01
Where did that number come from?
If a stat has no source, it's decoration.
11 Marketing + Design ·Founder
Walter Steelman.
Entrepreneur First.
Marketer Because He Had To Be.
Nobody taught Walter marketing at an agency. His ventures taught him, products designed, patents filed, payrolls made, and every marketing dollar spent was his own, which turns out to be the most rigorous marketing education there is.
The Road Here
The Résumé Is a List of Things He Had To Figure Out.
1991–1997
Market research
Manager, programmer, analyst, where the habit started of asking what number is behind a claim before believing it.
1997–2014
Art director, print & publishing
Seventeen years learning what makes a page work when the ink is permanent and somebody already paid for the print run.
1997
Websites, the entire time
Google was founded in 1998.
2001
First company
Four businesses owned and operated since. In 2011 he filed his first patents, for products geared toward the banking industry.
Always
Printmaking and glassblowing
Disciplines where the craft cannot be faked and the material tells you immediately when you have rushed it.
Why the Combination Matters
That combination is unusual and it explains the agency:
The analyst
asks for the number
The art director
makes it look like something
The operator
has signed the front of the checks
The craftsman
knows the difference between finished and done
Why the Agency Exists
Every Operator Has Vendor Stories. He Founded the Inversion.
Every operator has the same vendor stories: the agency that reported "impressions," the invoice that never tied to an outcome, the account manager who'd never run anything. In 2017, Walter founded 11 Marketing + Design in downtown Amarillo as the inversion of those stories: an agency run by someone who's been the client, priced like the small-business budgets it serves, and reporting the way an owner actually reads, calls, leads, customers, sources attached.
Five years in, Amarillo's business community put $100,000 of EnterPrize grant money behind that model; seven years in, the city voted it Best Advertising & Marketing Agency.
The vendor story
The inversion
The agency that reported "impressions"
Calls, leads, customers, sources attached
The invoice that never tied to an outcome
Priced like the small-business budgets it serves
The account manager who'd never run anything
Run by someone who's been the client
About That Title
What's a Factotum?
The title Walter actually uses, and the most honest one in the industry: factotum, from the Latin for "do everything," historically the person in an operation trusted with all of it. In a founder-led agency, that's not a joke title, it's the org chart, and it's why clients here get answers from someone who can see the whole board: the site, the rankings, the ads, the brand, and how each moves the others.
fac·to·tum · noun
Latin: facere + totum
"Does everything."
The site
The rankings
The ads
The brand
…and how each moves the others.
What He'd Tell You Before You Hire Anyone (Including Us)
The Operator's Three Questions.
We built this agency to survive all three questions from the kind of buyer Walter used to be. How we work.
Free Audit
Talk to the Operator.
The consultation isn't a pitch deck; it's Walter or the team reading your actual market with you. Bring your numbers, or let the free audit pull them first.