Hi Blake, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about how you got your first non-friend, non-family client. Paint the picture for us so we can feel the same excitement you felt on that day.

What was your thought process behind starting your own business? I am a native Los Angeleno born in St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, CA, raised in West L.A., grew up surfing south of the pier and playing volleyball with my friends, and graduated from The University of Southern California. I now split my time between Los Angeles, CA, and Naples, FL.

My journey started while still attending U.S.C. as an intern at NBC Studios in Burbank, CA, in the local sports department with Fred Roggin. Then I was lucky enough to be offered a production assistant position with Fred on his nationally syndicated tv show “Roggin’s Heroes.” I spent five years in production and doing some acting bits for the MCA Universal, a syndicated sports/video variety show. It was terrific. I loved every minute of working with the team and being on the lot.

I soon decided to make a career change. I went into law, joining the L.A. office of the national legal firm, Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen, and Lowey P.A., as a Sr. Paralegal with aspirations to attend law school. A year into this position, the firm decided to open an office in Palo Alto, California, an area with a burgeoning venture capital and technology scene. Investing and entrepreneurialism were something I was extremely interested in. Thus, I immediately volunteered to transfer to the Bay area as part of the team to open the office.

It was 1994, and there was a ton of excitement in the air as the firm had a lot of clients in Silicon Valley, which allowed me to meet the executives, venture capitalists, and money managers investing in established and startup companies. I was immersed in the culture and loved every minute of it.

In early 1995, I met and befriended the Vice President of an old Wall Street firm called J. & W. Seligman & Company. This individual was tasked with operating a satellite office in Palo Alto, which would give the firm a presence on the west coast and in the heart of Silicon Valley. I expressed interest in interning for them in the early morning while maintaining my Sr. Paralegal position with the law firm down the street in downtown Palo Alto, they agreed.

Then one early morning, I informed them that I had quit my legal position. They said, ‘You did what?’. After the initial shock wore off, they called the New York home office of J. & W. Seligman to speak with Paul Wick – the Managing Director of the Seligman Technology Group. The firm agreed to hire me at a base position with a starting pay of $30,000 a year as a Research Assistant, substantially less than what I was making at the law firm, and effectively starting at the bottom. Everyone thought I was crazy to leave my job as a Sr. Paralegal, but I was very excited as I was in the industry I had always dreamed of, and I was with the best technology fund and manager in the country.

Institutional Investor Magazine ranked me as Best of the Buy Side Institutional Investor within three years, and I was nominated again in 2004. After six years with J. & W. Seligman, I was hired away by American Express Asset Management to join an asset management team based in La Jolla, CA. At AMEX, I was the Head Technology Sector Portfolio Manager on a team responsible for $38 Billion in Assets under Management (AUM) and with the direct oversight of $16 Billion of those funds in technology, media, and telecom.

Like many do on the Buy Side of Wall Street, I left AMEX Asset Management to launch a boutique investment firm. The timing proved difficult with partner issues, the eventual housing market collapse, and the near global collapse of the financial system and markets. The Great Recession had begun, and the impact was felt far and wide.

In 2008, after residing in Florida part-time since 2000, I relocated full-time to Florida, consulting with a family investment office and in media until 2011, when I met the founder of a small Florida lifestyle skincare company based in Naples, FL. Over the next few months, I began to provide business advice to the founder, tapping into my investment and business background. In July of 2011, I was asked by the founder to join the company full-time, and I agreed. I spent the next four years plus as Chief Operating Officer and V.P. of Business Development, where I was responsible for sales, marketing, I.T., and H.R. For the first few years, I also delivered products to the stores weekly in the company’s van and helped sell the product on weekends at the local green markets. In addition, to bolster awareness of the brand, I came up with the idea to launch a regional health and wellness radio program I co-hosted with the founder called “The Soap Dish.” Everyone wears many hats when you are part of a startup, whether you are a founder or employee number 25. It is a team effort; I am passionate about business and very competitive.

Over these four and a half years, the company transformed from a two-store brick and mortar to a rapidly growing regional business and recognized brand. With renewed branding, which included a new logo, website and labeling, I drove efficiencies of operational procedures and logistics, while placing sales goals in place, all this contributed to a top-line revenue growth of more than 45% per year. The company expanded from two stores to 12, launched a J.V. in Japan, relocated into a 30,000 sq. ft. facility, and along the way, won multiple awards, including the prestigious Florida Retailer of the Year 2015 award from The Florida Retail Federation. In September 2015, I parted ways and focused on two new entrepreneurial opportunities I had envisioned. The company had the foundation in place and to go public which they did via a SPAC in 2022.

