Christy Lee's Seventh House Marketing: how a former CMO built a Forbes 30 Under 30 agency in under two years

Christy Lee did not start Seventh House Marketing with investors, a big team or a famous client list. She started it in February 2024 with one idea about how brands should make social media content, and design skills she taught herself on YouTube.

Less than two years later, the Chicago agency had worked with more than 50 clients and Lee had been named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for marketing and advertising in the class of 2026. Forbes put the agency's projected revenue for 2025 at between $450,000 and $500,000.

That is small by agency standards. It is also exactly why her story is useful for founders who want to build a services business without outside money.

Christy Lee taught herself design before she ran marketing

Lee says her path into marketing began in college, when she decided on a whim to learn graphic design. She taught herself with YouTube tutorials and online articles rather than formal training.

From there she moved through creative marketing roles and became chief marketing officer of an e-commerce jewelry brand, which Crunchbase lists as Evry Jewels. In that job she oversaw digital marketing from choosing influencer partners to running conversion campaigns, and she built two ambassador programs that added thousands of members to the brand's community, according to her agency's website.

That mix matters to her clients. Chicago coworking space Subtle Haus, where the agency is a member, describes Lee as bringing experience from both the brand side and the influencer side of marketing. She knows what a brand needs from content, what creators can realistically deliver, and how to manage both.

The idea behind Seventh House Marketing

Lee eventually left the corporate job to start her own agency. She named it after astrology: the seventh house stands for partnerships, it nods to Libra, her sign, and seven is her lucky number, the agency's website explains.

The business model is less mystical. Seventh House offers social media strategy, content creation, influencer marketing, email marketing and consulting. Its signature service, as Forbes describes it, is batch content: the agency turns one day's photo shoot or event into a month's worth of social posts.

For brands without a full-time creative team, that solves a familiar problem. Posting every day takes constant production. Batching moves the work into one planned session, then spreads the results across the calendar.

Clients do not even have to be in Chicago. Forbes reports that company heads can send Lee their products, and the agency will produce the batch remotely.

Why batch content works for small brands

Many small consumer brands face the same squeeze. Social media is where customers discover them, but hiring a photographer, a designer and a social media manager full time is out of reach.

Seventh House sits in between. Its website describes the agency as building "social-first campaigns" with strategy, production and reporting under one roof, and pitches its team as specialists in reaching millennial and Gen Z audiences.

The batch approach also suits Lee's background. A single well-planned shoot needs strong creative direction up front, which is the skill she built teaching herself design and running marketing in-house. The more each shoot produces, the better the economics for both the client and the agency.

Growing a bootstrapped agency to 50 clients

Forbes did not report any outside funding for Seventh House. With projected revenue below $500,000 and a client count above 50, the agency is still at an early stage.

Lee has added other ways to reach people. The agency runs a newsletter, a Coffee Club and an online academy that sells templates and courses for people starting a business or a marketing career. Lee also runs her own creator accounts, which keeps her close to the creator side of the industry her clients depend on.

The agency is a member of Subtle Haus, a creative coworking space in Chicago. Lee has described its community as ambitious people from diverse creative fields who support and collaborate with each other, the kind of network a young agency can lean on.

What the Forbes 30 Under 30 recognition means

For an agency founder, a Forbes 30 Under 30 listing is more than a headline. It is a credibility signal that helps win clients who have never heard of you.

Lee has been open about how much it meant. Her agency's About page says leaving corporate life to found her own agency was "a leap that landed me on the 2026 Forbes 30 Under 30 list."

The recognition also sets a higher bar. Clients who arrive because of Forbes will expect the agency to deliver results at a bigger scale than its current size.

What comes next for Christy Lee

The next phase for Seventh House Marketing will be about turning a strong first two years into a durable business. That means keeping the batch model efficient as the client list grows, hiring without losing the quality Lee built her name on, and moving more clients into ongoing work.

There are plenty of social media agencies chasing the same brands. Lee's advantage is that she has sat on every side of the table: as a self-taught designer, as a brand's chief marketing officer and as a creator.

If she can keep that perspective as Seventh House grows, the agency that started with a single idea about content days could become one of the more interesting young marketing businesses in Chicago.