With five new team members, his biggest staff ever and four decades in the Arkansas advertising industry, Mike Sells of the Sells Agency in Little Rock is hardly ready for retirement.
In fact, at 62, he’s expanding the family business in new offices in the Riverdale neighborhood and has a succession plan that will keep him at it for at least four more years.
He credits the expansion to the work of three colleagues who have agreed to buy him out in 2026: Jon Hodges, Drew Finkbeiner and Thad James.
Hodges is the firm’s vice president and executive creative director; Finkbeiner is vice president and director of account services; and James leads Pixel Perfect, Sells’ digital entity.
“I’ve got to chalk the majority of our new business up to Drew and Jon, my two business partners in the Sells Agency, and to Thad James, my business partner in Pixel Perfect, our digital company,” Sells told Arkansas Business just before Thanksgiving.
“Those guys have done a great job of networking out in the community, and they’re doing a much better job than I did in getting new business leads, focusing on them and being able to tell people a really compelling story about why they should work with us,” Sells said. “That’s resulting in a much higher win rate on new business opportunities.”
New Clients, New Employees
New Sells Agency clients include Everett Automotive Group, Chaffee Crossing, the Family Centered Treatment Foundation, Powers HVAC, the Methodist Family Health Foundation and Seal Solar of North Little Rock.
Expanding business means expanding staff, and last week Sells announced five new hires, including four in added positions. The additions raised the Sells Agency workforce from 19 to 23. “I think that ties the most positions we’ve ever had, or it may be one more than our biggest total,” Sells said.
The employees added over the past year are:
Makayla Morris, who joined the team nearly a year ago in a new spot, media specialist. She had just earned a master’s degree in mass communication from the University of South Carolina. She came to Arkansas after her husband was stationed at Little Rock Air Force Base.
James Garvin, who became the firm’s senior videographer in February. He was an Emmy-nominated mass communications specialist in the United States Army, where he composed communications and video messaging for a 50,000-soldier division. In 2022, he received the Keith L. Ware Army Videographer of the Year Award. He is a graduate of Chatham University in Pittsburgh.
Lauren Myrick, who filled a newly created position as account coordinator in September. Myrick previously developed marketing strategies and managed social media platforms for clients of Brown-Forman Corp. of Louisville, Kentucky. She has a master’s degree in business administration and a bachelor’s in marketing, both from Mississippi State University, where she was captain of the volleyball team.
Rob O’Connor, a Hendrix College communications veteran who took a newly created position as senior public relations manager in September. He’s a former journalist who covered business, government and health care for the Log Cabin Democrat in Conway. He won the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Small Business Journalist of the Year Award in 2006, and recently completed a graduate certificate in conflict management from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, where he completed his master’s in professional and technical writing.
And Suzanne Palmer, who took a new position as senior media planner/buyer early last month. She will develop strategies and execute paid media plans for agency clients. She has 25 years of experience, most recently as director of channel activation for the Buntin Group of Nashville, Tennessee. Palmer has a marketing degree from Middle Tennessee State University and will work remotely from the Nashville area.
‘Incredibly Fortunate’
New clients and increased business from longtime clients fueled the expansion, Sells said.
“We have been incredibly fortunate to add many new clients while simultaneously having long-tenured clients entrust us with new work,” he said. “For 33 years, we have earned a reputation for developing long-term relationships with clients based on providing marketing programs that deliver results and help our clients succeed. It will be exciting to continue this client-first approach to our business and do the same with these new clients.”
Sells said that since the first of the year, his media department has grown from two employees to four. “So we’ve added Makayla and Suzanne to new positions, and you know that I wouldn’t be doubling the size of a department if we hadn’t doubled the amount of work.”
The team is working on a hybrid schedule, with team members working remotely for 16 hours a week, and the other 24 hours at the office building at 2222 Cottondale Lane, along the Arkansas River. “I’m looking out at a magnificent view,” Sells said. “We see all kinds of wildlife. We see bald eagles.”
One night recently, a team member captured a bobcat on video, scratching on the door of the office building 30 yards away.
The hybrid office arrangement is working, Sells said. “People can pick the hours the work remotely,” he said. “For some people that means picking up the kids and finishing their work from home. Some people pick two full days to work from home. And three of our employees are fully remote.”
Past and Future
For Sells, the expansion offered an opportunity to look back and ahead, and to be thankful for both.
He recalled being hired for his first job, as a marketing assistant at the old Brooks-Pollard firm in Little Rock two weeks before his graduation from Hendrix College in Conway. “I did an interview with Hugh Pollard, and he hired me. I believe the specific job offer was, “You don’t know shit, so I’m going to pay you shit.”
He did two stints at what is now the CJRW firm in Little Rock, and was advertising manager for First Commercial Bank for two years. Then he made his dad, Arkansas public relations legend Bob Sells, a job offer he couldn’t refuse.
“He had Bob Sells PR, and I said, ‘Well, Dad, I do advertising and marketing. What would you think about hiring me on to see if I can build some advertising business out of your PR firm?’ I told him he’d have to pay me what I was already making, because I had two little babies at home, and if in six months I wasn’t paying for myself, I’ll leave. If I am, then I’ll stay and buy you out. That was in 1995, so next year will be my 30th year.”
Now he finds himself a few years away from where his father once was.
“Drew and Jon will be buying me out on the Sells Agency [at the end of 2025], and Thad will do the same with Pixel Perfect,” Sells said. “And we’ve got an agreement that for three years after they are the owners, they have to employ me and I have to work for them.”
After 2028, “if I want to work and they want me to, I will. If they don’t want me to, I won’t; and if I don’t want to, I won’t.
“My philosophy is you don’t really retire, you redeploy. So I will be doing something.”
A previous version of this article misspelled the last name of one of the Sells Agency’s new hires.
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