Mad Fish Digital provides award winning digital marketing to values driven brands.

I feel I owe an enormous debt to the EO community. EO has positively impacted my business, my life, and my employees' lives. I joined the EO Accelerator program in 2009 struggling to reach $250k in annual revenue. From day one, EO business owners (of all sizes) have always generously made time to meet with me over coffee, tea, lunch etc... and to help me grow my business. No one has ever asked me for anything in return other than to be willing to pay it forward. My business has grown 2,700% in 15 years since joining EO. I don't think I could have ever anticipated that happening, and my business would look much different had I not been part of this community.
 
>What are you looking forward to in the next 6 months?
Mad Fish Digital recently completed an acquisition of Portland's longest-standing creative agency, Grady Britton. The partnership between the two companies is just starting to come together, and the future for both organizations is looking to be very exciting.

>How do you see AI entering your field?
AI is amazing! As AI matures, I see it improving the efficiencies and scalability of work in agency and consultancy settings. Right now, to maximize AI's use cases within existing workflows, a business must understand the various APIs that are available. As AI and the supporting tools evolve, the requirement to understand the APIs will decrease. As this democratization happens, it will be easier to integrate AI into existing workflows, and each business can leverage AI in a way that aligns with their specific needs. As the expanded ease of integration happens, I foresee higher expectations from clients regarding quality and quantities of work at the same price point, or an expectation of a lower price point for the current levels of quality/quantity of agency work. Currently, it feels like AI has received the same industry sentiment as social media did when it first started to become used by agencies. At first, the few early adopters were seen as experts, but eventually, it's usage and integration in marketing strategies becomes a necessary fact of life that every business owner needs to embrace or risk being run over by it. It's time to get good at writing complex "prompts!" :)

>What's a critical mistake you made that became a major learning moment?
For my second job, when I was 16, I was a courtesy clerk at a grocery store after school. I was routinely late, and missed shifts, and was a terrible employee. It sounds funny now, but I had thought that this was OK behavior. Understandably, I was fired from that job after about 9 months. Getting fired took me completely by surprise and gave me the necessary guardrails that helped me to build a work ethic. Getting fired from that job changed my life, and I have an extreme amount of gratitude for the manager that fired me. It helped me to understand that sometimes what seems like the worst moment of someone's day can lead to one the most important moments of a person's life.

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Ben joined EO Portland in 2015. Interested in joining a community of business founders? This could be your year! Learn more.