At 18, He Dropped Out of College. At 22, He’s Running One of America’s Fastest
At 18, He Dropped Out of College. At 22, He’s Running One of America’s Fastest-Growing Companies
Meet Mickey Hardy, founder and CEO of the Nashville-based marketing agency Arcadia.
Mickey Hardy. Photo: Courtesy company; Adobe Stock
If you ask Mickey Hardy about the journey that landed his marketing agency Arcadia at No. 93 on this year’s Inc. 5000 list, he’ll take you way back to the beginning—which isn’t actually that far back at all.
“It all started on February 11, 2004,” he says, “at Brookwood Hospital in Alabama.”
Indeed, Hardy is only 22 years old—which would be young for a CEO anywhere, let alone at one of the 100 fastest-growing small businesses in America.
It’s a factor that has shaped the trajectory of his company in ways both good and bad. On one hand, knowing how to incorporate online trends into marketing campaigns comes a lot more naturally to a Gen Z’er who grew up swimming in the internet’s cultural currents. But there are downsides, too: Hardy was too young to sign his own contracts when he first founded the company, he tells Inc., and has only recently started being able to go out for drinks with prospective clients.
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“When I want advice, who do I even go and ask?” he asks. “There’s really no one else in my age demographic that’s doing what I’m doing. It’s been very hard to find peers and people who can understand my problems.”
Still, Hardy’s age (or lack thereof) ultimately doesn’t seem to have been too big of an impediment to Arcadia’s success. Big-name brands such as JPMorgan Chase, FC Barcelona, Manchester United and the fintech company Ramp, as well as betting market innovators Polymarket and Kalshi, have all worked with the agency; it maintains a deep bench of social media influencers and creators who it can collaborate with on digital brand campaigns.
“The thesis has been to get a client by word of mouth marketing, by a referral, and just render an incredible service they can get nowhere else,” Hardy explains. “We have this saying, and it’s ‘Operate like every single client is your last one.’”
Source: www.inc.com
