JDA Worldwide CEO Recognized in IBJ’s Forty Under 40

Press Release: JDA Worldwide

April 14, 2025 

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — JDA Worldwide is proud to announce that its Chief Executive Officer, Chance Benbow, has been named to the Indianapolis Business Journal’s prestigious 2025 Forty Under 40 list, recognizing the region’s most accomplished young leaders who are making a significant impact in business and the community.

“This year’s recipients are tremendous individuals, and I am honored to be named a 2o25 IBJ Forty Under 40 alongside them,” said Chance Benbow, CEO of JDA Worldwide. “While this is a personal award, it speaks to the courageous work JDA does for our clients around the world, across the nation, and right here in Indianapolis.”

Benbow, who became CEO of JDA Worldwide in 2023, has led the full-service marketing agency in a period of strategic growth, innovation, and increased national recognition. Under his leadership, JDA has expanded its client portfolio, launched new services and practices, and strengthened its reputation as a purpose-driven agency that delivers extraordinary results for its clients. 

The IBJ’s Forty Under 40 class is selected through a highly competitive process that evaluates nominees based on professional achievements, leadership, and community involvement. The 2025 honorees will be celebrated at a special awards event and featured in the IBJ’s April 14 issue.  

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JDA Worldwide is a full-service marketing agency serving category-leading brands since 2003. JDA specializes in brand, creative, digital, paid media, and public relations with offices in Indianapolis, Washington D.C., and Nashville. JDA is a portfolio company of Prolific.

Prolific Connects Israeli Startups to Indiana

Prolific is proud to be at the center of a growing international story—one that bridges global innovation with Midwest opportunity. The Indianapolis Business Journal recently highlighted our Chairman and CEO, Brad Benbow, and JDA Worldwide President, Johnnie Moore, for their leadership in forging a new relationship between Indiana’s business community and Israeli startups through a strategic partnership with the venture fund Iron Nation.

As the IBJ story explains, Iron Nation was created in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 attacks on Israel to support the country’s resilient tech ecosystem. The first fund raised $20 million to invest in promising Israeli startups across the health, tech, software, and medical sectors. Iron Nation is raising a second fund—targeting $100 million—and Indiana is poised to play a key role in that growth.

Brad Benbow saw a powerful alignment between Indiana’s business strengths and Israel’s entrepreneurial energy. “Indiana and Israel are similar in size and complementary in sectors like technology, ag-tech, and life sciences,” Benbow told the IBJ. “For Israeli startups looking to expand into the U.S., Indiana is an obvious fit.”

Prolific’s strategic interest in Iron Nation is more than financial. It’s part of a broader mission to support bold, values-aligned companies that solve meaningful problems at scale. This mission is shared by Johnnie Moore, who helped spark the relationship with Iron Nation’s managing partners during a trip to Israel. “It was a clear alignment of missions,” said Iron Nation co-founder Gil Friedlander. “Johnnie brought purpose to the partnership—which made it more than just business.”

The article underscores a broader opportunity: Israeli founders increasingly look beyond traditional U.S. tech hubs. As Iron Nation leaders toured Indiana and met with stakeholders like Elevate Ventures, IEDC, and the Central Indiana Corporate Partnership, they recognized the state’s thriving innovation ecosystem, business-friendly culture, and global potential.

Prolific is proud to serve as a bridge—connecting capital, strategy, and opportunity between Israel and Indiana. We believe this is just the beginning of a powerful pipeline of innovation that flows both ways, and we’re honored the IBJ chose to highlight this unfolding story.

Read the full article on IBJ →

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Prolific combines the best traits of a consulting firm, marketing agency, and capital provider, helping unlock opportunities and maximize growth for emerging brands. To learn more, visit prolifichq.com and LinkedIn. 

