Today we’d like to introduce you to Lindsay Saewitz.
Lindsay, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
My career started in sales at a large tech company in the recruiting space. I successfully moved up as a top seller in my unit before transitioning to a sales training and employer branding role. After three years at the company, I was ready to try out a startup and joined an early startup to lead their sales team. After about a year and a half started to get the itch to start something of my own.
In 2010 I launched CitySwarm which offered active Chicagoans a hassle-free way to experience the city via all-inclusive event packages. It was part group buying platform, part social club. On the B2B side, I positioned us an experiential marketing firm and got sponsorships from companies like MillerCoors looking to reach our audience in a unique way. I sold the company in 2014 to another Chicago-based events firm.
After some solo travel abroad, I came back to Chicago and spent almost a year trying to find a role that was a fit for my varied skill set. I landed at Origin Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm, in the “Platform” role. This is the name given to someone at a VC firm who does a bunch of different stuff! Half my time was spent marketing the firm to potential investors, entrepreneurs, and other stakeholders within the startup ecosystem, and the other half was spent working directly with our portfolio companies.
My main priority on that side was providing the companies and their employees with educational resources, community building opportunities, and “consultant-like” services in areas that aligned with my skill set. After a year and a half, I realized I wanted to be back on the operating side and I left to join an early startup. Soon after that, I realized I was ready to step into entrepreneurship again!
In September of 2017, I launched my consulting company where I’m focused on helping startup businesses achieve growth through thoughtful strategy and tactical execution in all areas of business operations, with an emphasis in business development and marketing.(http://grayandivory.com) I also recently launched a side project called #Bizamo, where I’m attempting to validate one business idea a month in 2018. (http://bizamo.co).
I started in February when I launched Whoopla, a subscription service providing digital itineraries of unique, local experiences. While it didn’t pass the validation test, I got a ton of great feedback and will be modifying the idea slightly in the future to better fit the need. Currently, I’m working on monetizing ChicagoKaraokeNight.com, a site I’ve run for about eight years.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Of course not! I think an ongoing struggle for me is deciding which area of interest to focus on. I’ve always enjoyed being involved in lots of different areas of business. I love marketing and business development/sales equally, but I also love exploring the people/culture functions within a startup. Lately, I’ve gotten really interested in product and market research.
Because of these varied interests, I’ve become more of a “generalist” vs a “specialist”. In some ways, this is good because I know I can add value in a lot of different ways, but I think it’s harder for people to put their finger on it sometimes and fit me into a “box”. I recently learned a term for this – multipotentiality: the ability and preference of a person, particularly one of strong intellectual or artistic curiosity, to excel in two or more different fields. So I’m going to try to embrace it!
The other thing that’s been a consistent struggle for me is the mental game – remaining confident, dealing with fear, not comparing myself to others, etc. It’s easy to look at someone successful and start feeling bad about what you’ve done, or get too scared about something to move forward. I struggle with this a lot. I wrote about it in my first Medium post ever, and it was comforting to hear a lot of other people struggle with the same thing. (https://medium.com/@lsaewitz/fear-urgency-and-figuring-it-out-one-day-at-a-time-8b8028c1c4ae)
Gray & Ivory – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
My company is called Gray & Ivory, and it’s a consulting firm focused on startups and small businesses seeking growth. While I can help in many areas of the business, I’m focused mostly on marketing, business development, and learning & development programs. I’ve had three clients since I started the business in the fall. One was an email marketing/automation project, one was a revenue strategy/business development project, and with my current client, I work on all aspects of the affiliate marketing and partnerships programs.
I think one thing that sets me apart from others is you can drop me into any industry or business model and I’ll quickly be able to gain an in-depth understanding of how things work. At CareerBuilder, I worked with all different types of businesses on a daily basis – from universities to construction companies to retail shops. At Origin, I worked primarily with SaaS, content, and online marketplace companies. And then my own business was part e-commerce, part events, part media agency. So at this point, I feel it’s pretty easy for me to get acclimated to any new company and start adding value immediately.
Second, I can add value in a variety of different functions. A Series A company may not have the budget to add people in the strategic partnerships function, or learning & development. They probably also have just one or two marketing employees who are responsible for every channel (which is a LOT!). So having someone who can wear many hats can be super valuable. As much as I can execute, I can also function as a strategic leader. I love listening and uncovering problems of employees and customers, and then building strategies that aim to solve these challenges.
The last thing that sets me apart is less about what I do and more about how I do it. There’s a lot of BS out there in startup land, and the business world overall. I strive to be authentic no matter what. I value transparency and communication with the highest regard along with humor – if you’re not having fun, what’s the point? Lastly, one of my strongest qualities is empathy, which might be the most important thing that sets me apart. It’s impossible to do business without empathy for customers, in my opinion, but I’m always surprised how often the customer is overlooked. Same thing with employees. They are your biggest asset and it’s imperative that you can listen and understand them.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
I think one of my proudest moments was when I sold my first sponsorship at CitySwarm to MillerCoors. CitySwarm was really a big experiment that effectively allowed me to test out different team functions. I had never sold sponsorship before, even though I had a strong hunch I’d be good at it.
Once I built up the list of CitySwarmers, I created a marketing kit and then reached out cold to MillerCoors. I think I just found someone on LinkedIn who I thought seemed like a decent contact, played around with the email until I figured it out, and then emailed her cold. This was 2010 so we had way less tools than today… so even hearing back seemed like an accomplishment.
Somehow, the email made it’s way to the appropriate contacts who then reached out for a meeting. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing or what to try and charge. I did a lot of googling “how much to charge for sponsorship”. I came to the meeting with a proposal, and sure enough, after some back and forth on the numbers, they agreed to sponsor.
Since margins on the tickets were super low, the bulk of the revenue came from MillerCoors and it’s really what allowed me to stay in business for as long as I did. So, it was pretty awesome!
Contact Info:
- Website: http://grayandivory.com
- Email: lindsay@grayandivory.com
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/LSaeWHAT
- Other: http://bizamo.co
Getting in touch: VoyageChicago is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
