Meet Sam Flaten of Ohio

Today we’d like to introduce you to Sam Flaten.

Hi Sam, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
In 2010, a friend of mine finished an internship at Viamedia, a cable advertising company in Lexington KY, and couldn’t stop talking about how much she enjoyed her time there. I had no career plan at the time, but I needed an internship, and wanted to work somewhere interesting and with a great culture. I applied to see what she’d found there, and I ended up staying four years in a field that had never been on my radar.

Viamedia was full of cable, TV, and radio veterans, and online advertising made little sense to most of them. Most of my job became translation. I explained search, display, video, and mobile in terms a cable seller already understood, then built the tools and processes to sell them. While I was there, and I learned that people take to new ideas faster when someone explains them in their own language.

By 2015 I was ready to take on a bigger challenge. I took a job with Amazon in Seattle because I wanted to build alongside the people setting the pace for the whole industry. The timing wasn’t great. My wife and I had married that May, and her job kept her in Louisville for the first few months, so I started out alone in a city where I knew almost no one, thousands of miles from family. The work filled those months as I was drinking from the proverbial firehose during my onboarding. In my almost 10 years at Amazon, I was a part of 3 departments within the ads org with a variety of roles and responsibilities. The continuously shifting landscape within my team, along with the encouragement at Amazon to move into other departments, helped foster my curiosity and desire for improvement.

Our first daughter was born while we were in Seattle, and we wanted her to grow up close to our families who are located throughout the midwest. My wife grew up in Columbus, and when Amazon offered her a role here in 2020, we moved and I moved to a new remote role within Amazon. Over the next five years I led the program that runs manages all of Amazons unsold advertising inventory on all the properties it owns.Working with a growing team of sharp, driven people, I grew the program’s inventory oversight by almost 800%. We managed trillions of ad impressions seen around the world on Amazon’s most visible products, including display ads on the website and app, Thursday Night Football, and Amazon Music’s free tier.

The work I’m proudest of from that stretch was the work I took on working with non-profit causes. Through Amazon’s pro-bono program, I helped deliver millions of dollars in donated advertising for organizations that could never have paid to reach that many people. The causes included aid for Ukraine, COVID information in multiple countries, a national cybersecurity campaign with the White House, and programs supporting children here and abroad. Those campaigns let me chase hard problems for people who needed help, and put good information in front of hundreds of millions of people.

Amazon also sharpened how I think. I came to believe that every idea deserves to be considered, stress-tested, and improved, and that “good enough” rarely ends the conversation. Somewhere in those years I also learned to be confident enough to be challenged and humble enough to admit when someone else had the better answer.

In 2025 I joined Pacvue, a retail media software company, to build its partner marketing program from scratch with teams at retailers like Amazon, Walmart, Target, TikTok, and Instacart. While I was there, I kept noticing how much corporate communication gets filtered and watered down before it reaches anyone, and how easily customers can tell. Some of the vendor and agency relationships I watched seemed to exist simply to exist, with the paying side getting very little in return. In January 2026, less than a year in, our entire department was eliminated. The hardest part was my direct report, who had grown so much and was close to a promotion she’d earned when she lost her job alongside me. I regret most having led her to that dead end.

In the months after the layoff, I talked with business owners and peers about where their marketing was falling short. I kept hearing that my experience and skillset was rare and useful to them, and by March I had started Reckoner. My first client came through the Worthington Chamber of Commerce. I cleaned up their website so customers could find it and taught them a routine for managing their own Google Ads account. That handoff is the model I wanted: every engagement ends with the client knowing more than when we started and not dependent on a recurring monthly payment or relationship.

The name comes from a Radiohead song about human connection and holding onto what matters while you’re here. It doesn’t map neatly onto my business plan, but it is a cool sounding word in my opinion. The tagline, Marketing for all human beings, carries two ideas for me. Anyone can learn to do marketing well, and it should sound like there’s a person behind it. If you’re paying someone for marketing, companies should feel confident auditing what they pay for, and the vendors they hire should stand behind their work in the open.

