The Greenville Story of: Ben Pettit

This story has been sponsored by POM Storage.

POM Storage is celebrating their one-year anniversary tomorrow, Thursday, September 3rd 2020. To celebrate, they are giving away free individually packaged cupcakes from Love + Sugar and a free t-shirt to everyone that drops by between 9am-6 pm, while supplies last.

POM Storage is a local family-owned storage facility located at:
207 S Buncombe Rd, Greer, SC 29650 and can be reached via phone, 864-655-4911

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Now, let’s meet one of our Greenville neighbors, Ben Pettit.

How long have you been in the Greenville/Upstate area? Since I was two years old. 

What is the most interesting fact about yourself? I thrive on moving fast. One semester, I took 23 hours of classes, which I thought was normal. 

What is your background? I grew up in Spartanburg and went to high school in that area. Then, I hopped over to Anderson College, which became Anderson University right as I graduated and then settled. My wife and I have been in Greenville since 2011. 

I was kind of a nerd growing up, to be honest. I did not fit into any group. I did every musical venture possible and never really fit into any crowd even though I knew everybody, from the popular kids to the nerds. 

I am an early adopter of technology and gadgets. I’ve just always been fascinated. Even in my kitchen, I have the latest kitchen gadgets. I am also that crazy guy that if Apple were to announce something, I will either order it right at 3:00 am or wait in-line very early to get that latest product. 

At the young age of fourteen, and I know that this is frowned upon, but I would go online and get a bootleg copy of the latest Adobe Suite to simply explore the product and see what features Adobe had. And then there were computers, I would be the one who would take a computer apart, but when it took time to put the computer back together, I wasn’t necessarily the best. Sorry, Mom and Dad.

I started dabbling with web design around this same age, fourteen, and had my first site, a Geocities site, around this same time. It was exciting. I got to watch the internet be born. I even remember my AOL Instant Messenger name. It was ‘Ben’ followed by my birthday. 

My wife and I met in Anderson. She is an interior designer. We are currently in the process of launching her company, Story Interiors, which is a sister company of my agency, STORY Agency. My wife and I have two children aged five and two. 

At Anderson, I majored in music with a minor in business but was roughly nine credit hours away from a degree in marketing management, which I would have had a double-degree. But the thought of going back an extra semester and paying $30,000 to get another piece of paper was not appealing. But I did take all the marketing classes they had to offer. 

After graduation, I hit the real world and was gainfully employed three times and then was laid-off three times. This was 2008, it was not a good year, not a very good time to go and find a job. But after that third job loss, I decided to go run my own business. I knew many people, people my age, that we’re making money by working for themselves. I made an agreement in my mind that I would never work for anyone again. From there, I set my own path. 

I have always had this entrepreneurial mindset and have always enjoyed anything business, but I was never the best student. My mom always reminds me of the story when my mother was called by my first-grade teacher, who said, ‘I want to talk to you about Ben because it seems like he wants to be anywhere else but here [at school, in a classroom].” She was right. 

I felt like I did not get school, but I realized later in life that I was simply bored at school. I was bored out of my mind. Honestly, I grew up, and I thought I was dumb. But it was really me being bored and wanting to do something else, anything else. 

What are your hobbies? I love playing golf. It gives me an intentional time to give me brain space. 

What are you currently reading and watching? I am currently reading ‘How to Be an Imperfectionist,’ by Stephen Guise, and rereading ‘This is Marketing’ by Seth Godin. 

I am currently watching a third-time, ‘The West Wing.’ I just love the characters, the fast-paced moving dialogue. 

What is your motivation? I love my company. I love my customers. Honestly, we have the best customers on Planet Earth. There is really never a reason to not get out of bed. That is part of it. 

At STORY, we are trying to create a unique culture where our people are as healthy as possible. We want to share this message with the world. We only work forty hours a week. We call it the ‘Best Forty.’ Typically, in our industry, agencies are working 70-80 hours a week, and that is crazy. I do not want to do that, nor would I have my employees do that. 

I love what I do. 

What do you do for a living? What is your day-to-day? 

I run a creative and marketing agency, STORY Agency. I am the Founder and CEO. Our agency has two sides: creative and marketing. On the creative side, we can work on almost any size of a project when it comes to branding, creativity, videography, photography, pretty much everything that you will need on the creative side. 

On the marketing side, we do a lot of programmatic advertising. We have really neat tools. For example, we can target an audience within twenty feet. We also do SEO (search engine optimization) and social media management. For social, we are one of the very few agencies that actually creates the content from the ground up. 

For me in particular, I have the ability to lead a small team and we do business consulting, marketing plans and ideally, make the most comprehensive plan that we can for our clients. 

We are growing, and with that, we are hiring. 

How would you describe Greenville? I see Greenville as a teenager. Greenville is growing up really fast, it is having giant growth spurts. In some ways though, it is having an identity crisis and I hope that Greenville can keep its identity and not become a big city like Charlotte or Atlanta. 

There are some great things about Greenville, but like with any teenager, there is some things that you are ok doing without. But Greenville is a polite teenager and is a great place to be. 

How would you Greenville describe you? Oh wow, I do not know how to answer that question [laughs]. I love Greenville and our food...Greenville would probably say that I eat everywhere. 

No, I would say that Greenville would describe me as a taxpayer and a business owner, someone that is very invested, not just from the civic level but from the university level as far as who we are hiring and the type of talent that we are bringing to Greenville. 

What is your favorite Greenville morning hangout spot? You can find me at ‘Coffee Underground.’ 

What is your favorite Greenville evening hangout spot?Stella’s Southern Brasserie within Hollingsworth Park. 

You meet with business owners, who run businesses of all sizes, daily. With that, what is some advice that you could give to a business owner during this pandemic? What has been a common trend? 

I like to use an analogy, a fish analogy, especially to the average-sized business owner: in the ‘normal world'; you could throw a medium-sized net into the water where there is a lot of fish that would allow you to pull in a lot of business. Unfortunately, when there are fewer fish, then that same medium-sized net is going to capture less fish [business]. And that’s where we are now, there is less business and fewer leads that get qualified, it all trickles down. 

Now is the time to cast wider nets. Spread-out, make sure you dive into places that you have never been before. For your current customers, continue to be transparent, be in-depth, almost over-communicate with them. 

For future customers, pick up the phone, explore different places because you never know when somebody, somewhere, just might need your services. Be sure to cast the wider-net. 

But there is one step that needs to be taken before all of this: assess your team’s health. If you do not have a healthy team, then I can promise you, you will never do anything extraordinary as a company. 

Checking-in with team members, helping your employees with costs of goods if you can, asking, ‘does your team have the resources they need: technology, software, etc?’ 

When there are process issues, even when things are normal, we all just ‘deal’ with that particular process issue. But when you have a COVID year, one where we feel like we are operating in chaos, well that doubles and triples the problem. So, try to remove the biggest bottleneck that you have first, whether it is in the qualifying process, customer process, on-boarding process and so-forth. 

Those steps alone, casting a wider-net and checking the mental health of your team, can help tremendously.

Ben, thank you for sharing your story. You, yes you, can also share your story with us. Email us, hello@sharegvl.org with a subject along the lines of, ‘I want to share my story.’ Sharing your story is free, and it always will be.