Indianapolis-based Prolific the only Indiana company on Inc. 5000 for eighth consecutive year

Press Release:  

August 13, 2024 

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — Prolific, the Growth Firm, proudly announces its inclusion in the Inc. 5000 for the eighth consecutive year. This remarkable milestone distinguishes Prolific as the only company headquartered in Indiana to make this prestigious list every year since 2017. 

The Inc. 5000 list recognizes the fastest-growing private companies in America based on revenue growth over a three-year span. Securing a spot for eight years in a row underscores Prolific’s unparalleled growth, longevity, and resilience in a competitive market. 

“This recognition is a testament not only to the dedication of our team but also to the unmatched growth and impact we’ve delivered for our visionary clients year after year,” says Brad Benbow, Chairman and CEO of Prolific. “Our business is growth; our eight years on this list demonstrates our track record of relentless innovation.” 

In 2003, Benbow co-founded JDA Worldwide, the full-service marketing and communications firm that later became the foundation for Prolific’s portfolio of companies. This portfolio also includes Conquer, an Atlanta-based national media agency, Carolina-based Chernoff Newman, and Prolific Capital, the firm’s investment and acquisition arm. Prolific’s team operates from ten offices across seven states and Washington D.C. 

“One of the greatest joys of my job is going through the Inc. 5000 list,” says Mike Hofman, who recently joined Inc. as editor-in-chief. “To see all of the intriguing and surprising ways that companies are transforming sectors, from health care and AI to apparel and pet food, is fascinating for me as a journalist and storyteller. Congratulations to this year’s honorees, as well, for growing their businesses fast despite the economic disruption we all faced over the past three years, from supply chain woes to inflation to changes in the workforce.” 

Prolific has experienced incredible growth under the leadership of Brad Benbow, a two-time Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award finalist. In the past five years, Prolific’s revenue has increased fourfold, and its team has expanded by 330%, showcasing significant organizational success. Most notably, we have empowered our world-class non-profit partners to raise an astounding $5.1B, demonstrating Prolific’s impact and commitment to meaningful partnerships. 

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Prolific combines the best traits of a consulting firm, marketing agency, and capital provider, helping unlock opportunities and maximize growth for emerging brands. To learn more, visit prolifichq.com and LinkedIn. 

5 tips for planning, crafting, and executing an effective strategic plan.

Crafting the overarching strategy for your organization is no small task. Your mission and vision are significant, so translating them to a comprehensive short- and long-term strategy is challenging. There is fear of missed opportunities, of not implementing solutions for low-hanging revenue or impact up shots, and a general desire to ensure your strategy doesn’t exclude critical functions that drive business performance.

Strategic plans should be the backstop to quell these fears, but they often come up short. At their best, strategic plans can be detailed road maps for success that are as focused on high-impact strategies as they are on short-term tactics. Unfortunately, strategic plans usually end up being placed on shelves—50-page printed PowerPoint decks with research you already knew and ideas that have no implementation plan. They might provide directional guardrails, but usually don’t include strategies to maximize the performance metrics you care about most.

Find a good partner.

Getting outside analysis and perspective on your business is valuable. It takes trust and vulnerability, but walking through this process with a team that can shake off bias and look at your business objectively is critical. A partner experienced in the world of strategy will be able to see beyond obstacles and distractions to recommend bold strategies.

Get immersed and share, share, share!

Most strategic plans start off with some form of a discovery meeting where leadership shares pertinent information with a facilitator or a strategic planning partner. This is helpful, but only the start. Discovery meetings should cover a wide range of topics beyond your history and short-term goals. A good partner will ask hard questions, and at times, force alignment within a healthy leadership team.

Insist on research insights you don’t already know.

Too often, consultants regurgitate information you already had or already know. Identifying unknown insights or those that lead to innovative thinking are much more valuable. Find a research partner who contributes more than the first few pages of Google results.

Generate strategies that go big.

