After spending 25 fulfilling years at award-winning agencies and inside global brands, I hit pause a few years ago to focus on some non-advertising entrepreneurial efforts. Ironically, this wild journey introduced me to start-up founders, CEOs, CMOs, celebrities, media figures, publishers, hedge-funders, and institutional investors who love to talk marketing.

Casual conversations around campfires and random Zoom happy hours veered into territory that would’ve seemed almost blasphemous during my previous advertising career:

• What fosters our various industry echo chambers and is it the result of insular, narrow systems of reward? Does this constrict talent, shrink the creative canvas, and slow brand growth?

• How, then, would advertising transform if placed in the hands of people outside the industry?

• Does the purchase funnel as we know it really exist or are we just wasting money chasing ghost audiences in ghost channels?

• How could CMOs implement more of a publisher’s empathetic mindset and story-breaking/audience-building approach?

• Does a narrative crafted for marketing gain more traction by combining the character-development and storytelling disciplines of a screenwriter with the amplifying mindset of a shameless celebrity publicist? And can Hollywood's world-building techniques build greater rapport by enhancing the stories that audiences are in, rather than merely reflecting the lives and stories of the creators themselves?

And "The Owl" was born: a discreet, direct-to-founder, CEO, CMO and institutional investor strategic think tank meets creative studio. A nickname given to me by those in my professional circles.

I collaborate with a diverse network pulled straight from the very pillars of pop culture: cultural and investigative journalism, professional athletes, screenwriting, publications and media, film/entertainment, music, culinary, celebrity activism, show running and fashion/style. They know how to build an audience around a brand or story because they’ve built large audiences themselves.