Crafting Curiosity with Holden Ellis

Tim Fulton 00:00Welcome to the Confluence Cast, presented by Columbus Underground. We are a weekly, Columbus-centric podcast focusing on the civics, lifestyle, entertainment, and people of our city. I'm your host, Tim Fulton. This week: Holden Ellis, a creative studio in Columbus, just celebrated its 10-year anniversary, a milestone that founder and CEO Josh Fitzwater describes as a testament to resilience, creativity, and teamwork. I sat down with Fitzwater to discuss the journey of Holden Ellis, from its humble beginnings to becoming a sought-after agency specializing in healthcare, branding, and digital experiences. Building a business from the ground up taught him lessons about prioritizing his team, navigating cash flow challenges, and staying true to the agency's mission of making people curious. In our conversation, he shared insights on the evolving role of creativity in healthcare and why staying small and nimble remains central to his vision. You can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at theconfluencecast.com. Enjoy the interview. Sitting down here with Josh Fitzwater, the founder and CEO of Holden Ellis. Josh, how are you? Tell us about Holden Ellis. Tell us about what you guys do.

Josh Fitzwater 01:31So Holden Ellis is a creative studio here. Our job is to make people curious, and we do that by pushing the boundaries of creativity and strategy. We always fancy ourselves kind of as a bit of an indie-band sort of studio — not following normal trends and kind of trying to do things our way.

Tim Fulton 01:54Okay. And you tend to work in the healthcare space. That's where you specialize.

Josh Fitzwater 01:58It is, yeah, that's one of our verticals. Absolutely.

Tim Fulton 02:02And so, 10-year anniversary at this point. Let's go back — talk about sort of the founding of Holden Ellis.

Josh Fitzwater 02:08Yeah. So I graduated from undergrad with a degree in public relations and poli-sci, and did absolutely nothing with it. I was in higher ed for a long time. I was a copywriter, and got the itch to join an agency. I went to the agency that I felt like I could run the creative team and run accounts, and that was Cement. That was Cement, yeah. And I saw the space being created in my head of just being able to create an environment where creativity could just, like, take hold. And I got the burn. I got that itch that every entrepreneur gets, and I quit on a Friday, and by Monday had a name, had a real crappy website version — you know, I won't even call it 1.0, I was just like, "point" — and that was Holden Ellis. So, humble, super humble beginnings.

Tim Fulton 03:23Sorry — you did do some work with Ghost Label there, yes, at some point. Ghost Label, the composer of our theme song, okay? Benji. Benji Robinson.

Josh Fitzwater 03:36Everything goes back to him. Yes, it does indeed. So, okay, small sidebar then, too. Forward used to be Ghost Label, and Kevin McIntyre and I started that. I was still in higher ed. It was time to come back together, form a company. It had become sort of more of a video-based company at that time. Holden Ellis, the company that I've got, was sort of the original intention of Forward, which is just like a creative studio. Anyway, so fast-forward, and, yeah, humble beginnings. And, you know, looking back over 10 years, there's just been a lot of good entrepreneurial lessons. I was sort of a reluctant entrepreneur. Wasn't prepared for really what was about to happen, and just sort of locked arms with this idea, and off we went.

Tim Fulton 04:36And the name comes from your son, okay.

Josh Fitzwater 04:40Like, pendulum swinging. So Cement — you know, Cement Marketing was a good name, but I wanted a name that meant something to me and kept me honest. And so I slapped my son's name on it. So his name is Holden Ellis Fitzwater. And so, yeah.

Tim Fulton 05:01There you go. And so, talk sort of through — was there much of a learning curve based on what you were doing at Cement? I know a bit about the space, right? Like, I know that you are dealing with RFPs, and you're up against other agencies to pitch things, and there's a certain amount of, like, filling your pipeline. What do you think — were you aware of everything you were about to take on accountability-wise? Because it's your — you know, at least one mouth at home that you're feeding, in addition to yours. But then you take on employees, you take on contractors, you take on that accountability. Talk about that, and sort of, like, how those early years went.

Josh Fitzwater 05:47I mean, cash flow is a real thing, right? There were a lot of good lessons. I think the early ones were — and maybe for better or for worse — I mean, after like the first month, it was about prioritizing everybody else. I knew that I would get mine eventually. And so we staffed up, all the money went back to the people, and it was tough, because learning how to balance things — in the early years, I mean, there's like a giant payroll struggle. Any fresh business has got those stresses. And we did it organically. There was never an investor. There was never, for a long time, even a business loan. It was just get to work.

