This High School Entrepreneur Founded His Agency in a Closet

Microsoft had a whole garage to begin its journey to greatness, but Michael Watts didn't have that luxury. He founded his creative production agency Hook in a closet in his Michigan home—because the garage was already being used by his roommates. Now, Hook boasts more than 100 employees across San Francisco and other locations, and Watts is in the process of restoring a historic building in downtown Ann Arbor, Mich., that will become its new headquarters. Watts’ entrepreneurial journey began by helping his parents run a music production company. He started tinkering on their old Apple computer with Photoshop precursor, SuperPaint. When his parents decided in 1998 that they needed a website, they turned to their son. Since this was the pre-YouTube, early internet era, “I bought a book and figured it out myself. It wasn't great, but it worked,” Watts said. That first basic site led to starting a website development business with a high school friend. His partner’s neighbor worked in marketing and found them local clients. For client meetings, they dressed professionally and told people they were in college to give them more credibility. “We would leave high school and go to meetings. We got some crappy suits, and we had to look like we were 14 years old, but I would say we were freshmen in college,” he recalled. Watts did attend the University of Michigan for a few weeks but realized he was already getting paid for what he loved to do, so he decided to officially set up a business with co-founder Aaron Schwartz. The name Hook came about because they thought it would look good on a sticker. While the Hook crew had never worked in the ad industry, they got pulled into it when Crispin Porter Bogusky came calling after Hook sent out mass emails to drum up work. The company landed a job doing a Flash game for Coke Zero, which set Hook on a course of being one of the agency’s primary production partners. From there, Hook has grown into a creative production powerhouse. And Watts values his employees so much that he gave them the entire month off between mid-December and mid-January. Watts now counts Google, Cameo, Mailchimp, Nike, NASA and Indeed as clients of Hook, which was also named to Adweek’s Fastest Growing Agencies list in 2020. “Our vision is to be everybody's favorite agency," he said. "We look at that from the standpoint of our clients, the people who work here and the communities in which we reside and identify with." Big mistake “We waited way too long to get engaged in the community," by joining professional organizations and tackling nonprofit work, Watts said. "We just realized there was so much we were missing. We were just focused on the hard skills and not the soft skills." Lesson learned To connect with young people and help diversify the industry, Hook started a mentorship program called Sandbox that matches high school and college students interested in advertising and content with an employee who mentors them on creativity as a profession. How he got the gig "I kind of fell into it through a combination of helping my parents and then just having a passion for work, the computer and being creative. I didn't know where it was going to lead. I just knew I liked to do it.” Pro tip Watts saw that prioritizing work and awards above everything else led to burnout and a negative company culture at other agencies. So he and his team decided that “no matter what we do, our people are put before the work.” Turning a Family Tradition Into a Holiday Marketing Juggernaut