A core part of working here at Fluency is the opportunity to make a profound impact on virtually every aspect of our business—regardless of location. Spanning across 18 states—and counting—we’ve built quite the dynamic team and we want you to get to know them. That’s why we’ve created The Fluency Five, a five question blog series about what makes our employees special and what they love about working here.
Getting to Know Tomy Szczypiorski, VP of Client Services
1. What brought you to Fluency? I started my professional career as an Entrepreneur in the Mining Industry. My 8 yrs spent there were both the greatest Gift, and greatest Curse. The Gift? Perspective. My experience granted me a unique look into what it meant to work with absolute passion and care for a business…what I put in, was directly correlated to what I got out. This meant energy, time, heart, soul, passion, creativity, fine detail, and absolute desire. The Curse? I found out what it feels like to “love what I do” during the first step of my career. From that moment I was hooked - I simply wasn’t able to settle for anything less from that point on.
The day came that I transitioned from the Mining business, and subsequently joined two market leading organizations in the Automotive space. One of them had experienced two acquisitions, and the second was newly acquired. I greatly enjoyed my time at each as I gained valuable insights into the varying life cycles of a business, and their associated characteristics. I absorbed everything I could knowing that my journey back to the start-up world would be a cyclical one. When I was transitioning from my second career stop to the third, I started to visualize that circle of professional life evolving in front of my eyes:
STOP 1: Start my own business -> learn lessons + that you shouldn’t settle for anything less
than “love what you do”
STOP 2: Go to work for a very mature market leader -> observe a company at “full maturity”
STOP 3: Experience ‘recent post acquisition’ market leader -> observe a company “growing up”
STOP 4: Land back at Start-up -> create, collaborate with passion, chase a dream
It was my undying desire for Stop #4 that brought me to Fluency. With a world class founding team, an evolutionary Tech vision, and rapid growth - this opportunity offered me the “way back home” that I had spent 5 years musing about. On day one I realized that my wildest dreams could only take me 75% of the way to truly understanding what Fluency represented. When I stepped into this world it exceeded everything that I was in search of, and opened the door to an entirely new level of what it meant to “love what you do.” I wake up every day and struggle to call what I do here “work.” It is people, collaboration, creation, iteration, and evolution - and for these reasons - I know that I made the best professional decision of my career to be here.
2. What’s something interesting about what you do at Fluency? From the earliest days of me starting at Fluency, it was apparent that our Client Services division had a powerful, and very unique opportunity in front of it. The first question I asked our CS Leaders when I joined was; “...when you have an industry changing Technology like ours, what can we do in Client Services to exponentiate that value?” The answer for us was simple: redefine the perception of “Service.” However, the path to success was far more dynamic and will require absolute executional excellence…every moment, every day.
To literally “redefine” how a word is perceived is no small undertaking. The effort becomes infinitely larger especially across varying geographies, company types, and industries - each of which are anchored to legacy perceptions of what “Service” looks, sounds, and feels like.
As a result, every day our team sits down and opens their computers, we do so with the conscious understanding that we are supporting our Client’s journey to a better version of themselves. We understand that we are an Advertising Technology, however our standard of service positions us to reach far deeper to drive Organizational Evolution. When we conclude conversations with our Clients, we want them to “feel” this new standard of value creation, and always remain curious about “what’s possible.”
I consider it a gift to work with such a visionary team, and I consider this mission to redefine “Service” as one of the most rewarding aspects of what I do at Fluency. The best part? Our pursuit of defining a new standard of Service will never cease with our commitment and passion to create, iterate, and evolve.
3. In your opinion, what is the most interesting thing about Fluency? We “work” in a new world - one that was accelerated by a significant shift to ‘remote’ environments. Many organizations transitioned back to an ‘in-person’ model, while others offered ‘hybrid’ options to employees. As we emerged from the pandemic, Fluency made the decision to remain a ‘remote first’ company. Now, while some may consider this a risk to Culture, Productivity, and general Engagement - Fluency has experienced quite the opposite. With a daily company-wide call to keep us connected to critical business mechanics, to deep and conscious “care” for maintaining Culture - our ability to drive results is of the rarest breeds. Remote first allows for a broader diversity of skillset, perspective, and background - and it is extremely powerful (and interesting) to validate this through our successes on a daily basis.
4. Can you tell us something personal about you?I was the only one in my immediate family born in the United States. My parents emigrated from Poland with only my 2 yr old brother, two suitcases, and a strong education that they worked very hard for. Their drive was to give their children access to a life that they didn’t have available to them, and I owe much of my approach + perspective to the sacrifices that they made.
5. What are you most looking forward to this year in your role and/or at the company? I have to answer this question with the broadest of terms…. “EVERYTHING.” When I made the decision to come to Fluency, I was seeking a ‘once in a lifetime’ experience. For me, that meant experiencing and seeing it all unfold - one failure and success at a time. Simultaneously, we move extremely quickly, yet plan intelligently for the future. What I most look forward to is the continued collaboration with highly intelligent professionals, who also all happen to be fantastic human beings. It is critical to remind ourselves that we only have 1 chance at life, so we might as well spend it changing the world around us with good people, doing extraordinary things.
