Today we’d like to introduce you to Amanda Kacperowski.
Amanda, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
MY STORY: HOW I BUILT 24 EAST CREATIVE AGENCY
I got my start in marketing right out of college, working for an agency that specialized in luxury real estate. It was a niche world, and I loved it. That job is where I fell for this industry, the strategy behind it, the creativity, all of it.
But the truth is, the real beginning of my business wasn’t happening at that job. It was happening everywhere else. I’d be at the hair salon, or sitting in the dentist’s chair, and somehow the conversation would turn to marketing. I couldn’t help myself. I’d end up offering advice to whoever I was talking to, usually a small business owner who had no idea what to do with their online presence. Those conversations kept happening, over and over, until they turned into something real.
That’s how my side hustle started. I was working 8:30 to 5:30 at my agency job, and then I’d clock into my own personal night shift, 5:30 until my eyes couldn’t stay open anymore. It was a lot. But I was fortunate that it grew fast. The people I worked with started referring me to their friends, and their friends referred me to other businesses, and what began as a few clients in Tampa slowly turned into something worldwide.
In 2020, I quit my job. I was 24 years old, and the world was in the middle of a global pandemic. Looking back, it probably wasn’t the most logical time to bet everything on myself. But it was also the moment the world was becoming more digitally advanced than ever, almost overnight, and I already knew how to work in that space. So I took my side hustle and turned it into a full-time job, with clients around the world.
The name of my agency, 24 East Creative, comes from that same year and that same number. Twenty-four has been a lucky number for me through so many of the biggest turning points in building this company, and it felt right to build the name around it. There’s also something in the idea of “east” that speaks to me, it’s always been the direction of beginnings, the first light, the start of something new. Between the number and the direction, the name became more than a name. It became the standard I hold myself to. There are twenty-four hours in a day, and I show up for every one of them, the same way I did back when I was working two jobs just to get this off the ground.
This year, my agency turned six years old. Six years of building something from nothing but a few conversations at the salon and a lot of late nights. I’m proud of how far it’s come, from a handful of local clients to a business that reaches people around the world, and I’m just getting started.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
If the digital world was a smooth road, nobody would have a job in it. The whole reason businesses need someone like me is because things are constantly changing, algorithms shift, platforms rise and fall, and what worked six months ago doesn’t always work today. So no, it hasn’t been smooth, and honestly I wouldn’t trust it if it had been.
Running the agency solo has meant wearing every hat there is. I’m the strategist, the writer, the designer, the ad manager, and the person answering emails at midnight, all in one. In the beginning, there was no team to hand things off to when I was stretched thin, so learning how to manage my time and protect my energy has been its own ongoing struggle for sure. Taking vacation days is still one of my struggles as well as turning my brain off before bed.
Starting the business in the middle of a global pandemic came with its own uncertainty too. Nobody knew what the world was going to look like, and I was betting everything on myself at a time when a lot of businesses were scared to spend money on marketing at all. During the pandemic, and honestly for a few years after, I was seeing this strange push and pull everywhere. Every business suddenly needed a digital presence; that part wasn’t optional anymore. But at the same time, people were terrified of the state of the world and didn’t want to put money into marketing when they didn’t know what tomorrow looked like. So I was constantly having to convince business owners that this was exactly the moment to invest, not pull back, even though everything in them wanted to hold onto their money and wait it out. I had to prove the value of what I do when budgets were tight and trust was hard to come by.
And then there’s the industry itself. Staying ahead of every platform update, every new trend, every shift in what actually gets a brand seen, that never stops. What I’ve learned is that the struggle isn’t a sign something is wrong. It’s the job. The road was never going to be smooth, and six years in, I’ve made peace with that.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
At 24 East Creative Agency, we handle the full scope of digital marketing for our clients. That means social media management, paid advertising on Meta and Google, SEO, website development, and branding. We work across a lot of different industries too, real estate, travel, food and beverage, beauty, architecture, construction, legal, software, and childcare, so no two days look the same. One morning we might be writing listing captions for a realtor, and that same afternoon we’re building out an ad campaign for a boat rental software company or putting together a content calendar for a nanny agency.
We’d say we’re known for being able to jump into almost any industry and figure out how to make it resonate online, without losing what makes that business unique. We don’t believe in one size fits all marketing. A luxury real estate brand and a local dessert shop need completely different voices, and we take the time to find that voice for each client instead of running everyone through the same formula. We refuse to be cookie cutter.
What we’re most proud of is that we’ve built this entire agency from the ground up. We’ve grown from a few referrals in Tampa to clients around the world, and six years in, we still touch every single piece of work that goes out under our name. We think that’s exactly why clients trust us.
What sets us apart is that we take a real, data-driven approach to everything we do. We’re not creating content just to fill a calendar. Every strategy is built to actually connect with the people a business is trying to reach, and we stay close to what’s changing in the industry so our clients never fall behind. We also just genuinely care. These aren’t accounts to us, they’re relationships we’ve built over years, some of them since the very beginning, and that kind of investment is something we don’t think you can fake.
What matters most to you?
Building relationships with our clients matters most to us. This work only functions if there’s real trust behind it, and that trust is something we’ve earned over time, not something we assume on day one.
A lot of our clients choose to be completely hands off, and that’s not because they don’t care about their brand. It’s because they’ve seen, over months and years, that we’re going to show up and handle it the way they would themselves. That kind of trust doesn’t happen overnight. It’s built through every caption we write, every campaign we manage, every time we catch something before it becomes a problem. Once a client feels like they can hand us the keys and walk away, that’s when we know we’ve done our job right.
At the end of the day, people don’t stay with an agency for six years because of a clever tagline. They stay because the relationship works, because they feel understood, and because they trust the person on the other end of the account. That’s what we care about most, and it’s what we build everything else on top of.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.24eastcreative.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/24eastcreative/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/24eastcreative/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/24eastcreative