Within typical strategic plans, most “strategies” are simply areas the organization should focus on, or obvious ideas that needed executed. Effective strategic plans include bold strategies that are tethered to revenue or impact—ideas that move the needle and make way for market share capture, new customers, or expanded impact to one’s mission. When it comes to crafting strategies, dream big.

Include tie backs and projections.

The biggest missing piece to most strategic plans is the execution road map. Consultants are notorious for executing light research, presenting new strategies and ideas, and packaging it up in a PowerPoint. That approach is not enough. Effective strategic plans have detailed timing and priority projections, assignments for who should own and execute strategies, and confirmation that each strategy is affordable and financially responsible. Without this important step, business leaders are left to figure out implementation and execution of strategies over the short and long term.

By following these tips, your organization will experience the benefit of a roadmap that does more than sit on a shelf after one review. The deliverable will become a document you reference regularly and serve as the driving force in accomplishing the goals and growth you’ve worked so hard to achieve.

CEO “personas” who undertake a strategic plan.

Strategic planning. All CEOs or business leaders have gone through this process in some form or fashion. As a firm focused on this important process and the impact it can have for our partners, Prolific has teamed up with a variety of CEOs and leaders from multiple sectors and backgrounds who are committed to exponential growth.

Our partners often ask us how they should engage us throughout the strategic planning process. Ultimately, strategic plans should serve as a roadmap for accomplishing the growth goals an organization is committed to reaching in the short and long term. Strategic plans should possess insightful research, bold strategies, and tactics to execute and implement the strategic plan. The journey to an effective strategic plan is almost always accomplished through the guidance of an effective leader. Below are three personas of CEOs who go through the strategic planning process to achieve success.

The Visionary CEO

The Visionary CEO understands his or her vision and mission intimately. They value the impact they provide their target audiences and know their own people inside and out. They also understand that new, bold strategies to empower their vision and mission are critical for on-going success. They’re not insecure in going through the strategic planning process, and don’t feel pressure to have every strategy figured out in pursuit of their goals. Visionary CEOs don’t say things like, “yeah, we’ve tried that already.” Instead, they are steadfast in their focus and commitment to their organization’s purpose while pursuing new ideas from multiple people to maximize the metrics they care about most. This CEO is open-minded and wants to hear new, data-driven, fresh ideas on the strategies her or his team will commit to over the course of 1–3 years. They value outside advisors and expect them to provide high-impact strategies that will move the needle for the organization.

The Hands-On CEO

The Hands-OnCEO is intimately involved in the strategy development process. Often, they possess a specific focus on what strategies they want included in their strategic plan. Hands-On CEOs even have an idea of how they want their strategies executed tactically. Less willing to budge on his or her own strategies, the Hands-On CEO is mildly interested in new ideas that could drive greater gains, but more interested in seeing their own ideas further built out so they can come to life and be executed efficiently. They understand that locking in a precise strategy and direction for their team is crucial for continued prosperity and having an outside partner to develop this roadmap is necessary and important. They will dig in to the details of strategy development, giving direct and specific thoughts for the strategies that need to be crafted in order to influence the way strategies are developed. Because they are only focused on one or two key metrics for success, the Hands-OnCEO will be very clear on expectations and outcomes the strategic plan must accomplish and is 100% invested in the whole process.

The Collaborator CEO

This CEO strikes a great balance between providing strong vision and direction, while also remaining curious to innovative initiatives that can advance their business. They’re committed to remaining strategic, not tactical. They value vision and strategy, but also understand that downstream tactics and executions turn ideas into reality. The CollaboratorCEO will participate in strategy development but provide space for strategists and researchers to think and dream. They will lead and direct while offering wide guardrails for big ideas to emerge. The CollaboratorCEO will be highly involved in the first 20% and the last 20% of the strategic plan process, providing great expectations and confirming that the end deliverable meets their needs.

The great thing about these strategic planning personas is that they all produce a successful end result. Whether you engage more intimately, provide vision and delegate, or act as a player-coach, strategic plans are foundational deliverables all organizations who want to maximize their goals should possess.

