We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Maggie Gentry. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Maggie below.

Maggie, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Owning a business isn’t always glamorous and so most business owners we’ve connected with have shared that on tough days they sometimes wonder what it would have been like to have just had a regular job instead of all the responsibility of running a business. Have you ever felt that way?

I think it’s common for us as humans to weigh our options and think about what might be. I regularly have the thought of going back to a “regular job.” For me, it’s a healthy thought experiment to ask myself this question often, to check back in that owning my business is still something I honestly want to do. I know that at any point this no longer makes me happy, I do have the option to find employment with a company. It’s that freedom of choice that feels so empowering.

I’ve owned my own business for six years now, and there was a point in Year 3 when things were exceptionally challenging, and I felt then that exploring full-time employment was the solution. I ended up getting a Director of Marketing job for a startup, and after 3 months, I knew it was not for me, so I left. Ultimately, I realized the variety and flexibility of self-employment is really where my heart is happiest—at least for now.

Maggie, 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?

Sometimes it’s hard to know exactly where your story begins, and it’s always helpful to make the connections in hindsight. As I trace my entrepreneurial origin story, I am taken back to my first job. One of the early mantras I heard in the workplace was, “Business is business. Love is love. And this ain’t love.” (I’m from Texas, so imagine that in a nice, slow drawl.)

This was intended to bring more objectivity into the workplace and to downplay emotions, feelings, and intuition. Back then, I knew this saying didn’t feel quite right, but I didn’t have the wherewithal to examine why exactly that was.

Now, six years into running my own business and after much exploration of my own soul and countless conversations with others who also felt uncomfortable with this sentiment (even if it wasn’t so directly expressed to them), I know just how untrue it is.

Business and love—and indeed emotions, feelings, and intuition—have everything to do with each other.

And in increasing waves, I’m seeing folks reject the idea that work is work and home is home, embracing a more integrated way of living, working, and being. We understand that what we do in one area of life affects the others. We can no longer keep things separated.

That’s the approach I bring to my work, which I call Mindful Marketing. It’s about finding ways to share your story in a way that feel aligned to who you are as the human behind the business. There is no fixed formula or path that I follow because every person is unique, and when we can honor that uniqueness, things in the business naturally unfold from there.

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

During the first few years of my business, I spent a lot of time at networking events and trying to make connections with prospective clients. It felt like the logical thing to do. However, I found that I was spending a lot of time going on coffee chats and developing relationships (many of who are still friends to this day!) but never did turn into paying clients.

What really shifted for me was about three years ago, I started to focus on developing relationships with folx who are in tangential fields to mine and building my referral network. That was the game-changer for me!

As a marketer and brand strategist, I found that getting to know web and graphic designers, photographers, copywriters, SEO specialists, etc. has been most helpful for me. When I have clients who have needs that I don’t provide, I can refer my clients to them, and then it so beautifully happens that in time, those same folx often reciprocate. Now I have a couple of like-minded business owners with whom we trust each other and our processes align so well, that we often collaborate on client projects.

It was a subtle shift in who I was developing relationships with, but it was a profound one!

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

One of the aspects of entrepreneurship that I am most grateful for is how it feels conducive to embracing the creative process, which for me, means pivoting, or at least refining, quite often. As I learn more about how I can show up and offer my work in better ways, I make those necessary tweaks.

I made a big pivot last fall where I realized the way in which I was working was not serving my wellbeing. Because of that, I was also not doing my best work or showing up for my clients in the way that I ultimately wanted to. I had to make the hard decision to cut my client roster significantly. So I’m working with a lot less clients than I was previously, but I do feel like I’m able to go deeper with each one, and that’s my preference.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.maggiegentry.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maggiegentry_/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MaggieGentryThoughtPartner
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maggie-gentry-27671512/

Image Credits
Creating Light Studio