22 Things About Bellmont Partners on Our 22nd Birthday

It’s hard to believe, but this week, Bell­mont Part­ners cel­e­brat­ed its 22^nd birth­day! While there was just one “Bell­mont part­ner” (Bri­an) in 1996, we’re proud to mark year 22 with 13 tal­ent­ed, hard-work­ing indi­vid­u­als on our team. To cel­e­brate this occa­sion, I chat­ted with my col­leagues to com­pile a list of 22 things that you might not know about what makes us…well, us.

With­out fur­ther ado…

1. We spent sev­er­al years work­ing out of a for­mer work­out stu­dio in Pri­or Lake, Minn., and four years ago moved to our cur­rent space in Edi­na, Minn. We just com­plet­ed an expan­sion, which now gives us just about 6,000 square feet, includ­ing updat­ed offices, con­fer­ence rooms and kitchens.
2. After years of work­ing with start-ups and estab­lished com­pa­nies in the med­ical and med-tech space, we for­mal­ized and expand­ed our health prac­tice group in ear­ly 2018. In May, Ragan’s and PR Dai­ly named us Health Care Pub­lic Rela­tions Agency of the Year as part of the annu­al Ace Awards.
3. Pop-cul­ture-lov­ing pres­i­dent Bri­an Bell­mont co-wrote two books with Gael Fash­ing­bauer Coop­er. They appeared on the Today Show to pro­mote their first book, What­ev­er Hap­pened to Pud­ding Pops?, and Kathie Lee Gif­ford apol­o­gized for extend­ing a san­i­tiz­er-cov­ered hand because she’d just been pet­ting a lemur.
4. One of our weird­est, most mem­o­rable team out­ings was in 2013, when we were trapped on a boat with Saved-By-the-Bell-actor-turned-insult-come­di­an Dustin “Screech” Diamond.
5. Our favorite part of the office – in addi­tion to the copi­ous amounts of glass designed to spark col­lab­o­ra­tion and let the out­side in – is our actu­al out­door space, a mas­sive wrap-around bal­cony with spec­tac­u­lar views of the Twin Cities. We love host­ing clients and friends in this beau­ti­ful space, so give us a shout if you’d like to stop by for cof­fee al fresco!
6. Speak­ing of our out­door space, our green thumbs are improv­ing with our bal­cony gar­den. Before we got plant­i­ng, we even had two Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta Exten­sion Mas­ter Gar­den­ers vis­it to share best prac­tices and advice with us, giv­ing us the knowl­edge we need to have a healthy boun­ty of chem­i­cal-free veg­gies and herbs.
7. We cur­rent­ly have 16 dif­fer­ent fla­vors of LaCroix and Bubly in our office.
8. Through our Bell­mont Gives Back pro­gram, employ­ees can use up to five hours of com­pa­ny time per month toward vol­un­teer­ing for caus­es they are pas­sion­ate about and have done every­thing from serv­ing on boards for local non­prof­its to pack­ing food at client Sec­ond Har­vest Heart­land, vol­un­teer­ing at their chil­dren’s schools, donat­ing blood and more!
9. Our com­mit­ment to sus­tain­abil­i­ty has led us to com­post our food waste, go car-free for a day, aim for a plas­tic-free month and com­plete Lean+Green Chal­lenges – which moti­vate us to climb sev­en flights of stairs up to our office just to earn two chal­lenge points!
10. Our Talk­ing Points Event Series was devel­oped in 2017 as a part­ner­ship with long­time agency friend Arik Han­son of ACH Com­mu­ni­ca­tions. We love col­lab­o­rat­ing with fel­low com­mu­ni­ca­tion pros and orgs to move the indus­try for­ward and keep push­ing the needle.
11. After hear­ing about Big Slick, an annu­al celebri­ty-led fundrais­er for Children’s Mer­cy in Kansas City, in 2015 when I pre­sent­ed a lunch ‘n’ learn about my then role with the Kansas City Roy­als, Jen and Bri­an knew they had to go. This year marked their third straight par­tic­i­pat­ing in this phe­nom­e­nal fundrais­ing event, and they were joined by two of our team mem­bers for a week­end of BBQ, fes­tiv­i­ties and fun for a great cause.
12. We work well under pres­sure – and that’s like­ly because sev­er­al of us are for­mer jour­nal­ists who live for a quick-turn dead­line. Across our team, we have peo­ple who have worked at local and nation­al out­lets (Reader’s Digest, Bet­ter Homes and Gar­dens, Lil­lie News, MSNBC.com, Min­neso­ta Par­ent and more), pro­vid­ing unique per­spec­tives to thor­ough­ly under­stand and help over­come the chal­lenges reporters in dif­fer­ent set­tings face on a dai­ly basis.
