Celebrating 7 Years of Awesome
It’s our 7th birthday and what better way to celebrate than catching up with our very own Bill Beutler, Wikipedia expert, Stanley Kubrick aficionado, occasional film producer, and CEO of Beutler Ink (which we lovingly refer to as BINK).
Bill started the company in 2013 with the hope of building a digital agency that would help brands tell their story through creative content marketing. Seven years later, Beutler Ink has successfully represented behemoth brands like Google, Amazon, Netflix, Adobe, and more, as well as boutique businesses in conservation, hospitality, dining, and entertainment.
What made you start Beutler Ink?
When I first started working for myself, it was because I had figured out a new service (Wikipedia consulting) and I wanted to see how far it could go. By the time we started Beutler Ink, it was about more than just my ideas—I knew I had found the right people to help build something even greater.
What’s your favorite Beutler Ink memory?
A particularly cherished memory is the weekend that Jenny (President and Co-founder), Rhi (President and Co-founder), and I spent in Chicago in March 2013. We scheduled it almost immediately after Jenny had joined, completing the trio of our original executive team. We all flew in from our respective cities for a day in a meeting room at the James Hotel in River North. At this point, we weren’t even Beutler Ink yet—we knew that we wanted to work together, and that we had some complementary skills and connections. Speaking only for myself, I really felt then that this could work, and that night we went out to a steakhouse and hit one of the city's legendary jazz clubs, and it was really special. It’s gratifying to look back on that and say: we were right, that really did work out the way we hoped.
What’s your favorite part of the job?
Being a part of this team. In my corner, it's developing strategies with talented, well-prepared, and good-humored professionals. Everyone here puts in hard work with attention to detail, and it shows in the quality of our execution. I like to consider us a thinking person’s digital marketing company, and that’s exciting to be a part of.
What’s our greatest strength?
Our greatest strength is adaptability. You see it in how we work with our partners, how we collaborate with each other, and how we learn from our work over time to grow these strengths even more.
What does the future hold?
We've always looked to apply ourselves where we can make a difference. The world we live in and the markets we operate in have changed a lot since we started out, and at this very moment it's changing rapidly again. Now as ever, we're committed to developing our core competencies, exploring new revenue streams, and making ourselves vital to our partners. That's what a great agency does—it's always asking, are we making the greatest difference we can?
What’s the best leadership advice you can share?
First and foremost, be useful to others. Don’t worry about how you, personally, will succeed in any given situation. Instead, focus on how you can be useful to others, and you’ll be surprised how well it works out.
Tell us what Beutler Ink is in one word.
Conscientious. Toward each other, the team as a whole, and toward our partners as well.
