How to Transform An Industry: A Guide Where There Are No Maps

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Brian Wallace is the President of NowSourcing, one of the nation’s top infographic agencies based in Louisville, KY and Cincinnati, OH. and works with companies that range from small business to Fortune 500.

Brian also runs a regional event to make the Louisville / Cincinnati corridor a more competitive region (#thinkbig) and has been named a 2017 Google Small Business Advisor.

What are you working on? How did you come up with this idea?

Brian Wallace: This August makes 12 years in business. When I started NowSourcing way back when I was mainly doing tech consulting and building websites. In the mid 2000’s we became a social media agency but by the end of the 2000’s there were just too many specialties to master, so we switched gears and pivoted to doing infographics only. I came up with doing this because there were only a few firms putting out infographics at the time and I believed there was much more opportunity to the market and we already had a lot of the skills in-house: graphic design, storytelling, research, knowing what goes viral, media outreach, and all of these things.

How is your company different?

Brian Wallace: We don’t take shortcuts. Most people waste time trying to be good at lots of different things. We believe in being among the best in the world at a narrow band of things.

What’s your dream with your company?

Brian Wallace: I’m living that dream now. It’s kind of like being Tom Hanks as an adult in Big who’s paid to play with toys. 🙂

Seriously though it’s very satisfying to help clients get all sorts of press and exposure that they might not have thought of. Getting to be creative all day long is a lot of fun, but there’s a ton of work in it. And I wouldn’t want it any other way!

How do you creatively advertise?

Brian Wallace: my clients are my advertising. The next time you see an infographic that really captivates you that you saw on a large website, go check out the bottom right corner. We put our calling card on there.

Why are entrepreneurs obsessed with hustle?

Brian Wallace: because it’s easy to talk about. I think that it’s important to learn through adversity and personal life stories. Recently I opened up about this with a very personal story about the death of my son on Jeremy Slate’s Create Your Own Life Podcast and there’s been a great reception so far.

Hustle and motivation are fun but finding a deeper meaning and purpose is so important.

What were your biggest failure and biggest success? What did you learn from them?

Brian Wallace: Let’s start with the biggest failure, as I think it’s healthy and important to fail often. It’s trickier when you’re more publicly visible but that’s still ok as it’s very important to be humble and not let success make you feel better / more important than others. Here’s a failure that we got in the media (even Forbes!) but the idea just never took off. It taught me that just because an idea looks good on paper, if you don’t have the right sales model / not a viable market, it’s just not going to happen.

As for biggest success? It was pretty great when we got a basketball player a $64 million max contract before his 23rd birthday. And it taught me that you can achieve great things through quality and determination.

What’s something new you’ve learned in the past month?

Brian Wallace: If you don’t stay relevant, you die.

People that think they can just coast along with the same message and the same crowd are finding themselves completely irrelevant to the world around them, sometimes without them even realizing it. I’ve been amping up my personal brand and that of NowSourcing and have been making conscious efforts to do a better job to regularly be a guest on podcasts, interviews, and being in the press. We’ve had lots of success on a piece about influencer marketing.

What should an entrepreneur focus on?

Recognizing the power of one’s network and expanding that network. Don’t forget that everyone has a circle of influence. Also, don’t insist on labels and glorifying ageism – I’ve had outstanding conversations with people that are 18 and 80. You could argue that older people may have more wisdom through life experience and and younger people may have more energy, but you’d be surprised what you can learn from everyone!