The Olive Street Agency – Rita Forte
#050 – Today we visit with Rita Forte, Founder and Owner of The Olive Street Agency, a boutique B2B Marketing Organization founded in East Oakland in 2012. Rita decided to take her learnings from marketing her DJ business over 10 years and help other entrepreneurs to grow their businesses. The agency assists clients in several Marketing services that will help them tell their story and communicate with their clients.
“Our purpose as a marketing agency is to help people and so when I think of helping folks and creating basically opportunity and hope for folks, that’s how I look at what marketing does.”
Olive Street offers four main services: 1) printing merch – tee shirts, hats, hoodies; 2) graphic design; 3) video content creation; and 4) social media management. The company provides polos to flooring businesses, paraphernalia for schools, and marketing materials for politicians – they provided merch for 3 of the candidates in the recent Oakland mayoral race.
Rita believes their differentiator is perspective and art. You can go to sites like Fiverr to get cheap designs. Olive Street is more than that – it is a strategic partner. Rita’s goal is to work with clients at an early stage to create memorable and lasting marketing campaigns.
“And so it’s just trying to get to those brands and those people before they say to us we already have our design, we just need you to print it. No, we want to work with you along the process. We want to get together to design and come up with the concept, the strategy, and all of that.”
Rita has great advice for other entrepreneurs like be ready for a lonely ride – you will spend a lot of time by yourself because you have to get stuff done when no one else is around. AND “you’re going to need money” – don’t be afraid to do other hustles to fund your venture. At one point she drove for Uber to make some extra cash.
Be sure to listen until the end to hear Rita talk more about this lonely ride for entrepreneurs.
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