Ep. 160: David Gaspar, Partner and Head of Innovation at Gather, Building Scalable Marketing Teams By Revolutionizing Agency Models

Leaders,
What if you could fundamentally redevelop the agency experience? Better yet, what if you could radically redevelop how marketing teams plan, build, and scale their impact?
I introduce Gather, an independent creative partner that builds better marketing teams by using an independent network, double opt-in incentives, and a team-as-a-service model. In this episode, we meet David Gaspar, a Partner and Head of Innovation at Gather. Before that, David was part of the innovation team at GE and a CFO and investor in multiple ventures.
In this episode, we explore what helped shape Gather’s success. David came from Corporate Innovation teams, so he knew what worked and what was lacking across the Fortune 500 landscape. He discusses that the core of every good innovation leader was a small, trusted network they would always lean into. Gather set out to solve the problem of scaling this trusted network to all innovation and business leaders.
In their 15+ year journey, Gather has championed many best practices. One of these is a double-opt-in matching process, where both the client and the independent opt in to the engagement. This results in much higher motivation, productivity, and results. Another best practice of Gather is serving the thinking and doing within teams. Rather than just nice presentations and recommendations or just execution, Gather independents provide both the thinking and doing.
The last topic we’ll discuss is the secrets of change for every internal change maker. David made a great point: Anyone doing something new within a large organization can have a target on their back. That is 100% true. However, they can navigate this, and David recommended two things immediately: first, make more significant asks, and second, ask for help.  
Key takeaways:
Being the “day one” phone call has been a critical component of Gather’s success
Gather uses a TaaS (team as a service) model
Gather uses a high-touch client relationship
Independents on Gather are fiercely independent
Independents don’t have the caution or bureaucratic thinking on who and how to talk to people across the company