David Bean

“We engaged David as a full-time advisor in March of 2021 to steer our SaaS platform and solve significant team challenges. When we asked him to join us in the 'big' sprint, leading and improving our North American business as President, we immediately felt the impact of his skills and insights as he unlocked the full potential of Firebolt, re-igniting individuals and healing traditional gaps between Sales and Manufacturing. David’s brand of 'Growing Places' is not for the faint of heart. In his first six months as President, he set a blistering pace as a roll-up-his-sleeves leader who engages from the bottom up. Surprising us with his first four weeks working in the shop to learn the Firebolt way and only then asked the team to hold everything up to the light and ask the question, 'why?'. Proceeding to decisively and tirelessly knock out single points of failure and deploy best practices across the enterprise enabling incredible individual and corporate growth. As an experienced board member, his counsel was well respected as we re- formulated our board and our acquisition strategy. David applied invaluable commercial due diligence skills to sorting through multiple targets. Making tough calls on which to turn away from and helping us lean into the right one. He achieved his goals of sequential building and being able to leave behind scalable and sustainable winning organizations that are able to take things to the next level on their own. David certainly is leaving us in a better position than when we started with him. The results speak for themselves- significant growth in sales and EBITDA. Hannan Lis Chairman”

“I have had the privilege of working with David for just about decade at both The George P Johnson Co, as well as EWI. In 2008 I moved onto the business development team as a creative director where I worked with David both maintaining new client relationships, as well as pursuing and developing new ones. Very quickly I came to appreciate David’s mentoring nature. While he was a tremendous account lead, his ability to truly help craft and mentor his team was a tremendous gift to those who worked with and for him. 

Every project under David was led from a strategic standpoint. Who is our prospective client? What were that identifying as their needs and goals, and does that specific ask align with their overall corporate goals and brand values? During the building of these responses David challenged his team to be thoughtful in our pitch. Not just from a creative perspective, but from an overall strategic perspective. Often times, this meant us taking a provocative stance in our response back to the clients. It meant at times taking and uncomfortable position and outlining why what they were asking for might not provide them with the best brand experience. Time and time again this thoughtful strategic stance in our programatic and creative responses provoked a client to award us the business. It was during these responses where I watched and learned the actual business side of event marketing under David’s leadership. Understanding how the account management team can bring value to client by making effective and measured change increasing efficiency was one of the most eye opening experiences for me. David’s drive for impeccable customer service influences every thing he does. He was always focused on these and taught his team why it mattered, how to pitch these services, and deliver against them. While a great creative response could wow a client, it was the thoughtful and well created business pitch that come be actionable and measured that often helped to close the deal. When I made the transition to leading a studio at EWI under David’s corporate leadership I again was in a position where I was able to continue to grow and learn. I watched David bring cross functional teams together across the enterprise to find better ways of working together, delivering our clients a better product, and doing it all in a more efficient way. Under David’s leadership I learned the corporate side of our business. I now had exposure to and responsibly in P&L ownership, professional development of one’s staff, and overall enterprise management. This was a whole new world for me and was truly glad to have him there to help mentor me there as well. Looking back at my years working with David, I see them as being my most formidable years as both a creative and as a corporate leader. I still see him as one of my greatest mentors, and forever one of my best cheerleaders. ”