Growth Nation was founded in 2001 out of the perceived need that emerging companies could benefit by having marketing services delivered to them in a new and better way. We continue to find that these companies struggle getting all the right marketing skills they need. Hiring them all can be expensive, and reaching out to the community for marketing services can give mixed results.
At the time we felt that marketing firms tended to 1) have difficulty integrating marketing plans into the business plan 2) be too focused on one or two tools of marketing, 3) be too enamored with marketing as an art form rather than as a driver of growth 4) either be good at strategy or execution, but not both and 5) have a difficult time matching up sales and marketing programs to get results. And so Growth Nation was formed to help business owners overcome these gaps, and grow, period.
Growth Nation was initially called Stamos International, and our first clients grew out of the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics Committee led by Mitt Romney. Founder and current CEO Doug Bruhnke explains the start:
“My wife is Greek-American and she is a cousin of actor John Stamos. With my initial connection to the Salt Lake Olympics and with the Greek Olympics coming up, using Greek in our name probably helped us secure them as a customer. However in order to grow more broadly, I thought we should have a name that better reflected our focus on growth. During a radio interview in 2007 with John Adam Kowalski that focus on growth became crystal clear, and so our team agreed upon the name change to Growth Nation.”
Our international business expertise is a bonus for many clients because we understand what it takes for global companies to grow in the US, and for US companies to grow outside the US. We believe that our global growth expertise helps all our customers develop world-class growth strategies, plans and implementations.