Marketer & Social Media Pragmatist

Jack Hadley My Social Practice

Short Bio:

Jack Hadley teaches social media marketing to MBA students at Brigham Young University’s Marriott School of Management in Provo, Utah. He is also a founding partner at My Social Practice, an agency providing social media marketing support to dental practices worldwide.

Longer Bio:

Jack Hadley teaches social media marketing to MBA students at Brigham Young University’s Marriott School of Management in Provo, Utah. He is also a founding partner at My Social Practice, an agency providing social media marketing content, strategy, and support to dental, orthodontic, and other dental specialty practices worldwide. Jack is the former CEO at Lava7, one of the nation’s first agencies focused exclusively on social media marketing solutions for businesses. And in early 2008, he founded Cowork Utah—a social media community workspace that provided a collaborative environment for independent designers, bloggers, and programmers. During that same year, Jack also cofounded the Utah Valley Social Media Club. Jack is an award-winning copywriter, epiphany catalyst, and former ad agency Creative Director with a rich background in all aspects of the creative process. As a corporate storyteller Jack has helped scores of businesses cut through the clutter by distilling and clarifying their marketing messages and positioning. Jack is an engaging speaker who is frequently asked to address business and dental groups about social media marketing, creativity, and corporate messaging.

Jack Hadley My Social Practice

My Social Practice™

In 2009 I co-founded the first social media marketing solution for dental practices.

Jack Hadley Lava 7

Lava 7™

In 2008 we launched Lava7—a digital engagement marketing agency.

Jack Hadley Cowork Utah

Cowork Utah™

By 2007 I was immersed in the notion that social media = marketing’s future.

Jack Hadley Sum Media 2

Sum Media

In 2002 I co-created a dental marketing agency we named Sum Media.

Jack Hadley Playwork Design 2

Playwork Communications Design

In the early 90s, I opened my first tiny marketing company in the basement of our home.

My Journey

Jack Hadley Marketer and Entrepreneur

James Michener was a remarkable author (and my mother’s favorite). In an essay he wrote entitled, The Lost Years he said, “Many men and women win through to a sense of greatness in their lives only by first stumbling their way into patterns that gratify them and allow them to utilize their endowments to the maximum.”

“Actually, I wrote nothing at all until I was 40… As a consequence, I have never been able to feel anxiety about young people who are fumbling their way toward the enlightenment that will keep them going. I doubt that a young person, unless she wants to become a doctor or a research chemist, in which case a substantial body of specific knowledge must be mastered within a prescribed time, is really capable of wasting time, regardless of what she does. I believe that you have until age 35 to decide finally on what you are going to do, and that any exploration that you do in the process will, in the end, turn out to have been creative.”

I take comfort in James Michener’s belief that any career exploration prior to age 35 will turn out to have been creative. Looking back, I feel the same way. And in my mind, when I sort through that period of time, it seems that each of those explorations fell into one of two categories:

  1. > Other Formative, Entrepreneurial [ad]Ventures
  2. > Nine-to-Fives that Helped Shape My Journey