Founder’s Journey: Kim Eberl

Justin Levinson (00:00.879)‍

Hello everybody. Welcome to the agency side podcast. I'm your host Justin Levinson. I'm really excited to be here today with Kim Burl who is the founder, owner of the Motion Agency, which they're an exciting creative marketing agency based in Chicago. Thanks so much for being here today, Kim.

‍

Kim Eberl (00:17.698)‍

Thanks for having me, Justin. I appreciate it.

‍

Justin Levinson (00:20.303)‍

Yeah, so I guess we'll get right into it. Maybe for our viewers who aren't familiar with the Motion Agency, maybe you can just tell us a little bit about what you guys are doing over there.

‍

Kim Eberl (00:30.19)‍

Sure. Again, thanks for having me. My name is Kim Eberle and I actually, this is a great week for me to have an interview with you. This is our 19th year anniversary week, which is awesome. So we founded the agency in 2006. to say we're the largest woman owned agency in Chicago, which is no easy feat. We do a myriad of things from public relations and social media, which dovetails into content, obviously, to creative and marketing and packaging and

all those wonderful things.

‍

Justin Levinson (01:02.149)‍

Yeah, that's cool. I that you came from sort of like a PR background and then you like an account executive or a director, I'm sorry, at Ogilvy. Maybe you can tell us how you made that jump from the account side at a big agency to launching your own agency.

‍

Kim Eberl (01:14.402)‍

Yeah.

‍

Kim Eberl (01:27.692)‍

Yeah, so mine is a story of resilience, which is one of our values. So I was at a bigger PR firm. Actually, I have great respect for the bigger bigger PR firms have a lot of great relationships there. But on March 28, 2006, I was actually fired. I didn't see it coming. The person before me didn't last too long. The person after me lasted just about as long. So when I was let go, I started immediately freelancing thinking, OK, I'll do this until I get a real job. Right. And so I get my next

corporate gig or agency gig because I knew public relations and marketing was my passion. So once I started freelancing, the work really started to snowball and I came to a fork in the road where I either could turn down the work because it was too much for me, Kim, or I could hire someone else to join me in this journey. So I took the latter route, I hired someone else to help me manage the work and then the work just started snowballing more and more and I was like,

oh, I've got something here. I started to slowly see the need for an agency like mine that was a little bit more nimble, but had this bigger experience with bigger brands. And from there, you know, I've done public relations for so much of my life, in 2018, was presented with an opportunity to acquire a piece of business that expanded our experience from PR to other services. And in doing that, we've become full service.

called Motion PR and then when the agency evolved I dropped the PR and we just became Motion because we do much more than PR now. Yeah.

‍

Justin Levinson (02:59.045)‍

So that

‍

Justin Levinson (03:05.701)‍

That's really cool. Yeah, that's pretty fantastic. yeah, mean, a lot of agency owners, go through that period of they're just like trying to exit their company and then tend to start. And yours sort of happened like very organically where you were just picked up your own freelance work and then you started to scale and build from there. Did you have any...

‍

Kim Eberl (03:22.254)‍

us.

‍

Kim Eberl (03:26.914)‍

You suck.

‍

Justin Levinson (03:29.529)‍

Any mentors that were sort of helping you in scaling or how are you sort of learning how to do all that?

‍

Kim Eberl (03:36.43)‍

Yeah, one of my, I wouldn't say regrets is such a strong word, but if I could turn back time, I would like to have a mentor earlier in my career. I've actually gotten close relationships with mentors in the last 10 years, but in starting out, I just sort of navigated my own path.

and figure things out on my own and probably made some mistakes along the way. So I would advise anyone to get a mentor earlier in their life, especially someone that maybe they don't work with all the time, because that can give you a totally new perspective and make you think about things and challenge your traditional thinking. also mentors can also help reinforce your thinking. Sometimes as an owner, this sounds kind of like an allegory kind of statement, but like it feels lonely at the top. It does in the sense of if you have an intuition

‍

Justin Levinson (04:02.416)‍

You

‍

Justin Levinson (04:20.507)‍

Yeah.

‍

Kim Eberl (04:24.944)‍

or a gut or an idea, but you don't have anyone else to bounce it off of, that's where a mentor really can come in helpful.

‍

Justin Levinson (04:32.719)‍

Yeah. How does your company work in terms of like collaboration? You guys in office a lot or do you guys work in a remote setup or how is that?

‍

Kim Eberl (04:43.47)‍

Yeah, that was, you know, I feel like a lot of us in life look at life as pre-COVID and post-COVID. So pre-COVID, just like many other companies, we were in the office five days a week. Post-COVID, there was definitely a journey where I was, you know, we were 100 % remote, then we got people in voluntarily and whatnot. So now we have a hybrid model in Chicago where there's a certain number of work from home days per year and people can use them to whatever fits their life. So for example, I have some people

that live in Michigan and we're mostly based in Chicago, although we have offices in Cincinnati and Nashville. And so if someone wants to be in Michigan for a week, they can, but that just means they're coming in more another week. So they have a certain allotment of work from home days. So I actually feel like it's one of more...

flexible work scenarios that I've heard of before. And I'm really proud of that. I think the team really likes it, that type of flexibility. And we noticed that some people come in more than the minimum just because they like to get out of the house. And I like to come in, I come in four days a week. I like to be here.

