Five Years. Five faces of reinvention.

We gave up an incredibly cool office space to become fully remote (this was pre-COVID). We had no idea what the future would hold—only that we knew there was a better way to help marketers succeed.

The five years since have worked out extremely well.

Most importantly, we’ve attracted an incredible group of humans to be part of Traction. We changed our mission statement to “Reinvent the agency model by aligning the experience clients need with the experience talent wants.”

Today, that evolution of the agency model is slowly but steadily taking place industry-wide and we’re proud to have been a pioneer of the liquid workforce.

Here are five things we’ve learned about reinvention over the past five years.

Reinvention is the child of necessity.

They say that necessity is the mother of invention. Perhaps, but it definitely is true when it comes to reinvention. After 18 years as a traditional, digital, creative agency, we made some enormous changes—shifting to a Liquid Workforce, getting rid of our office (this was before COVID), expanding our services, focusing on helping in-house teams succeed instead of competing with them.

But this was not just an idea we had. The old way wasn’t working anymore. We knew we had to change to continue to be relevant.

Reinvention is hard.

But it’s a pretty unsettling process when you’re going through it. In his book The Hard Thing About Hard Things, Ben Horowitz says, “There’s no recipe for building a high-tech company; there’s no recipe for leading a group of people out of trouble … there are no silver bullets, only lead ones.”

Back in 2019, we knew there wasn’t a recipe that would get us where we needed to go. We didn’t know how the soup would taste, but we threw great ingredients in the pot, so we had a gut feeling that it would turn out good.

Reinvention is an evolution.

We didn’t have the full master plan on Day One. When we created the Liquid Workforce, we didn’t realize we’d attract former executives from lululemon, Apple, CNN, Nordstrom, Hilton and Unilever. That started to happen organically—we saw it was helping us gain speed-to-trust dramatically faster with our clients, so we leaned into it.

When you make changes, some will work. Others won’t. Keep evolving.

Reinvention takes a village.

I can’t tell you how many people we listened to as we made this evolution— and how open to sharing time and insight they were. I’m so grateful to each and every one. People like Amit Bhutani, the CEO of GoDaddy, who spent a full day with us, reviewing our strategy and making thoughtful suggestions to hone it. Like Susan McDermid and Marti Funk from the Ascendant Network who championed our model. Like former CMOs Babs Rangaiah and Shiv Singh, who saw our Liquid Workforce as the future of work and helped us tell that story; Like Amit Shah and Sumo Das who have become strategic partners and original members of The Futureproof Project, bolstering our ability to deliver powerful AI solutions. And many more. Thanks to all of you. It’s our baby.

Reinvention is a constant.

Two years ago, we started The Futureproof Project because we saw a tsunami of technology innovation heading our way—AR/VR, blockchain, and of course, AI. We wanted a great big surfboard to ride that wave, so we built one—a community of over 300 brand leaders and technologists that are helping one another turn emerging technology into a competitive advantage.

That commitment has helped Traction stay at the forefront of AI in marketing, attract the talent, build credibility, and develop a suite of solutions that are harnessing the power of AI for brands today. We’ve embraced changing the way we work and helping our clients accelerate their marketing with AI. And we’re just getting started.

Reinvention is amazing (when it works).

I have to admit, it feels pretty great when you come up with a strategy, put together a plan, make hard decisions, execute and see success come out of that. I think the whole team is pretty proud we did that.

One of the best parts, however, is that we’re emotionally reinvested in our business. I’m constantly hearing from our team how Traction is different from any other place they’ve worked. Those who want the Liquid Workforce environment we provide, love being part of our team. We put everyone in a position to do their best work. We hire people who demonstrate our values, and choose clients we want to work with.

When all that comes together—when we do work we’re proud of with people who care about doing great work as part of a great team, and we have fun doing it—that is simply an amazing outcome.