We are privileged to work with clients in many different industries, different stages of growth, and with different approaches to growing their businesses. In this article, we delve a little deeper into the story of Adam Arkfeld, Founder and CEO of ParaCore, a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising agency.
Adam knows a few things about starting (and running) a successful business. Or two, or three.
He built up a seven-figure website development company and then pivoted that business into its current iteration. Since then, he’s launched several more affiliated brands and businesses in the PPC space, developing an expertise in advertising strategy and analytics alongside his background in computer science.
“I’m on my second iteration but my third phase,” he said. “We built websites, then we pivoted to retainer-based advertisements, and now we’re switching into performance marketing where we’re getting paid per lead instead of a retainer.”
But when Arkfeld needed a branding professional to turn to for his most personal project yet, he came to Miss Details founder and principal Tanya Gagnon.
Taking On A Personal Project
In 2018, Adam and his wife Becky, who was pregnant with twin girls, suffered one of the worst tragedies imaginable when they lost the twins at 20 weeks. Nearly a year later, Adam was still searching for a way to honor the pair, named Sophie and Chloe, when he came up with an idea.
“I’ve always enjoyed cold-brew coffee, even before it was a thing, when only certain coffee shops had cold-brewed coffee,” he said. “The entrepreneur in me just wanted to start a cold-brewed coffee business. And I realized I needed a brand, and I wanted to connect these two things—the loss of the twins with the brand—so that it had some more purpose to me.”
Adam and Tanya had met in the earlier part of the 2010s, when ParaCore was looking for a graphic design and branding expert and Tanya was looking for a website designer. They got to know each other better when they were both participating in the Arizona chapter of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) Accelerator program, designed to help successful entrepreneurs build their businesses further and faster.
While they developed a mutual respect for each other and their businesses, it wasn’t until Adam’s cold-brew idea that he decided to hire Tanya for his own business. He knew that her personality and professionalism would make her the perfect partner for such a poignant project.
“I think she has an empathy that’s deeper than most people’s, when I speak to other agency owners or designers.” Adam said. “She has an empathy thing which connects with me. She’s a very engaged person, when you talk to her she’s fully engaged in the conversation and just looks at things a different way.
“I thought, if I could choose any person to brand this, who could it be? And Tanya was the person that I chose.”
“I was honored that Adam chose me for this project.” Tanya said. “We add meaning to all of our logo designs but this one was special, it had a deeper purpose. I was so thrilled to hear that the final logo really resonated with Becky and him for so many reasons. It was my privilege to work with him on this first design project and our ongoing working relationship is one that I truly value.”
Tanya helped Adam design a logo and brand vision for his company, which he named Moments Cold Brew. The brand never saw the public eye, as Adam decided to focus on ParaCore and his family instead; he and his wife have a five-year-old daughter, Maci, and a two-year-old son, Parker.
But he was so impressed with her work that he’s hired her for two projects since, and doesn’t plan on stopping if he’s got further brands to launch.
“Everything about her is professional,” Adam said. “And when it comes to the process of working together, she is exceptional at moving the process along efficiently. And then she ties every step together so you see why you got to a certain point—you talk about the brand and what it means, and the feeling.
“As a business owner, I really appreciated that, that I always knew what to expect and how it progressed, and then the work was really high-quality. High-quality work is one thing, but even the operations of the business are really solid with Tanya.”
Arkfeld’s awesome advice
Through the process of developing, launching, and growing several thriving businesses, Adam’s learned several important lessons about what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur.
Most important is finding the proper work-life balance:
“You have two options: you can either focus on your business first and your personal second, in which case your personal side will likely fail, either physically or your relationship or something else, you’ll have a breakdown. Or you can focus on your personal side first and your business side second, in which case your business will thrive because you have the energy and relationships and stability and everything you need to run your business.
“Most entrepreneurs don’t realize that: they think that focusing on their personal life sacrifices their business. It’s actually quite the opposite. Focusing on your personal life lets your business thrive, because you have a stronger foundation for all the shit you’re going to go through.”
From a business standpoint, the word Adam embraces is ‘niche.’
When he was only running ParaCore, he realized he had to convince different types of customers that his business could handle their work: for example, a personal injury attorney would ask to make sure his firm could handle personal injury advertisements.
That’s why he launched Prevail Legal Marketing, one of the brands Tanya assisted him on since the Moments Cold Brew development project. A PPC marketing firm solely for attorneys, Prevail answers that question before its potential clients would need to ask.
Brand Snapshot™ for Prevail Legal Marketing
This is a page from the Brand Snapshot™ we created for Prevail Legal Marketing, in which we develop the overall mood of the brand and a nimble set of brand standards.
Note: Since this is a foundational document, many of these images are examples and therefore not finalized and purchased (that's why you see the watermarks).
Adam experimented with other niche brands, including edison21 for Shopify store owners, for which Tanya also handled the brand design and development. But as Prevail took off, Adam and Tanya focused their attention on the legal marketing brand, a smart choice that helped the business succeed.
“Create a business where your messaging just allows the consumer to self-select into your business, and disqualify everybody else. They just make all these assumptions, and the assumptions should theoretically be true because that is what you do. You don’t go to a Ferrari mechanic and ask if they’ve ever worked on a Ferrari before."
No matter what business you’re in, Arkfeld said, it’s important to stay around other entrepreneurs and business owners. Trapping yourself in a bubble of your own ideas will only lead to stagnation and slow innovation.
“All of my businesses’ different phases, the reason I’d get the idea is because I saw someone or met someone or knew someone through other entrepreneur groups that was doing something different than I was doing, and I took their model and pivoted it for myself.
“You’ve got to be around other business owners who are doing things differently. You see things that you never saw before.”
Brand Snapshot™ for edison21
A few pages from the Brand Snapshot™ we created for edison21, in which we develop the overall mood of the brand and a nimble set of brand standards.
Note: Since this is a foundational document, many of these images are examples and therefore not finalized and purchased (that's why you see the watermarks).
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