We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Katy Wells a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Katy thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

Double You Marketing was formed from the simple idea that so much more could be accomplished if you could make a copy of yourself. Oftentimes business owners and marketers are busy with the day-to-day necessities that they cannot focus on new ideas or spending time on new strategies and approaches that will ultimately help them reach their goals. As a “double” of our clients, we like to consider ourselves an important part of their team, so closely that it feels we truly are on the same wavelength.

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?

I grew up around marketers most of my life and got my start in high school serving on a committee to re-brand our city logo. I was selected as an art student from the high school and ended up providing more than just a few sketch options. I found myself verbalizing what the adults in the room seemed to miss. I thought about it differently. The entire process intrigued me and I wanted to learn more.

Upon graduation from the University of Northern Iowa, I moved to the west coast to work at an advertising agency with a global scale of clients. After five years of working long hours and missing home, I decided to move back to my roots in the Midwest and ended up in a small college town in Iowa. While getting used to my new normal of finding myself in a rural setting, I knew the big budgets and celebrity talent photo shoots would be sparse if I chose to take on work with the local clientele. But I also knew that one of my favorite parts of my new community was being neighborly with the hardworking group that cared so deeply for the community they serve.

While taking on freelance gigs with local agencies, I launched Double You Marketing in an attempt to see if I could take on clients of my own, primarily focusing on companies and organizations in my new community. I’ve never looked back. I’m proud to have built an incredible stable of not just clients but community partners, friends and advocates of my work.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

The most effective strategy for growing my clientele starts with relationships. To fully understand the assignment, what the client needs, best ways to communicate and ultimately how to create success, you really need to be able to put yourself in their shoes and give them the assurance you’re going to dig into it together. Marketing is such a test with every campaign down to every tactic. Having a solid relationship with your client helps you power through all of those tests to continue optimizing and yielding the best results. As you find that success together and share those successes, the clients truly multiply through observing your shared success, referrals to others and even having the great opportunity to personally share those stories with new prospects.

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

High morale and overall positivity is such an important part of my business and also my life. I worked with an Account Coordinator at my very first agency and it was a tough job. With big budgets, high stakes and hot deadlines, it was easy to jaw at each other or let the stress wear you down. But my Coordinator taught me something about positivity – it’s contagious and it makes the process fun. I am always having fun. Even when the task is tough, you can find me telling jokes or seeking out the silver lining. Stress and bad news will always creep in, but there’s no chance you can let it keep you down when the entire team is having a good time.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.doubleyoumarketing.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doubleyoumarketing
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doubleyoumarketing