Small Businesses in the Big City

How does a small business fit into the big city world? This is a question I asked myself for a while. Being from the suburbs, I have always been caught in between the corporate world and the small business world, and could never quite grasp what was in between.

The other day at my internship with Chatterblast Media, a piece of my puzzle was discovered. While reading over a blog post my creative director Matthew Ray wrote, and after talking with him about it a bit, I found a whole new understanding to the meaning of small business.

Matt wrote a blog post about a charity event called #Run4UrLife, which was a collaborative project that was put together between him and several of Chatterblast’s business partners in Philadelphia. The way he explained this to me opened up a whole new viewpoint to me for my future in the agency world.

He said: “Alone as agencies, we can’t do everything, but when we have great partners that we like to work with and who we have fun working with, together we can all take on bigger projects that it would normally take a huge company to do.” This is true for everything from starting charity events, to doing work for larger companies.

And viola! Just like that I saw the advertising industry in a whole new light. Small business does not mean mom-and-pop shops, and it doesn’t have to have limits. You don’t need to choose between a small town family run business and becoming a robot in the corporate world. When you work in an agency, and surround yourself with people who think like you and share similar beliefs, your possibilities are exponential.

Matt taught me in that moment that the world of agencies is a world of collaboration, teamwork, and possibilities. He showed me that my passions don’t have to die with my entrance to the working world, and instead that my passions will lead me to success and can be used to make great things happen.