Exploring Life & Business with Jared Bednar of YellowBug Creative

Today, we’d like to introduce you to Jared Bednar.

Hi Jared, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
Before starting YellowBug, I spent the past decade working at the Topeka Zoo & Conservation Center. It’s an awesome organization that was going through a period of rejuvenation.

I was able to work alongside a team of passionate people who cared about wildlife conservation and community engagement. I spent most of my time and energy on business operations, specifically earned revenue. To grow our initiatives, we developed a fairly dynamic marketing program. As more of my time was gravitating towards marketing initiatives, it started becoming a viable avenue for a future career.

At the same time, my wife, Katarina, earned her doctorate in philosophy from the University of Kansas. After spending years teaching, she pivoted to digital marketing. Her analytical brain handled the transition well, as she built a skillset that served her well in the more technical realm of digital marketing.

Starting our own business was nothing we ever talked about until months before we opened. My primary work motivator is whether I find what I am doing interesting and engaging. I appreciate working with new topics and stretching my abilities. There were life experiences I wanted to have as my family grew. Katarina and I started exploring the reality of starting our own business after seeing some of our family and friends do the same. A window of opportunity opened, and we dove through.

In the summer of 2023, YellowBug started as a team of three with backgrounds in business, design, and digital marketing. We added a couple more friends along the way and have a small support network of marketing professionals we can call on for help. We spent our first six months focused on our initial clients, developing our own internal processes along the way. At the beginning of 2024, we started branching out and working with some fun organizations.

Can you talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Absolutely nothing about starting a business is smooth! There are learning curves to overcome, and some things we’re just not as efficient with now as we will be in the future. Since we’re a small team, we all stretch our skill sets. It creates some extra stress and takes more effort.

It may seem ironic coming from a marketing company, but it took us time to become comfortable marketing ourselves. It’s much easier to promote someone else! Marketing can be very self-reflective, and we had internal anxiety sharing about ourselves.

It took months for me to become comfortable being a representative for my business. That was a huge mental hurdle to overcome. The days are also filled with client deliverables, so there’s never enough time to work on us!

I appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about YellowBug Creative?
YellowBug is a digital marketing agency with a full suite of services that include design, campaign development, SEO, and SEM. None of us have worked for a large agency before, which is why I think we come across a little more personal and hopefully, attentive.

We try to view ourselves as an extension of your business, more like an internal department than an external agency. We do everything from front-end design for websites to developing campus wayfinding signage to putting together fundraiser materials for capital campaigns. We’re a new company and have yet to develop a specific “niche.” Personally, I hope we never do. There’s something unique about every single client, and I enjoy trying to figure out what’s going to elevate their messaging.

One of our strengths is understanding a client’s business goals and operations. We’re also strong with visuals and storytelling. The combination influences how we market a brand. A company or organization takes on the personality of its leadership. What you present to the public must genuinely represent the experience people have consuming your product or service. Consumers are savvy and will stop working with you if you’re not real.

There are so many marketing channels to activate, but the reality is not every business has the time or resources to be present everywhere. Everyone needs to understand their bandwidth. Our job is to help identify where a business should place its efforts and help them through that process.

We do much of the heavy lifting with our design work and campaigns, but we hope our clients view working with us as a partnership. YellowBug raises the floor of your marketing, but as a business owner, you set the ceiling.

Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
As a child, I played with my two siblings and a core group of friends, but I also spent quite a bit of time solo. I think that gave me a sense of independence and allowed me to develop a creative side. I was active in sports and outdoors, and I really enjoyed imaginative play.

I read prolifically, sometimes rollerblading around the driveway with a book. I spent too much time building in games like Roller Coaster Tycoon and The Sims. I enjoyed cinema and consumed the making of featurettes. I even tried my hand at stop-motion animation with my GI Joes. I enjoyed drawing and sketching animals or maps of make-believe theme parks or zoos. I even dabbled in HTML to create a website catalog of my Star Wars toys.

Now that I’m older, I describe myself as a hobbyist. I still do many of the things I did in my youth, but now I get to share with my children. I never really viewed marketing as the field I would ever work in, but looking back on my own childhood, I can connect the dots.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://yellowbug.co/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yellowbugcreative/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yellowbugco
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/yellowbugcreative