How we landed a Honda commercial.

Earlier this year, I got an email from a producer at Tier10 who was producing and marketing commercials for Honda all across the country. They’d filmed some already in Cleveland and were looking for another business to highlight.

Here’s how they described the project to me:

“To give you a little background of the campaign, we are singling out Cleveland-area businesses and faces that have an impact on the community and its surroundings, and are an excellent example of the tight-knit community of the CLE. I felt The Cleveland Flea not only had a great message, but also an awesome spirit and aesthetic.”

When I ended up speaking with Devin, he told me that when he began searching for talent, my business came up first.

In other words, the amount of money, time and energy we spend on our social media and photography worked to get his attention.

And he said that telling an interesting story would be a lot easier with a business who had this much content (team, offices, location, mission) already built.

When I think about how much money and time I’ve spent on this business, and the decisions that I’ve made that were uncomfortable and risky, it’s exactly those decisions that lead to opportunities like this.

I think it’s easy to believe that stuff like getting a call from Honda is random and out of our control. But from day 1, I made building an online presence a huge goal of mine. I’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars on photography and content creation throughout my six years in business.

I engineered this moment’s existence.

Did I always have that budget? No. The first year of Cleveland Flea, my friend Suzanna actually helped me with photos for free. Just because she wanted to support me as well as connect to small businesses who could (and did) become her clients.

So, how did we really do it?

We play big. We do all the work. We have big goals. One of which was to be nationally recognized for the role we have in the shaping of Cleveland’s small business economy.

We believed it would happen. And all our thinking and decisions made it possible.