I hit 50,000+ followers, and my COO said, “you're a fool for not reintroducing yourself.” So here’s the quick rundown...
My first internship was at Disneyland. No joke, lived in Disney housing and worked on everything from finance to marketing.
Then I graduated from USC during the pandemic (shout out my fellow 2020 grads who also graduated via Zoom lol).
And kickstarted my career in the crazy world of Management Consulting. Absolutely loved my time at Accenture (s/o goated managers like Christopher & Zain), having consulted within innovation and marketing for the world's largest tech and media companies.
After 3 years, I decided it was time to make the leap and quit my comfortable $130,000+ "dream" consulting job.
I was starting to make content on the side through my media company, The Final Round, which helped job seekers advance past "the final round interview".
Job seekers live on LinkedIn, so I started to create content on this platform. Then I received an invite to join the Creators Program (s/o Michael & Zander), and launched 3 LinkedIn Learning Courses (s/o Almeera & Amanda) that now total 200,000+ Learners!!
I quickly realized that B2B creators were the next big thing, and LinkedIn was the biggest untapped opportunity.
Launched Creator Match 🧩, which funny enough started out as a LinkedIn talent agency. Realized that I enjoyed the brand side much more so I flipped sides of the table and landed our first ever paid campaign. In the early days, the campaigns were crumbs compared to the b2c world. I'm talking $1k campaigns entirely. Now we have several year long $1,000,000+ partnerships.
We started growing the team (s/o our fab COO Tara Knight 🧩), rebranded from "Final Round Agency" to "Creator Match", doubled down on branding (including the notorious puzzle piece emoji & logo), and we were off to the races! We went from just a linkedin agency to now building and scaling full creator programs for b2b/saas/ai brands (ie. all channels, brand trips, gifting, ads +).
We were the first agency to pay out $1,000,000 to Linkedin creators (which took us 12 months), and now we hit that milestone in just one month in November. 😆
Our team is now 21 people strong (fever dream?). We are a small but mighty agency, competing against the agency giants in our space.
Outside of being a busy Founder, I also:
📰 Write for Fast Company
🎤 Speak at events/conferences around the world
🌎 Travel and explore: surfing, snowboarding, mountain biking
🥇 Compete in endurance sports (Marathons, Ultramarathons, Triathlons)
This may look like a solo story but I can guarantee you that none of this would be possible without our amazing brands, creators, and wonderful team that powers everything behind the scenes. I'm incredibly grateful. 💚
The next chapter is going to be wild.
Cheers,
AJ
***
🔔 Follow me AJ Eckstein 🧩 for more content on entrepreneurship, B2B Creator Marketing, and Brand strategies
My first internship was at Disneyland. No joke, lived in Disney housing and worked on everything from finance to marketing.
Then I graduated from USC during the pandemic (shout out my fellow 2020 grads who also graduated via Zoom lol).
And kickstarted my career in the crazy world of Management Consulting. Absolutely loved my time at Accenture (s/o goated managers like Christopher & Zain), having consulted within innovation and marketing for the world's largest tech and media companies.
After 3 years, I decided it was time to make the leap and quit my comfortable $130,000+ "dream" consulting job.
I was starting to make content on the side through my media company, The Final Round, which helped job seekers advance past "the final round interview".
Job seekers live on LinkedIn, so I started to create content on this platform. Then I received an invite to join the Creators Program (s/o Michael & Zander), and launched 3 LinkedIn Learning Courses (s/o Almeera & Amanda) that now total 200,000+ Learners!!
I quickly realized that B2B creators were the next big thing, and LinkedIn was the biggest untapped opportunity.
Launched Creator Match 🧩, which funny enough started out as a LinkedIn talent agency. Realized that I enjoyed the brand side much more so I flipped sides of the table and landed our first ever paid campaign. In the early days, the campaigns were crumbs compared to the b2c world. I'm talking $1k campaigns entirely. Now we have several year long $1,000,000+ partnerships.
We started growing the team (s/o our fab COO Tara Knight 🧩), rebranded from "Final Round Agency" to "Creator Match", doubled down on branding (including the notorious puzzle piece emoji & logo), and we were off to the races! We went from just a linkedin agency to now building and scaling full creator programs for b2b/saas/ai brands (ie. all channels, brand trips, gifting, ads +).
We were the first agency to pay out $1,000,000 to Linkedin creators (which took us 12 months), and now we hit that milestone in just one month in November. 😆
Our team is now 21 people strong (fever dream?). We are a small but mighty agency, competing against the agency giants in our space.
Outside of being a busy Founder, I also:
📰 Write for Fast Company
🎤 Speak at events/conferences around the world
🌎 Travel and explore: surfing, snowboarding, mountain biking
🥇 Compete in endurance sports (Marathons, Ultramarathons, Triathlons)
This may look like a solo story but I can guarantee you that none of this would be possible without our amazing brands, creators, and wonderful team that powers everything behind the scenes. I'm incredibly grateful. 💚
The next chapter is going to be wild.
Cheers,
AJ
***
🔔 Follow me AJ Eckstein 🧩 for more content on entrepreneurship, B2B Creator Marketing, and Brand strategies