Tell me about your current work.
I am currently the Chief Marketing Officer for Flagship Specialty Partners, a management service organization. Flagship specializes in the oral surgery side of healthcare and manages practices across the Southeast, private practices through a full-service offering. My area of expertise is marketing and I've been in that role for nearly two months now. It's been a breath of fresh air at this point in my career, and I’m excited to be a part of Flagship’s leadership.
What drew you to a career in the marketing realm?
It's interesting, I have kids who are headed to college, one in college now and two that are about to go.
I have been chatting with them a lot lately as they prepare for college. I see that more now than ever, there's an idea that kids need exposure to careers early on in their schooling. The belief being, young people will find direction on what courses to take when they get to college and what career to focus on.
But that’s not at all what happened with me. I took no marketing classes, no advertising classes, no communications classes. I was just fortunate enough at the time to enter the workforce when tons of job opportunities were open. I wound up finding a great organization, a great bunch of teammates, and it happened to be an ad agency. Now, 25 years later, I've just never not worked in marketing communication. It's kind of amazing. I had little intention to get into it, but it has clearly become my identifier, and in many ways, I now can't imagine doing anything else.
As a longtime Charlotte resident, what's one thing you find most appealing and noteworthy about Charlotte? And then the converse, what’s least appealing and unremarkable about it?
One of the things I have found rewarding, in the last eight to ten years, is being an advocate and ambassador for Charlotte's creative community. Historically, Charlotte has been referred to as a banking or an energy or a healthcare town. I would like it to become the destination for creatives—from fine art and high performance to digital marketers, copywriters, artists and singer/songwriters. There's an opportunity for Charlotte to be a destination for creatives that just happens to be in what used to be a banking town. It just happens to be two hours to the beach, two hours to the mountains.
Of all the things people describe Charlotte as, I want us to be a creative community. I have found this advocacy incredibly rewarding, and we've made headway. I had breakfast with a woman recently who specifically chose relocate from Southern California to Charlotte. Part of her rationale was that she had been exposed to a lot of creative thinking coming out of Charlotte. I wish I could have captured her saying that. It was almost like my vision and hopes for Charlotte was coming to life.
On the converse, there are some occasions when Charlotte lacks a solid identity. It sometimes feels like we’re all over the place. While that may work for visitors and newcomers, the city risks losing its character. I'm neither pro development nor anti-development. While I don’t have specific stances, there are times I find Charlotte a difficult place to describe. It lacks that one defining piece that holds it all together. Hopefully, we will evolve from that. Maybe the generation behind me sees things differently.
What's your happy place and why?
I have a couple of happy places. I enjoy sitting in the backyard or sitting at the kitchen table or in our living room playing cards with my wife. That's a happy place for me. I think a physical location. I probably have a few. Community Matters Cafe is a nice spot for me. I'm a big fan of Bitty & Beau's Coffee Shop in South End. I love 7th Street Market in uptown. They're just nice places that I think represent a lot of the things that are part of my life. I'm sure I'm missing a dozen other places that I love, but for the most part, I'm a good fan of a brewery.
But I'm glad that there are so many spots I can go that are accessible and feel like my third place, if you will. Right. Not home, not work. Kind of your third place, which is great.
You recently moderated a conversation around storytelling as it pertains to marketing. Please share some thoughts on the power of storytelling and how people might lean into their marketing with storytelling.
We’re currently in an environment of short, quick communication. I want it quickly. I want it fast. And I want it on my phone. Social media has been a huge catalyst for this. That's taken us away from the ability to hear a story, digest content, and make our own judgment or decisions. As a culture, we seldom think about how certain content has affected us. We rarely reflect on what actions we’re prompted to take after consuming content, whether seeing, reading, hearing or watching it. Storytelling has a different vibe nowadays, specifically for marketers and content creators, in terms of how can you convey a meaningful story in three or four paragraphs.
Many of us are asking, are there different ways to get people to lean in? How do they click through? How do they view through to the next level? I'm a fan of concise storytelling; however, I do think that there's an opportunity to tell richer, more robust stories. Dedicated professionals can achieve that. Once done, it could possibly be the most powerful form of marketing.
If you can read something and you're moved to act, then marketers don't have to sell you, offer a discount or cut a price. We don't have to incentivize people in any way. It's just the language and the pictures that have motivated you to take action. To me, that’s the sweet spot.
That said, I'm not condemning social media in any way, but I do think it has driven us to a space where we seldom go deep on anything. I'd like us, as a society, go a bit deeper and to make decisions and have conversations on topics that are meaningful.