13. Thanks to our friend Sarah Moe of Sleep Health Spe­cial­ists, we’re learn­ing to love sleep. Sarah has led two lunch ‘n’ learns this year on the impor­tance of sleep and how to achieve qual­i­ty ZZZs to increase our pro­duc­tiv­i­ty at both work and home.
14. Events make our adren­a­line kick in. From coor­di­nat­ing live TV hits at the Uptown Art Fair (come see us out there this week­end!) or Min­neso­ta State Fair to trou­bleshoot­ing chal­lenges when a cool­er at the Super Bowl Expe­ri­ence is being prob­lem­at­ic, we thrive in event set­tings. We strive to help media churn out the best pieces they can and also enjoy get­ting to bet­ter under­stand our clients’ patrons through inter­ac­tions at events, pro­vid­ing us with all the moti­va­tion we need to put our best feet for­ward every time.
15. We’re a musi­cal bunch, whether it’s play­ing instru­ments (rang­ing from piano to flute, drums to vio­lin, sax­o­phone to organ and don’t for­get the oboe), singing, catch­ing the lat­est musi­cal or going to con­certs, we love hav­ing music in the air.
16. In addi­tion to our non­prof­it work for clients includ­ing Sec­ond Har­vest Heart­land, Peo­ple Incor­po­rat­ed and MnFire, as well as many oth­ers, our team mem­bers are lead­ers in the com­mu­ni­ty. Hye­di Nel­son and Megan Ander­son are cur­rent­ly com­plet­ing the Be the Delta lead­er­ship train­ing pro­gram, and sev­er­al BPers serve on boards and com­mit­tees for area non­prof­its. From Girls on the Run to Three­Six­ty Jour­nal­ism and the Min­neso­ta PRSA Stu­dent Rela­tions Com­mit­tee to the Chas­ka Val­ley Fam­i­ly The­atre, we are proud our group val­ues these com­mu­ni­ty assets and donates their time to sup­port them.
17. We are a group with var­ied back­grounds. Through­out our careers, our team mem­bers have lived in 11 dif­fer­ent states and four coun­tries, using each new cul­ture to learn and bet­ter under­stand peo­ple and how they com­mu­ni­cate. With degrees from 10 dif­fer­ent col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties and decades of expe­ri­ence across near­ly any indus­try you can think of, we each bring some­thing dif­fer­ent to the table, mak­ing for a unique, well-round­ed crew.
18. While we love a good “no idea is a bad idea” brain­storm to get the cre­ative juices flow­ing, we always make sure our rec­om­men­da­tions are ground­ed in steady approach­es to deliv­er results and achieve goals. We’re all for mak­ing a big splash from time to time, but our clients con­tin­u­al­ly let us know they appre­ci­ate our con­sis­tent, proven meth­ods when it comes to giv­ing them the best return on their investments.
19. Although we won’t give up our cake, dough­nuts and ice cream (not to men­tion try­ing the newest Oreo fla­vors) any­time soon, we also have a tribe com­mit­ted to healthy liv­ing. Our health & well­ness com­mit­tee has coor­di­nat­ed par­tic­i­pa­tion in races from 5Ks to 10 miles, rock climb­ing out­ings, bike & brews and more. We know stay­ing active makes us hap­pi­er and health­i­er peo­ple – trans­lat­ing into even bet­ter pro­fes­sion­als and com­mu­ni­ty members.
20. Our client work in the world of sports has pro­vid­ed an oppor­tu­ni­ty to help pro­fes­sion­al ath­letes use their plat­forms to spread pos­i­tive mes­sages and build their per­son­al brands. Through our work with Mid­west Dairy and the Fuel Up to Play 60 pro­gram, we’ve helped posi­tion more than 100 NFL play­ers as role mod­els for stu­dents to encour­age healthy, active lifestyle choic­es. In addi­tion, we’ve worked with pro­fes­sion­al ath­letes to coor­di­nate char­i­ta­ble event logis­tics and media, man­age their social media accounts and devel­op media rela­tions campaigns.
21. Through­out our careers, we’ve done client work across the U.S. and in mul­ti­ple coun­tries. From the Dairy Expe­ri­ence Forum held just last week in Min­neso­ta to the Nation­al Hard­ware Show in Las Vegas to the Inter­na­tion­al Den­tal Show in Ger­many, we go the extra miles (or kilo­me­ters) for our clients.
22. Glip is one of our team’s favorite tools. This instant mes­sen­ger allows us to effi­cient­ly com­mu­ni­cate to col­leagues or the whole team with­out flood­ing inbox­es. Bonus, the sys­tem sup­ports GIFs with a built-in search func­tion mak­ing it eas­i­er than ever for us to express our­selves – some­times lead­ing to entire con­ver­sa­tions com­prised of animation.

We hope you enjoyed learn­ing a lit­tle more about Bell­mont Part­ners, and cheers to year 22!