Tim Fulton 06:39And did you have some clients to start? Like, you had enough to —

Josh Fitzwater 06:42No. No. I mean, a smarter business — you didn't leave with anything. And it was important to kind of do it the right way. And so there was no leaving with a client or anything like that. So it was really humble beginnings. For a long time, the thing that I learned was just how important the team is, and we've had so many iterations. As the visionary, you can only do so much, right? You have to have a good team. And there's been times where we've had the right team members, and there've been moments where we've had the wrong team members. But that — I think, you know, like, every two weeks, payroll comes in, right?

Tim Fulton 07:35Accounts receivable is also a thing. And, like, at that time, you —

Josh Fitzwater 07:37You just have to do everything you can. You believe in your dreams so much, you believe in this company so much, that in those tough times you do everything you can to push through.

Tim Fulton 07:49Now that you're 10 years down the road, do you feel like you're still able to be as hands-on as you want to be? Or do you try to be hands-off when you're like, I'm not really passionate about this project, but it's paying the bills, and I have somebody who can do storyboards and, frankly, write out the RFP and paint a vision?

Josh Fitzwater 08:08I mean, what's nice about being a smaller agency is there isn't a project that comes in that I'm not passionate about. And it's a super fortunate place to be in, but we can be kind of choosy as to who we work with, and we're excited about everything. Because I think — and this is where I think people get it wrong with agencies — it's not that our job is to find, like, the sexy projects. Our job is to make it sexy, right? And so people might come in with something that's complicated, or it doesn't seem very design-indicative, but our job is to figure out how to tell a story. Our job is to make something interesting, position it to be interesting, even if on the surface it seems like maybe this is a boring thing. It's our job to make it exciting.

Tim Fulton 09:01Talk about the model a little bit. I've been exploring a lot about — this is me personally — like, how does XYZ industry work, right? This is everything from, like, how does horse racing work, to —

Josh Fitzwater 09:14How does horse racing work?

Tim Fulton 09:17I don't know, but I know more than I did two weeks ago. Or, how do name, image, and likeness contracts work? Or, how does a bookstore work, or a bicycle shop? And, like, there are things in your industry that I imagine, if you're not in it, people don't quite understand. Like, I don't know — how do you have clients that are just on retainer? Or are you purely project-based?

Josh Fitzwater 09:44Used to be retainer, and have kind of moved away from it. I think on a long enough timeline with retainers, it becomes — there's a bit of an imbalance, of like, "I'm paying for X hours a month," and then, like, creative deliverables. Sometimes that thing that's, like, this big and that small took a long time to do, and so there becomes this, like —

Tim Fulton 10:09But that's why you get paid this month and this month, right?

Josh Fitzwater 10:15It just — and I think partners matter too, right? Some partners get that. Some partners don't. It becomes, like, an hour squeeze.

Tim Fulton 10:21And when you say "partner," are you talking about the end client, or another agency? Because there's going to be agencies of record, right? And when I say RFP — it's a request for proposal, basically, like, "Hey, we want to do a TV ad. What would you like to do with this TV ad?" And based on your response to that and what the end cost may be, you may or may not get the job. Some of those are coming through other agencies, right? Are you going out for that, or are you just a pure client-to-agency shop?

Josh Fitzwater 10:55I think our success rate is better when we just are talking straight to the client. That does happen sometimes, where there's another agency involved. We play nice in the sandbox with anybody. One thing that we pride ourselves on is being pretty egoless. We have high expectations for our product, but I think we can play nice with everybody.

Tim Fulton 11:23So, talk about the portfolio. Like, what are you proud of that you guys have put out in the world?

Josh Fitzwater 11:28So this goes back to kind of what you were talking about, too. Right now, we do a lot in healthcare. So on one side of the coin, we're working with large, like, Fortune 10 companies like McKesson — so they're in healthcare distribution, and they've got their hands in a lot of stuff. We're working with them on national campaigns, like Journey strategy, Journey work of their customer, their end user. And on the other side, something we're working on right now — again, just to kind of talk about process — is a large... I hate — so the worst part about healthcare is how acronymed everything is. And I'm like, I hate acronyms, and then I find myself using them all the time. It's shorthand.

