Behind the Conversation: The Perception Cliff, the Streaming Arc, and the New Creepy Cool

My name was never on the door, but I always felt the weight of owning the agency. Our own agency, Michael Stoner and me. Equal parts “OMG this is amazing!” and “Holy fuck, what are we doing?” Not always in that order.

The dual pressure not only to make sure that we had the right team and enough work to keep people challenged and employed (and over 25 years that we were mStoner, we didn't always get it right), but also to be doing our best possible work for clients.

What I didn't fully understand back then, not the way I do now, was that none of it worked without relationships. Jen Lonchar said something in our conversation that I absolutely agree with. She said this industry is "150% built on relationships," and that she'd "go to the grave arguing with anybody who says differently."

She’s right. I've lived it over the last 30 years, both running mStoner, a boutique agency, and now being part of a much larger, full-service firm.

Clients who have a great experience with us at one institution want to work with us again when they move to the next one. That's not loyalty to an agency name. That's trust in the people. And it compounds. You build it slowly, project by project, and then one day you look up and realize the same five or six people have shown up across four different institutions, three different job titles, two different decades, because they wanted to work with you specifically.

That's the part nobody puts in the case study.

It's also, I think, the real explanation for how Jen has moved through this industry the way she has. Twice now she's brought something new to higher ed before the industry was ready for it. Retargeting in 2010. Streaming TV now. Both times, people called it creepy, before they called it cool … before they called it “any given weekday.”

I think the thing that actually got schools to say yes wasn't the technology. It was that they trusted her. She'd earned that, one relationship at a time, long before AmbioEdu ever existed.

I think about that a lot these days. Not what I'm building so much as who I'm building it with.

The relationships you've built over time, and the integrity behind them. That's the thing that travels with you. Everything else is just the vehicle.

Listen or watch the full conversation with Jen Lonchar on Higher Ed Icons:

🎧 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1xveNSySOKZlGAeS6d1EAn?si=65ba073d57754b70

🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/higher-ed-icons/id1889996806?i=1000782123699

▶️ Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/sdW2QA3dNxI?si=Gy6HaJol0miuV4Y8