While investing in public and private companies over the years and working as an entrepreneur myself, I had extensive experience working with marketing agencies and found those experiences frustrating. These experiences stayed with me and were the spark that lit my next endeavors.

The focus – and the main differentiator – from the beginning was to create a firm that offered a comprehensive business strategy integrated with a comprehensive platform of marketing services under one roof, providing a “one-stop shop” for clients. Business strategy and impactful marketing go hand-in-hand, and to have these services available through one company seven years ago was groundbreaking. Today, you are seeing the larger, branded business consulting firms move into marketing and adopt the model we were first to market with at Dragon Horse Agency.

In the early stages of forming Dragon Horse, I brought in Julie Koester as a Co-founder and President. Ms. Koester brought an impressive background, including a background as the Founding Chairwoman of a Florida-based Children’s Museum and a Doctorate (a.b.d.) in Public Health from Columbia University.

As the Founding Chairwoman of the Children’s Museum of Naples, Julie raised approximately $30 million for the museum and opened its doors 11 years later – an incredible accomplishment. When I approached her about the idea of launching Dragon Horse, she was very interested. Then I also mentioned starting a second company called Moxie Creed, a luxury lifestyle and skincare company. She was on board with both ideas, and our partnership began, like many Silicon Valley businesses, by taking out some notebook paper and drawing up our business plans.

In the first year and a half of our holding company, Veedor Holdings LLC, we worked out of Julie’s kitchen, self-funding the businesses and not taking compensation for almost two years. In July 2017, we took our first official office space, sharing a tiny office in an executive office suite. In 2018, we moved into a slightly bigger office as we grew, and this office had enough room for us to have our desks. It was pretty noisy if we were on the phone or working on a project, so we gave everyone a business card that said ‘stop talking.’ You were allowed to play that card once per day.

All joking aside, Dragon Horse’s disruptive agency model rapidly took hold, and soon, businesses realized Dragon Horse was not your everyday marketing agency. We vet our clients to ensure a good fit on both sides, and business strategy – and how that incorporates the client’s overall marketing strategy – is front and center. We are serious about with whom we work and the results we produce. We are now bicoastal with offices in Naples, FL, and Santa Monica, CA, providing a slate of complete marketing services and business strategies. Dragon Horse Agency is now an international business marketing firm.

We approach our clients in a similar discipline as I did back in my investing days regarding due diligence, vetting, and analysis of the brands and businesses. Not every day, you find a “marketing firm” generating 25-page master strategy business plans that cover every element of their business, head to toe, and then incorporate that into dynamic, impactful marketing. At Dragon Horse, it’s all about our client’s success. It’s not about winning awards or personal achievements; they are simply results of our commitment to excellence and a passionately accomplished job.

Today, Dragon Horse Agency is an international, multi-award-wining business marketing firm with local, national, and international clients.

For Dragon Horse Agency, I am passionate about collaborating and supporting our clients to build, grow, manage, and promote their businesses for long-term success.” I’ve been an investor and an entrepreneur in enterprises of all sizes; thus, I bring a unique perspective, skill set, and level of expertise. Strategizing with our clients and implementing actionable objectives is enjoyable and truly exciting for me. www.dragonhorseagency.com “At Dragon Horse Agency we are a fiduciary to brands.”

For Moxie Creed, I share my Co-Founder, Julie Koester’s, passion for getting the most out of the products we experience daily and a healthy, active lifestyle. Moxie Creed offers unique, exceptional, and off-the-cuff products as well as bath and body. We all know the skin is the larger organ of the body, and what we put on our skin will have as much impact as what we put in our body health-wise. We offer a carefully curated line of lifestyle and bath products at Moxie Creed. We are passionate about living life with “Moxie.” www.moxiecreed.com

Lastly, in 2018 we launched Dragon Horse Publishing. We issued our first release in December of 2021 with the award-winning, exceptional children’s story of Toofer and The Giblet written by Paulette LeBlanc with old-world, hand-drawn, watercolor illustrations by Ukrainian Dmitry Morozov. This is the first book of the seven-book series. We are presently exploring development projects in Hollywood to bring Toofer and The Giblet to the little and big screen. www.dragonhorsepublishing.com, www.tooferandthegiblet.com.

