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Meet Michael Anderson of Wonderist Agency in Point Loma

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Michael Anderson.

Michael, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I always like to joke that I’m a recovering English major. When I got to college at University Wisconsin-Madison I knew I was interested in business and entrepreneurship but the path to get there wasn’t clear. Growing up my dad owned multiple businesses in the QSR space and I loved the diversity of problems he would talk about at the dinner table.

After college, I stumbled through a few different jobs, starting at DePuy Orthopedics driving surgical parts to hospitals then moved to Marquette University to work as an academic coordinator. I felt unfulfilled and bored. That’s when I caught the startup bug. I got heavily involved in Milwaukee’s growing Startup Community and found a happy home at a healthcare incubator that had been created by a local Fortune 500 company, Assurant Health. That’s where my passion for business building and local marketing really took off.

Two years later I met my now wife, Laura who was doing marketing consulting for a handful of dentists and we decided to go into business together and create Wodnerist Agency, a full-service marketing agency for dentists across the country.

The business started with a 100 dollar bill at a kitchen table. Within a few months, we packed our bags in Milwaukee and drove to LA to settle down. We spent the next two years slowly growing a team while working out of our house before moving to San Diego where we got our first office. I can still remember that first week, lingering after work in disbelief that we had an office. We quickly expanded the office and then a year later outgrew it and moved to our current space in Point Loma. Wonderist Agency currently works with over 100 clients across the country.

We have 18 employees and 7 dogs, in a beautiful 4000 sq/ft space just outside of Liberty Station. While we’ve got all the startup cliches, ping pong table, exposed ducts, unlimited vacation time, our vibrant culture has become the calling card of Wonderist Agency. Our employees or Wonder Buddies as they’ve come to be called, are a unique group of driven creatives that are the special sauce that has made us an industry leader. We were honored to be awarded one of SDBJ’s best places to work in 2018.

In 2018 we acquired Merger Labs, a marketing agency for the M&A and Private Equity space where we’ve partnered with local entrepreneur Gabe Galvez. Merger Labs has over 30 clients. Most recently we launched NOMOS Marketing, a marketing agency for Lawyers by Lawyers where we’ve partnered with a lawyer, Tyler Roberts and his wife April Roberts (one of our Wonderist rockstars).

The path has not been easy but Wonderist Agency has become a thriving local marketing agency that has provided a springboard for us to build other companies and explore new verticles.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
The road has most certainly not been smooth. I’ve learned the hard way that one of the most important factors to being successful in business is knowing how to take the punches and get back up and do it all again the next day.

When we were first starting we had our first team members work out of our house. In those days there was no way to leave work at the office and my wife and I were always together, always working. Working with your significant other also has its own unique set of challenges. While it’s amazing to share successes, solve problems, and really share days together, we also share failures. My bad day is Laura’s bad day and it can make it harder to pick each other up.

What has really made the hard moments easier is having an ever growing team of people that absorb some of the problem-solving. Hiring the right people and giving them agency to solve problems for you is freeing and has really been the foundation of how Wonderist has spread its wings over the two years.

The hardest time for us happened 2 years ago. We were experiencing turn over, we were running out of office space. We had a culture of stress. That’s when Laura and I learned to let go and trust our team. The fantastic culture that we have at Wonderist Agency today was born out of the crucible we endured 2 years ago. Those are crucial moments because they can break a company or, as the saying goes, make a company stronger.

Starting and running a business is really just a series of failures, mistakes, and curveballs. I’m constantly critical of what we can be doing better, how we should be growing differently, where we are falling short. Some of the hardest and loneliest moments I’ve experienced have come from Wonderist Agency. When problems come up my job as one of the co-founders is to have the answer even when answers don’t always exist. But these challenges ALWAYS make us better and Laura and I have learned to be more accepting of them as we gain experience, there is always a solution you just need perspective.

Please tell us about Wonderist Agency.
Laura and I have always planned to build out our company in different verticles.

Verticalization is a huge advantage for us as we are able to become experts in a space and make sure our clients are getting tailored service that delivers the best results. We currently own and operate three separate marketing agencies out of the same office, Wonderist Agency, Merger Labs, and NOMOS marketing.

At Wonderist we do local marketing and digital marketing for dentists across the country. Our job is to help drive new patients for our clients. In addition to helping plan and execute TV, Radio, and Direct mail campaigns we build beautifully handcrafted websites and support them with SEO, Adwords, and social media campaigns. Wonderist Agency has succeeded by working in a highly verticalized space where we’ve become experts at serving our dental clients, differentiating ourselves as the friendliest agency that focuses delivering beautiful design in a stale space while tracking results to calculate clear ROI.

But that’s the nuts and bolts of what we do, we really like Southwest Airlines motto; “we’re a service company that happens to fly airplanes”. At our core we are a service company that happens to do marketing for dentists.” we put service first. That’s why our motto is “the best dental marketing with a smile”.

Merger Labs is marketing agency for M&A and private equity companies. We are the only marketing agency in the space. We provide marketing for deal makers and our job is to drive new deal flow for mergers and acquisitions.

NOMOS Marketing, our newest agency is poised to take over the marketing space for Lawyers. The agency is lead by Tyler Robers, himself a lawyer giving us a unique perspective when working with our clients. His wife and co-partner, April Roberts lends here to experience as a rockstar account manager from Wodnerist Agency.

If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
Wow, where to start. I’ll pick two: culture and trust and customer fit and scalable pricing. If we were starting over there are a lot of things I would approach differently. I would have hired differently, looked for more experience and stretched to pay for it sooner.

Culture is key to growth and having the right people around you helps build and sustain that culture. On that note learning how to let go and trust your team is also something I would have forced sooner. Not being a parent yet, I imagine it’s a lot like having kids. The business is your baby and at first, you do everything. you have your hands in everything. That makes it hard to let go of one new people come on to take things off your hands. It’s a hard lesson to learn but once you do you never go back.

When you are just starting a business there is a widespread startup philosophy that says “do things that don’t scale.” And it’s true. You need to bend over backward to serve your first clients. Sometimes this also means doing things at a much lower cost and working with clients that aren’t the best fit. If we were starting over I would launch with pricing that respects our time and process much more quickly and makes sure we are working with clients that are a good fit out of the gates. In our industry, there is no handbook for how to price so understanding margins and creating a scalable model is key!

Okay one more thing, I’d look for channel partners sooner. We are lucky to have some very good referral relationships and it ensures we are getting clients that are a good fit and spend most of our time delivering great service not selling.

Pricing:

  • Websites starting at $4500
  • Digital Marketing starting at $350/month – $2200/month
  • Brand & Logo $1200

Contact Info:

Image Credit:
Drew McGill, Chris Dumas

Getting in touch: SDVoyager is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.

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