‍

Justin Levinson (05:51.131)‍

That's awesome. Not to get off subject, but I am looking in the background of your screen here. I know some of the folks who are listening to us, maybe Spotify or whatever, won't be able to see the picture. But I'm noticing some really cool stuff. I'm noticing that Kim's got, maybe is that Hendrix? No, it's cream does really gears. I saw blood on the tracks, the Bob Dylan, Bill Bruce Springsteen, I see over there maybe.

Kim Eberl (06:10.488)‍

Yes. Yep. I got, I got Spring City, I got The Who, Jefferson Starship, Beatles White Album, Carp and Groose. Yeah. So I'm a music lover for sure. And blondie shirts on. Yeah.

‍

Justin Levinson (06:19.597)‍

Yeah. good stuff.

You a blondie shirt too? Nice, my god, I love blondie. I know you're cool. This is great stuff. So you're big music fan, obviously.

‍

Kim Eberl (06:34.638)‍

Big music fan. Yeah, obviously I inherited my dad's record collection when he passed away. And so I'd like to credit him with most of these, like 90 % of them. And actually I love your background there. I'm actually just now learning the piano, which is hard. I've never played an instrument before and it is, it's hard. decided to, you know, as a business owner, as an agency owner,

‍

Justin Levinson (06:47.131)‍

Thank you.

‍

Kim Eberl (06:59.694)‍

Life can be stressful and you think about work more than you care to. So you have to have these outlets to take a break. And I like to exercise and walk my dogs and all that stuff, but I wanted something else to really center on. So I've just now started the piano and I'm not going to perform any time soon because it's brand new, but I think I'm taking lessons. I have to. I look at these books, it's like a foreign language.

‍

Justin Levinson (07:18.491)‍

Yeah. Are you taking lessons or are just... That's cool. Awesome.

‍

Justin Levinson (07:28.315)‍

Yeah, I think that one, I actually was a piano teacher at one point in time. Yeah, I actually taught at music school in La Cunha in LA. And so I taught, it was funny in that school, it was very high end, like these kids wanted to be concert pianists. Like they were incredible. But when I was hired, I basically got all the kids that like were like not practicing that well, that were like a little bit more like,

‍

Kim Eberl (07:34.563)‍

Blue R-

‍

Justin Levinson (07:58.307)‍

you know, little more rough around the edges. And their parents were like, all right, we're just gonna throw these kids to Justin. I was very like loosey goosey. I was just like, yeah, let's just have fun and we'll play this chord and we'll do that. And I wasn't taking it quite as seriously. So I taught piano there for a long time. I taught actually some adults there as well. And yeah, I think the thing about a piano teacher, what you get,

‍

Kim Eberl (08:05.614)‍

Lucky you.

‍

Justin Levinson (08:25.763)‍

is the most important thing, think is accountability. Maybe that's kind of like with having a mentor as well. It's like, just knowing like, this is what I have to practice and this is what I need to do and I'm gonna come home and I'm just gonna do this. Because if you look through the whole book, it's just like, my God, there's just, this is like, how does anybody do this, you know?

‍

Kim Eberl (08:28.792)‍

Yes. Yep. Yep.

‍

Kim Eberl (08:43.55)‍

anyone do it? I know. I looked ahead to my lesson book and I'm like, how am I ever going to be able to play something that's like 30 pages down the road? But I can proudly say I know how to play Jingle Bells now. And yeah.

‍

Justin Levinson (08:52.603)‍

Totally.

Nice. There's one part in this adult book that I have, the Alfred's book, where it's like, is that the one you're doing? And I try to get the kids to play. I mean, I'm not the funniest guy in the world. It's not my thing, but I get them to play like a little bit of like Mozart on the first day. And then I can tell the parents like, hey, they're playing Mozart on the first day. you're the piano teacher of all time over here.

‍

Kim Eberl (09:02.678)‍

I have the offered book. That's what I'm using. Yeah.

‍

Kim Eberl (09:18.382)‍

Okay.

‍

Justin Levinson (09:23.963)‍

That was my thing.

‍

Kim Eberl (09:25.198)‍

Yeah, it's a struggle. might, well, and you have guitars and piano, and I've heard that the guitar sheet music is different than the piano, right?

‍

Justin Levinson (09:34.799)‍

Yeah, I mean, all the notes are the same, it's, you know, you gotta know where they are. it's physically, it's, you know, it's a harder thing to play chords and everything. I'm a pianist by trade. you know, I just, love the piano. It's one of my just favorite things of all time. And I actually am always interested personally in how, as a musician, how music relates to like advertising, you know, and how that pulls together. Do you guys use a lot of...

‍

Kim Eberl (10:00.172)‍

Mm-hmm.

‍

Justin Levinson (10:03.919)‍

partner with any sort of music with the campaigns and stuff that you guys do?

‍

Kim Eberl (10:08.256)‍

Yeah, sometimes. And actually, as I've like, I've been wanting to pick up the piano forever. And as I just started, I'll answer your question in seconds. But as I started like looking into pretty good lessons, going back to your point about teaching kids, one of the websites said, okay, name, email, age of your child. I'm like, okay, 47. And then when I look around the office here, and I've thought about in the past years, like we've got a lot of

employees who are musicians here, whether it's guitar, there's some excellent singers here. I only know one or two other piano players. So it's been interesting. And yeah, for the music, as we put together, especially like a social media reel or something like that, it does...

come with music in the background. So having some musical knowledge, musical theory, I think is very helpful. And for me, I've noticed too, people here have a creative outlet of some sort after work. Some people cook and bake and I do that okay.

