As co-founder and owner of Clean Laundry retail chain, founder of Leverage Marketing, Vistage Best Practice Chair, and senior executive at Advance Auto Parts, Phil Akin has a proven history of assisting businesses (start-up to mature) grow revenue, decrease expenses, reduce risk, and make better decisions. Phil provides proven strategic marketing, branding, sales, and operations input that has repositioned dozens of companies. From Fortune 500 to new start-ups, Phil has helped position companies to achieve meaningful marketing objectives and generate measurable results.
Phil Akin served as the President/CEO of Hellman Associates, Inc., a full-service advertising, marketing, and public relations firm in Waterloo, IA. Hellman provides branding, product launch, sales growth, public relations, and new business development strategies to regional, national, and global clients. Clients include John Deere, 3M, Ecolab, Rockwell-Collins, and GE. His primary responsibilities included new business development for the agency and facilitating the development of marketing strategy, marketing communications, and internet marketing campaigns for clients.
Prior to joining Hellman Associates, Phil was the Director of Marketing for Advance Auto Parts, a $3.7 billion specialty retailer. As the founder of the international Duds ‘n Suds Laundry Chain (with stores in the US, Canada, Ireland, the UK, and nine SE Asian countries), Phil was presented a Certificate of Outstanding Achievement in Entrepreneurship by Entrepreneur Magazine and was an Entrepreneur of the Year nominee for Ernst & Young.More...