful in understanding the difference between creating a job for yourself and building a business.

• Remember past lessons: Even previous employers can teach you something. "Becoming a business owner is like becoming a parent," says Odato. "You always think you can do it better, but you eventually realize that some of your parents' ways of doing things actually work."

• Optimism breeds achievement: Put your values down in writing, says Odato, and look for customers and employees that share those values. In addition to integrity and ideas, one of Odato's core values is being consistently optimistic. "Humble confidence," he says, "attracts success."

• Always be networking: Find the best way to tell your story, says Odato, and then tell it early and often. The business will only go as far as the relationships you generate, so networking to find the people to tell your story to is crucial.

-Mark Gordon