5 Signs You Need a New Strategic Plan

Strategic planning is an essential part of every organization. The process may seem daunting, and even a bit scary, but the best results often come from the hardest challenges. Strategic plans come in many different forms, shapes, and sizes, and typically range from 3-5 years of goals and action items. If you’re in that 3–5-year threshold or haven’t “completed” your strategic plan yet, when do you know it’s time for a new strategic plan?

1) You haven’t updated your strategic plan in years.

Your strategic plan was your guidepost at some point. You have one, and you’ve skated by for years without rethinking your strategies, goals, or objectives for your business. You’re probably doing okay without it but updating your strategic plan can take your organization to the next level. No risk = no reward.

2) You have a strategic plan but haven’t touched it in 6+ months.

You just went through completing a strategic plan, but you haven’t looked at it in months. Maybe you regret it. There are a lot of reasons strategic plans don’t work out. Sometimes, they’re boring slide decks with no action items, don’t hold anyone accountable for execution, and don’t tell you anything you didn’t already know.

There’s also a chance business fluctuates, and your strategic plan is now irrelevant. The goals no longer match up with your vision, and the company has pivoted. If that’s the case – it’s worth spending the extra time and money to get your strategic plan to where it needs to be.

3) There are no attainable KPIs or direct ROI attached to your strategic plan execution.

A strategic plan may include tactics and action items – but doesn’t always tell you what key performance indicators (KPI’s) or what sort of ROI is directly attributed to it. Strategic plans typically aren’t cheap, making success metrics incredibly important in measuring your plan’s impact on your organization. Ultimately, a strategic plan should pay for itself with the results it induces. If your strategic plan includes any “best practices” or tactics that can be found on the first search engine result page (SERP), it’s time to invest in a new strategic plan.

4) Your strategic plan isn’t driving revenue, relevancy, or impact for your organization.

Typically, our partners’ goals can all relate to maximizing their revenue, relevancy, and impact. Our Strategic Growth Plans goal is that, when executed, directly tie into fulfilling your mission, vision, and values. Whatever your growth goals or metrics may be, your strategic plan must be working towards them. Misalignment is a silent destroyer of strategic plan execution. A good strategic planning partner will help you identify, amplify, and communicate your organization’s growth goals, ensuring misalignment and miscommunication won’t be a problem when it’s time for implementation.

5) Your strategic plan is too restrictive.

When crafting strategic plans for our partners, we practice having an abundance mindset. Instead of focusing on creating guard rails, outlining what you shouldn’t do or what needs to be eliminated from your organization, we focus on what to amplify. Our goal is to help our partners continuously develop what is already working and build upon that foundation to accelerate growth. Instead of telling you what you can’t do, we focus on what you can do.

A good strategic plan is your playbook for exponential growth for your organization. It should clearly outline your goals, your current state, and detail what you need to do to achieve the success you’re looking for.


Prolific has helped hundreds of partners worldwide grow exponentially through growth strategy, growth capital, and growth performance. If you’re interested in learning more about Prolific, go to Growth Practices, see our Success Stories, or tell us about your growth metric.

What’s a Strategic Growth Plan?

You’re in a place many business leaders have found themselves in before. You’re stuck. Your growth is incremental when it should be exponential. You’ve been doing the same things with the same results for too many years. You have an incredible vision for your organization, but your performance is lagging. You’re tired of being your industry’s best-kept secret. Strategic Growth Plans change all of those paradigms.

Strategic Growth Plans are a part of our growth strategy practice. They are a robust guiding document that captures your five-year vision and turns it into an actionable plan for aggressive gains in the metrics that matter most to your organization. You dream big and cast your vision. We listen intently, dream alongside you, and begin to discover ways to maximize your revenue, relevancy, and impact.

