From Teen Homelessness to Running a Digital Marketing Firm

From homelessness to business leadership

When Greg Daily found himself homeless as a teenager, becoming a successful entrepreneur seemed impossible. At 19, in 2001, he spent six months in Minneapolis sleeping wherever he could, asking friends and acquaintances if he could stay on their sofas and, at times, making do with a kitchen floor.

Short of money and struggling to find stable work, Daily says those years were shaped by hardship but also by an early exposure to business. He recalls riding with his grandfather, who sold brooms and cleaning equipment from the back of a van, and learning a lesson that stayed with him: "Businesses feed families."

Now 43, Daily is the founder and boss of Denver-based digital marketing firm Science in Advertising. Launched in 2019, the company helps clients ranging from Fortune 500 businesses to small family-owned retailers manage online advertising across platforms including Google, Facebook and Instagram.

Family struggles and education

Daily says his family life in Denver was "broken" while he was growing up. His parents divorced when he was young, and he was raised by a single mother. After his grandfather died when Daily was 10, his mother struggled to feed four children and made money by selling clothes and jewellery.

As he entered adulthood, Daily moved around the US, spending time in Texas with his grandmother and with his father before falling into couch surfing. He says the turning point came when he travelled to Colorado for a construction job and met his future wife at a church. More than two decades later, they are still married.

Seeing that his wife was earning more money while working fewer hours, Daily decided in 2008 to return to college. After studying journalism at Metropolitan State University of Denver, he worked for a local newspaper. But as smartphones and the internet disrupted print journalism, he reassessed his path and moved to England to complete a two-year creative writing diploma at Oxford University.

Building a company around risk

After returning to the US, Daily moved into digital marketing. When he and his wife prepared to launch Science in Advertising, they calculated they had about six to eight months of savings before running out of money. He describes that period as terrifying and says he was in tears.

What worried him most was not the work itself, but the uncertainty around everything else: whether the business would succeed, whether he would fail, and whether he would still be able to provide for his family. Rather than ignore those fears, he built a philosophy around them, using the phrase "failure is always an option" to guide decision-making.

Daily says that mindset helps his team approach risk more realistically. Instead of pretending failure is impossible, he argues that businesses should assume things can go wrong, identify where problems may arise and reduce the damage if they do.

Pride in helping family businesses

The company has grown its client base, and Daily says he is especially proud to help small, family-owned businesses like the ones his mother and grandfather ran. He says their success feels personal because it reflects the kind of background he comes from.

US digital marketing expert Shama Hyder says succeeding in the field is difficult because the industry is crowded, competition is intense, and platforms and consumer behaviour keep changing. She said building a thriving agency in that environment deserves recognition.

Family remains central to Daily's ambitions. He says his eight-year-old son is "very engineering minded," and the pair have been watching online videos about people making money from selling 3D-printed items after buying a 3D printer together.