Through the years, Keith Scandone has been an actor, playwright, entertainment reporter, and personal chef. He’s been a casting assistant, a script doctor, and a critic for a music magazine. Keith has been a waiter, an assistant tennis pro, a marketing director, and a dog walker. Yet of all of his odd jobs, the one that prepared him most for his daily duties as the CEO of O3 World, was as the producer of a little play in Los Angeles.
Keith is currently a cofounder and CEO of O3 World, an interactive agency that combines business intelligence, informed design, and integrated technology to produce web based strategies and solutions for their clients. Established in 2005, O3 works with a wide array of clients including Comcast, Thomson Reuters, and Five Below. While his current position and success seems orthodox, it’s his path to get there, which included his producing stint, that has proven to be anything but.
The beginnings of this unconventional path can be traced back to his days at Loyola College in Maryland. While he majored in Political Science, it was his minor in Fine Arts that had the most influence on Keith’s life and post college career. During his junior year, exhibiting an all or nothing attitude that would become his trademark, he decided that his first crack at acting would be to audition for the lead role in Oedipus Rex. Surprising the director and even himself, he performed so well that he landed the role, and from that day forward, he threw himself into what became a 6-year pursuit of an acting career. “I think it was the first time I really, truly gave 100 percent of my energy to something,” he recalls. “It was a life-changing experience.”
Keith’s passion for acting took him to Los Angeles, where he pursued a name for himself in an oversaturated and fiercely competitive city and industry. While he loved acting and the city itself, he discovered after six years that he was no closer to getting a star on Hollywood Boulevard than the day he arrived, and that it was time for a change in career and focus. This necessity became even clearer after performing in a play he wrote, which ended up being chosen as part of a playwriting series that a local theater group was producing. While Keith played the lead role, he also played a significant role in the behind-the-scenes production of the play, mainly because of a lack of resources within the small group. “I ended up having to bring actors in for auditions, choose a director, choose the actors, put the set design together, get the furniture, promote it, and make sure tickets were being sold,” he remembers today. “That’s when I realized that, while acting was great, producing is what I really loved and what I was much better at, because producing allowed me to bring all of the pieces together.”
That philosophy and scope of responsibilities are no different than Keith’s responsibilities and duties today. Keith’s role in O3 has focused on creating, or producing, new business for the company, and working collaboratively with his business partner, or creative director, on strategic growth for the company. “Just like being the producer of a movie or a play, at a company, you’re involved in nearly every aspect of its growth,” he explains. “I’ve had a hand in creating our company’s name, positioning it, establishing its culture, and playing a key role in most of its hires. I like overseeing and orchestrating, instead of being in the trenches and the weeds doing one thing. I get bored when my focus is too narrow, as I like touching a little bit of everything. For me, this company is like producing one big play—it just happens to be in several acts that keep unfolding year after year.”
O3 World’s inception came a little more than a year after Keith’s move from Los Angeles. He returned to his home state of Pennsylvania, with no real game plan beyond making a change in careers. He had a sense that he wanted to work in advertising, since he still wanted to stay in a creative field, but with no real relevant experience, many strongly recommended he reconsider his career path.
But much like his all-or-nothing approach to acting, he applied that same philosophy to advertising, and before long, Keith fell into an opportunity that would be his first entry into advertising and the interactive space: working for an online entertainment city guide. “I ended up having the opportunity to rebrand their company in the marketplace,” he recalls. “I worked with designers to redo their website, hired writers to reshape their editorial staff, and worked with the city’s top PR firms to help gain exposure and traffic to the site by fostering strong relationships. It was all a first for me, and a kind of learn-as-I-go opportunity, but I think all of my odd jobs in Los Angeles collectively prepared me for the varied duties associated with that role.”
In addition to the city guide, the firm offered web design and development services to many clients as well, which enabled Keith to see how selling and production process worked. While his input was respected, however, being a mere employee kept him from having the impact on the strategic growth of the company he wanted to have. “They were working with a lot of hair salons, bars, restaurants, and other businesses with limited budgets, and they were doing smaller, design-oriented sites,” Keith remarks. “I wanted to go after bigger projects and enterprise solutions, really being able to immerse myself in the companies’ culture and future business needs, and becoming more of a strategic partner with them.”
