Meeting Jason Locy of Fivestone

Recently we completed working on a project for a new mobile app called Vaulted. We were brought in to work on the project by a marketing agency in midtown Manhattan called FiveStone.

Vaulted is an app that allows anyone to purchase and sell gold. Yes, as in real gold, the precious metal — right on the app. There are apps and websites where you can purchase gold, but really you’re not really buying a hard asset. You’re buying a digital transaction of gold that you sell for either a profit or loss. Those sites are not sending you the amount of gold you bought via FedEx or UPS. Vaulted is different in that when you purchase gold on the app you are actually buying a hard asset that is in a secured vault in the Canadian Royal Mint. If you want, you can have your gold taken out of the vault and sent to you or wherever you want it sent. You can also buy any amount of gold at any time. This allows regular people who are small investors accumulate their gold holdings over time.

Pretty cool right? The scope of work we executed for Vaulted (via FiveStone) revolved around identifying and securing relevant podcast sponsorships and guest host appearances for Vaulted's primary investor, David McAlvany. We also developed gold buying related content for paid editorial spots across the web and a paid search campaign targeted at gold investors. Our team did great work and the project was successful.

I figured since I was going to be in Manhattan for a few days I should try to connect with the head guy at FiveStone, Jason Locy (pictured right).

Jason is a published author as well as the principal and founder of FiveStone, an award-winning branding and design firm he founded in 2001. Jason lives life daily from a deep relationship with God and focus on his family. At work, he leans into working with not-for-profit organizations to help them tell their story more effectively so they can impact the world.

FiveStone’s office is on the top floor of an eight story building on 36th. It’s an older, but really interesting building with great architecture. The original hard wood floors and quarter dome ceilings make for a great creative space. After introductions Jason and I sat down to talk in his office.

We talked about the type of work each of our agencies do primarily. FiveStone does almost all its work with non-profit organizations, which is why Jason moved the company from Atlanta to New York years back. The charity, not-for-profit space in NYC is more robust than almost anywhere in the world driven by the enormous amount of wealth created there. FiveStone has built its position in the non-profit market on strategy, branding and design. More plainly, when organizations need to get better at raising money for their cause, they turn to FiveStone who helps them more effectively tell their story in amazing ways.

It was incredibly interesting to hear Jason describe their clients and work. Agency owners don’t often get the opportunity to sit down and talk shop. We discussed challenges we face in running our businesses, how to chart the path forward and navigate it successfully.

Although a client call brought about an end to our time, we plan to keep talking in the future. I can’t wait to see the work FiveStone tackles next.