Hilbrich Group

Acquisition and leadership of marketing communications companies to bring more and better services to clients.

CEO | Founder | Investor l Business Turnaround Expert l Author l Coach

I have combined four decades of experience into instant insight. To help businesses create good times out of bad and to learn from the mistakes I made to help amplify their success.

Executive Coach

Global organization of company Presidents who believe in education, idea exchange and family work/life balance. Have held many officer, day chair and global champion roles.

Member

The Sandbox Agency

Our vision is to create a global challenger agency. Sandbox not only creates great work and executes flawlessly—we focus on the important and undervalued virtue in the agency business of playing together nicely in the sandbox. After growing from a startup to $62MM in revenue, Sandbox successfully combined with MERGE in March 2020.

Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO

Brandimage - Desgrippes & LAGA

Acquired Brandimage - Desgrippes & Laga, one of the world’s largest design firms, was formed from the combination of Desgrippes Gobé, a global design firm, and laga, a leading American design and innovation agency. With a team of experts in the U.S. Europe and Asia, Brandimage offers holistic services designed to deliver rich emotional brand experiences for consumers, from brand strategy and consumer insight, to brand identity, industrial design, package design, graphics, innovation, interactive, retail experience and architecture in one integrated offering. Brandimage was acquired by Schawk in October 2011.

Owner and CEO

The Marketing Store

Global promotional marketing communications agency with offices in the U.S., Canada, Brazil, U.K., France, Australia and China serving McDonald's, Nissan, Diageo, Vodafone and Coca Cola. Having created the awesome team that grew The Marketing Store Canada from a startup to $25MM in revenue, earned TMS global agency of the year three years in a row and achieved a top 5 independent agency status in Canada, I moved to the role of Global President of the company.

Global President

Leo Burnett

Started my career at Leo Burnett in Chicago and moved on to Burnett offices in Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Canada in various senior leadership positions while growing the agency and client business for Kellogg's, Proctor & Gamble, Kraft, Heinz, Fruit of the Loom, Glad and McDonald's. Although I loved working with many major multinational clients, I especially enjoyed successfully leading smaller, more entrepreneurial offices in Leo Burnett International. Having experienced helping clients navigate the crumbling of the Berlin Wall and executing turnarounds in smaller offices in Scandinavia, I developed my deep love of the agency business and the people who work so hard to make it tick.

Senior Vice President

CEO | Entrepreneur | Investor | Author | Executive Coach

Leaders need perspective and broader thinking to create success. I can help you achieve that success. 

After almost three decades as a CEO, entrepreneur and investor, I have navigated organizations large and small, struggled through recessions and successfully managed companies to success who were once drowning in poor management or deeply in debt. I have grown business organically and through acquisition; and I have exited two companies as an entrepreneur.

I have seen a lot. I'm not perfect. I have struggled and laid awake many nights to try to figure out the right answer. 

My passion is to serve. That is why I have combined four decades of experience into days of learning for you. To help you create good times out of bad, to help you learn from the mistakes I made and to help you amplify your success. 

I will engage in your success. I will help you turn your company around. I will sell your company. I will invest in or purchase your company. 

If I have entered the conversation you are already having in your head, I would be privileged to chat with you.

John Hilbrich

Miodrag O. Markovic

CEO of Vacabee 🐝 | Combining the travel industry with web3 and blockchain |

• Passionate about travel, technology, AI, blockchain, and entrepreneurship.

• CEO of Vacabee, winner of Miami’s Best AI Start-Up Award 2025 by Evergreen Awards. We are a travel and lifestyle company that combines technology and AI.

On LinkedIn, I share my journey in entrepreneurship, connect with professionals, and explore investment opportunities. With a background in finance, investing, and management, I focus on building strong teams and encouraging innovation.

Right now, I am focused on Vacabee, an AI-powered lifestyle platform that started with travel but goes beyond that.

We provide exclusive access to flights, hotels, restaurants, gyms, and more. What makes us different is Mr. Bee, a personal AI concierge. He helps you travel smarter today. Tomorrow, he can organize your calendar, pay bills, assist with networking, read your RSS feeds, and even more because we don't limit ourselves when it comes to innovating to help the user. 

If we have same interests, or you want to learn how Vacabee is building a smarter way to live, let’s connect.

*Everything I share on LinkedIn is my personal opinion and should not be taken as professional advice.*

CEO & Co-Founder

Vacabee combines two rapidly growing industries: travel and blockchain. Our goal is to offer customers the most affordable yet premium experience by merging these two sectors. With Web3 and blockchain, we can offer our clients exclusive access to the most affordable prices for travel, covering accommodation, activities, car rentals, worldwide tours, and more. These deals are not available to the general public. As the first platform on Web3 to provide a "Travel and Earn" experience, we recently introduced our latest feature, the AI Travel Coach. For more information, feel free to check out Vacabee's social media channels and our website, or simply send me a direct message.

Anyone can launch a product. Very few can keep it alive.

It’s not enough for the product to work.
Everything that supports it has to keep working too.

If privacy is weak, users walk away.
If culture gets toxic, teams burn out under pressure.
If communication starts to lack clarity, goals scatter and progress slows.
If leadership is absent, momentum fades and direction disappears.
If value is missing, customers leave for something that delivers more.

Pay attention to these, they’re common issues, but never small ones.