Tim Fulton 12:22I mean, these are — I refer to them as terms of art, right?

Josh Fitzwater 12:25A great way for no one else to know what you're talking about, right?

Tim Fulton 12:29Or to figure out if the person that you're talking to knows what the hell they're talking about, right? Yeah, exactly — like, I saw a little sparkle when I said RFP, you were like, "Oh yeah, he knows what — he's already done a little bit."

Josh Fitzwater 12:40Of course. You know what you're talking about. Well, thank you. So we're working with a really large GPO in healthcare. GPO is a group purchasing organization. So, think about that as, they represent big buying groups on, like, the pharma side — pharmacy, medication — and then they purchase it in bulk. Then there's, like, a lower price rate, but then the pharmacy gets this giant guarantee that we just bought 3 million pills of whatever. So we're doing this full rebrand for them, repositioning in the marketplace. But one of the things that we're working on now — literally, like, right before I came here — was a new name. So their name is antiquated. It itself is an acronym that they're trying to move away from. And our process with this is taking a linguistic and phonetic look at it. So this new name needs to, phonetically — like, in our research, it's like two syllables, and the sound of it, the way that you say it, should harken back. Doesn't have to be apples to apples, but it should harken back to the mission and vision of what this company is in the healthcare space. And so we're exploring all these possibilities based on, one, like, emotional feel, but also, two, this kind of scientific modeling of naming linguistics, on how to make a name.

Tim Fulton 14:17Like, is this hard? Is this sharp? We can have a sharp and a soft, but we can't have a soft and a soft, and we certainly can't have a sharp and a sharp, right? And so you're — I imagine just a board where you're sort of mapping this out.

Josh Fitzwater 14:40Like, if I say it, where does my mind go with it, too, right?

Tim Fulton 14:45One, is everybody going to say it the same? And, yeah, like, when it's —

Josh Fitzwater 14:50My, like, synonymous — so if I say, I don't know, like, I look at your water bottle, it's like "cream ice," right? Cream makes me think of ice cream. And then I just go down this road, right?

Tim Fulton 15:04So there's a lot of weed, is what you're saying. There's a lot of, like, just got to brainstorm.

Josh Fitzwater 15:10I mean — this is my cannabis, right here, the green.

Tim Fulton 15:14The plastic green fern on the table. So, and from there, you come up with — I do not know how many — but then are you guys the ones administering everything from focus groups to, like, basically validation studies, to setting up landing pages that, like, "Hey, we're going to buy out $500 worth of Google ads for each landing page, see which one performs better based on the language that we put in front of people when they Google, 'Where do I get XYZ thing fulfilled?'"

Josh Fitzwater 15:47Full strategy. Our main spaces are branding and digital experiences. Strategy is sort of like — data is sort of like the foundation. Of course we're going to have a strategy, but then, like, to activate that strategy, you've got the brand and you've got digital experiences. So, like, web-based stuff, mobile-application-based stuff. When it comes to, like, executing digital advertising, we'll do all the creative, we'll do the strategy, but the placement of it, we usually partner up.

Tim Fulton 16:21And are you doing any — and I know you've done some work with Walker in a previous iteration of their digital advertising space. I guess my question is, like, do you guys — is it all about look and feel for you, or are you getting a little bit into the validation side of it?

Josh Fitzwater 16:39It's got to perform, right? Like, especially — there's big dollars being invested in this, to just be like —

Tim Fulton 16:47Are you using a partner to do that, or —

Josh Fitzwater 16:49Yeah. My mom said I'm really passionate about it.

Tim Fulton 16:52Yeah, got it. And so the renaming piece — like, that's in process right now?

Josh Fitzwater 17:01Yeah, part of the brand. So, like, that's step one of this rebrand, repositioning, that we're working on.

Tim Fulton 17:07Is that for McKesson, or is that another client, similarly positioned?

Josh Fitzwater 17:11McKesson will never rebrand. I wouldn't. Yeah, right.

Tim Fulton 17:16They'll acquire things. Yeah. So, can you talk about, basically, the audience-engagement side of it — like, when are you done with a project? Are you done with it when it's out in the world? Or are you — certainly, yes, you're putting it in your portfolio, you're putting it on your brand-new website, which folks should go and check out. But when does the end of the project come for you? When the deliverable is done?