While owning a business was still far from Keith’s mind during his years in Los Angeles, his entrepreneurial spirit sprung long before that time in his life, inspired in part by his father. An attorney in Philadelphia, he was a sole practitioner with a reputation for scrupulous honesty. “My father was a very honest and very ethical attorney, and from a business standpoint, I got a lot of my core values from him,” Keith notes. “He was honest almost to a fault and did a lot of pro bono work for people. From him, I learned to be very fair in all my dealings with people.” The middle of three children, with an older brother and younger sister, he credits both his parents with incredible support over the years. Although his father speculated that he would’ve been a great lawyer because of his ability to see both sides of an issue—an ability that serves him well today at O3 World—his mother and father encouraged their son to follow his own path, and continued to support him at every step along the way.
Today, giving 100 percent in pursuit of his goals has become the norm for Keith—a necessary attribute for successful entrepreneurs, and the saving grace that allowed O3 to get off the ground at its outset. “One of the hardest things I’ve done is try to make a name for ourselves in an overly saturated marketplace, filled with salespeople that consistently over-promise and under-deliver,” Keith describes. “Philadelphia is a very old-school, traditional town, and it was much slower on the interactive side of things when it came to enterprise level websites than other cities tend to be. Because of that, a lot of clients were much slower to go with a company like us. Also, being a small company with only a year or two under our belts, we were much more of a risk. People wanted a guarantee that we weren’t going to go out of business before trusting us with their business, which is kind of a catch-22. They felt much safer hiring the company that’s been around 35 years versus the company that’s been around only three years.”
Along with overcoming long odds, Keith is proud of the culture at O3 World, which he describes as a family. “We don’t outsource any of our work,” he avows. “It is very common for other agencies to outsource, either to other individuals or overseas, but it’s always been very important to us that everybody who contributes to the end product is truly aligned with our vision and commitment to quality. We all come in and work side by side every single day, and working so collectively and collaboratively on a day-to-day basis is something that’s very unique in the industry we work in.”
Although employees are expected to be in the office every day, Keith has focused on developing an atmosphere of genuine respect between clients and employees such that the value of their time is truly recognized. “While we work very hard for our clients, which often includes overtime, it’s important that our clients respect our process and the people producing the work,” he affirms.
To young people entering the working world today, Keith emphasizes the importance of follow-through above all else. “Do what you say you’re going to do,” he stresses. “It’s a simple motto, but I just don’t see it all that often. Kids complain that it’s hard to find a job, but it’s not as hard if you really showcase that you’re passionate. If you really care about something, pay attention to detail, work harder, and just follow through, success will come to you.”
Keith also emphasizes the need to make a change if a change is needed, just as he did when he submitted his play in that contest all those years ago and suddenly saw himself in a new light. “Finding who I was and what I could be was never based on a formula,” he points out. “My path was all over the place, but it worked. I would tell people not to be so hung up on choosing the wrong major or taking a job in an industry that isn’t going down the right path for you. Have the confidence and courage to know that if you’re really passionate about going into a new industry or starting your own business, you can succeed. While experience plays a role in hiring technical positions, the most important qualifications, for me anyway, are nothing more than dedication, interest, and intelligence.”
Giving back to the community is also an important value Keith encourages young people to embrace, and one he exemplifies through pro bono work at O3 World. Usually affiliated with several non-profits at a time, O3 currently works with Back on my Feet and with the Travis Manion Foundation—two national organizations that are very important to Keith, his business partner, and O3 at large.
Keith’s career certainly took many turns since he studied fine arts and drama at Loyola, but his commitment to following his dreams never wavered. Everything he pursued, he did so whole-heartedly, and this, more than anything else, brought him success. “The opportunity is always there,” he reminds us. “Even if there’s no job posting on a company’s website, it’s there. If you’re talented enough, if you want it enough, and if you’re passionate enough, there’s a job waiting for you.” By taking responsibility for the production value of our own lives, choosing the vision and story we want to make ourselves into, and then carrying them out with discipline, dedication, and our own unique style, we have the ability to be our own producers and bring scripts—and dreams—to life.
© February 2013
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