Meet Hunter Bergman, Founder and President @ XPM Agency

XPM Agency offers digital marketing, content creation and branding solutions aimed at legacy businesses and those wanting to tap into modern-day trends and practices. Its team is interested in exploring more opportunities to educate businesses, nonprofits and students on how to better understand and use AI tools. 

Bergman has taken on leadership roles to convene and promote entrepreneurs in the state, such as serving as a community organizer for 1 Million Cups Norfolk. 

What inspired you to become an entrepreneur or support other entrepreneurs?

I think growing up, I watched a little too much Steve Jobs. A quote that really continues to inspire me is, “Those who are crazy enough to think they can create the future are usually the ones that do.” I don’t know if that’s the exact verbatim quote, but that’s what really inspired me to continue to be a builder — create with what I have.

My mom is also extremely an inspiration for me because I saw her be an entrepreneur and have that chutzpah going. 

I’ve always loved community, and at Northeast Community College, I was part of the Future Business Leaders of America Collegiate — a Nebraska organization. Just bringing people together and seeing how I can help others. I also was an ambassador of the Center for Entrepreneurship at UNL. That’s really where I found a love for helping other people transition into becoming an entrepreneur or thinking about what it is. 

I always had a side hustle. I’ve been working on XPM probably since like 2017 (and) since I graduated. At UNL, I worked at the Center for Entrepreneurship and then also building websites and doing social media strategies and that kind of stuff —  just hustling through.

I felt like I could relate more to what an entrepreneur’s life was because I had some income that I was generating on my own. As an upperclassman — junior, senior — I was able to help younger — freshmen, sophomores — really understand what does it take to do those things. 

I was the president of StartupsUNL. We fostered a community of people who were like-minded and cross-disciplinary. What continues to inspire me is seeing somebody go from idea to actual execution.

Today, I love opening the door to the community in Norfolk. It’s a smaller community, so it’s kind of the front porch step of the ecosystem. And helping people come in and hear their story — understand maybe what they are going through. 

Fast forward four years from UNL, I’ve had a lot more experiences. I’ve got people on payroll and taxes and lawyers and accountants, so I can help them navigate some of those initial things: What do you need and what do you not need? How do you focus on driving revenue for that individual?

I’ve had some really fun conversations and seen some people come in and go from full-time job, to quitting their job, to “I’m scared. I have no idea what’s going on,” to now, “I figured it out, I’m hustling and I’m selling things.”

I’m like a moth to the flame to that energy of building and creating something from nothing.

It’s hard. A quote that I’ve always told students and other people in the community is, “Entrepreneurship is an island that everybody wants to visit, but nobody wants to stay.” 

It’s sexy on paper, but at the end of the day, it’s a hard job and you have to be working 24/7. Sometimes you don’t know the next step, but finding community in that is really important.

What advice would you give yourself if you could go back in time to when you were just starting out?

I’m very grateful for where I’m at now, and I don’t know if I would do anything necessarily different — other than realize how much capital it takes to actually get a business off the ground.

I think capital was a really important thing that we bootstrapped. It’s never really been any other capital outside of just self-funded and bootstrapped. That has its own set of constraints. 

When I started the company, I was just a young kid wanting to make a difference with my skills. I love being able to use my digital marketing skills and my video and storytelling skills to really make a difference in my community. 

I think that’s really where XPM stands for “experience marketing.” Our mission is to really continue to use our skills to make a difference in the world. I think to go back in time, telling myself to “keep following your North Star.”

I (could) go back and tell myself that I should plan to spend “X amount” of capital along the journey, but I don’t necessarily know if I would have planned for it in any other way other than just doing what I thought I could do.

I would have probably asked for help sooner. I think sometimes it’s hard to reach out to mentors and say, “How would you do this?” I don’t want to bug you.

But as now I give my time back to younger students, I can see it from the other side. Mentors love being able to help guide you through certain situations. So, I definitely have been reaching out to more people more often.

Reach out to people who are smarter than you and try to learn from them, versus making the mistakes painfully yourself.

How do you stay motivated when things feel overwhelming — or stagnant?

I want to give a special shoutout to Anna Fiala, my co-founder. In 2021, we were in Jacht together, which is a student-run ad agency at UNL. We were collaborating on some teams, and Anna did some freelancing for me. We were getting ready to graduate, (and) I was like, “What are you doing after school? Just help me build this thing — together.”

And so we’ve just been cranking away. Anna is a grinder. You need someone that matches your skill set, and Anna really keeps me motivated. I couldn’t probably be where I am today without having Anna on the team. They’re definitely a huge force in what we do.

Celebrating the wins, even the small things, is really important.

I also think podcasts, listening to other resources, to hear from other people that the journey is supposed to be hard. It’s not supposed to be easy, and you’re supposed to make mistakes to some degree. Those are the most important learning lessons that could help you grow or think of new ways to solve problems.

What is the biggest challenge you’ve overcome and how did you overcome it?

A lot of these tools right now, with artificial intelligence and GenAI and these things, are really shifting how marketing happens. For us, as a team, we’re trying to understand how do we control our labor costs, how do we control our cost drivers and also revenue drivers, to make sure that we’re building a service and products that people need — in the 21st century.

It’s no longer, “Let me spin up a WordPress site.” There’s a lot of other tools out there that can save time, energy and efficiency. 

I actually have spun up this kind of pilot program called XPM Labs. This is an offshoot of really just tinkering, working with businesses, educating businesses and students, helping upskill them on how to use the tools of today. Through XPM Labs, I’m learning a lot about real business use cases and applications.

And then also educating our students and other people in the community on how to navigate these tools, which continues to flow back in the XPM Agency, where we’re building these out internally for ourselves. We’re a little further along, and we definitely have some fun tools that we use and are building internally right now. But XPM Labs is my community offshoot to do workshops, speak at conferences. 

How can the Nebraska community support you?

If you’re a legacy, family-owned business looking to modernize, feel free to reach out and we’d love to figure out how we could collaborate to continue to bring your story and brand to life.

Whether you’re looking for some training, workshop, etc., that’s also another opportunity for us. We’re really interested in, like nonprofits, schools, those areas that we want to give back to.

What really fills our bucket is the ability to make a difference in our community. Those who are looking to learn about some of those things that I mentioned, reach out and set up a time to have us come and help you do a training and learn about these tools — so that we can continue to learn how to best deliver the training and that development.

I want to continue to help educate rural communities on these tools. We could do a better job of empowering the youth to use these tools as not a crutch but as a tool to help them think better, be more skilled, etc. There’s a need for that in northeast Nebraska and rural areas that I’m originally from.