An Interview with Nate Hartmann, Founder of Yellow Box
By: Alisha Kumar
Nate Hartmann is an alumni who founded Yellow Box, a digital marketing agency, in 2010 while he was just a freshman in college. 10 years later, Yellow Box has grown into a boutique agency with 13 employees and has a wide range of clients from CPGs to startups, all focused on an approach to data/testing within the digital marketing space.
Q: Why did you choose to get a Master’s in Advertising?
Nate: I understood tactics and strategically how things could fit in, but I recognized I didn’t know enough in terms of measurement. I knew to best serve my current and future clientele, but I needed to hone my skills to better measure impact and how to develop meaningful insights quickly and accurately.
Having started my agency as a student, obviously learning on the job had proven to be extremely useful, but if I didn’t do the Master’s program, I don’t think I would have developed the same strategic framework and foundation that guides nearly all of my accounts today. For example, to this day, there are still three papers I know off the top of my head that I quote to clients.
That’s all to say, it really comes down to the career goals you have. If you’re going into anything like strategy or market research, I think an advanced degree is beneficial because you’re exposed to a wide breadth of perspectives and ways to measure behavior and analyze the impact of what you’re doing in a campaign. If you want to go into creative, I think it’s still impactful, but the benefits are not as direct.
To that end, I think an appetite for continued self-learning and improvement is crucial for anyone in this ever-changing business. I still spend a lot of time on industry blogs, podcasts, white papers, case studies, and research. So while I hope that helps, it’s also worth talking to current students and talk to alumni who have gone through it. Hunt them down. Find them on LinkedIn and see what roles they have. See if that jives with your goals.
Q: What made you decide to run an agency?
Nate: In high school, I decided I was going to be the next great American author. Then, I decided I was going to be a screenwriter. I went to U of I to study creative writing because that was going to hone my narrative abilities. Stereotypically my dad was like, “You have to get a job and make money,” so that summer, I went door to door in downtown Skokie and landed a video project for something like $200. Big money for an 18-year-old. This grew into a small video production business for myself and some friends who I still work with to this day at Yellow Box.
Where the real opportunity arose was when I realized the businesses didn’t know what to do with the commercial once I handed it over. Based on what I put together to market my video services, I already knew what the next steps were. At this point, I had already built my own website and ran my own paid search and email marketing campaigns. When I began to make marketing recommendations to my current client roster, I had unknowingly begun a small agency. It took off from there and grew into something far greater and larger than I could’ve anticipated as a freshman with an aging JVC.
Q: What does a typical day in your life look like?
Nate: Running the agency itself is always something totally different. Some days I’m on calls for upwards of 8 hours a day, and other days, I actually have the time to focus on account work. Every morning I prepare myself by saying, “What insanity awaits me today?” Who doesn’t love positive affirmations?
Q: What do you love about running an agency?
Nate: After graduating, I worked in-house for all of 2.5 months and was immediately uninspired. That’s not an indictment of working in-house, but what appeals to me about agency life is the variety of client work. If that variety is also a priority for you, you’ll probably like dislike in-house. Right now, our clients range from CPG brands to pharmaceuticals to government agencies to SaaS companies. It’s really great in terms of creativity and generating new ideas because you’re like, “Oh wait, this new strategy worked over here. But what can this strategy look like for this client in an entirely different industry over there?” Going through a block of five calls, you’re better able to pinpoint the synergies there are in strategies I think. And I think that’s really cool. It’s always all over the place.
Q: What are the challenges you face?
Nate: The other side of running an agency is all of the paperwork, and I do not enjoy it whatsoever. There’s also a lot of personnel to manage. And, being the CEO of a smaller agency, I’m constantly available to our clients which has meant lots of weekend work and calls at all hours of the day and night. But eventually there will be a vacation post-COVID (I hope!).
Q: What is one thing you wish you had known as a student before stepping into the world of advertising?
Nate: Redundancy doesn’t exist. Clients aren’t steeped in our industry, so you can never explain something too much. I know that sounds like something very simple, but I need to remind myself of that constantly. When you get so close to something and work within it all day, it’s easy to think things that are obvious to you should be obvious to everyone. As advertising experts, it’s crucial to be intentional and specific all the time with clients, even those who are familiar with the space, in order to always provide renewed context and maintain account alignment. Whether it’s controlling for an understanding around the use of ad spend or the latest round of creative, making sure everyone’s on the same page is imperative and also takes a lot more time than you’d expect. My mantra for my team is “everyone is an account manager,” and I believe that when you prioritize that mindset and clients are on the same page, you’re able to do your best work.