I'm more of a baker than a cooker. One of our creatives I was talking to and he was taking a creative writing lesson after work just to keep honing his skill. And then I also got my juices thinking like, all right, I know French is a language a little bit. What else can I do to better myself? And I thought about the piano. So I think having that second outlet out of work is such a great stress reliever. And like I said, an outlet for people that in our industry, there are so many creative instincts to exercise that in other ways, I think is awesome.

‍

Justin Levinson (11:38.191)‍

Yeah, I'm interested in your experience in PR and I know you guys changed to have more offerings. Did you study PR in school?

‍

Kim Eberl (11:48.438)‍

I did. Yeah, I went to Marquette University, who is no longer in the March Madness stuff. Let's not talk about that. But no, I studied public relations. I had a bunch of internships while at Marquette University in Milwaukee, which were awesome. I have nothing but great things to about Marquette. My last internship at Marquette in PR was at this little company called Harley-Davidson Motor Company, which was awesome. And I was going to stay at Harley, but I ended up coming to Chicago and doing some more PR here in different agencies. So yeah, PR was

‍

Justin Levinson (11:53.744)‍

God.

‍

Kim Eberl (12:18.352)‍

my nature, as I was in high school and going into college, I could eliminate what I wasn't good at. You know, I'm not good at math. I don't want to be a doctor, know, like check, check, check. What do I not want to do? And then I started to narrow down into a creative communications kind of role. And that's my nip. I always wanted to be Murphy Brown when I grew up. I don't know if I'm dating myself there a little bit, but there we go. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

‍

Justin Levinson (12:42.169)‍

watch it. Yeah.

‍

Justin Levinson (12:46.907)‍

That's cool. Did you ever do PR for anything outside of in the ad space? Did you ever do anything for like anything outside of that?

‍

Kim Eberl (12:56.014)‍

I was in the agency, in an agency setting for most of my career. I was in house briefly at cars.com and at Harley Davidson. But other than that, I was mostly at an agency. Yeah, that's just what I, I know, I like the variety that agencies have. You you can learn.

‍

Justin Levinson (13:15.376)‍

Yeah.

‍

Kim Eberl (13:17.294)‍

Just like with music, you can learn all these types of music, whether it's jazz or country or whatever. Same with when you're interested with clients, you can learn one day about a manufacturing client, the next day about a restaurant. I like that variety. It kind of keeps it interesting.

‍

Justin Levinson (13:32.315)‍

Totally, I guess I didn't ask my question, but I think you answered it anyway, but I was sort of thinking if you had ever done PR for anything outside of a brand, guess like if you had done like artists or done PR for any like influencer or any certain thing else in that space.

‍

Kim Eberl (13:40.558)
Kim Eberl (13:47.022)‍

Um, the only thing outside of a brand I've done is actually for athletes. Actually the name motion PR and motion started because some of my first clients were, uh, you know, athletic capacity, they were cyclists or a cycling team or something like that, or a sports recruiting company. So less so about artists, although that would be phenomenal and exciting, um, but more in the sports arena. And that's where the motion, but I also, kept the name motion though, because even though it leans into sports, it also obviously tucks

about how brands want to stay in motion. They want to stay alive. They don't want to be stagnant. So I thought motion worked in a few ways.

‍

Justin Levinson (14:24.795)‍

Yeah. Well, when you were at, when you guys were just PR, I guess I'm kind of curious to what like, like the day to day kind of look like the difference before PR. And then when you transitioned to having to giving more offerings, when you were in the PR state, what, know, exclusively, what was that sort of like day to day?

‍

Kim Eberl (14:46.434)‍

Yeah, well, as you know, with public relations, things are so time sensitive so many times. You're issuing, whether it's press release, which is kind of dated nowadays, but you're issuing statements and you're getting in front of the news. And there's a lot more active and real time and some crises. Whereas when you're in a creative agency, there are some longer term campaigns that you're leaning on. And I think the big difference when I was doing dress PR to

‍

Justin Levinson (15:02.843)‍

Hmm.

‍

Kim Eberl (15:15.522)‍

difference, but a difference going from PR only to creative and the agency size that we're at now, which is around 70 some odd people, 75, 70, whatever, is the scale of the clients. You know, I started doing a lot of PR for smaller businesses and as I've matured and my agency has evolved, we work with a lot more established companies now. And there's pros and cons to both. You know, I love the small clients. I was actually just going out yesterday with my husband and I saw a restaurant that has several locations and I opened the first one.

So there's like this nice feeling of impacting a small business owner. But then again, with the bigger brands and the bigger companies, you can do a lot more fun stuff sometimes where you can't always with a small brand. So there's a protocol.

‍

Justin Levinson (16:00.165)‍

Yeah, how did you, I mean, I guess it's just over the course of time and your journey and putting out good work, but how, I guess, how do you, how does somebody who is working with smaller brands that wants to work with those more, I I saw you guys work with like Home Depot, Whirlpool, some real like, you know, some big, yeah, how does one get from those smaller clients to those bigger ones?

‍

Kim Eberl (16:20.172)‍

Heavy hitters, yeah.

