Ep 152 | How to put your money where your culture is with Josh Lane

Years ago, I worked at Hill Holliday in NYC. Not the most glamorous work, but the people were fantastic. At some point, our team grew to include folks from an agency in Greenville, SC called Erwin Penland (EP). As typical NYC-ers, we didn’t know anything about them. Or Greenville for that matter. Was South Carolina the good Carolina? Over time, those SC-ers simply became part of the team. We had this amazing trip down to Greenville to bond with them and get a taste of the city. It’s honestly one of my favorite places in the US to this day. I can still taste the (spiked) sweet tea. EP has grown a lot since those days. And Greenville has cultivated quite the ad community. Josh Lane is a big part of that. He cut his teeth at EP and went on to co-found FerebeeLane in 2005. It sure looks like they’ve built a similar culture —with great people at the core. Culture is easy when it doesn’t cost anything. The hard part comes when the a-hole is incredibly talented. Or the client making your team miserable is incredibly profitable. So Josh and his partner Matt built an agency where protecting the people is built into the operation. They carry no debt. They maintain a solid reserve. And that gives them the freedom to walk away from business that threatens the health of the team. Like when a difficult client began wearing down one of their most experienced—and normally super chipper—account leaders. Josh and Matt confronted the behavior directly, knowing they could afford to lose the account. The client changed. But the conversation only happened because they could afford to have it. In agency-land, that kind of behavior is rare. But I’m starting to wonder if it’s less so in Greenville. You can follow Josh on LinkedIn and learn more about his agency at ferebeelane.com If you’d like to make your agency 20% less crazy, let’s talk. Schedule a free half-hour Demuckify Session and we’ll identify one thing that will move the needle right now. Type “meow” in the calendar invite and I’ll also send you a free DesuckifyWork® t-shirt. Bye, everyone! Get full access to DesuckifyWork® at tjbennett.substack.com/subscribe