Awards I’ve Won • Cool Stuff I’ve Done
I’m a marketing strategist, instructor, and speaker based in Denver, CO. I’ve been doing marketing in one form or another since high school when I was pushing my bands, shows, and zines. This continued to the online world as the world and I began to adopt the internet. I was lucky enough to be friends, and later roommates, with Chris Graves. Chris organized one of the first internet magazines, called Fallout Magazine, and asked me to serve as music editor. Mind you, this is still in the days of having to register a domain name by mail.
Fallout was very cool – it was beautifully designed and it began to win awards from the most prominent entities in the world at the time, Yahoo and CDNow.
Chris is a genius by any metrics you care to judge him by and I was extremely lucky to find myself in rooms with him for multiple decades. When he and I were roommates, we’d spend our days and evenings chain-smoking cigarettes (a habit I’m happily free of for many years) and drinking navy-grade ice tea (that would absolutely destroy my gastrointestinal system were I to drink it today). He was gracious enough to answer all of my questions, including “How do you build a webpage?” and “How do you use photoshop?”
The webpage tutorial was very cool. I remember sitting in front of my computer on Netscape where Chris showed me how to find, copy, and manipulate the source code of Yahoo’s homepage and load it back into the browser from the local file. I soon found myself in deep wormholes of thought and construction that would last for hours. I was building websites, which I felt was as substantial as someone using a printing press in in the mid-1400’s. It was clear that somehow this medium was going to change everything.
I’d moved to Athens, GA for a couple of years before Chris, sensing my homesickness and needing help, asked me to comeback and help run customers service for his company, Itsamac. Itsamac was a web hosting service designed specifically for Mac users at a time when Mac users were massively underserved. They were the outcasts of the computing world. Itsamac had 200 monthly subscribers at that point.
Previously, in my own experiences of getting help when I was hosting with providers like Earthlink, I’d found that I was able to expand my abilities and overcome limitations by following their step-by-step tutorials which is documentation Itsamac was severely lacking. Luckily, in those early days, the phone would ring only a few times a day and email support was hit or miss. We were still receiving help requests via the US Postal Service (seriously, 1999 – it was happening that way.) This space allowed me room to not only learn the job, but to create strong, public-facing how-tos for our customers that lived on the website. And that’s how I first began excelling at SEO – I just didn’t know it yet.
In my spare time, my friend Dave Hererra and I were pounding out a new internet magazine called Hybrid Magazine. We produced a ton of reviews and interviewed some amazing artists like James, Tricky, Semisonic, Luna – we were always at shows, too. Whenever we posted a review or interview or feature, I’d spend hour making sure it was listed in the appropriate categories of the directories of the day, Yahoo, Excite, Alta Vista, Ultimate Band List, and probably several more I can no longer place. SEO wasn’t a thing because search engines weren’t really a thing. Luckily, most people in the arts weren’t really focused on getting listed in these directories so it was an uncrowded space, save for Hybrid Magazine and a competing publication called Pitchfork. Good on Pitchfork for recognizing that they were a business while we still saw ourselves as hobbyists.
I was always interested in being a radio host and when I discovered Real Networks and the ability to “stream” audio directly from a website, I was champing at the bit to put it into action. That’s when Dave and I started recording on-demand radio shows. Podcasts before podcasts, Pandora before Pandora.
Around that time, me and my friends Michael Trundle and Tim Cook decided that we wanted to start a brit-pop club night in town to complement the scene started by the defunct night Quid and the then-running Shag at the Snake Pit. So we started a night called Lipgloss, named after the Pulp song. It’s still going (though I quit in 2009) and it’s won a ton of awards. Back before it was anything, though, I popped up a website for it (most clubs didn’t even have websites, much less once-a-month club nights). This website had upcoming dates, details about album listening parties, playlists from previous nights, photos, forms where you could place requests early, and a very active forum. MySpace was still 2 years away. I was creating interactive social spaces before the dawn of social media. Lipgloss moved from a Monday night to a coveted Friday night slot, from a monthly night to a weekly night. In addition to all of the digital work, I was designing all of the flyers, sending out press releases, coordinating with record labels and PR agencies to establish listening parties and giveaways, and getting sponsorships from liquor companies. I still had a day job at Itsamac and I was also a husband and new father.