‍

Kim Eberl (16:26.83)‍

I say I go from a smaller client as an agency owner to a bigger one. Some of the key things to do is just to not give up on yourself. You know, I got some opportunities that...

someone might have thought, well, I can't handle this. This is too big for me. But I went for it anyway. And a pivotal moment for us in my journey is when I won a regional footprint for Panera Bread. We were a very small, less than 10 person agency at the time. And to win a bigger brand like that, I was like, I can do this. You know, I can land a bigger client. So just trusting in yourself and your team and some clients that are big, like a Whirlpool or whatever, they like working with a smaller agency.

because they like.

you know, the focus that a smaller agency gives versus thinking they might get lost in the sea when they're at a bigger company. So I would suggest to others that are pondering, do they go after that big picture? Not just go for it because you never know what that client is truly looking for. They could be looking for a small tight knit team that gets a lot of focus and that has that right experience. So in a way, it's not it's not rocket science, but I just went for it. I just went, I'm to go for it. Yeah.

‍

Justin Levinson (17:17.776)‍

Yeah.

‍

Justin Levinson (17:39.897)‍

Yeah. Do you have some, like, I saw there was one, I can't remember offhand on my notes, but there was one client that you had that's been, it was one client that guys had for a really, really long time. can't, maybe you can refresh my memory.

‍

Kim Eberl (17:52.334)‍

Yeah, we have several.

Yeah, no, was so part motion's journey has been acquisitions. We've actually done about five acquisitions and motion's been around again this week, 19 years. But one client that we've had for 30 years is Chamberlain Liftmaster. Those are garage door openers and it predates when I started because they came with an acquisition. But even despite that, they're staying with us and the people that work on the business have worked on and worked at motion longer than I've owned motion.

‍

Justin Levinson (18:10.522)‍

Yeah.

‍

Kim Eberl (18:23.92)‍

And so it kind of comes through acquisition, we were proud to say we were with Chamberlain Liftmaster for 30 years, Home Depot for 15 years. Yeah, tractor supplies also have been over 10 years. And same with Boys and Girls Kill. We have a long standing relationship along with some associations. So that's really something of pride. And also to have my staff stick around for more than a day is great too. We've some that have been here for 10 plus years, which is awesome. Yeah.

‍

Justin Levinson (18:30.971)‍

That's the one I saw on the, the site.

‍

Justin Levinson (18:52.163)‍

Yeah, well, I know you've been doing this for a minute now. What kind of changes are you, are there a lot of big changes that have come since you first started? And obviously there's been huge technology advances and different things that have happened. What are you guys been saying?

‍

Kim Eberl (19:08.268)‍

Yeah, that's the first thing that comes to mind. Actually, the month and the year that I launched Motion, another company launched the same month and the same year, and that was Twitter. And now it's not even called Twitter, and it's taken on a life of its own. And I remember when I launched back in the day, I was using MySpace, and now that's gone. So keeping up with the changing tides of not only social media, but technology, to your point. When I started, were no influencers. There were spokespersons.

‍

Justin Levinson (19:25.753)‍

Yeah, me too.

‍

Justin Levinson (19:37.339)‍

Yeah.

‍

Kim Eberl (19:38.192)‍

has changed and then of course AI is the great frontier that everyone is keeping up with and I advise my staff to use it to explore it. We have to be ethical about it and have some guard girls in place but the changes for sure. The technology changes have been outstanding as well and then from a public relations news perspective of course there have been

changes in the media, some publications have folded, some have started, there's less reporters generally and I get worried to tears with this stuff. yeah, there's been so many changes in the last 20 years and I think it's a great time to still be in the space.

‍

Justin Levinson (20:22.105)‍

Yeah. And what in terms of what you're doing daily, now that you're sort of, we talked about, sometimes it could be a little lonely on top, but what, what is it, you know, what, what's a day like for you in terms of managing all these things and clients and it must be, it must be a lot.

‍

Kim Eberl (20:37.358)‍

Yeah, that's a great question. It's something I reflect on often in the sense of you know, the size we're at I'm not as client-facing as I used to be which sometimes I do miss I try to focus on working on the business versus in the business which is a hard line to tow because I Want to know what's going on with their clients and I want to be involved and I want them to be happy But then again, I have to step back and make sure that the strategy for motions in place that we're doing great things So the best thing that I've

is to hire really great senior people that I trust to manage the clients so that I can focus on the business of the business, honestly.

‍

Justin Levinson (21:17.359)‍

Yeah, no, that totally makes sense. Do you have any, are there any standout campaigns or standout projects that you guys have done that you'd be interested in sharing with us?

‍

Kim Eberl (21:19.811)‍

Yeah.

‍

Kim Eberl (21:30.638)‍

Gosh, there's so many. To pick one or two is kind hard. I mean, one thing years ago, before Motion PR became Motion, we helped launch the Premier Boxing Channel, which is where people experience boxing nowadays. That was a wonderful campaign. It was launched on the set of Saturday Night Live, which I got to go to and meet Sugar Ray Leonard and all that stuff. And hearing George Foreman died recently, I'm like, oh gosh, it takes me back to how I helped launch the boxing network. So that was something that's

‍

Justin Levinson (21:51.003)‍

Wow.

‍

Justin Levinson (21:54.672)‍

Yeah.

‍

Kim Eberl (22:00.652)‍

That's wonderful and outstanding, but there's so many great things we do on a daily basis. It's hard to pick a favorite.

‍

Justin Levinson (22:09.509)‍

Yeah, well, that must have been pretty exciting being on the side of SNL.

‍

Kim Eberl (22:12.94)‍

my gosh, yeah. And like you might imagine that the set's a lot smaller than you think, you know? And Premier Boxing had, going back to music for a second, they had someone doing the score for the Premier Boxing channel and that's someone we also got to meet and that was Hans Zimmer. Yeah, so it had a lot of star power behind it and it was such a, I was just so honored to be part of it.

