Our Story
Visualizing Purpose
Years before Monarkk existed, I remember doing an exercise with my family inspired by The Secret and the idea that what you focus on and believe in can help shape where you go.
We each had to answer one question: What do you want?
I didn’t have to think about it. “I want to own a creative agency someday.”
At the time, I was working in marketing, raising two young daughters and trying to figure out what the next chapter of my career might look like. I had a degree in marketing, experience in B2B manufacturing and had gone back to school for graphic design. I loved business and strategy, but I also needed to create. I just didn’t know yet how those two sides of me would come together.
Not long after, an opportunity with a production company called Sister gave me the push to find out. They became my first client and gave me the confidence to start my own business.
I called it Angie’s Creative.
What began with branding and websites quickly grew into broader marketing relationships. As clients came to me for advertising, content, photography, digital marketing and more, I became increasingly involved in their businesses, not just individual projects.
Over time, I started seeing a pattern. The more connected I was to a client’s business and the more pieces of their marketing I could see, the better the work became and the better the results were.
I also saw the opposite: companies with one person doing their website, another doing SEO, another running ads and another creating content, with nobody connecting any of it.
Everyone knew their tool. Nobody really knew the client. I knew there was a better way.
I also discovered how much I loved working directly with founders, understanding why they started their companies, what they saw that others didn’t and where they believed the business could go. Over the years, I’ve become a trusted sounding board for new products, business decisions and ideas still taking shape. A few clients have jokingly called me their marketing therapist.
That’s when this became about more than marketing for me.
Angie’s Creative Became Bigger Than Angie
As my daughters grew up, the business grew too.
Jordyn joined first, bringing her background in fine art, graphic design and web. A few years later, Mikayla joined us with experience in photography, video, content, storytelling and B2B marketing. They brought new perspectives and strengths that expanded what we could create for our clients.
What started as my way of building a career around creativity and family had become something none of us had really planned: a family creative agency.
And Angie’s Creative wasn’t really Angie’s Creative anymore.
The combination of our different skills made us better at the kind of work I had been moving toward all along. We could understand the business, find the story, build the brand and bring it to life across the marketing.
We became Monarkk.
The name represented transformation, but it also represented legacy.
We Found Our Sweet Spot
As Monarkk grew, we started paying attention to where we were doing our best work and where our clients were seeing the most growth.
It wasn’t one particular marketing service. It was when we were close enough to the business to see the whole picture.
The more we understood the business, the easier it was to see how everything should work together and where we could make the biggest difference.
We also noticed that our strongest relationships tended to be with founders who really believed in what they were building. They knew their industry, had a point of view and wanted to build something better.
We realized those were the people we wanted to build alongside.
Still Growing
A lot has changed since Angie’s Creative began, and we’ve changed with it. The tools are different, the possibilities are bigger and there will always be something new to learn.
What I hope doesn’t change is how we approach the work.
We want to know our clients, tell them when we think there’s a better way, protect the brands they’ve worked so hard to build and keep creativity, curiosity and some fun in the process.
Monarkk started because I wanted a career where I could bring together the things I loved most: creativity, strategy, communication and relationships. Somewhere along the way, it became a legacy I could build with my daughters and a team that brings all of those things together.
What none of us planned was how much we’d love walking alongside the people building these companies, helping them see the potential in what they’ve created and figuring out together where it can go next.
That’s the part of our story I hope never changes.
— Angie Hughes
Founder, Monarkk
