By All Means

In the early 2000s, leading consumers to a brand on the Internet could seem like a mystery, and Nina Hale loved the challenge. After years of working in advertising and digital strategy for other companies, Hale launched her own Minneapolis-based performance marketing agency in 2005. She called it Nina Hale Inc. and specialized in search engine optimization. Clients included UnitedHealth Group, Renewal by Andersen, Land O’Lakes, and other national brands. In 2014, with 50 employees, Nina Hale Inc. converted to an ESOP, an employee stock ownership plan. Hale then began her long goodbye, retiring in 2020 at which time the agency renamed itself Collective Measures. Hale has become a big advocate of the ESOP model. "It's really for people who want to have some sort of legacy, and for people who want to pass wealth on to their team." Today, Hale mentors other founders on exit planning. “if you don’t have an exit plan,” she says, “You don’t have a plan.” Hale talks about the evolution of digital marketing, an