Audit and strengthen security.
Hire well and remove toxicity fast.
Keep communication clear and consistent.
Lead visibly and stay accountable.
Talk to users and build what matters.

As we get ready to launch our personalized voice AI concierge, I remind myself that launch is only a moment.

What matters is how we maintain the standards that follow.

Because launch creates momentum, but consistency keeps it.

📌 Join the waitlist of the world’s 1st speech-to-speech AI concierge & try the prototype👇 | Innovating Tech, Travel & Lifestyle | CEO of Vacabee 🐝

People love to label who can and can’t make it.

The reality is, those labels rarely have anything to do with the outcome.

I say, don’t ever let anyone limit you like that.

Sure, some people have natural talent.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t learn, grow, and become exceptional in your own way.

Talent helps.

But dedication is a choice.

And honestly, plenty of people have talent but never use it.

So why should you hold yourself back?

This is a recent throwback of me on stage at Conf3rence in Dortmund. 👇

It reminded me how far you can go when you believe in yourself and when you have a team that believes with you.

Vacabee exists because we refused to be defined by other people’s limits, and moments like this show why that mindset matters for all of us.

It’s proof of what a team can achieve when no one lets limits hold them back.

So, keep choosing the unfamiliar stage, the new challenge, and the bigger vision.

You'll make it!

Your smartest people aren’t producing the results you expected.

Because talent without teamwork is just expensive potential.

This quote of Michael Jordan sits on my office wall for a reason: 👇

“Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.”

I trained in basketball for 18 years, and Michael Jordan was the blueprint.
That quote shaped how I think about teams long before I ever became a CEO.

Talent is the entry point. It gets you started.
But alone, it has a ceiling.

My experience taught me something simple but hard-earned:

High performers don’t win big because of skill.

They win big because they know how to think and move together and challenge each other.

My team at Vacabee is not just a group of talented people blindly executing tasks.

They’re a team where every strength multiplies the next.

So:

Reward collaboration over heroics.
Don’t let top talent operate in isolation.
Make information move as fast as decisions.
Fix misalignment immediately, it never solves itself.

P.S. Do you have anything in your office that keeps you motivated?

A quote every leader should read:

“When you were made a leader, you weren’t given a crown. You were given the responsibility to bring out the best in others.”
— Jack Welch

It captures something I’ve learned as a CEO:

Leadership isn’t a symbol of importance.
It is a responsibility you choose every day.

The moment people look to you for direction, your role becomes clear.
You are there to elevate others, not only yourself.

That has been my focus at Vacabee as we move closer to launch.
Not creating tension.
Not adding pressure.

Simply building the clarity, trust, and environment where talented people can do work they are proud of.

If I could offer one piece of advice to anyone stepping into leadership, it would be this:

Protect your culture.
Communicate clearly.
Empower, don’t control.
Understand your people.

And keep being human.

Don’t let titles distort you or damage your culture, your business, or your best people.

Tech that only impresses your team won’t impress your users.

You probably have a million things going on.

So does everyone else.

I'm a husband. Father. CEO. Always traveling for work.

Everything demanding attention, all at the same time.

To manage it, I need a strong routine and the right tools.

With powerful tech, AI can be the answer.

But in reality, most tools just make us do more work.

That’s why I made sure all these common struggles were at the center of everything we built.

Because I’m tired of tech that goes nowhere.

That’s how Mr. Bee was born.

A personal voice AI concierge, the first that can actually do stuff instead of you.

Book hotels, flights, restaurants, gyms… just with your voice.

It remembers your preferences, seats, vibe, budget, dietary restrictions, and more.

Soon, it will go even further.

A true lifestyle concierge, capable of handling bills, errands, etc.

I think technology should work for us. Not the other way around.

If you’re an entrepreneur too, my advice is simple:

Start with the real user problem. Solve that first. Everything else follows.

What if being brilliant meant enjoying the journey, not just the results?

I have this quote on my office wall:

“Creativity is intelligence having fun.”
- Albert Einstein

A simple reminder to my team and me that our best ideas don’t always come from strict plans. 

I purposely put it there to counter the most common toxic behaviors in business culture.

Both employees and leaders can fall into it: forcing work, excellence, and results.

It has worked for us immensely, because we realized that in work, in leadership, in life:

Innovation thrives when curiosity is free.
Teams perform best when creativity is encouraged, not constrained.
Solutions appear when we step back, mix things up, or take a different perspective.

Don’t be so hard on your team and yourself to be perfect.

Sometimes, brilliance comes from enjoying the process, not just chasing the outcome.

We started Vacabee because we kept asking a simple question: why does life feel so complicated sometimes?

Sitting with my co-founders, Maximilian Schmidt and Denis Lulić, talking about what we’ve built, I realized this isn’t just a product.

It’s every late night, every tough decision, every moment of figuring out how to make something genuinely useful for people.

One thing echoed through every discussion: "You need to empower the people who use what you create."

I think we did it. 

Mr. Bee solves problems we all face, planning, organizing, juggling a hundred small details, but in a way that actually works. 

Travel, lifestyle, everyday tasks… it’s all handled through a personal voice AI concierge.

The thing that excites me most isn’t the tech. It’s seeing the impact it has on people’s lives. 

That’s what makes all the hard work worth it.

But enough from me, watch the video. 👇

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John Hilbrich

Miodrag O. Markovic

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