Resilience, discipline, collaboration and drive—all important qualities for athletes—are values that shape former professional basketball player Drew Urquhart’s approach as founder and CEO of Banch Marketing.
Banch was born out of Urquhart’s experience with learning how to run paid digital advertising for his own e-commerce brand, God The Father, a Christian apparel company he founded in 2019. “Other brands would message me and say, ‘Who are you guys using as an agency?’ And I was like, ‘I’m doing it,’” he recalls. When other businesses asked if he would run their ads, he realized it would be a good business model. “Next thing you know, Banch was making more than God The Father,” he says. “It happened organically.”
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Banch runs paid advertising campaigns on Meta and Google, manages influencer partnerships and runs email marketing for e-commerce brands (80 percent of which are clothing brands). Urquhart, who’s based in Maple Ridge, notes that he wasted time and money figuring out digital advertising for God The Father (while being priced out of other agencies)—now, Banch streamlines this process. “Meeting someone when they’re doing $5,000 a month, and now they’re doing $1 million a month,” he says, “that’s probably the most rewarding thing.”
Banch Marketing has doubled in revenue year-over-year, generating $3.5 million in 2024. Since 2020, Banch has helped over 1,000 brands generate leads and sales through paid digital advertising. In the next few years, Urquhart wants to grow the now 20-person team and hopes to more than triple the agency’s revenue while staying attainable for smaller brands. “As we grow, yes, we want bigger clients and better brands,” he explains, “but I still want to be able to work with the ‘mes’ back in 2019.”
What’s one leadership principle you live by?
“Never get too high, never get too low. I feel like a lot of people ride the emotional roller coaster, and it hurts the day-to-day. You only have so much energy to give to someone or some tasks. So, I really try to just maintain a level head and not get too excited, but not get too down.”
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