In June 2022, Dragon Horse Agency opened our Los Angeles Office in the iconic 100 Wilshire Building in Santa Monica, CA. We felt it was essential for the company and our clients to be in the epicenter of the creative world in Los Angeles and intention to expand to Milan, IT. When it comes to future goals, Veedor Holdings LLC’s company culture is a culture built on Ubuntu and excellence where everyone is family. We intend to continue looking for strategic opportunities, growing patiently, and expanding into additional synergistic channels to our vision. We are building something carefully, slowly, and with a long-term horizon with purpose.

As Winston Churchill said, “Success is not final; failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts.”

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

What should our readers know about your business? In the first year and a half of our holding company, Veedor Holdings LLC, we worked out of Julie’s kitchen, self-funding the businesses and not taking compensation for almost two years.

In July 2017, we took our first official office space, sharing a tiny office in an executive office suite. In 2018, we moved into a slightly bigger office as we grew, and this office had enough room for us to have our desks. It was pretty noisy if we were on the phone or working on a project, so we gave everyone a business card that said ‘stop talking.’ You were allowed to play that card once per day.

All joking aside, Dragon Horse’s disruptive agency model rapidly took hold, and soon, businesses realized Dragon Horse was not your everyday marketing agency. We vet our clients to ensure a good fit on both sides, and business strategy – and how that incorporates the client’s overall marketing strategy – is front and center. We are serious about whom we work with and the results we produce. We are now bicoastal with offices in Naples, FL, and Santa Monica, CA, providing a slate of complete marketing services and business strategies. We operate globally yet maintain a local feel and approach and our work speaks as if we were sitting across the table from that customer or consumer.

We must do the same thing for our clients that I did back in my investing days regarding due diligence, vetting, and analysis of the brands and businesses we work with. Not every day, you find a “marketing firm” generating 100-page master strategy business plans that cover every element of their business, head to toe, and then incorporate that into dynamic, impactful marketing. At Dragon Horse, it’s all about our client’s success. It’s not about winning awards or personal achievements; they are simply results of our commitment to excellence and a passionately accomplished job.

Today, Dragon Horse Agency is a multi-award-wining business marketing firm with local, national, and international clients.

For Dragon Horse Agency, I am passionate about collaborating and supporting our clients to build, grow, manage, and promote their businesses for long-term success.” I’ve been an investor and an entrepreneur in enterprises of all sizes; thus, I bring a unique perspective, skill set, and level of expertise. Strategizing with our clients and implementing actionable objectives is enjoyable and truly exciting for me. www.dragonhorseagency.com

For Moxie Creed, I share my Co-Founder, Julie Koester’s, passion for getting the most out of the products we experience daily and a healthy, active lifestyle. Moxie Creed offers unique, exceptional, and off-the-cuff products as well as bath and body. We all know the skin is the larger organ of the body, and what we put on our skin will have as much impact as what we put in our body health-wise. We offer a carefully curated line of lifestyle and bath products at Moxie Creed. We are passionate about living life with “Moxie.” www.moxiecreed.com

Lastly, in 2018 we launched Dragon Horse Publishing. We issued our first release in December of 2021 with the award-winning, exceptional children’s story of Toofer and The Giblet written by Paulette LeBlanc with old-world, hand-drawn, watercolor illustrations by Ukrainian Dmitry Morozov. This is the first book of the seven-book series. We are presently exploring development projects in Hollywood to bring Toofer and The Giblet to the little and big screen. www.dragonhorsepublishing.com, www.tooferandthegiblet.com.

In June 2022, Dragon Horse Agency opened our Los Angeles Office in the iconic 100 Wilshire Building in Santa Monica, CA. It was essential for the company and our clients to be in the epicenter of the creative world in Los Angeles. When it comes to future goals, Veedor Holdings LLC’s company culture is a culture built on excellence where everyone is family. We intend to continue looking for strategic opportunities, growing patiently, and expanding into additional synergistic channels to our vision. We are building something carefully, slowly, and with a long-term horizon with purpose.