‍

Justin Levinson (22:19.472)‍

Yeah.

‍

Justin Levinson (22:30.075)‍

I hope.

‍

Justin Levinson (22:37.985)‍

Yeah, what was he like? Was he a friendly guy?

‍

Kim Eberl (22:40.43)‍

Friendly guy, very soft spoken, very like, know, humble, approachable guy. And just, I mean, all of his talent. And it was also just fascinating. I had younger staff working with me on this campaign that came to New York with me. And they all knew Hans so well, you know, he's not someone that just a music aficionado knows. He crossed this generation so well. So that was just this cool moment for all of us.

‍

Justin Levinson (23:08.729)‍

Yeah, that is really cool. Have you come across any other like celebrity type people like that in your career?

‍

Kim Eberl (23:10.604)‍

Yeah.

‍

Kim Eberl (23:17.1)‍

Yeah, know, the best, gosh, this was before I owned Motion, but I worked at another agency. We did something in Times Square and we had a celebrity that helped us launch it. And the nicest celebrity I've ever met was Dick Clark, actually. Yeah, he was the most down to earth guy. I remember when we greeted him, you know, he's gonna hang his own jacket. He doesn't need people to help, you know.

‍

Justin Levinson (23:34.799)‍

Really? Cool.

‍

Kim Eberl (23:46.27)‍

manage his being, you know, he's like over his celebrityism, I think. And he's like, yeah, I'm going to hang my coat. What can I do? Let me, can I grab you a water? You know, he's, whereas I met some celebrities and I'm not going to say who that are newer, that are newer to fame. And they think that, okay, like someone please print my hair and do all this stuff. You know, I think Dick Clark at the time got rest of soul was just like, and maybe that's how Hans Zimmer was too. He's just like, yes, this is, I'm being who I am, you know, yeah.

‍

Justin Levinson (23:59.337)‍

Awesome. Yeah.

‍

Justin Levinson (24:14.607)‍

Yeah, that's always good to know when those people turn out to be really great people as well.

‍

Kim Eberl (24:20.278)‍

Yeah, I think so. I think so. I like to think the best of people.

‍

Justin Levinson (24:23.907)‍

Yeah, definitely. I haven't really worked with any of these celebrities, but I was thinking with all the music conversation that we've had, that my wife was hiking in LA and she walked, and Paul McCartney alone walked right by her and started going up the mountain and my wife looked up and was like, that's Paul McCartney. And he just took off and kept going. And then,

‍

Kim Eberl (24:40.942)‍

Wow

Yes, I can't meet you.

‍

Justin Levinson (24:51.973)‍

people coming down the hill. And she was like, she almost couldn't believe it, because he was just by himself with a walking stick and one of the Griffiths trails that were back there that she was on. And people coming down the mountain were like, that was Paul McCartney up there. And yeah, it's pretty wild. think I would have probably fainted myself. Yeah.

‍

Kim Eberl (25:01.4)‍

Yeah.

‍

Kim Eberl (25:10.178)‍

Yeah, I think your next agency side podcast has to be with the musician of some sort. Just call Paul. See if he's great. He's not doing anything.

‍

Justin Levinson (25:16.379)‍

I see if we can get to them get them on here. I've had some, maybe we can get them here. I've been trying to get some folks in music because a lot of the different, you know, there's so much music that's involved in like the trailer space and I do a ton of work in the trailer space. And there's also like, you know, all the clients that I work with, even just traditional brand and brand, a lot of them have, you know, some royalty free subscriptions that they're working with with different, so we're trying to get people.

from those on the music side over here too, so we can talk to them and learn from them as well. Yeah, it's fun. mean, the purpose of the podcast, the people listen, no, but it's really just to get, to give value to everybody, to like people that are trying to get into the agency space. You know, when they hear leaders like you, Kim, they can say like, you know, what can I do to stand out for somebody like him to see me? Or if there's somebody that's, you know, trying to, you know.

‍

Kim Eberl (25:51.534)‍

That'd be great. Yeah.

‍

Kim Eberl (26:10.115)‍

Yeah.

‍

Justin Levinson (26:14.907)‍

is working, maybe they're a director of accounts at a big traditional brand agency and they're saying, man, I think I could do this, but they need to hear from somebody like yourself that's like, yeah, I just started freelancing and then I started scaling. you know, people are interested, like, how did you do it? How did you scale? know there's a lot of freelancers that are in that limbo where they're, you know, they might be thinking about a full-time job. They keep going from freelance to freelance job, but they, you know, they, they, they just don't, there's, they're kind of like on the hamster wheel, you know?

‍

Kim Eberl (26:21.57)‍

Yeah.

‍

Kim Eberl (26:43.926)‍

Right, right. Yeah, I this agency side podcast is a great idea, fantastic idea, because yeah, when I was just starting to freelance, I remember someone told me like, you know, don't get an eight, don't become an agency. There's so many more headaches with that. so, yeah, there's some truth to that, you know, because you've got

‍

Justin Levinson (26:44.507)‍

So your story might be pretty interesting.

‍

Kim Eberl (27:06.062)‍

a lot more things on your shoulders. But then when you're a freelancer, I don't know if you've ever freelance, Justin, but like the work just goes like this, you know, and some months are like, there's not enough hours in the day, but then the next month you're like, well, when is the work gonna come, you know? So having more clients and some staff gives you a little more stability. But I...

