We recently connected with Kristina Witmer and have shared our conversation below.

Kristina, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Often outsiders look at a successful business and think it became a success overnight. Even media and especially movies love to gloss over nitty, gritty details that went into that middle phase of your business – after you started but before you got to where you are today. In our experience, overnight success is usually the result of years of hard work laying the foundation for success, but unfortunately, it’s exactly this part of the story that most of the media ignores. Can you talk to us about your scaling up story – what are some of the nitty, gritty details folks should know about?

Witmer Group began 13 years ago after a failed effort at a co-owned business venture that lasted for three years. Having approached this new company with a ‘build from the ground up’ mentality a lot of the growth was steady and substantial. The first few years saw a lot of progress with building an expert team, building the client base, and more importantly building my and my company’s brand across the U.S.

With so much excitement and energy focused on these efforts I did not realize until much later that some of the foundation required to take my business to the next level was missing. Without the strict and proven methods for delivery, sales, onboarding, and profit the business had a slow growth with a lot of trends up and down over the course of any given year.

Finally, taking a step back to ensure that our offering was solving specific problems for our clients and ensuring that we captured the data and the stories to share with future clients – made all the difference. We could no longer afford to just have happy clients without having a data based success story in our pockets for future growth.

Contrary to my past life where an agency was everything to a client – now it makes more sense, and there’s more value to everyone, when our focus and tools are built around content based, buyers’ journey focused lead generation and marketing solutions.

Kristina, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

In college, Kristina was a co-sys op for a local BBS board, where she discovered her love of technology and the challenges it seeks to solve. The internet and social collaboration were in their infancy, and Kristina fully embraced them as she saw their huge potential.

Kristina graduated college with a degree in PR / Journalism and landed an account coordinator job at an advertising agency. She quickly realized she enjoyed working with clients and using technology to help solve their marketing problems.

After several years, Kristina became frustrated with her job’s bureaucracy. She realized the need to be agile, make quick decisions, and implement them just as quickly. Her company wasn’t moving fast enough and this was causing issues for the clients.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

The evolution of social media has required several pivots in my professional experience. As social media was becoming the norm for businesses, there was a lot of apprehension and fear from companies about how and if they should engage. The main conversation at this stage was helping companies understand that conversations were happening about them online and in social space and they could choose to be ‘in the room’ for these conversations or turn away and pretend they weren’t happening. This time frame was all about education and assurance of control (or lack of control) with businesses.

Fast forward to today where the major pivot happening over the last few years remains to be the challenge of authenticity and humanity in a world that overloaded with content, and the battle for consumer and prospect attention is exhausting.

We work with clients today and continue to challenge them to identify how they can create real value for their audience – anything less will not do.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

Fortunately I have a genuine curiosity and openness about meeting new people and hearing their unique perspectives. This approach has helped me with networking, client growth, and team building. By trying to treat every relationship, regardless of the potential return, with respect and as much kindness as possible, it really opens doors for future opportunities.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.witmergroup.com/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kwitmer/