Josh Linkner: Why ePrize Thrives

As Featured in the Vol. 4 No. 4

Josh Linkner, founder and CEO of ePrize has a clear and unwavering vision of what he wants his company to do, be and stand for. A Detroit native, Linkner earned a bachelor of science in advertising from the University of Florida. He minored in finance and music. Today he remains an avid jazz musician, a hobby which develops skills he feels are vital to his professional life.

LINKNER: There’s a lot of similarities between jazz music and the business world, believe it or not, in terms of being able to improvise, be creative and work in the context of a team. So it’s actually been very helpful philosophically in building this business.

MBR: Linkner is regarded as a pioneer in the Web business. Before his 25th birthday, he founded GlobalLink New Media in 1995, one of the first agencies dedicated to Internet marketing. GlobalLink was recognized by Advertising Age Magazine as a "Top 100 Interactive Agency" in 1997, and again in 1998. Riding that success, Linkner sold the company in early 1999. But he didn’t retire; the sale simply cleared his schedule for the development of ePrize that March.

What started as a one-man technological operation has grown into an international organization employing 250 people. With its headquarters in Pleasant Ridge, ePrize also maintains offices in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and London.

I have a quote that’s actually up on the wall somewhere here. What I say is that ‘someday a company’s going to come along and put us out of business. So it might as well be us.’ And that really goes to the spirit of reinventing ourselves on a regular basis. When my first employee started in 1999 I said to him, ‘you won’t recognize this company in six months.’ And I still say that because it seems like every six months we are doing something very different. We’re changing, we’re evolving, we’re adapting to the market. The minute a company starts to rest on their laurels, and starts to think more about what they did yesterday instead of what they’re going to do tomorrow, is the beginning of the end. We always stay very forward-looking in our approach to business.

Today, ePrize manages and executes over 1,500 specialized Web marketing campaigns for some of the world’s largest brands. At its inception, the company’s focus was on smaller dot-com enterprises. When that industry’s bubble burst, Linkner set his sights higher. He didn’t change ePrize’s mission, but improved on it by expanding its services. It’s a tricky move. Many companies would fall into a trap of over-diversification in an effort to break in with the big leagues. Linkner stayed focused to prevent that from happening.

I don’t produce TV commercials. I don’t build web sites. There’s all kinds of stuff we don’t do. But what we do accomplish, I can look someone in the eye and say ‘we are absolutely the best in the world at it.’ There’s no company that can do an interactive promotion better than we can…Our technology is better, our global reach is better, our visual design is better, our security is better. You know the saying, ‘don’t put all your eggs in one basket?’ We did the opposite. We put all our eggs in one basket, and said we’re going to take one thing and be the best in the world at it.

Linkner is a big believer in his talent pool, and has built a corporate culture which he believes nurtures not only his company, but his people as well.

We have this culture that I like to describe as a yin and yang. On the one hand, it’s this passion, fire in the belly, swing for the fences creativity, which is really exciting. The energy in this building is palpable. You’re just fired up. You really want to make stuff happen. The other side of that is tempered by accountability and discipline. When you think about companies that have failed, they get unbalanced—they lose one of those…So we work very hard to maintain that balance, and there’s just a tremendous amount of will-power within these walls of us really feeling that we can make a difference. We don’t feel like we’re at a job, we feel like we’re making history. We feel like we’re changing an industry.

Leadership and management are two totally different things. Leadership is empowering people, and listening to them, and creating a culture that nurtures people’s maximum potential. And it’s not oppressive. And so I don’t think that economic gain and individual personal growth need to be at odds with each other. I think they should be in complete alignment. One of the reasons that we’ve grown is we’ve created a culture and an environment where people can bring out their ‘A game,’ and be their best, and really enjoy the success along with the company.

While many Internet companies have already gone under in this fledgling industry, ePrize has maintained solid success. Since 1999, the company has achieved annual growth over 100 percent and now boasts nearly $14 million in revenue. It won more than 100 new accounts in 2005, 70 percent of which came from existing clients. Its portfolio includes 62 of the top 100 brands in 32 countries. General Mills, Old Navy, Target, Dell and HBO are a few examples.

Linkner began targeting this client base as the 21st century arrived. It was not an ideal time to begin wooing big-ticket accounts, as the economic fallout of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 began to take its toll on American businesses.

We have an enormous amount of persistence and grit…In 2001, after September 11, no one wanted to go give away cars. It was a somber time in our culture and we took it on the chin. Rather than just being overwhelmed by that negativity, we just had the will power to fight through it. And so I think having a strong gut has been helpful to us.

Linkner maintains a loyalty to Michigan. ePrize recently announced an expansion project in Pleasant Ridge and will secure a $10 million loan from Charter One Bank for the project. This will be the second loan given through the Charter One Job Creation Loan Program, an incentive administered by the MEDC and designed to stimulate job creation in the state.

We want to be that next great Michigan company. You look at Ford Motor Company or Handleman or Quicken Loans or others that have their roots here in the state of Michigan and have become truly a memorable, sustainable great company. And that’s what we want to become. We want to be recognized in that same list. If you’re going to list the few companies that come to mind in the state of Michigan, we want ePrize to be up there. Long story short, we don’t feel that we are at the top of our goals. In fact, the road ahead is much steeper and ultimately much greater than where we are today.

For more information on ePrize and Josh Linkner, log on to www.ePrize.com.