Itsamac changed its name to MacHighway somewhere along the way. It served me well and I grew a lot while I was there. When it was time to leave, I looked at the skills that I’d developed – Website design, technical copywriting, operations, network and local security, server administration, ad placements, ad design, product development, personnel management, and pricing strategy – I realized that what I loved still was what I’d always loved: Marketing.
By the time I exited MacHighway after almost 16 years, we were one of the top 1% of web hosting companies in the world. It’s since been sold.
Clearly, I’ve always been a marketer – but since 2015, I’ve had the title.
Marketing is more than my career, it’s my calling. I was built for this, I believe in it, and it gives me joy to work in the space. To that end, I also love talking about it – so feel free to drop me a line if you want to start a conversation. I’m serious about that offer.
AWARDS I’VE WON
Yahoo Site of The Day – Fallout Magazine (sometime in 1996)
CDNow Best Music Website – Fallout Magazine (1996)
Westword, Best of Denver, Best Club Night – Lipgloss (2002)
Westword, Best of Denver, Best Club Night – Lipgloss (2005)
Westword, Best of Denver, Best Club Night – Lipgloss (2006)
Westword, Best of Denver, Best Club For Hooking Up – Hetero – Lipgloss (2006)
5280 Magazine, Best Club Night – Lipgloss (2005)
Time Magazine, Man of the Year – Me (2006)
Channel 7 Denver’s A List – Best Dance Club – Lipgloss (2007)
Westword, Best of Denver, Best Taste Making DJ Duo – Michael Trundle & Tyler Jacobson (2008)
Westword, Best of Denver, Best Dance Club Institution – Lipgloss (2012)
Westword, Best of Denver, Best Club Night – Reader’s Choice – Mile High Soul Club (2013)
Westword, Best of Denver, Best Club Night – Mile High Soul Club (2014)
Westword, Best of Denver, Best Club Night – Reader’s Choice – Mile High Soul Club (2016)
PRSA Gold Spike, Reputation & Brand Management – Philosophy Communication (2017)
Westword, Best of Denver, Best Club Night – Mile High Soul Club (2017)
Cool Stuff I’ve Done
- Radio host and producer – Indie 101.5 – Denver, CO (2009 – 2009 RIP Indie 101.5).
- Headlined at The Knitting Factory Brooklyn with guest Frend Schneider of the B-52s.
- Started my own marketing agency, Omnifonic.
- Designed and led workshops at General Assembly for Digital Marketing, Email, Social Media, and Facebook ads.
- Created music with members of the British band Kingmaker (Hull), GoGoGo Airheart, and Thievery Corporation.
- Soundtracked a seasonal art opening at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) in Denver
- DJ’d multiple exhibits and events at the Clyfford Still Museum.
- Shared a DJ booth with Tim Burgess of the Charlatans UK, Mike Joyce & Andy Rourke of The Smiths, Paul Ryder of Happy Mondays, Mani of The Stone Roses and Primal Scream, Jane Wiedlin and Gina Shock of The Go-Gos, Marky Ramone of The Ramones, Spencer Moody of The Murder City Devils, Paul Thompson of Franz Ferdinand, All of the Members of Cut Copy, Nick Waterhouse, Eli “Paperboy” Reed, Peter Hook of New Order and Joy Division, Zia McCabe of The Dandy Warhols, and more.
- Been mentioned in the MTV2 blog, Spin magazine, and NME.
- DJ’d Red Rocks on the main stage 3 times, once while spinning before The Dandy Warhols at the Monolith Festival.
- Started an all-natural skincare brand with my wife called Sweet Georgia Sugar that was carried in over 50 retail locations across 7 states.
- Have 2 amazing kids who have impeccable taste in music.