Josh Fitzwater 17:49It just sort of depends. So, for example — and not to only have healthcare examples, but since we're talking healthcare — earlier this year we did the first-ever national advertising campaign for McKesson. One of their business units is medical-surgical, so gloves, syringes, all the healthcare products. And so, first, we went through and figured out what their value props were — like, what's your value proposition on how you're positioning yourself in the marketplace? And from there, we went and created a couple different campaigns, but what we found was a way to differentiate. And that's kind of our big thing, especially in healthcare, where everything is pretty vanilla. One person one time made a web page with, like, blue, and they're like, "Oh my God, that's healthcare. It's healthcare blue," right? And then they're like, "Well, the reflex color of blue is orange, so we've got to put some orange in there." And then it just was like that for, like, 20 years. And so — any client that we work with, any person that we talk to, anyone who's trying to be successful in anything needs to differentiate. And what's fun about the healthcare industry right now is that a lot of it is the same. Now you get into, like, healthcare tech startups — they're straddling that startup space, so they understand the point of brand and narrative and storytelling.

Tim Fulton 19:30But they're a startup. They have to, right?

Josh Fitzwater 19:34Yeah, but then, like, once you're past that, some of these people kind of lose their way. They forget what got them there, or they become too big, and things become so antiquated and disconnected and siloed. So we created this campaign called Meet the Moment, where we're taking more of, like, an emotive appeal to the healthcare workers. So instead of trying to get them to buy the gloves, the whole campaign is like, "We understand your day-to-day. We're just here to help you do your job better, and your job is really tough."

Tim Fulton 20:16Yeah. And we are there in the moment.

Josh Fitzwater 20:21Yeah, and it's about empathizing with them versus trying to sell them. So it's a very soft strategy, but very conceptual and appealing to them emotionally. And so that campaign, when we created it, we created an entire year's worth of everything.

Tim Fulton 20:40Of the content that ends up getting going, right? And that's — what's interesting, there's a psychology, right? If your audience — there is the nurse that grabs the glove. That nurse may actually not be the person that buys the glove, but they are the person that expects the glove, right? And so they want the —

Josh Fitzwater 20:59The person's going to buy it too, right? Like, procurement. We even have — part of our campaign is targeting procurement people, because they're buying it, right? And they've got several options. One of them's local here, you know?

Tim Fulton 21:15Where do you want to be in 10 years?

Josh Fitzwater 21:16That's a great question.

Tim Fulton 21:18Do you like this space?

Josh Fitzwater 21:20I love it. Yeah, I can't — I'm broken now. I can't do anything else.

Tim Fulton 21:26Well, you did a nice ad for Chemba a couple months ago, right?

Josh Fitzwater 21:29Oh yeah. I mean, I can't do anything other than creative.

Tim Fulton 21:32Yeah. Well, but where does Holden Ellis want to be as an agency in 10 years?

Josh Fitzwater 21:38I think we want to be still here. I think Columbus is just such a great place to have a business. We want to stay small. I think being small lets us stay nimble, lets us be choosy. And as markets go up and down, there's no — if you work here, you just work here, right? You don't have to worry about laying 30 people off because we over-rotated and got too big. So I think it's staying small. It's staying true to what we believe in, which is making people curious. So right now that's branding and digital experiences, but we're not going to be so blinded to other opportunities, if it's something — I mean, we were working on a project where we were talking about integrating, like, augmented reality into some of these big, sort of, like, muralscapes that we're working on, and that's all about making people curious. That's, like, this nice surprise-and-delight moment, diving deeper into the creative. So, you know, like, healthcare startups — that's the space that we like, because all they want to do is differentiate, and the other one is ripe with needing differentiation. But we don't want to be too blind to what comes next. So, yeah, I think just staying true to our core values, and growing.

Tim Fulton 23:17Okay. I end every interview with the same two questions: What do you think Columbus is doing well, and what do you think Columbus is not doing so well?

