We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Michael Pitts. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Michael below.

Michael, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today One of the toughest things about progressing in your career is that there are almost always unexpected problems that come up – problems that you often can’t read about in advance, can’t prepare for, etc. Have you had such and experience and if so, can you tell us the story of one of those unexpected problems you’ve encountered?

One of the most unexpected problems I’ve faced in my career happened early on when I was building my marketing consultancy, The Gentleman of Marketing. I had just landed some of my first real clients which were a chiropractor, lawyer, a nurse academy, a mortgage broker, and I was confident I could deliver results.
I had the strategies mapped out, the funnels designed, the pitch was clean. What I didn’t fully anticipate was how differently business owners experience marketing compared to how marketers think about it.
I was managing a lead generation campaign for a client and we were actually generating solid leads. But the client was frustrated. Their sales weren’t closing, and in their mind, that was my problem. I remember the moment vividly. I got a call where they essentially blamed the entire marketing effort for their sales team’s inability to follow up and convert. It felt like the ground shifted under me. I had done my job, but I was being measured against a metric I hadn’t agreed to and couldn’t fully control.
What made it worse was that I hadn’t clearly defined the scope of what “success” looked like at the outset. I assumed we were aligned. We weren’t. This was a big lesson that changed how I approached business.
First, I stopped being defensive and got genuinely curious about their sales process. I sat down with them and mapped out the full pipeline from the moment a lead came in to the moment it either closed or went cold. What I found was a massive gap in their follow-up system. Leads were sitting untouched for days. So I shifted gears and built them a basic CRM workflow using Agile CRM ( I have my own now) and wrote follow-up email sequences that their team could execute with minimal effort.
The campaign didn’t just generate leads after that, it started closing business. They were closing at 34% with each customer valued at 5k per deal. This was up from their 10% close rate with bought lead lists. More importantly, I walked away with a lesson that completely changed how I onboard clients to this day: marketing doesn’t end at the lead. It ends at the sale.
If you want to be held accountable for results, you have to have a hand in the entire process or clearly define in writing where your responsibility begins and ends.
That experience made me a better consultant, a better communicator, and honestly, a more valuable partner to every client I’ve worked with since.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My name is Michael C Pitts, and I run The Gentleman of Marketing, a digital marketing consultancy based in Orlando, Florida. But before I get into what we do, I think it’s worth giving you a little context on who I am, because honestly, the business is just an extension of the person I’ve become.
I didn’t come from a marketing background in the traditional sense. I grew up around entrepreneurship. My parents ran their own businesses so the idea of building something was always in my DNA, even when I didn’t have the tools or the direction yet. I bounced around for years. Tried MLMs, ran a basketball training program, even co-owned an ABA basketball team. Each thing I did taught me something, but nothing felt like it until I stumbled into marketing.
And I do mean stumbled. I started studying it on the side, getting certifications, reading everything I could get my hands on. Then one day I realized I wasn’t just learning this stuff I was obsessed with it. The psychology behind why people buy, the systems that drive decisions, the way a well-crafted message can completely change the trajectory of a business. That’s when I knew.
So I went out and did what a lot of first-time consultants do. I walked into businesses cold, pitched my services, and got told no. A lot. But I kept going, sharpened my pitch, refined my approach, and eventually built a real foundation.
At The Gentleman of Marketing, I work with service-based businesses dentists, law firms, mortgage brokers, Salons etc. helping them generate leads, convert those leads into paying clients, and build the systems that make growth repeatable. Not just a one-off campaign, but an actual engine.
The services we offer span the full digital lifecycle: website design and development, lead generation, paid advertising, CRM automation, AI assistants, social media strategy, and unified marketing analytics. That last one is something I take seriously. Most business owners are flying blind they know they’re spending money on marketing but have no clear picture of what’s actually working. We fix that.
I’ve personally had conversations with over 1,000 business owners about their marketing, sales, and automation challenges. That’s not a stat I throw around to sound impressive, it’s the reason I approach client work the way I do. I’ve heard every version of “I tried ads and they didn’t work” or “I built a website and nothing happened.” I know where the real gaps are, and they’re almost never where people think they are.
What makes us different is that we don’t just run campaigns and send you a report. We get into the business. We look at your entire pipeline — from the first time someone sees your brand to the moment they sign a contract or book an appointment — and we identify where things are breaking down. Then we build systems to fix it.
The name The Gentleman of Marketing isn’t just branding. It represents a standard — thoroughness, clarity, professionalism, and a genuine commitment to the client’s outcome. I’m not here to upsell you on services you don’t need. I’m here to help you grow, and I want you to understand exactly how and why every decision we make together serves that goal.
Honestly, the moments that stick with me aren’t the big pitch wins they’re the conversations after results start coming in. When a client who was barely getting traction suddenly has a pipeline of qualified prospects and knows their marketing is working. When a business owner who felt overwhelmed by the digital landscape tells me they finally feel in control of it.
That’s what the work is really about. Building something real for people who are great at what they do but just need the right system behind them to get the clients they deserve.
If you’re a business owner who’s been burned by agencies that overpromised and underdelivered, I get it. That’s part of why I built this company the way I did. We’re built on transparency — you’ll always know what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and what results it’s producing.
If you’re just starting to explore marketing help, or you’ve tried things before and they haven’t worked, I’d love to have that conversation. Not a sales call. Just a real conversation about your business and whether we’re the right fit for each other.
That’s how we operate. And that’s what I want people to know about The Gentleman of Marketing.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

