Kenny Tomlin

The 37-year-old founder of Rockfish Interactive has seen his company in four years grow from a modest northwest Arkansas ad shop to an 80-person outfit pegged as one of the best in the world by Advertising Age.
Kenny Tomlin doesn’t downplay that success, but when asked to cite his finest accomplishments, he mentions his earning a master’s degree in theology while working full time, completing a 94-credit degree online and in the classroom in three years.
“It was a good time in my life to learn about prioritization and balance,” Tomlin said. Amid the rush to launch businesses, run projects, add employees and woo clients, Tomlin was studying Hebrew and Greek. In all, he said, he sharpened his ability to “switch from one train of thought to another very quickly.”
He found immediate success when he started Rockfish after more than four years working at Wal-Mart. The retail giant became one of the agency’s first clients, and other large companies followed.
Its innovations outside of its client work are where Tomlin’s firm exhibits a distinct personality. It launched a line of coffee, Silver Joe’s, that now is opening its own cafés (including one in Tokyo). It built a filtering application called Tidy Tweet that venture capitalists selected as the best Twitter app at last year’s 140 Twitter Conference.
That track record of incubating ideas and businesses is a result, in part, of Tomlin’s management philosophy.
“I’m not a micromanager,” he said. “I don’t have the time. If I have to think about telling you what to do, then that’s not the best use of my time. We try to hire self-motivated driven enthusiasts who love what they do and love the company and unleash them and let them do their thing.
“I think generally people want to surprise the people they work for,” he continued. “They want to be recognized as overachievers.”

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