Building businesses is never a smooth road. There are countless challenges, from barriers to entry, competition, funding, talent, product/service development, and more. In the 8 years since our holding company, Veedor Holdings LLC built three companies in three very challenging markets. Veedor Holdings LLC faced a partnership change, two natural disasters, and a pandemic which put considerable pressure on our financials, operations, staffing, and execution. Veedor Holdings LLC and each company successfully navigated these challenges given the prudent, experienced management team in place, disciplined management structure, and flexible processes.

Veedor Holdings LLC’s 3 companies are:

1-Dragon Horse Agency, an award-winning agency, established the business marketing services sector, competing with well-established enterprise conglomerates and small agencies while offering a differentiated structure and product offering. https://www.dragonhorseagency.com

2-Dragon Horse Publishing, an award-winning publishing company, focuses on the production and sale of children’s and young adult fiction. https://www.dragonhorsepublishing.com

3- Moxie Creed, is a direct-to-consumer lifestyle and skincare retail company. https://www.moxiecreed.com

Be passionate about whatever it is you are pursuing. Have an open mind to constructive feedback but also know yourself and your goals. As Winston Churchill said, “Success is not final; failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts.”

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc. Growing up in West Los Angeles, a favorite of mine was Trader Vic’s in the Beverly Hilton. It was legendary in every sense of the word. Today, I like to dine at Nobu in Malibu, and take in the great view of Santa Monica Bay atop the Huntley Hotel bar and restaurant. For the best Italian in Los Angeles, beginning of Italian heritage, you must go to Marino Ristorante on Melrose. I was introduced to this restaurant by the Oscar Winning composer, Bill Conti. The restaurant, Marino Ristorante, is deeply rooted in Hollywood since the late 1950’s when Ciro (Mario to friends) Marino landed in Hollywood and has ever since had generations of who’s who in the movie, record, art, political and business LA community at his tables. The restaurant is still owned and operated by the family. For Mexican cuisine at lunch, it’s Frida Tacos in Brentwood. Really, Los Angeles has so much to offer given the diversity of culture and history. My list is endless. What can I say, “I love L.A.!” to quote Randy Newman.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

Business thanks My Co-Founder, Julie Koester, is a terrific business partner who is instrumental in the success of our firm. In the early stages of forming Dragon Horse, I brought in Julie Koester as a Co-founder and President. Ms. Koester brought an impressive background, including being the Founding Chairwoman of a Florida-based Golisano Children’s Museum of Naples and she holds a Doctorate (a.b.d.) in Public Health from Columbia University. As the Founding Chairwoman of the Children’s Museum of Naples, Julie raised approximately $30 million for the museum and opened its doors 11 years later – an incredible accomplishment.

Earlier in my life, much of my mentoring and guidance came from my later Father, who was a very impoverished Italian immigrant with his family who migrated from Sambiase, Italy to Steubenville, OH, in 1900. My late father worked in the steel mills for $0.05/hour as a young kid and young adult, then put himself through Ohio State University, where he set the record for the collegiate mile and became a captain of the track team with the Olympian Jesse Owens. In WWII, he served in Washington DC as a Lieutenant Commander and then went on to a very successful in the commercial aviation industry, starting Air Micronesia in the early 1960s, and then helping build Continental Airlines and Western Airlines eventually retiring as the CEO, COO, and COB of Western Airlines. My late mother was also an inspiration as a very smart, hard-working mother. My late mother was second runner-up in the 1959 Miss USA pageant and became a spokesperson and board member for the muscular dystrophy association and a career R.N. and psychiatric nurse. Both of my parents instilled values of integrity, hard work, and discipline, and most important that I could accomplish anything if I applied myself.

After graduating from the University of Southern California, my professional opportunities and career were created by determination and perseverance. Regardless of closed doors, challenges, a lack of a Master’s Degree, or others, I refused to let obstacles or setbacks hold me back.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.dragonhorseagency.com, https://www.veedorholdingsllcsrl.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dragonhorseagency/, https://www.instagram.com/veedorholdings/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dragonhorseagency/, https://www.facebook.com/veedorholdings/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dragon-horse-media-llc/?viewAsMember=true, https://www.linkedin.com/company/veedor-holdings-llc-srl/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/dragonhorsead, https://twitter.com/veedorholdings?lang=en
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCR-zCRHYCmfSsJ1byel8JWQ