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

Amelia, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Almost all entrepreneurs have had to decide whether to start now or later? There are always pros and cons for waiting and so we’d love to hear what you think about your decision in retrospect. If you could go back in time, would you have started your business sooner, later or at the exact time you started?

They say hindsight is always 20/20 – well, after the wild ride that was 2023 I must say, I think “they” are onto something.

For over a decade I ran a digital agency based in DTLA that specialized in digital marketing + eCommerce. We were a one-stop shop with the ability to run your eCommerce business from A-Z, including content creation. It was an exciting time filled with constant challenges and pivots. In my ten-year tenure, I learned the ins and outs of running a business from building a team, onboarding new clients, managing the books, and increasing profitability. I operated alongside my mentor and loved every minute of it.

When 2020 rolled around I was looking for something more. At the time three partners owned the agency I managed and though I was treated as a partner and included in big-picture business decisions, on paper I was just a salaried employee and I wanted skin in the game.

Up until this point I never really saw myself being in business for myself. But after the crash course I was fortunate enough to get during my time at that agency I knew I was capable of running my own business and that confidence inspired me to go for it.

The timing of it couldn’t have been better as the core of my business plan, which I presented to my mentor, was centered on moving away from offerings that were a commodity and focusing all of our efforts on more profitable and niche services i.e. strategy, branding, advertising, and beyond. Little did I know this new approach would be our saving grace.

From here the GM Agency was born and with my mentor as my business partner, I was ready to get to work.

Now, we all know what happens next. Fast-forward two months into our new business and the global pandemic sweeps the globe. Fortunately for us, we were nimble and no strangers to pivoting so we pushed up our sleeves and got to work.

Not only did our clients survive, they thrived. And that victory, making it out of the COVID-19 dark ages alive instilled in me that I could do this on my own. For two years I worked alongside my mentor and business partner, gaining knowledge every day.

In January of 2023, I had high hopes for the year and my business partner and I had activated a 5-year plan, we would phase her out so she could prepare to retire and I would take over ownership of our company. But by the end of January, it became clear the universe had a different timeline in mind. And when I lost my mentor unexpectedly I was left with no choice but to action our plan 5 years early.

Losing my mentor was one of the hardest experiences of my life. Dealing with grief from losing a loved one is difficult enough but now I was on my own, the fate of the business rested with ME.

I am now in year two of being the Owner + Founder of my very own consulting firm, BUFFALOE DIGITAL, and though the timing wasn’t something I would have chosen, the fact that I dusted myself off and got to work just shows how prepared I was. And I have myself and my mentor to thank for that.

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

My name is Amelia Castellanos and I am a renowned expert in digital optimization, strategy, and advertising. Over the last 15 years, I have helped online retailers from UMBRO, Joe’s Jeans, Electric & Rose, Maxfield, BRANDBLACK, STAMPD, SUSHI CLUB, and others scale their online businesses through strategic guidance and a maniacal focus on the customer experience.

With a background in Journalism, Electronic Media, and Fashion Marketing, I am an experienced brand strategist who has partnered with both start-ups and enterprise-level companies on the right way to get results from their digital activations and marketing campaigns.

My consulting services include e-commerce Optimization, Digital Marketing + Advertising

My technology partners include Shopify, Klaviyo, Attentive, Meta, Pinterest, Gorgias, and accessibe

Securing the spot as the first Shopify Plus partner in Los Angeles for my previous agency, I became obsessed with UI + UX and enhancing the customer’s experience as a way to shorten the funnel to checkout.

With this, my focus these days is rooted in revolutionizing the post-click appraoch to ad optimization by looking at the customer journey from a 360-degree angle, extending my strategy beyond the ad-click and into the site experience and beyond. Which makes me unique as a marketer and advertisier.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

Managing people is a developed skill and personally, I consider it an art form. Human beings are complex, if you want them to show up, perform, and grow, you need to invest in your own professional and personal development to ensure you are combing yourself to be a good leader.

Throughout my childhood, I played competitive sports and spent most of my younger years on a team – living, eating, and breathing with other people, all in a collective effort to perform our best and be the best. I always looked at that time of my life as a confidence builder and my early introduction to my resourcefulness but the truth is, that chapter was preparing me to be a manager long before I even knew it.

I have managed people of all personality types and across generations and what I have learned is a constant variable from one individual to the next along the way, is that to be a manager, team leader, or company founder, you need to be able to identify your employees or team members’ strengths and weaknesses.

This is a very important skill you must possess if you want to be an effective leader – it is required so that you can empower them to hone in the skills they feel they need to work on while at the same time leveraging their expertise to your maximum benefit. The best leaders I have come in contact with had the innate ability to identify the lane in which someone could take off and nurture them to find their way.

We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.

In the post-pandemic world of eCommerce, more and more aspects of the industry are digital. Not only are our stores digital but our communication is distributed through +/- 80% digital channels i.e. email marketing, SMS marketing, search engines, and social media platforms….. as all things transition to a completely digital world I find that IRL interaction does wonders for increasing productivity and fostering client relationships.

As a consultant, I operate as an extension of a brand’s in-house team. Some of my clients I may be hyper-focused on specific communications channels and this allows me to work with them completely remotely, which comes in handy for me as I like to travel in my RV with my husband and my three furry children which means MOST of my day-to-day can go uninterrupted even when I am out in the middle of nowhere (with the help of Starlink of course).

However, for a selection of my clients, I essentially act as their outsourced CMO, steering the ship for their entire D2C business and managing their in-house team. I find in these instances attending weekly meetings in person proves widely beneficial as opposed to signing onto Zoom.

In today’s digital age it is important to find a balance between the benefits of WFH and being in an office setting.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.buffaloedigital.com/