I think if there's really answers out there, would encourage you to stick your neck out if you can, you know, even if you do some stuff on the side that's smaller and doesn't compete with your current role. I know some people here are web developer does some small things on the side, which motion as an agency wouldn't take on. There's just not enough there. But I hope he never leaves me.

‍

Justin Levinson (27:50.363)‍

Is your team structured with mostly full-time people or do you guys have sort of a mix or how does that look?

‍

Kim Eberl (27:58.636)‍

Yeah, we have mostly full time people. Like I said, we have offices in Chicago, Cincinnati and Nashville. Nashville is for one of our bigger clients, Tractor Supply Company. And there's mostly full time people that work for Motion. Although we do work with some freelancers for sure that are part timers or something like that that are specialists in a certain thing or have a certain relationship with the client or just makes more efficiency, no efficiencies with it. I actually was just on a call before.

this or working with some freelancers and it makes total sense because they understand what we're doing to be more efficient but in general we have full-time staff.

‍

Justin Levinson (28:37.561)‍

Yeah, what are sort of like the hardest types of people to find? Like what are the trickiest ones typically?

‍

Kim Eberl (28:42.638)‍

the hardest type of people to find. Great question. I think the hardest type of people to find. Gosh, you're stumping me here, Justin.

‍

Justin Levinson (28:56.603)‍

Well, doesn't, it can be just any particular roles. mean, it could be like people in strategy or certain like creatives or accounts people or client facing people. I feel like sometimes in a lot of agencies, there's like a certain type of position that's usually, you know, a lot of it's sales roles. Cause a lot of creative people have to do sales too. And they just, they don't like doing the sales. So all the times in the structure of the company and who's doing what, but just curious if there is one of those roles that's just like, man, that's a.

‍

Kim Eberl (29:22.156)‍

Yeah, you know, sometimes a hard person to find is someone that's like mid level that is not just right out of college, but it's not a VP, someone that has five or six years experience. They're really hard to pry off of another company or something that can be challenging.

Also, you what I've noticed through the years is sometimes we get resumes from someone that's worked at a bigger agency like a Weber, Shanwe, Gettleman, Fleishman, Hiller, whatever. And they've got a bang, bang on resume. You know, they've worked on some awesome brands.

But transitioning from a big agency to a smaller agency can be a challenge for them. We just have a different structure. We do things a little bit differently. So I've noticed when I get a resume from a bigger person, it just comes with more questions on what their long-term goals are. Because they're going to find we have different resources than a bigger agency. So sometimes I find that as hard to, you know.

‍

Justin Levinson (30:14.203)‍

Hmm.

‍

Justin Levinson (30:21.708)‍

Do you feel, it's like a little smaller tight knit, somebody in your agency might wear a little more hats than they would in the bigger one? Yeah.

‍

Kim Eberl (30:27.672)‍

Exactly, exactly, exactly. So sometimes here people can get promoted and they went from being an account director to a VP, I don't know. But the job doesn't change a lot. And so we need someone that is comfortable with...

that philosophy, thinking that all right, it doesn't mean I'm gonna now manage 10 more people and I'm not gonna abate and not do some of the work I used to be doing. It just means there's a little bit more responsibility and people can usually do things faster, but I digress. So yeah, I think the job doesn't change sometimes even though the title might change, but I think, Yes, I was gonna say that a lot more autonomy, freedom, and I think the junior people get more

‍

Justin Levinson (31:03.931)‍

Do you think they get more autonomy working for a smaller place like you? Yeah.

‍

Kim Eberl (31:13.742)‍

They move a little quicker versus being like, right, you have to work for six months doing this. then you have to do, you know, there's a little bit, this can be a faster track for some people too. Yeah. And there's a lot, I try, pride myself to have good work-life balance here at Motion where I used to work at a bigger agency and that's not always the case. So.

‍

Justin Levinson (31:23.098)‍

Yeah.

‍

Justin Levinson (31:34.021)‍

And you guys went to the Cubs game, I saw that too.

‍

Kim Eberl (31:36.206)‍

We go to the Cubs game. We already picked the day and the time for our Christmas party. We did that in January. We are ready to party. So yeah, we try to do some fun things. We're kicking off opening day here internally with some hot dogs and stuff to get behind baseball season. So we try and keep the culture cohesive as we can.

‍

Justin Levinson (31:44.059)‍

You

‍

Justin Levinson (31:57.765)‍

Yeah, I'm always an advocate for going to, you know, for candidates that, you know, to go to a smaller shop where they can, they, you know, they can get their hands on more things. They can have more autonomy. you know, they can, they can grow their careers and, you know, sometimes just, you know, there's just, there's less red tape. Sometimes there's better collaboration with people too. you know, sometimes people are, you know, not everybody has a voice in the room and a lot of the bigger agencies, I mean, that can happen to smaller agency too, but, you know, I think some of those smaller.

‍

Kim Eberl (32:07.594)‍

Exactly.

‍

Kim Eberl (32:16.152)‍

I agree.

‍

Justin Levinson (32:27.611)‍

smaller shops, think you can really, I mean, you guys aren't small shop, I guess in comparison to like one of those.

‍

Kim Eberl (32:32.6)‍

Smaller compared to a lot of people, yeah, no, for sure. there is, you know, when I was not on my own, I interviewed our member at a bigger shop and a smaller shop. And I understand the hesitations of a smaller shop, because I had it. I was like, well, what this is so small, I don't like everybody? you know, there's concerns there. But now that I'm on the other side in many ways, like there are so many benefits to an independent agency. Yeah.

