E144: The Power of Ownership Thinking with Tiffany Sauder

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Tiffany is the CEO of Element Three, a full-service marketing consultancy in Indianapolis. Since 2006, she’s transformed E3 from a small creative shop into one of the fastest-growing marketing consultancies in the Midwest.

She’s been named to IBJ’s 40 Under 40 and has won awards like Junior Achievement’s Best and Brightest and Krannert’s Burton Entrepreneurship Award. Under Tiffany’s leadership, the company has appeared on the Inc. 5000 six consecutive times from 2014 to 2019, claimed spots on the IBJ Fast 25: Fastest Growing Businesses in 2014 and 2015, and won HubSpot’s Agency of the Year in 2012.

Episode highlights:

• The unusual path that Tiffany took to become the CEO of an agency.
• What a history of finance and projections had to do with her agency’s growth.
• How to decide between different paths in advertising.
• What clients think of Tiffany’s agency’s approach.
• On mindset as an owner.
• Best advice received: It’s amazing how hard you had to work for that luck. Discipline behavior creates luck events.
• Habit that contributes to success: Saying what you mean the first time.
• Recommended tools: Shipt for delivered groceries
• Recommended book: Great by Choice by Jim Collins
• Run time: 36:29

Links:

• LinkedIn 
• ElementThree.com
• Shipt 
• Great by Choice by Jim Collins

Quotes:

• “What the hell does mid-market even mean?”
• “Not just building prettier pictures.”
• “I knew more quickly what to do with it all…I don’t know if it was opportunistic or dumb luck.”
• “I had a different background that had a different lense.”
• “I don’t want it to come across as too clinical.”