Louisville personal injury attorney Sam Aguiar has put up roughly 60 billboards around his city since December 2024, and not one of them pitches his law firm. Instead, the signs carry short messages like “Believe in yourself,” “Good vibes only today” and “Stay strong.” Aguiar designed them himself, and he’s spent more than half a million dollars keeping the campaign going.
The response has been overwhelming. More than 2,000 people have reached out by phone, email, text and social media, including trauma nurses, EMTs, teachers, single moms, and a cancer patient who saw a sign on the drive to chemotherapy. Some new clients have come his way, but Aguiar says business was never the goal. His explanation is refreshingly simple: “It’s not hard to remind people that they’re important, that they’re loved, that they’re making a difference.”
Here on the Suncoast, we know billboards. Driving between Sarasota and Bradenton, the signs are everywhere, from storm shutters to early-bird specials. Aguiar’s project makes you wonder what a little more encouragement on our roads would do for the people stuck in traffic on the way to a hard day. It’s an easy story to smile at, and an easy one to talk about.
So we want to hear from you: if you could put up one motivational billboard anywhere on the Suncoast, what would it say?