‍

Justin Levinson (32:47.803)‍

Yeah.

‍

Justin Levinson (33:00.144)‍

Yeah, that's really great. What kind of stuff, I mean, you talked a little about music and you said that you obviously have a dog and you said you do cooking and piano. I'm starting to get all of my research on Kim here. But what kind of other stuff are you into? Do have any other hobbies or fun things that you like to do?

‍

Kim Eberl (33:09.325)‍

Yeah.

‍

Kim Eberl (33:19.566)‍

No, I mean, I am, I will say I'm an early riser. I get up at about 430 in the morning. And so I know, I know. Well.

‍

Justin Levinson (33:24.699)‍

Wow, end up with a farmer's cab.

‍

Kim Eberl (33:29.07)‍

In part, my husband's a construction worker, so he has to be at work at 6 a.m. So we are up as an early household. I like to get up early and then do stuff for myself early in the morning, exercising, taking the dogs out, things like that. So when I start the workday at 8, 30 or 9, I've already have three or four hours under my belt doing stuff for myself. So my mind is a little fresher and clearer.

‍

Justin Levinson (33:54.075)‍

Yeah.

‍

Kim Eberl (33:54.734)‍

And then at night I'm tinkering with the piano trying to practice 30 minutes, 45 minutes, whatever I can squeeze in. And then just I vet you out. I'm not that special. What's that?

‍

Justin Levinson (34:06.171)‍

You meditate at all? that something you've ever gotten into? You meditate?

‍

Kim Eberl (34:12.344)‍

don't have patience. Do you meditate?

‍

Justin Levinson (34:14.266)‍

Yeah. I mean, I well, I, I, well, I'm not a great meditator. I'm not like, I'm not, I, I have the insight timer app and I think it's more like, it's just like a, you know, sometimes I have trouble falling asleep at night because I just, I'm a very wired person where I'm like, what am doing tomorrow? What's going on? And then before I know, I'm like, oh my God, it's one o'clock in the morning. Oh, if I don't fall asleep now, then it's going to two o'clock. If I don't fall asleep at two o'clock.

‍

Kim Eberl (34:23.864)‍

So.

‍

Kim Eberl (34:29.197)‍

Yeah.

That's all I have.

Yeah.

‍

Justin Levinson (34:38.843)‍

then it's gonna be three and then I'm not gonna be having enough sleep and then I'm not gonna be, then we get sick and then like I'll go into those thoughts. So sometimes the insight time rap, it's just like, it's like a, they'll just talk, you know, they'll talk you off the cliff and I'll listen to it and then I'll fall asleep. So I think, you know, but I was, only reason I was asking about meditation was because I just, you know, lot of leaders like, you know, they.

‍

Kim Eberl (34:40.206)‍

that.

I'm exactly the same. I'm exactly the same. Yeah.

‍

Kim Eberl (34:52.567)‍

Yeah.

‍

Justin Levinson (35:04.059)‍

they follow the same kind of thing that you were saying where they get up early in the morning and then they take care do things for themselves like the exercise and do stuff and I was just like I just you know made wondering if meditation was part of your morning routine.

‍

Kim Eberl (35:13.806)‍

I I'll tell you, my dentist wants me to meditate because I grind my teeth at night thinking about all the stuff that you're talking about, Justin, like, what do I have to do tomorrow? I don't want to forget something. And then I'll get up and I'll write myself a note that I don't want to forget in the morning. And I grind my teeth so much that my dentist wants me to meditate. So I think I should. I'll say that.

‍

Justin Levinson (35:18.922)‍

I do that too.

‍

Justin Levinson (35:33.915)‍

Hey, maybe there's one thing you got from the agency side podcast. was the the insight time wrap. It is free. I'm not sponsored by them at all or I have no affiliation with them. But yeah, I do. I do kind of like it. And I actually got my kids kind of hip to it too, because like one of the you know, have two little girls and at late at night, you know, like especially my older one, she's, you know, she's she's getting nightmares, like all little kids kind of get where she's thinking about like, she had she had a nightmare that she was crying about, though. This is ridiculous that her

‍

Kim Eberl (35:37.89)‍

That's it. That's the time. Okay.

‍

Kim Eberl (36:03.511)‍

WAH!

‍

Justin Levinson (36:04.141)‍

cycle got dirty. She has a pony cycle where you sit on this little like stuffed horsey and you go up and down and it moves like a bike with wheels and it goes up and all through our house. It's like a it's absolutely ridiculous but she had a nightmare that her pony cycle got dirty. That was it. mean I my nightmares were much worse when I was a child. Yeah like Night of the Living Dead, Ghostbusters, my dad was watching all these like little critters and and

‍

Kim Eberl (36:15.453)‍

huh.

‍

Kim Eberl (36:20.971)‍

Wow.

‍

Kim Eberl (36:25.036)‍

Yeah, know, I'm like the boogeyman in the closet and stuff like that.

‍

Justin Levinson (36:35.099)‍

don't know, pet cemetery, those things are kind of things you got in my head. But yeah, so she, I mean, that's a pretty benign dream about having her pony cycle be dirty. anyway, long story short is that the meditations actually have some ones for children too that are sort of like storytelling and they're like, you're going through a peaceful forest and there's a happy bird. then like, you know, yeah.

