Today we’d like to introduce you to Justin Stewart.
Hi Justin, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
My entrepreneurial journey and path to founding Vesper Marketing took a winding road to get here. It was shaped by years of focus peppered with moments of doubt and disillusionment, intense periods of listening, learning, researching, and testing, but also celebrating small wins and reflecting introspectively on failures big and small. Above all, at the heart of my experiences, I realized that how I perceived, managed, and coped with adversity helped me to understand myself better and clarify what matters.
I grew up in New York City and, as a Fellow of the prestigious Prep for Prep nonprofit, I was afforded a scholarship to attend Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School then went on to study English Literature at Yale. I spent years in media and technology professionally, first at ESPN working in business operations (ad sales & customer marketing), then at Time Inc. in research and consumer insights (technology & engagement). Those roles taught me how large organizations think about audiences, data, and engagement at scale. But they also showed me how often small businesses get left behind, immediately priced out of sophisticated strategy or handed generic solutions that don’t fit their reality, industry use case, or location.
I’ve always had a creative streak. I’m a writer, photographer, and designer at heart, and I found myself drawn to the moments where strategy and storytelling intersect. A few years into my time in Denver, I met my wife Eliza, and together we founded and operate Vesper. She brings a rare blend of experience in operations, communications, and team leadership from her work in corporate staffing, project management, client service, as well as creative branding development and go-to-market strategy. Denver’s entrepreneurial energy felt like the right place to build something of our own.
We built Vesper to be the agency we wished existed when we first started by helping friends and early clients figure out their digital presence: a consulting firm that’s responsive, strategic, genuinely invested in outcomes, and treats every client like a real partner rather than a line item. We’re intentionally selective about who we work with because we believe deep relationships produce better results than high volume ever could.
Today, Vesper is a digital consulting firm helping small businesses and entrepreneurs with everything from brand strategy and marketing technology to website design and software development. We’ve helped clients double their revenue, launch products they’re proud of, and develop experiences that resonate with their customers while attracting new prospects. The most rewarding part of our work is executing alongside our clients as true partners. Watching their vision come to life through creative design and functional software, that’s what keeps us going.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It definitely hasn’t been a smooth road. One of our greatest challenges has been hiring and retaining quality teammates in the post-pandemic landscape. When we started building Vesper, the world was shifting toward remote work, which opened up flexibility but also created new friction. The talent pool felt simultaneously wider and harder to navigate. Finding consultants and contributors who shared our values, met our quality standards, and could thrive in a remote environment proved harder than we anticipated. We experienced turnover that set projects back. We onboarded people who looked great on paper but weren’t the right fit in practice. It was frustrating and expensive, both financially and in terms of momentum.
At the same time, we had to be realistic about overhead and budget constraints. We’re a small consultancy firm, not a venture-backed agency that can absorb inefficiencies while figuring things out. Every dollar matters, and every team member needs to contribute meaningfully.
So Eliza and I made a decision: instead of continuously cycling through contributors and hoping to find the right people, we’d invest in ourselves. We committed to learning as many workflows and lifecycles as we could (strategy, creative design, tech development, business intelligence, & platform proficiencies) so that we could comprehensively serve our clients without being dependent on outsourcing to bridge functional gaps. It meant longer hours and a steep learning curve, but it also meant we could guarantee a consistent level of quality on complex projects because we were doing the work ourselves.
What started as a constraint became our competitive advantage. We now have hands-on fluency and expertise across the full lifecycles of our service offerings, which makes us better strategic partners when planning and executing for our clients. We understand the granular details because we’ve lived them, and when we do bring in collaborators now, we’re much sharper about who fits and what is needed. The lesson for us was that our initial obstacle showed us a better but more intensive path forward, and we had to be willing to take it.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Vesper Marketing LLC?
Vesper Marketing is a digital consulting firm based in Denver, Colorado. What we do spans a wide range, but it all connects back to helping businesses see measurable performance improvements using strategic approaches that we tailor to each client’s unique need. This might mean developing a marketing plan or competitive research for a startup preparing to launch, building a custom mobile app from initial concept to deployment, redesigning a website or landing page that’s not converting, implementing automation systems that save hours of manual work, or configuring then managing paid advertising campaigns across search engines and social platforms. We work with clients at different stages; some are just getting started and need foundational guidance while others are more established and looking to scale or modernize their digital presence and workflows.
What sets us apart is how we work, not just what we deliver. My wife Eliza and I directly lead each engagement. When you hire Vesper, you get us and you communicate only with an owner as your account service team. This is by design. We’ve found that the best outcomes come from sincere approaches to partnership, where we understand a client’s business deeply enough to make strategic recommendations, not just execute tasks.
Our iterative approach (improving and refining as we go, focusing on highest impact activities) also illustrates deep understanding of full service lifecycles through how we manage and communicate on projects when executing deliverables. Because Eliza and I invested in learning the workflows ourselves (strategy, design, development, analytics, platform management), we guide clients through the entire process while offering instruction and training, rather than outsourcing any workflows where we lacked expertise then hope that the pieces fit together in the end.
Continuity matters. It leads to fewer miscommunications, more cohesive deliverables, and a level of quality control that’s hard to achieve when work is fragmented across multiple vendors. What we’re most proud of is the relationships we’ve cultivated with our clients—and the results those partnerships produce. Revenue growth, stronger engagement, experiences that actually resonate with their customers. To us, that’s the difference between a vendor and a partner.
Before we let you go, we’ve got to ask if you have any advice for those who are just starting out?
<i>Relationships, positive communication, & follow-up are critical for your business. </i>People remember how you made them feel, how you communicated when things got hard, and if you did what you said you’d do. Deliver great work, obviously, but never underestimate the compounding value of trust. Our best clients came from referrals, and those referrals came from relationships we genuinely invested in.
<i>Adversity is data.</i> Every setback teaches you something, about your process, your market, your own limitations. I used to take failures too personally (sometimes I still do!), as if they were verdicts on my ability. Now I see them as key bits of information. Reframing adversity and challenges in this way doesn’t make it painless, but makes these experiences useful by improving your capacity for dynamic problem solving.
<i>Find a partner who complements you. </i>I don’t just mean romantically, though building Vesper with Eliza has been one of the most rewarding parts of this journey. I mean someone whose strengths cover your blind spots, who you trust enough to disagree with, and who shares your standards. Entrepreneurship is lonely enough without trying to carry everything yourself.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.vesper-marketing.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vesper.marketing
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vesper.mkg/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/vespermarketing/
- Other: https://www.thumbtack.com/co/englewood/marketing/vesper-marketing/service/466564096984039426
