We were lucky to catch up with Mariko Hickerson recently and have shared our conversation below.

Mariko, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

Our mantra is that “We work with people we enjoy and brands we believe in.” What that means is that we’re really focused on creating great work (in the form of graphic design, website development and SEO) for good people and brands. Doing great work for clients is easy when you’re passionate about a brand and want the people behind that brand to succeed.

With business hours consuming 40 hours or more of our work weeks, I believe in the importance of really loving and enjoying what you do every day. And a lot of that enjoyment comes from being surrounded by people you enjoy working with — whether they’re team members or clients.

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?

Huckleberry Branding is a Nashville branding and SEO agency that provides 3 primary services: graphic design, website design and development, and SEO.

I was a former newspaper reporter in San Diego turned freelance digital marketing professional turned business owner. We are now a team of 6, including two graphic designers, a website director, two project managers, and myself (sales and business development).

I’m really proud of the team we’ve built. All are hyper-talented in their respective fields, but they are also just really great people. We have great team camaraderie and support one another. I have seen every one of my team members go out of their way to help other team members without expecting anything back in return just to make sure a project is successful. In the same vein, they’re all willing to bend over backward for our clients and do everything they can to wow them. I don’t know how I got so lucky.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

I was a newspaper reporter in San Diego who picked up some freelance writing and marketing jobs on the side. Although I had learned a lot at the newspaper, including a little graphic design, website development, and — of course — writing, I expanded my skill set even further through this side hustle, as my freelance clients began trusting me more and more with their entire marketing budgets. I began managing everything from social media and email marketing to ad and PR campaigns for a handful of clients. This is really where I learned more about the entire suite of marketing tools available and learned how to measure their effectiveness as part of a greater business marketing strategy.

In fusing these new skills (plus other very important business skills, such as sales and finance), I was able to take the leap of quitting my job at the paper and branching out on my own. For a few years, I just picked up clients through my network and on Elance (now Upwork) as a freelancer, until eventually, I had built up a robust enough initial client base to start really building a business.

Have you ever had to pivot?

Just last year, we scaled down our service offerings from 6 services to just 3 core services. Although I personally got my start managing all 6 of these service areas, our business (and the marketing tools themselves) has grown and evolved. We focused our efforts on and became really skilled at 3 core areas (graphic design, websites, and SEO). We outsourced the other 3 service areas (social media, email marketing, and PPC). Not only did we not make as high a margin in these areas, but we were also often spending more time project managing these services just coordinating between vendors and clients. The expanded service suite also presented some marketing challenges, as we tended to dilute marketing in the areas of our business that were more profitable by trying to be a “jack of all trades” marketing firm.

By just focusing on the 3 service areas in which we excel and can provide value in-house, we feel much more streamlined operationally and are seeing the financial benefits also pay off as well. I think this was absolutely the right decision for us.

Contact Info:

• Website: huckleberrybranding.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/huckleberrybranding/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/huckleberrybranding/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/huckleberry-branding/
• Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/huckleberrybrnd
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1JiYK5gPVOuqyhidvlD84g

Image Credits
Hannah Meredith Photo