"Being open and honest in business is like a clear map that helps everyone understand and move together towards success."
Welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview with Warren Jolly, the visionary force behind adQuadrant, a pioneering digital growth partner. In this insightful conversation, we delve into Warren Jolly’s journey and the remarkable achievements that have propelled adQuadrant to the forefront of the digital landscape.
As the CEO of adQuadrant, Jolly’s strategic prowess has enabled the company to guide challenger DTC (Direct-to-Consumer) brands toward becoming category leaders through an unparalleled blend of strategy, media, creative, and analytics.
Throughout this interview, Jolly highlights the significance of a strong organizational culture and shares how adQuadrant has embraced remote work to empower their team and optimize work-life balance.
He also navigates the evolving challenges of privacy concerns in online business and sheds light on his philosophy of transparency as a cornerstone of effective leadership.
Join us in exploring the remarkable insights and experiences of Warren Jolly, a true trailblazer in the realm of digital growth and innovation.
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Table of Contents
We are thrilled to have you join us today, welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview! Let’s start off with a little introduction. Tell our readers a bit about yourself and your company.
Warren Jolly: adQuadrant is a full-service digital growth partner that focuses on guiding challenger DTC brands toward category leadership through best-in-class strategy, media, creative and analytics.
As far as what differentiates adQuadrant from other agencies, we excel at combining data and creative to generate positive outcomes for our partners. Another huge strength of ours is our willingness to develop a deep understanding of our partners.
We view ourselves as an extension of each of our partner’s teams which means we need to think and act as our partners would.
In the past year, what is the greatest business achievement you’d like to celebrate with your team? Please share the details of that success.
Warren Jolly: Our biggest achievement over the past year has been our ability to maneuver very challenging economic times.
Too many companies look at a downturn as an opportunity to cut payroll and budgets, but we’ve actually taken the opposite approach and looked at the economic headwinds as a chance to gain market share as competition has weakened and our capabilities have replaced the work of former in-house teams.
Quiet quitting, The Great Resignation, are an ongoing trend causing many businesses to struggle to keep talent engaged and motivated. Most are leaving because of their boss or their company culture. 82% of people feel unheard, undervalued, and misunderstood in the workplace. In your experience, what keeps employees happy? And how are you adapting to the current shift we see?
Warren Jolly: adQuadrant was founded on a strong culture and that has what has allowed us to grow into the company we are today. We’ve always put our employees first and that will never change. Once the pandemic hit, we pivoted to remote work and went so far as to close our office.
While most companies are requiring their employees to move to either a hybrid or full-time back-to-the-office schedule, we’ve gone in the opposite direction and are hiring folks from all over the country. We know that work-life balance is paramount and the best way to achieve this is to let folks work from wherever they want.
Online business keeps on surging higher than ever, B2B, B2C, online shopping, virtual meetings, remote work, Zoom medical consultations, what are your expectations for the year to come and how are you capitalizing on the tidal wave?
Warren Jolly: We specialize in DTC and we only see this gaining more momentum over the next year. E-commerce platforms such as Shopify have made it so easy to sell online that you can literally have a store up and running in a day.
Getting your products online is the easy part, the challenging part, and where we come in, is helping each store owner differentiate their products from their competitors.
While more people than ever are looking to Google, TikTok and Meta to help them with their purchase decisions, attention spans are much shorter and it’s up to us to help our partners stand out from the crowd.
Business is all about overcoming obstacles and creating opportunities for growth. What do you see as THE real challenge right now?
Warren Jolly: For us, the biggest obstacle is the ever-changing online privacy landscape. Consumers are rightfully demanding that their personal information be protected which is making it increasingly more difficult for online businesses to market to their core audience.
This is where opportunity is born; helping companies establish a relationship with their customers in a compliant and cost-effective manner. This is done by combining art and science. The end goal is to get the right creative (advertisement) in front of the right person at the right time.
In your experience, what tends to be the most underestimated part of running a company? Can you share an example?
Warren Jolly: For me, the most underestimated, yet most important part about running a business is being transparent.
As CEO, it’s my obligation to make sure that everyone that works at adQuadrant has a clear understanding of not only what success looks like, but what it will take to get us there. This also means we openly share when things don’t go according to plan so we can course correct.
What does “success” in 2023 mean to you? It could be on a personal or business level, please share your vision.
Warren Jolly: Success has different meanings to different people. I can run a very successful business from a financial perspective but if our most important assets, our people, aren’t achieving their career goals then the business will ultimately fail.
Success for me is running a thriving business that affords each team member the opportunity to grow and achieve their professional goals.
Jerome Knyszewski, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Warren Jolly for taking the time to do this interview and share his knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Warren Jolly or his company, you can do it through his – Linkedin Page
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