‍

Kim Eberl (36:37.954)‍

Yeah.

‍

Kim Eberl (36:57.452)‍

Like relax, yeah. Are you teaching your girls to play music too or no?

‍

Justin Levinson (37:02.971)‍

I am, the one that's six I'm starting to, but I'm sensitive to putting too much pressure on it because I was a music guy and took lessons and all that stuff. I know that at that age, if you're too forceful, like practice, sit down, no, C, no, C sharp, it can really, I don't want it to hurt her relationship with music. I want her to love it and to enjoy it, but it is something you have to work at at the same time. So it's sort of like that.

‍

Kim Eberl (37:23.788)‍

turn that.

‍

Justin Levinson (37:31.641)‍

that balance, but I'm kind of waiting. Sometimes she'll go to the piano herself and play it. And I'm kind of like leaning into when that's happening, like, that sounds really good. It's great, keep going. That sounds great, play that again. Opposed to being like, it's time to sit and practice, which was sort of when I was a kid. was like, you're practicing for 30 minutes and then you're doing the dishes and then you can go out and play with your friends. was very, it was very like strict when I was a child.

‍

Kim Eberl (37:53.422)‍

Right, right.

Yeah, no, my mom had the piano, she never, like, she was like you, like, she's like, I'm gonna teach you, but you don't have to. And then I just never got into it. But my mom played the piano, my dad played the drums, my brother played the guitar. I'm the only like moron that didn't play an instrument yet. So too late, doing it now. Darn it.

‍

Justin Levinson (38:11.771)‍

It's not too late, you're doing it now. Yeah, you never know what you'll create. Yeah, you know, it is hard though, because it is something you do have to work to get good at. know, it's not like, I mean, there are people that just have it in there, you know, they can just do it and they have it natural. But there is like another level I feel like you can get to when you kind of like understand what you're doing and you have the technique and all that stuff.

‍

Kim Eberl (38:26.22)‍

I know.

‍

Kim Eberl (38:40.514)‍

Yeah, that's gonna take me a while. I feel like I'm going through the really hard things right now, but that's very similar to other things in life, right? You gotta like earn your stripes, put the hard work first, and then eventually things will be easier. So I'm hoping that it's the same with the piano, because right now it's hard. And over time, I hope it'll better.

‍

Justin Levinson (38:42.852)‍

Yeah, well-

‍

Justin Levinson (38:56.187)‍

Yeah, yeah. I think that like, yeah, for, you know, for me playing music, I mean, I took piano lessons too, not to keep it noses, eight, decide podcast, we're gonna talk about piano lessons all the time. I, I took piano lessons even when I was a piano teacher, I took piano lessons, like I had a teacher that would teach me partially because I was always nervous that my teacher would give me a prodigy concert pianist and he that would be, you know, he or she would be better than I am.

‍

Kim Eberl (39:08.184)‍

Who wants to talk about agency stuff? Come on.

‍

Kim Eberl (39:14.67)‍

of tissue.

‍

Justin Levinson (39:25.499)‍

So I wanted to stay ahead of the kids, you know? But I always wanted, it has to be fun too, you know what I mean? It's gotta be, you gotta like really, you gotta kind of dig it and has to be relaxing and can't have that pressure of like, oh, I need to learn this thing or I need to do that because then, you know, it kind of sours the fun.

‍

Kim Eberl (39:26.461)‍

Yeah... Yeah... Oh, yeah...

‍

Kim Eberl (39:32.853)‍

No, yeah.

‍

Kim Eberl (39:43.502)‍

Yeah, that's what my piano instructor said, like, if it's not fun, you're going to quit. You know? And so we're just trying to make it fun now. And yeah, so I'll get there.

‍

Justin Levinson (39:46.928)‍

Yeah.

‍

Justin Levinson (39:52.463)‍

Well, I'm stoked that you've come on our show today. And if you ever, you know, maybe if you come on, you know, in the future, maybe, you know, we can get a short performance maybe we'll, if you ever forget what we'll do first, Riverside or sorry, agency side duet from Vermont here to Chicago.

‍

Kim Eberl (40:03.17)‍

Let's do it. Let's do it. Yeah.

‍

Kim Eberl (40:10.018)‍

Yeah!

‍

Kim Eberl (40:13.39)‍

Sign me up, man. How long do think it's gonna take me to do this? Because I've been like a year? How about next year? Two years from now.

‍

Justin Levinson (40:18.903)‍

You know what, I I think, yeah, maybe next year we'll do like a simple, like maybe we can do like a little three chord song or something. We can, yeah, we'll co-write.

‍

Kim Eberl (40:26.284)‍

I love it. All right. So listeners next year, Justin, Kim, Duet. We're going to be here.

‍

Justin Levinson (40:31.707)‍

We're gonna be here on the same show rocking it. We're gonna make sure everything is copywritten or that way nobody will steal our brilliant idea which is gonna definitely take over the world 100%. Yeah. Cool, Kim. Well, thanks so much for being on here and talking to me today. And I had a lot of fun speaking with you and we'll be in touch in a year with our co-write. All right, Kim. Take care. Bye.

‍

Kim Eberl (40:37.856)‍

Great.

‍

Kim Eberl (40:42.03)‍

As it will, 100%, yeah.

‍

Kim Eberl (40:46.67)‍

Give us

‍

Kim Eberl (40:54.442)‍

I love it. Okay. Thank you, Justin. Take care, guys.

‍