What does BrightWave do? And what do you do for the company?

BrightWave is a very focused digital agency concentrating on email and CRM for leading enterprise brands like Chick-fil-A, Equifax, Mattress Firm, Panera Bread and other leading brands. We manage and advise on email and CRM programs to drive stronger relationships and greater revenue.

I’m very excited to have I hired Raj Choudhury as President about six months ago. It has dramatically changed my focus as opposed to how I’ve been spending the previous 12 months. Before, I was spread very thin and not able to really go deep on a lot of things that were important. Now I’m much more focused on external planning, corporate development, business development, marketing, partnerships – a lot of things that have probably been underserved over the last 24 months or so. I’ve turned over a lot of the internal operations to Raj. My day to day still varies greatly, but I’m really much more focused on the external things and letting him handle the majority of the internal side.

That’s a pretty critical inflection point and one that a lot of founders struggle with. Did you just get to the point where you said, “I am being spread too thin, I can’t focus on anything that really goes deep? And I need to make this change?” Or was it something that the organization came together and made as a group decision?

There wasn’t necessarily a straight line to the decision. It was more that I knew that in the last year that I needed some help and some advice. Raj was a guy that I already knew, and he was available as a consultant. It allowed me to put the focus on cherry picking a smart candidate who has a lot of agency experience and have him just spend 15-20 hours for a couple of months helping me out. From there, I’d figure out what I need to do. Then, when we realized that we worked really well together and it was a very good fit, we quickly tried to figure out how to bring him on in a more formal, full-time role. It wasn’t something that I would have probably pursued aggressively outside, it was more opportunistic.

I noticed some of the stats on your website, including the Inc. 5000 for five years in a row - which is no small feat. You’ve also mentioned BrightWave has been around for 12 years. In the world of digital marketing and email marketing that is quite a length of time! Congratulations on the longevity!

Let’s take a huge rewind and dive into what you wanted to be when you grew up?

A professional baseball or basketball player. I went strong with that. But in about 7th or 8th grade I realized that might not happen.

When did things change?

I wasn’t somebody that was necessarily thinking that far ahead. I was a history major in college. I was somebody that wanted to get a lot of different experiences and exposure in life, but didn’t have a clear path. I knew more about what I didn’t want to do.

My father was in financial services with Morgan Stanley for 30 years.  I did an internship one summer there and realized that it wasn’t a great fit for me. I also interned at the White House. Politics was something that was the closest thing to what I thought would be an interesting path. I grew up in Maryland – close to D.C., so that was intriguing. After I worked at the White House I realized this is a great thing to do for a couple of months, but not a career. So that helped me a lot. Being a history major basically meant that I was unemployed when I graduated. I learned more on the path of what I didn’t like than what I did like until the dot com era in the late 90s happened. Once I saw that emerging, I was all over that and sprinted to it as fast as I could.

For more about how Simms’ path to entrepreneurship and tune in to the podcast. Connect with Simms on Twitter at @SimmsJenkins.