Josh White is the founder and CEO of Neon Treehouse, a bright and imaginative digital advertising agency. This award-winning team has over 25 staff and has worked with hundreds of clients from small to medium businesses, as well as startups and scaleups across Australia and the world. He has been forging his own path and leading the way for others in the digital world for over 11 years!
What you’ll hear from Josh is a clear passion for digital and startups, mobilizing teams around values and vision, customer-centric marketing, the modern-day digital marketing stack, and excitement about what’s in store for the future of the world.
Josh is a born and raised Adelaide entrepreneur, who moved to Melbourne to grow the East Coast presence. No matter what people say, he’s insistent you’ll never be able to take the SA spirit out of the boy!
For more details, visit their website here.
Here we sit down with Josh to learn a bit more about his journey as an entrepreneur.
Q. What inspired you to become an entrepreneur?
Josh: I wasn’t looking to become an entrepreneur. However, what inspired/gave me the courage to start on my own was my uncle, my dad, and my mum who all ran their own respective businesses which they had started themselves.
Q. How did you get started?
Josh: I just saw two opportunities in the market. The first one was when I was finishing uni and I was struggling to find an opportunity to prove myself. So, I went out and started my own agency running social media accounts for businesses! This grew steadily and before I knew it we had a 5 person team in operation. We were essentially running social media page content and communities for small to medium businesses back when ads really weren’t what they are today, and accounts could thrive with $0 of ad spend.
The second one was when after running this business for a few years I noticed it was really quite tricky to manage content scheduling at scale with the apps that were available at the time. So, I set out to fix this issue whilst servicing clients. I built the prototype, got market validation, raised seed funding, finished the product, and launched it to market to eventually get 600+ paying customers to use it! Eventually, the focus turned back to the service offering and for the last 5 years has been the core business. We built the service component quickly to 25 staff earning a number of awards and fast-moving finalist positions along the way.
Q. What was your biggest startup challenge? What steps did you take to overcome it? What did you learn?
Josh: The biggest startup challenge for me was two in equal parts. The first was pivoting from our SaaS software back to the agency in full. This was a tricky pivot as your team is moving from technical product people to creatives and people people! Also, your ego takes a bit of a hit when you’re moving back to core business operations after being really excited by the big opportunity of a new revenue stream! As the SaaS business didn’t get the amount of traction we needed to survive and grow against the competitors at the time the challenge ultimately was swallowing the big pride pill and doing what needed to be done to survive. I’m glad that I was able to get myself out of the way to allow the business to thrive and become what it is today.
The second one was going from a SaaS, growth marketing trajectory to a very people-focused business where they are not only the talent and the culture, but the product in many ways as well as we’re selling expert-led execution of marketing. This took some tweaking of management style and management storytelling to build excitement around the direction of the company and build people into what they wanted to be in a way that supported the company vision too. Where we are today as a company is positioned as the kids in the treehouse coming up with clever ways to make a great impact for the companies we work for but to do it in a way where staff feel empowered, acknowledged, and accomplished in their work with us.
Q. What is the most memorable thing you’ve done since you started your business?
Josh: The most memorable thing would have been our first major client. They were what I’d call a scale-up. Big ambitions to grow their already very established nationwide business. The problem they had was that they’d been promised the world with some bigger media agencies and had not had the success they’d seen others have in digital ads. Essentially, they gave us a month to deliver results.
I saw a real opportunity here and I spent a HUGE amount of time over 2 or so weeks building over 2,000 ads for this client and ultimately smashing their ROAS requirements. This client has stayed with us since and we’ve been working together now for around 6 years and we’ve grown together with them! It’s been a really special experience and I still remember that first month and what was accomplished.
Q. What is one book you recommend, and why?
Josh: Scaling Up by Verne Harnish, as I’ve never seen a more preparatory book for people who are looking for answers in what lies ahead. I also think that the Smart Marketing Book by David White is a cracker, as it debunks a lot of the “scale overnight” attitudes that we see from young founders and supports the idea that persistence and vision will ultimately prevail!
Q. What are your top 3 favourite online apps, tools or resources and what do you love about them?
Josh: Vivino: I’m a wine enthusiast and love the app UI, gamification, and genuine value it provides me. Acquired.fm: The ultimate in startup and scaling research turned valuable content I’ve seen. The episodes are long, thorough, and incredibly insightful. I find these really valuable. LinkedIn: Nothing keeps me closer to my professional network online than this. I feel like the platform is really coming into its own. I like the opportunity to support our clients, suppliers, staff, alumni staff, and more.
Q. In terms of legacy, what is the mark you’d like to leave on the world?
Josh: The mark I want to leave on the world is:
- A family who thinks I’m present, and thinks I was able to provide a great life for them (for my parents, my fiancee, my siblings, etc)
- A company that employs, supports employee growth, and provides a positive memorable experience for staff when they look back on their career
- To create real-world impact in supporting businesses to do great things.
Q. In one sentence, what’s the best advice you’d give to someone just starting out on their entrepreneurial journey?
Josh: Speak to people, try stuff out, remove the ego, and be incredibly persistent. It’s a long, harrowing journey for most, and you’ll challenge yourself, your beliefs and values, and more and you’ll need to be able to show up the whole time. The trade-off for the right cause will be so worth it.
To keep up to date with Josh and his journey, connect with him on LinkedIn.
