What Bellingham Digital Marketing Looks Like When Creatives Think Like Strategists
When you're nominated for something like the Top 7 Under 40, you start thinking about who shaped the work that got you there. For me, one of those people is Dante Check. Dante and I ran parallel tracks for years at a Bellingham digital marketing agency. We weren't on the same team — we were just both building, both figuring things out, both trying to close the gap between creative instinct and business strategy. That kind of peer relationship is rare, and it's underrated.
What Business-Minded Creativity Actually Looks Like
Dante has a way of moving between worlds that most creatives can't pull off. One day he's directing a brand shoot. The next he's deep in an SEO campaign or mapping out a content strategy. He doesn't treat those as separate skills — he treats them as the same skill applied differently.
That's the thing about the best creative professionals in the PNW: they don't wait for someone else to connect the dots between storytelling and growth. They do it themselves.
Watching Dante work raised my own bar for what intentional creative work looks like — and what a Bellingham digital marketing agency should actually be capable of delivering.
The Video
When I was nominated for the Top 7 Under 40, Dante made a video about working with me. I'm sharing it here because I think it says something important — not just about me, but about the kind of work culture that produces results.
The people who see your work up close, your peers and collaborators, often understand it better than anyone. They know what the day-to-day looked like. They know what problems you actually solved.
Building NYLEAR on That Foundation
That experience at a Bellingham digital marketing agency — growing alongside people like Dante — is directly behind what I'm building at NYLEAR. An agency where strategy and creativity aren't in tension. Where the people doing the work are genuinely invested in the outcome.
If you're a brand in Bellingham or beyond looking for a creative partner who thinks like a strategist, get in touch.