The biggest pivot of my life wasn’t a business decision it was a mindset decision. And honestly, it didn’t feel like a pivot at the time. It felt more like hitting a wall.

For years, I was chasing entrepreneurship through whatever door seemed open. I ran an ABA basketball team. I tried the MLM route. I ran a basketball training program. Each thing had its moment, and I gave each one everything I had. But nothing was building toward anything. I was moving, but I wasn’t going anywhere. And if you’ve ever been in that season where you’re working hard but you can’t point to what you’re actually building you know how heavy that gets.

The real shift came when I started studying marketing not as a strategy, but as a language. I started understanding why people buy, how decisions are made, what it means to actually position something in someone’s mind. And I realized I’d been doing marketing my whole life I just hadn’t called it that. Every pitch I’d made, every team I’d promoted, every product I’d tried to sell, it was all marketing. I’d just never systematized it.

So I made a decision. I stopped chasing the next thing and went all-in on what I was already naturally drawn to. I got certified. I started studying obsessively consumer psychology, digital funnels, sales systems, copywriting. And then I did something that scared me: I walked into businesses cold, told them what I saw broken in their marketing, and offered to fix it.

That pivot from scattered entrepreneur to focused marketing consultant changed everything. But the deeper pivot was around purpose. I didn’t just want to run an agency. I wanted to build something that stood for something. That’s where The Gentleman of Marketing came from this idea that you could operate in the business world with integrity, precision, and a genuine standard of excellence. Not cutting corners. Not overpromising. Not being loud just to be heard. But being deliberate. The Gentleman Of Marketing.
The brand became the mission. And the mission became the business.

Looking back, I don’t think I wasted those years. Every failed venture taught me something about people, about persuasion, about what actually moves a business forward. The pivot wasn’t abandoning my past it was finally connecting the dots.

Any thoughts, advice, or strategies you can share for fostering brand loyalty?

Keeping in touch with clients isn’t something I treat as a task it’s something I treat as a standard. And honestly, that distinction matters more than any specific tactic.

One of our core values at The Gentleman of Marketing is Honorable Transparency the idea that our word is our bond and our reputation is our greatest asset. That philosophy shapes everything about how we maintain client relationships. When someone trusts you with their marketing, they’re not just handing you a budget. They’re handing you a piece of their livelihood. That deserves consistent, honest communication not just when things are going great.

In practice, that looks like a few things:

Regular reporting and check-ins. Clients should never have to wonder what their money is doing. We set up clear dashboards and performance reports so that at any given moment, a client can see exactly what’s working, what we’re testing, and what the numbers say. Transparency isn’t a quarterly event it’s an ongoing conversation.

Automated touchpoints that feel personal. We use CRM workflows to make sure no client falls through the cracks follow-up sequences, milestone check-ins, renewal reminders. But the key is that these aren’t generic blast emails. They’re built around each client’s specific journey and goals, so the communication feels relevant and intentional rather than automated noise.

Proactive outreach, not reactive damage control. One thing I’ve made a point of is reaching out before there’s a problem. If I see something in the data that’s shifting a cost-per-lead creeping up, engagement dropping on a campaign I’m on the phone or in their inbox before they have to ask. Clients notice that. It builds a different kind of trust.

Value outside of deliverables. I stay present in clients’ worlds between projects too sharing relevant industry news, a strategy idea I came across, something I thought might apply to their business. It’s small, but it signals that you’re actually thinking about them and not just waiting for the next invoice. That’s the gentleman standard we operate by.

As for brand loyalty more broadly I genuinely believe it’s an output, not a strategy. If clients feel like they’re being served with real care and real results, loyalty follows naturally. The businesses that come back, refer others, and expand their relationship with us aren’t doing it because of a loyalty program. They’re doing it because the experience matched or exceeded the promise we made at the start.

That’s what we’re always working toward.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://thegentlemanofmarketing.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michaelcpitts/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thegentlemanofmarketing
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-c-pitts-/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@michaelcpitts
• Other: https://linktr.ee/thegentlemanofmarketing

Image Credits

photofiend.art