The newest piece I’m working on is Reckoner NIL, which helps student athletes understand what they’re worth during their playing days. It runs alongside the consulting work. If it helps even one athlete see their value clearly, I’ll call it a success.

Every step since that internship has come from wanting to figure things out, help the people around me, and hand over what I’ve learned.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It has not been a smooth road, however I do recognize that I’ve been fortunate in the opportunities I’ve had in my career and life. I think very few people experience a smooth road, but it’s how you respond to the rough patches that determine success.

At Amazon, my team lived through several rounds of layoffs where nobody knew who would be affected until the news arrived. We came through most of them intact, and then one round took a member of my team. I had no warning, no input on the decision, and no explanation for why it was that person. Leading a team means feeling accountable for everyone on it, and losing someone without any say made that hard to accept. Pacvue brought a version of the same pain when my department was cut and my direct report lost her job right as she’d earned a promotion. Layoffs are an unfortunate reality in business, but that reality doesn’t make it a fun thing to experience.

Reckoner has brought a different set of challenges. My model is built around engagements that end on purpose, which means I’m always looking for the next client instead of renewing the last one. Self-promotion has never come naturally to me, and putting myself out there week after week has been an adjustment. Getting back into hands-on work has been fun, and it has also shown me how much I miss leading people. I loved building them up, giving advice, and watching them grow in ways I saw coming and many I didn’t. Seeing someone realize their potential is one of the most rewarding parts of any job I’ve had.

Alongside Reckoner, I’ve been applying for full-time roles at companies I believe in. A steady job keeps me growing professionally, and it frees me to choose side projects like the NIL work based on who they help instead of whether they pay the bills. I see the two paths as part of the same plan.

If a struggling business owner takes one thing from my story, I hope it’s this: a good idea gets you started, and effort decides how far it goes. Even full effort sometimes comes up short, and relationships are what close that gap. Mentors, friends, family, former colleagues, and clients have all carried me at different points, alongside my own experience and work. Lean on the people who want to help you, and let them.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
Reckoner is a marketing consultancy for small businesses, startups, and organizations that want to own and run their own digital marketing. Every engagement ends with a client who knows more than when we started and needs me less. I’m also building Reckoner NIL, a tool in private testing that helps college athletes understand their market value, evaluate deals, and negotiate with confidence.

Both are built on fifteen years of learning the business from different sides. Viamedia taught me how digital fits next to traditional media, as I built search, display, video, and mobile into a cable company’s lineup. Amazon showed me the scale of digital marketing, with ads running across its website, apps, devices, Amazon Music, and live sports like Thursday Night Football. Pacvue put me on the retail media side, working with Amazon, Walmart, Target, TikTok, and Instacart.

That range taught me to test everything, either with performance testing or through debate. Welcome challenge, and fortify positions based on data. I bring that same habit to clients: try it, measure it, and keep what works.

The part I’m known for is the operational backbone that makes good marketing repeatable. At Amazon, my team of eight managed trillions of impressions in over 16 countries on over 50 ad channels, after we cut campaign setup from two hours to five minutes and dropped errors by 95%. Small businesses deserve that same thinking at a scale that fits them, built with tools and augmented by AI that they can run on their own.

What I’m proudest of is watching people outgrow their need for me. That includes the Amazon team I hired and developed, and the clients I’ve worked with at Reckoner.

What’s next?
I’m looking forward to continuing to grow professionally. Keeping on top of how AI is impacting the space, and being an active participant to understand the skills and practices that will still matter once AI is fully integrated into digital advertising. There will always be a need for a human element, but where that is and what it looks like will change and grow as time goes on. I want to find the right balance between a 9-5 and growing Reckoner into something more consistent, both with helping businesses and the NIL part.

Pricing:

• NIL help- Always free for student athletes
• NIL for brands – pricing TBD
• Reckoner – engagements start at $2,500

Contact Info:

• Website: https://reckoner.works/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-flaten-b4107025/
• Other: https://nil.reckoner.works/