The story of Apiary began in late 2013 with a dream of traveling the world at length. Something that doesn’t exactly fit into the two-week vacation package typically offered by employers.
By January 2014, soon-to-be Apiary Founder and CEO Karen Amundson turned her dream of world travel into a reality, breaking free of the of 9-to-5 jungle of desk jobs. With her unquenchable professional drive to continue nurturing her career in digital marketing while traveling, Karen set off with plans already in place for part-time remote consulting.
Through generous referrals, the consulting work quickly grew to be too much for one person, and several things happened nearly all at once: It became clear what clients were really needing was fractional access to specialized expertise beyond what one individual could provide; Karen was realizing the workload was too heavy and varied for one person; and top talent within Karen’s professional network started asking her how they too could become consultants.
At this point, with an ignited spirit of entrepreneurship to turn all of these realizations into something awesome, Karen began building a flexible model for accessing specialized experts in a variety of digital marketing disciplines. This model quickly began growing and evolving, and was officially dubbed Apiary Digital in July 2015.
Right from the start, it has been a priority to fill the Apiary Collective with high-caliber talent coming from the best brands in digital—Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google, Microsoft, and the like. Many of our consultants have 8-15+ years of experience.
We are proud to have a team of consultants who are professionally driven and attracted to working at Apiary because of its lifestyle-friendly model (see sidebar). We think of our consultants the way we think of our clients: If we don’t provide an excellent consulting experience, they will find work somewhere else because talent of this caliber is in high-demand! Similarly, consultants know they need to prove their value-added by moving the needle for our clients. This synergistic relationship creates a high level of quality. It’s a win-win for clients and consultants alike and continues growing to this day!
Check out the first two chapters of our remote work ebook to learn more about what’s in our secret sauce for attracting top talent and structuring teams in a high-performance, lifestyle friendly package.
Apiary’s Collective Model
The word ‘Apiary’ means a collection of beehives, which inspires our model of working closely together, even while located in different ‘hives’. Each of our clients is it’s own hive with a dedicated team of top talent, benefiting from the cross-pollination across the Collective.
