The beginning.

As most great stories start, Peyton was born in a small town in Arkansas called Skunk Hollow. He described it as “very Huck Finn”. There were dirt roads, he lived on a lake and even had a dog named Hobo. However that is where the idyllic themes stopped, his father was an alcoholic and abusive. He said that the first 15 years of his life were incredibly challenging but thanks to after school programs and sports, he was able to find outlets rather than going home. While these times were tough, he credits them for shaping his perfectionist attitude. He was determined not to fail at anything he did. Things came to a head that summer when he was 15 and he left to go live with grandparents in Little Rock and credits this move to the start of the journey that led him to digital marketing. 

The journey.

When Peyton arrived in Little Rock he attended Central High School known for the Little Rock Nine of 1957. He dove into sports and spent all of high school planning on going to West Point on a basketball scholarship. At the last minute he shifted gears and realized that he wanted to pursue academics more. He traveled to Chicago shortly after and fell in love with Lake Forest College. During his time there he got very involved in abroad programs. He traveled through Greece, the Middle East and somehow ended up in South Africa eating lunch at a table with the Dalai Lama. He said that the conversation they had still guides him through to this day and helps him to remember that there is always hope. All of these experiences were setting him on his path to become an operator, he knew by then that he wanted to get things done.  

Why digital marketing?

Peyton returned from his travels, graduated from college and began his career in Chicago. He traveled to China for work and became obsessed with the idea of the internet. He described the internet of the early 2000’s as “a spam filled mess of awesome” but it fascinated him and how he could connect with people all over the world. During this time he published his first book and realized that he had no clue how to market himself. He began teaching himself branding and learning everything he could about the internet. When the recession of 2008 hit he had no choice but to shift gears and go into the oil industry. He almost forgot about marketing, he was out on rigs all day, making great money and able to provide for his new family. The universe had other plans and Peyton was in a horrible car accident. He was in the hospital for over three months, had to learn how to walk again and during that time was fired from the oil rig. He said he knew that was his turning point and that he had to completely redefine everything in his life. He got a sales job for Google, basically going door to door selling Google Business View. He wanted to learn everything he could about digital marketing. Soon he was leading the sales team for the southern region and taking advantage of every course Google had to offer. An opportunity came to work for Catholic Health Initiatives and he jumped at the chance to be able to utilize everything he had learned about AdWords and local search. He taught himself even more about optimization, web development and digital marketing and he found himself consulting for other businesses on the side. He realized that he wanted to take it bigger and so he created Alpha Wave. Now he works with medium to large companies that “have their infrastructure set but none of their digital processes in place.” 

A typical day. 

Peyton said that no two days are the same and he wouldn’t have it any other way. He is very disciplined and has succinct schedules for how he tackles his work flow. He said it is important to block out time for deep work and be able to concentrate on the tasks at hand, otherwise you can fill up your time with meeting after meeting. For consulting work he said that he will meet with a business and come in to set up scalable processes and systems in digital marketing for them to implement. He then leaves them with the tools to succeed and grow. Alpha Wave also offers companies a la carte services like search engine optimization, social media, paid advertising, OTT and content creation. His goal for the next 3-5 years is to package these processes and to create a toolkit that they can sell to other companies allowing them to grow their digital media presence. 

Looking forward.

Peyton’s advice to students and his hopes for the future of digital marketing all seem to tie back to the same sentiment, “do no harm”. He mentioned this multiple times in our talk and was an important theme throughout his past and future. He said that digital creation is a powerful, powerful tool if we can use it in the right ways. He believes that one of the problems is that our brains have not evolved enough to keep up with some of the technology and we are interacting with it in very harmful ways. 

He worries that digital technologies are pulling us away from important health and relationship functions that we need as humans, and that we are losing the ability to sit alone in quietude. He also mentioned the ability for digital marketing and social media to influence us in harmful ways, “everyone should know what happened with Cambridge Analytica and be scared by it.” 

He said we can apply theories from digital marketing to our daily lives and “optimize everything”. Not only should we be optimizing websites, we should be optimizing our sleep schedules, our diets and balance our personal lives with our professional. “If we live optimized lives, we have balance and balance should be our goal for everything.” 

What I learned. 

Talking to Peyton was amazing. He did not hold back on any part of his life or career so it was great to have such a candid interview. For me, as an older student, the most important thing that I learned is that the journey is never over. Life can take you so many places, it is important to always keep learning and growing- especially in a field that is as ever changing as digital marketing. 

Teaching people processes for digital media was interesting to me too, it was eye opening to see that there is such a need for consulting work and helping people to implement their own strategies. My biggest takeaway was the sentiment of “do no harm”. It seems as though there has been an underlying theme from a lot of our speakers that the future could be a dangerous place if we do not use the tools at hand wisely. 

I have hope in mankind that we will work to do no harm in the future. That mantra is something that I am going to take with me throughout my professional career and personal life. All in all it was a very inspiring conversation, if you are curious and open, life can take you in many different directions!