Josh Fitzwater 23:29Not to sound like a broken record, but I think Columbus is a great incubator for businesses. Obviously, like, prisoner of the moment — I happen to be one living in it. But it is an environment that, one, is full of really creative people, and — I'll break out of, like, the agency stuff — just really accepting people, curious people, which makes it a great little testing ground for any type of business. The rent's good, cost of living is good. My kids — I can still run a business and do all the kid stuff. You've got that still, like, Midwestern kind of aw-shucks charm, but then at the end of the day — which, actually, I think, is a misnomer — I think Columbus is like a go-get-it city where there's a ton of entrepreneurism. It gets drowned out by, like, the big, you know, CoverMyMeds unicorn, and Root, and Olive, right? Those were the big three.

Tim Fulton 24:41But there's — so, two varying successes.

Josh Fitzwater 24:44There's a whole spectrum there, yeah. But whether they made it or not — the ones that made it are so successful, and the ones that didn't still had a great run and provided jobs to a bazillion people. So I'd say that's probably what Columbus is doing right. I think what Columbus is doing wrong is — I feel like the people who live here get it, but there is a — however the city is personified, it feels a little wrong to me. I feel like we're still chasing, like, Nashville and Austin. It's like, who cares about either of those cities? No — they're both great. They're great. But, like, I feel like we're still chasing and saying, "Well, we're the new Nashville." It's like, no, we're Columbus. We're not Nashville, we're not Austin. And so there is a bit of — and I don't think anyone's quite got it right yet — but I feel like we're still trying to prove that we're cool, but we're already cool, you know? And so there's, like — I don't know, it's the way that we sell ourselves. I think we should just own who we are more. I think of the place that's like, "We're weird" — Asheville, right? They're like —

Tim Fulton 26:18Well, it used to be Austin, but Asheville also has a whole "Keep Asheville Weird" vibe. But that's also a reaction to getting big really fast, and getting a large tourism industry really fast.

Josh Fitzwater 26:34And you need that. And I'm pro-tourism, and I'm pro-Columbus getting big. It's just, I don't think we found that narrative hook of, really —

Tim Fulton 26:46So we had a conversation at the Big Table, which was recorded, and the audio is kind of not great, so it's probably just going to be a story on Columbus Underground. And all credit to Adam Burlet for being the first one to say it: Columbus is a teenager. And it is pretty darn clear where it's going. It is pretty darn clear what's happening. But it also is sort of just old enough to question authority and try to define itself, but not mature enough that you can trust it with two beers behind the wheel of a car. Like, I will critique — no, I'll criticize — the Experience Columbus "Yes, Columbus" campaign. I realize — I don't know if you're familiar with it. Yes, it's "Yes, comma, Columbus," and it's meant for tourism. I get it. I am not the audience for it. I also wonder — and there's no point there, I'm just saying some things — but I do wonder, when you say maybe that we aren't necessarily putting out the best image of ourselves: first of all, I don't think that's the citizens. I think that that's our government. I think that's our tourism bureau. I think we're fine. I think maybe we should be pushing back and saying, just let us be Brigadoon. Like, keep the businesses coming in, but keep it insulated, right? Yes, we want art, yes, we want culture, yes, we want these things, and people will see it when they come here, and it will be a much more organic thing, and we don't need to feel like we're having an acne outbreak every time we're on a national stage. So I don't know. I'm just trying to extend the teenager metaphor.

Josh Fitzwater 28:43I mean, I don't disagree with that. And, you know, I think, like, obviously the campaigns work, and the point of them matters. But I would like to see Columbus, really — I think it's a lot like what you just said. Just, well, just be. Yeah, calm down.

Tim Fulton 29:14Yeah, calm down.

Josh Fitzwater 29:15A little bit. Like, it's cool. We're cool. Everything's cool.

Tim Fulton 29:18Do not need a rebrand. Yeah — maybe a new name, but not reverent. Josh, thanks for your time.

Josh Fitzwater 29:25Hey, thank you. It was a pleasure being here.

Tim Fulton 29:38Thank you for listening to the Confluence Cast, presented by Columbus Underground. Again, you can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at theconfluencecast.com. Please rate, subscribe, and share this episode of the Confluence Cast with your friends, family, contacts, enemies, your favorite designer. If you're interested in sponsoring the Confluence Cast, get in touch with us. We can be reached by email at info@theconfluencecast.com. Our theme music was composed by Benji Robinson. Our producer is Philip Cogley. I'm your host, Tim Fulton. Have a great week.