What a Strategic Growth Plan is Not:
  • A 40-slide PowerPoint presentation that sits in your files, unopened for months
  • Research from the first 20 results on Google
  • A one-size-fits-all templated plan
  • Made for one person in your organization to utilize
  • Rigid, strict, not flexible as business changes
What a Strategic Growth Plan Is:
  • A detailed five-year plan focused on exponential growth
  • Extensive research on you, your industry, and your competitors
  • Custom to your business
  • Accessible to anyone who needs it
  • Flexible, ebbs and flows as your business continues to grow and change
  • Includes strategies that are affordable and responsible

A typical Strategic Growth Plan takes six months to craft, write, and deliver and has six different steps to complete. It’s a pretty easy timeline to remember: six months + six steps = a future of success.

The Six Steps of a Strategic Growth Plan
  1. 1) Immersion
  2. 2) Research
  3. 3) Strategy Development
  4. 4) Tie Backs
  5. 5) Delivery + Presentation
  6. 6) Implementation + Execution (Optional)
1) Immersion

Prolific Immersions are 2-3 day discovery meetings with you and the most important shareholders from your team. We ask questions, conduct workshops, and facilitate discussions to understand your team dynamic, your overall company goals, and growth expectations, both immediate and long-term. From our experience, the most successful Immersions happen when both parties share boldly and freely.

2) Research

Our research aims to do three main things: find insights hiding in plain sight, answer questions you’ve been wrestling with for a long time, and tell you things you didn’t already know. We occasionally engage with our Growth Network to help us conduct further research if needed. Conducting exhaustive, sound research is crucial for our strategists to make successful recommendations for growth strategies.

3) Strategy Development

Strategy development is typically the halfway point in our process – and where the real magic happens. Once we have thoroughly reviewed our notes and takeaways from the immersion and conducted our research, strategy development begins. Prolific’s strategy team handcrafts each strategy and recommends action items based on research, your business’ financials, and your team’s capability to complete them. Each strategy is carefully aligned with a goal in your organization to further your growth. When strategy development is complete, we pause, check-in, and present them in their totality before continuing with the Strategic Growth Plan process.

4) Tie Backs

Tiebacks are exactly what they sound like – we ensure every strategy is affordable and achievable, that someone will be responsible for them, and have a timing and action plan of when and how to complete it over the course of five years. This is where most consultants stop and where we are just getting started.

We collaborate with your CFO to determine how each strategy will be affordable and financially responsible relative to your organization’s financial position. We will never suggest a strategy that’s too expensive.

Each strategy requires an internal champion. Who will be in charge of overseeing the strategy to completion and measuring its success? Different leaders are often selected to lead different strategies that align with their departments, department goals, and general area of expertise. It’s impossible for just one person to be the pinnacle of success for a Strategic Growth Plan – it is a team, and all-company, effort.

Strategy champions are never left hanging with just the tactics and affordability plan: our tiebacks include a timing + action plan that maps out when each strategy should begin, when progress should be made, and when it should be completed.

With a clear path to affording the strategy, a leader in championing it, and a mapped-out timing + action, each strategy sets you up for lasting success. It’s as easy as one, two, three.

5) Delivery + Presentation

We don’t just conduct research, develop strategies, and send it to you tied in a bow to go on your merry way. We schedule a time to go through every page of this robust delivery. We review and answer any questions you may have on our research, strategies, or implementation tactics. You can also opt to have an executive summary review for a bite-sized delivery.

6) Implementation + Execution (Optional)

Our SGP’s are specifically designed to be implemented on your own, without a partner. While implementation + execution of your Strategic Growth Plan is not typically included in our partnership’s first phase, many of our partners engage us to implement and measure their plans’ success. What better partner than the one who knows your business inside and out?


Prolific has helped hundreds of partners worldwide grow exponentially through growth strategy, growth capital, and growth performance. If you want to learn more about Prolific, go to Growth Services, see our Growth Stories, or tell us about your growth metric.