Pop Lab’s Founder, Gene McCubbin Featured in Inc. Magazine: "How I Put My Business on the Map"
HOUSTON, TEXAS, August 19, 2010: The founder and president of well-known interactive marketing firm, Pop Labs, Inc., Gene McCubbin was recently featured in the July/August issue of Inc. Magazine discussing his current success and how he has managed to become a serial entrepreneur.
Read the article sponsored by Verizon, "How I Put My Business on the Map" below:
How I Put My Business on the Map
Staking his firm's double-digit growth on people and pricing, serial entrepreneur Gene McCubbin refuses to rest on his laurels
Putting a small business on the map is one thing. Keeping it there during tough economic times is another. And managing to maintain consistent double-digit growth through all of it? That's in a class by itself, but it's just what Houston-based interactive marketing agency Pop Labs has managed to do under the leadership of founder and president Gene McCubbin.
A serial entrepreneur, McCubbin has owned and sold several web related business over the past 15 years. Since launching Pop Labs in 2001, he's seen revenues rise about 30% a year, to approximately $6 million in 2009. The company was ranked No. 317 on the Inc. 500 list last year, up from 440 in 2008.
However, McCubbin doesn't plan to replicate Pop Labs' past performance in 2010. Instead, he aims to double revenues and increase staffing by about 50%. “I expect 2010 to be a transformational year,” he says. “We're also looking to acquire other providers across the U.S. That will add to our service offering, personnel and client base”.
Interactive agencies have evolved into a mainstream marketing tool over the past decade, and hundreds of companies now compete for client dollars in this space, according to Forrester Research. While the entire category has benefited from the shift of advertising dollars from traditional media to online channels, Pop Labs' performance still stands out. McCubbin credits it to several factors.
Chief among them is the kind of talent Pop Labs is able to attract and retain, “Our only real asset is our staff and intellectual property they apply to a client's campaign,” McCubbin maintains. He describes his mostly Gen Y employees as being enthusiastic about the industry and about working in a client service environment.
Those may sound like simplistic virtues, but McCubbin insists that without the dedication, effort, intellectual curiosity and resolve of Pop Labs' employees, it would be impossible to execute and manage his clients' campaigns successfully. “It's simple, really. No clients, No revenues; thus Pop Labs would not exist,” he says.
Of course, many companies claim, truthfully, to have fantastic employees. But that's rarely enough to to set a business apart from its competitors. Figuring out how to leverage that resource in a meaningful way is the real challenge, and McCubbin appears to have solved that puzzle.
“After $150 million in web services with my current and former companies, I learned it’s all about creating processes, documentation and management of the creative and brilliant people who make up your team,” he says. “Nobody wants to follow rules, but they exist to standardize the quality and consistency of your output, even in a creative business. Think about Apple or Disney - massive yet creative organizations”.
Another factor aiding Pop Lab's success has been its approach to pricing, which differs from industry norms. Most interactive agencies require clients to lay out sizeable chunks of cash up front to develop a high-end online marketing campaign. Pop Labs works on a retainer basis, softening the economic impact on the client and shifting the focus to an ongoing relationship rather than the signing of a deal, which aligns with the agency's own interests.
“It provides needed cash flow for consistent staffing, while instilling fiscal responsibility internally,” McCubbin says. He notes that its pricing model spared Pop Labs from having to lay anyone off during the recession, insuring that the quality of its service did not decline in anyway. “We continued to deliver successful campaigns throughout the recession and, in fact, had a very strong year economically in 2009.”
That's not to say the recession had no effect at all on McCubbin and Pop Labs. Rather, he says, it caused him to think more about the company's future and “re-taught” him the importance of developing future leadership among his employees and management team.
“It's tough for entrepreneurs to let anyone else drive the car, because we usually fear nobody can drive it as well as we can,” he says. “But seeking growth through duplication of your skills is the only way to insure you are properly taking care of your fiduciary responsibilities to your employees, shareholders, vendors and clientele.”
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