Today we’d like to introduce you to John Hazard
Hi John, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I am a journalist. I own a marketing agency and I wear many hats—account manager, project manager, accountant, HR director, IT support, etc. But, if you woke me up in the middle of the night and asked me “What do you do?” I would reply “journalist”. It’s where I started my career 25 years ago and it’s the common thread through all of the jobs and ventures I’ve taken on my path.
I began my career on the obituaries desk at The Asbury Park Press in New Jersey. I fell in love with the newsroom and the act of informing people about their world. Later, as I advanced in my career, I became a business editor, and I fell in love with Websites and technology as a tool to connect audiences and information. Later, I grew a taste for the business side of media, helping to build the revenue and marketing models that supported journalism.
I’ve worked at newspapers, magazines, a few web startups, and today, I run Lighthouse Creative Group an independent marketing agency based in New York. Most of clients are large technology brands. We help them develop marketing strategies, build websites, buy media, write reports, and create videos. We do everything it takes to help brands create great content and connect their story to an audience.
At the end of the day, I still see my job as informing people about their world.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The road was bumpy. And twisty. But my journey felt natural. What I do today—managing a marketing agency—is extremely different from what I started out doing in 2000. Still, every job I’ve had, felt like a natural evolution from one position to the next.
Media is a tough business. Startups are even tougher. I’ve been laid off. I’ve taken salary reductions. I’ve suffered bad bosses and bad jobs. But every job I had served as a learning experience and a networking opportunity. Networking has meant everything to my career.
I have kept a friend or 10 from every job I’ve ever held, including the bad ones. I’ve never burned a bridge. That network has been what’s propelled me, from opportunity to opportunity, and has been the growth engine of my my business, Lighthouse Creative Group.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Lighthouse Creative Group?
I manage Lighthouse Creative Group with three great friends, my business partners Guy Cimballo, Heather Frieser, and Sam Slaughter. Sam and I started Lighthouse in 2017 after a fun but burned-out run at a startup. We wanted to build a digital marketing agency where we would want to work.
Our idea was to find brilliant, mid-career marketers who had busy lives outside of work and wanted to opt out of the traditional agency grind, pay them a decent salary, put them in a supportive environment, and, most importantly, win big, exciting projects for them to work on.
There are a zillion smart marketers out there who aren’t willing to work 40+ hours a week and don’t fit into a traditional agency workforce—working mothers being a prime example. We see this group as underutilized, underemployed, and underappreciated. We built an agency that aligned with their life. We follow a 4-day work week. Our working hours are flexible. Everyone makes a competitive salary. Every employee owns a percentage of the company and receives a quarterly dividend. We enforce humane deadlines. We treat everyone, including employees and clients, as people with business lives.
The benefit for clients is that they get to access talented, trained marketers their other agencies overlooked.
What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
I am optimistic about the impact of AI. Marketing is full of many repetitive, laborious tasks that everyone despises. AI promises to automate whole aspects of our industry, such as media buying, siple writing, and basic design. AI should trim millions of hours of labor and free up smart humans to perform the more artful tasks like strategy and creative direction.
AI will not be capable of artful creative (for a while anyway). It means fewer hours for marketing agencies and will require fewer humans to do the work. But, it should mean leaner teams can have greater impact and be more productive.
Ai is something to navigate carefully for marketing agencies, but I see it as an opportunity to create more impact.
Pricing:
- $15,000 per month (minimum retainer)
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.lhchq.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lhc_ig/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/18377248/admin/dashboard/
- Other: https://vimeo.com/lhchq
