Life in the fast lane: Bellmont Partners named one of the Twin Cities’ fastest-growing companies

Here’s the thing about going on a jour­ney: You nev­er know exact­ly how long it’ll take to get to your des­ti­na­tion. Steve Mar­tin and John Can­dy rode planes, trains and auto­mo­biles to make it home. Dorothy eased on down the Yel­low Brick Road to get to Oz. The Gris­wolds drove the fam­i­ly truck­ster to Wal­ley World. And every one of them dealt with unex­pect­ed chal­lenges – and pleas­ant sur­pris­es – along the way that impact­ed the speed with which they traveled.

Add Bell­mont Part­ners to the list. While we start­ed our jour­ney 27 years ago at a fair­ly leisure­ly pace, we’ve been on a par­tic­u­lar­ly healthy growth track since the pan­dem­ic. And now we can final­ly see why the soles of our shoes are smok­ing: We’ve been rec­og­nized on this year’s MSPBJ Fast 50 list as one of the fastest-grow­ing com­pa­nies in the Twin Cities.

It’s the first time we’ve been named to the list; we found out we ranked 35th at a fab­u­lous event at U.S. Bank Sta­di­um last night. Our whole team has been keen­ly aware of how our recent growth spurt has impact­ed the agency, and the award is a tan­gi­ble reminder of why every­thing has felt accel­er­at­ed late­ly. Life in the fast lane has tak­en some get­ting used to, but the ride is start­ing to feel less bumpy.

Our mantra since we opened our doors in 1996 has been “mea­sured growth,” and for most of our run we’ve strolled down that fair­ly com­fort­able path. We’ve tried to look before we leaped and have tak­en great pains to store nuts for the win­ter (or, as it turned out, the pan­dem­ic). Over the past near­ly three decades, we’ve been for­tu­nate not to have to lay any­one off, and we’ve always been prof­itable – although some­times, in the ear­ly and mid­dle years, just barely.

But the pan­dem­ic was an inflec­tion point for us. Like near­ly every oth­er busi­ness, we took some painful blows when COVID hit: Six clients peeled off over those first fright­en­ing days. But the ship even­tu­al­ly right­ed itself, due most­ly to our abil­i­ty to piv­ot by pro­vid­ing our clients with the deep, senior com­mu­ni­ca­tions coun­sel their busi­ness­es need­ed to nav­i­gate the pan­dem­ic, as well as the strong rela­tion­ships we’ve forged along the way. Sud­den­ly, all the years of build­ing an incred­i­bly tal­ent­ed team, forg­ing rela­tion­ships in the indus­tries we serve, expand­ing our capa­bil­i­ties and deliv­er­ing award-win­ning work inter­sect­ed with a new and excit­ing set of oppor­tu­ni­ties on the hori­zon. We decid­ed to leap.

And we’re glad we did. Since the pan­dem­ic, we’ve felt a wind at our backs. What prospects, clients and job hunters are seek­ing now aligns more than ever with who we are and what we do: help inno­v­a­tive, growth-focused orga­ni­za­tions lever­age com­mu­ni­ca­tions strat­e­gy to solve their most com­plex busi­ness chal­lenges. Today, we’re col­lab­o­rat­ing with orga­ni­za­tions from Mall of Amer­i­ca to the Min­neso­ta Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture, DigiKey to the City of Duluth, and more med­ical device and med-tech clients than ever. We’ve near­ly dou­bled in size since 2020, from 15 to 28 peo­ple and count­ing, not to men­tion a deep bench of part­ner agen­cies and inde­pen­dent spe­cial­ists. We’ll like­ly cross the line into a $5 mil­lion agency next year. We have more resources, more oppor­tu­ni­ties and more excite­ment around what the future may hold.

I whole­heart­ed­ly believe our peo­ple-focused approach is what’s got­ten us this far, and has allowed us to con­tin­ue to thrive dur­ing this some­times stress­ful peri­od of fast growth. Our team has built, honed and main­tained a strong cul­ture over the years, and it con­tin­ues to pay off every day. Our turnover rate is mind-blow­ing­ly low, par­tic­u­lar­ly in our indus­try. We’ve won nine best work­places awards over the past five years, includ­ing mul­ti­ple Best Places to Work from the Mpls./St. Paul Busi­ness Jour­nal and mul­ti­ple nation­al Best Work­places by Inc. Mag­a­zine, all based on feed­back from our team.

You’ve like­ly heard the proverb, “If you want to go fast, go alone; but if you want to go far, go togeth­er.” Espe­cial­ly late­ly, we’ve def­i­nite­ly gone fast, but our focus has always been to go far – and to accom­plish that, we’ve done it togeth­er. I can’t think of a group of peo­ple I’d rather be on this jour­ney with – no mat­ter how fast we go.