It was 1996 when I (along with two other guys) won a web-dev scholarship competition that would ultimately take me down a path of founding Taoti Creative. Sinbad emceed the award ceremony. Ron Howard presented our award. And no one really knew what the ‘internet’ even was yet. Some good PR from the competition was the impetus for some local small businesses to reach out to me about a website—“whatever that was.” Taoti was born. (Since you’re wondering, Taoti is an acronym for The Art Of The Internet. It was more applicable back then. We’ve outgrown it and just treat ‘Taoti’ as a wordmark these days. We have too much brand history—and SEO traction—to change it now!)
Thirty years ago, I billed my first client $250 for a website (today, we have 7 and 8-figure clients.) I operated out of my dorm room (we now operate out of 15K square feet of studio space in the heart of DC). I considered cargo shorts and flip flops appropriate work attire (still do.)
Thirty years and over a thousand clients later, what makes us keep on ticking? Especially with AI creating existential questions for many agencies, I find myself reflecting on the underlying principles that have brought us through the good times and bad. Turns out, it’s not rocket science:
Scrappiness. And hustle.
If there’s one constant in agency life, it’s change. Everything changes. It takes a lot of scrappiness to keep up that change. Everything we do now (which is just about everything it seems), we once did not do. There was always a first time we tried a new technology or process or even a whole new business line. We didn’t have the experience or expertise, but we dug in, put our heads together, and figured it out. We take those little wins and leverage them into the experience we need to go win bigger, more diverse projects. That scrappy culture has been the m.o. behind most of Taoti’s growth.
But scrappiness without some hustle won’t get you anywhere. Business doesn’t very often just fall into your lap. You gotta go out there and make things happen, by hook or crook. That means going after the long shots. Taking chances and chasing gut instincts out one’s comfort zone. Squeezing the minutes out of the day and turning them into bone fide business instead of overhead.
I could say that ‘scrappiness and hustle’ might be an oversimplification of thirty years of agency growth strategy, but I’m not sure that it is. Everything else has evolved, shifted, and changed. And will continue to do so. But those two simple, core principles at the root of our agency culture have served Taoti well for thirty years. I believe any business (or even any person) who can execute on these principles will persevere and prosper. The tech, the booms, the generational differences—they will come and go. But with some hustle and a scrappy approach to new opportunities, I look forward to Taoti’s next thirty!
