We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kristen Kukta a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Kristen, appreciate you joining 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.
So I graduated from Loyola University with a marketing and management degree with a minor in psychology. When I first moved to Nashville I worked for Health Club and Day Spa and I ran their marketing and advertising. I worked for a couple different agencies but originally came up with my company name Unblurred Media because I realize that there really is no gray area in marketing. You can either market something or not, but I wanted to always be honest with my clients when they came to me with ideas because my business affected their business and we both affected each other‘s livelihoods. So I’ve always held honesty to the highest Degree because I truly believe that’s how you build relationships and a business
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
I’ve always loved marketing and sales. If anyone knows me they know I can talk to a wall and so sales as always interest me because of the new and unique people you get to meet along the way. I love the marketing side because I also love to be creative and come up with fun ideas for different clients. One thing I take very much pride in is coming up with collaborations and helping my clients work together to grow their audience through relationships and collaborations. I once did a collaboration for marketing with a health club and a grilled cheese place because everyone needs a cheat day. I think the thing I’m most proud about with Unblurred Media is we’ve remained very referral-based over the last 6 years. That definitely puts a smile on my face knowing people have enjoyed working with us, that they passed along our information to other people looking for our services. We are a full-service advertising agency so we do everything from TV and radio to billboards, print, social media and all types of digital advertising. We also build websites from scratch and grassroots marketing.
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
I feel like in business reputation is one of the most important things. The only way to build a reputation is to be honest and genuine. I’ve been very fortunate living in Nashville for 16 years. In the last 16 years I have been able to build relationships that I feel not only help me personally but also professionally. With social media today, I think a lot of people lose track of how important relationships are and that if you keep a good reputation and are always honest and genuine those types of relationships will continue to grow. I think the one reason that my reputation has remained strong is I say what I mean and I mean what I say. I also always make sure that I follow through with anything I said that I would do. This also goes for my company and my employees. I’ve been very lucky in that front
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
I think any business owner has a journey and has had good days and bad days. I always joke that people say, “own a business, it’ll be fun” they said… “they lied” anytime I use that line another business owner always chuckles awkwardly because they know exactly what I mean. Owning a business is the most fulfilling journey I’ve taken in my life and the fact that I still own a business seven years later and I havent lost my mind, I think illustrates a lot of resilience. Yet I couldn’t have done it alone, I gave a lot of credit to my father who also owns a sales company. I also owe a lot of sanity to my two other business mentors, Rich May and Sam Patel. These three people weren’t in my life, I feel like the first 5 months of starting a company I might’ve lost my mind. I also learned how important it was to have a strong business manager and to this day I don’t think I’d have a company without her. Tammy Ricker is definitely the glue that helps hold Unblurred Media together.
Contact Info:
- Website: Unblurredmedia.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/unblurredmedia?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
- Facebook: Facebook.com/unblurredmedia
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristenkukta
Image Credits
Photo by : Tausha Dickinson