We were lucky to catch up with Katie Greenstone recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Katie, thanks for joining us today. Let’s start with a story that highlights an important way in which your brand diverges from the industry standard.

We humanize brands. So many companies miss the mark when they are trying to leverage social media to gain clients and brand awareness because they’re too focused on their image, rather than the way they communicate b2c, the way their content makes people feel, and they forget to present themselves as human beings running a business.

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

My senior capstone in college when I attended Miami University was to create a social media account and run ads on something I was passionate about. At the time, that, for me, was my relationship with food. I was in the process of eating disorder recovery and attempting to re-encounter my love for food again. After falling in love with the connections I was making, the community I was building, I brought that project, my Instagram @wanthoneywiththat home back to Detroit. I began developing relationships and camaraderie with other bloggers (I blogged as well at the time) and local restaurants and small businesses and continued to fall more in love with both the community-building aspect and the digital marketing knowledge I was able to gain by doing and trial & error.

Through my first job as a front-end web developer for the content management team for a local advertising firm & then my journey into corporate fortune 500 sales, my love and passion for social media, and the exploration of brand personality (within both my content & the content I cautiously and intentionally consumed) did not waiver. I continued my personal brand on @wanthoneywiththat and then did some consulting for local businesses on branding & social media. All it took was for one person to tell me I should be doing consulting full time & a global pandemic to make me deeply reflect on the trajectory of my life to decide I wanted to pursue social media full time- social media personally, as well as social media for others. Market-G, my social media creative house was born in August of 2020, we’re a little over 2 years old, and have had an incredible journey. I’ve been fortunate to combine business & pleasure which I’ve always heard is something to run from, but that was something I was striving for.

@wanthoneywiththat grew from a place for me to provide recipes to others recovering disordered eating habits to an entire community and lifestyle Instagram brand with merch & amazing friendships and partnerships. Market-G is running at cruise control, helping local brands with strategy, design, content, and social platform management.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

My audience is amazing on social. They really do feel like family- people I’ve met through social have become friends of mine, and businesses I’ve highlighted now feel like a home away from home after taking time to nurture our relationships on and offline, and I owe it to one thing- being real AF through it all. Bringing my followers/audience with me through the highs and lows. I’ve received messages from so many people in the last two years, one that particularly stood out to me was someone who followed me as I was quitting corporate and she said “I just want to let you know that while I’ve never met you, I’ve met people you’ve worked with and they all speak incredibly highly of you. You are seen, your hustle is seen, and I’m rooting for you.” Not only did that totally bring me to full-blown tears, but it was so so encouraging, energizing and rewarding to hear that me bringing people along the realness of the journey wasn’t for nothing.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

My friends, my family & my current clients. They are EVERYTHING. I’m proud to say Market-G is a by referral-only business. That’s 75% because of people I know/love always repping me and sharing my story, and 25% because I have no shame in my game. I am always sharing about what we’re up to because people don’t know unless you tell them! You put in all this work, if you aren’t putting it out there, who is going to know what you’re able to do for them?!

Contact Info:

• Website: gomarketg.com and wanthoney.club
• Instagram: @marketgsocialhouse and @wanthoneywiththat (personal)
• Linkedin: Katie Greenstone

Image Credits
Shelby Dubin Photography