We were lucky to catch up with Kaitlyn Study recently and have shared our conversation below.

Kaitlyn, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Alright, so we’d love to hear about how you got your first client or customer. What’s the story?

My first client was a family friend who was also my mom’s hairstylist. During a haircut (yes, this is true!) she mentioned that she hired someone to help her with her marketing and she didn’t know what she was paying for or what she was getting. My mom mentioned that I was thinking about going off on my own and starting a marketing agency. She was interested, my mom made the intro and I was thrilled. I sent her an agreement for her website updates, SEO and social media… all for $250 per month!! She worked with me for 5+ years and introduced me to her friends which lead to other clients after that.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Hello 👋 I’m the owner and creative director of South Street & Co. We’re a fully remote digital marketing agency specializing in helping service-based companies grow their reach online. We help companies with their website, SEO, Google Business Profile, online reputation, blog writing, social media content and management, social media ads, coaching and email marketing.

The biggest thing we give back to our clients is time. As the business owner, they don’t have time to post on social media, create Reels, do keyword research for blogs, and everything else that a successful marketing campaign takes – we do that and more and give them the highlight reel of success and share what the areas of opportunity are for their growth.

A few of the items that set us apart are we walk the walk and talk the talk. Helping companies with SEO is one of the things we really excel in. We do what we do for our clients for ourselves. We invest heavily in our SEO and that’s also where we get 80% of our business. We also have over 100 5-star reviews on Google and look at our clients as partners. Our goal is to grow with them and to have a long-lasting relationship.

We’re women-owned, and right now we’re fully women-run. This in itself is inspiring because we have a ton of amazing talent on the team. We also are really passionate about the work that we create. We showcase that and our results on our website and our goal is to help our clients continue to grow.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

My agency started as a side-hustle while I was still working full-time for a local dermatology company.

I graduated from the University of Central Florida with a degree in marketing and looked for a job everywhere except for Orlando. I had gone on multiple interviews and my parents joked that I was a ‘professional interviewer.’ Nothing was true marketing and a lot of the jobs that said they were marketing were more sales jobs.

I finally found one on CraigsList – true story – applied for it, was called in for an interview and got the job. It was the easiest interview and I started two weeks later. In the first 6 months, I helped the company rebrand with a new logo, slogan, website, and social media sites, blogging, and an SEO plan.

In the two and a half years that I was there I helped them double in size – when I started they had 10 offices and when I left they had 20; 17 in Central Florida and 3 out of state.

I didn’t know how much further I could help them grow and I started looking for different options; I applied for a few interviews and nothing came of them, so I started thinking about doing a side hustle. I loved the digital marketing and figured I could do for others what I had done for the dermatology group.

I was introduced to my first client by my mom as she was her hairdresser from high school and she referred me to a few others. I was then introduced to daytime marketing and leads groups. Around this time, I started working mornings, nights and weekends as I was still working full-time but the networking groups allowed me to put a date to leaving while I was still working my 9-5 job.

It took me a little of a year to leave and when I put in my notice I was extremely nervous. I went in to the doctor in charge and handed him my letter of resignation and he asked, ‘Where are you going – are you going to a competitor!?’ I said, “No, I’m starting my own marketing company.’ He sat back in his chair and thought for a second. I didn’t know if he would let me go then or if I could work my last 2 weeks with him. He sat back up and said, “Well, why don’t you talk to the office manager and we can become your first big client?” I was shocked and so grateful.

I ended up being a year-long relationship with my new company and I’m so grateful for everything that I learned there and that they helped me leave.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

Instead of a lesson I had to unlearn, I had to learn that I needed to trust my gut. There are SO MANY examples of when I didn’t listen to my gut and then, when I look back, I could have avoided so many hard situations.

One, in particular, was with a client who wasn’t a good fit. I tried to hard to help them with their new website design and their SEO, but they were the type that was never happy. I went above and beyond but ‘I still wasn’t executing their vision.’ I had a website partner on the call with them and after they got off, he called me back and asked, ‘Why are you still working with them? They are so rude and treated you so poorly.’ I had never thought about it before. I was just trying to do my best but after that, and after realizing I was never going to be able to give them what they wanted, we ended the relationship.

I think I knew it wasn’t a good fit, but I’m a ‘fixer’ I try to fix things even though it’s not the right fit. So listening to my gut has been a learning curve because it’s more than likely the harder thing to do out of the options I have.

Contact Info:

• Website: SouthStreetMarketing.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/southstreet_co
• Facebook: facebook.com/southstreetco
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaitlyn-m-cook/
• Other: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@marketinggal_ Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/south-street-&-co–a-marketing-agency/

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