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

Mickey, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start big picture – what are some of biggest trends you are seeing in your industry?

We’re reaching a tipping point where interruption-based marketing is fading away. While there will always be a place for advertisements around content, whether that’s banner ads or video commercials, true interruptions are being tolerated less and less.

If your business model relies on cold-calling or cold-emailing, now is the time to start working to find a new approach. As David Meerman Scott has said, you can choose to get attention if you Buy, Beg, Bug or Earn it. Go earn it.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

GreenMellen was formed in 2009 by myself and my business partner Ali Green (hence “GreenMellen”). We started as a web design shop, and have slowly grown over the years to serve other areas of marketing that help to drive real traffic.

The web is still the core of what most businesses should do, but having a solid presence in search, social and email can make a huge difference in the quality and quantity of traffic that your website receives.

In building your marketing channels, you have decisions to make along the way about doing things quickly or doing them right. Accessibility is a big piece of this, as nearly 10% of web users have a disability of some kind, and making sure that they can access all of your content without unnecessary barriers is good for business and is simply the right thing to do.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

Ali and I both worked together a large church just outside of Atlanta. We went our separate ways as freelancers, but quickly realized we were much better together. My technical skills alongside her design skills made a great match, and our core values helped tie things together perfectly.

Over the years, it’s been a shockingly smooth relationship, as we both know our channels. I can have some design input, but she has the final say. Likewise, she can provide technical input, but she defers to my judgement on those types of decisions.

For everything else, our values make things clear. Doing the right thing and just being a good human makes so many tough decisions very easy to answer.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” heavily shaped our company in the early days. If your inboxes are a mess, it can be very hard to determine what’s important versus what’s simply urgent.

His book won’t give you any kind of framework for the business, but following his ideas can keep everything running smoothly and provide you with the bandwidth needed to really get things done.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.greenmellenmedia.com/
• Instagram: http://instagram.com/greenmellen
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GreenMellen
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/greenmellen/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/greenmellen
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/mickmel
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/greenmellen-marietta