He’s flying solo – or SOHO, if you prefer (Sole Ownership/Home Office) as owner of Marketing Engine Group (MEG), which opened in April 2008. However, Scott Cooper, 54, noted, “I’m here to report it’s working out very well. I stay very focused and can work for hours on end without surfacing. Discipline has made it easy.”
So who is the “group” behind the company name? Explains Cooper, “If I have an idea and give it to a company that then develops it, they own it, and it becomes their story. Therefore, the term ‘group’ is really just a state of mind for me. I am the group … but I never work alone.”
In fact, Cooper co-authored The Successful Marketing Plan; The One-Day Marketing Plan; and Tips and Traps for Marketing Your Business. But he did teach a class [alone] at the UW for 17 years in the schools of business and journalism at both the undergraduate and graduate level. He was senior VP of corporate marketing and branding for Brown Shoe Corporation, senior VP of marketing for Famous Footwear, and, prior to that, he was president of The Hiebing Group, a brand-marketing firm, with accounts including AAA and Coors Beer.
This year, his plans for MEG include annual revenues on either side of half a million dollars. Start-up costs, estimated at about $20,000, were self-funded. Cooper reported, “The major investments were the web site, legal paperwork, logo, stationary, video camera, projector, MacPro computer, and office equipment and furnishings.” He also created an office space with a contractor that added another $12,000 to the expense.
Cooper leveraged prior business relationships, as well as his home, when starting MEG. Chris Schell at Anchor Bank advised him to “symbolically shut the door to your home office at night.” Mike VanSicklen of Foley & Lardner helped him set up the legal provisions needed for business. Consultant Kay Plantes also advised him on the “how-tos” behind a SOHO consulting company. Accountant Gordy Meicher helped him establish a business structure (and referred the first client). Roman Hiebing is still part of his life, as is Joe Wood of Famous Footwear. Cooper also sees John Wall, his first employer at Demco, as a role model.
One of MEG’s biggest accounts is Firestone, which, Cooper said, is “in a stagnant seven-year slump as far as traffic.” As a way of increasing commerce, MEG has recalibrated the company’s business focus from a single-themed tire shop to a broader, more complete used car maintenance provider. MEG also works on development strategies and media planning for Wal-Mart, including “back to school and game-day programs, and the re-launching of its money center catered to the 70 million Americans who are not banked.”
Cooper’s role, he said, “has always been to get businesses to look at their operations a little differently.” His best days are when someone contacts him to say thanks for a little help here or there. His worst day was losing the Famous Footwear account in 1995 “and knowing we’d need to lay off people for the first time in the agency’s [Hiebing’s] history.”
Asked if he has an exit plan for the new business, Cooper said, “My vision was to create a situation where I could ramp up or ramp down my business as I got older, based on my desire to do so. Right now, I’m ramping up. So no exit strategy. It’s a work/life strategy.”
