We were lucky to catch up with Michael Dechane recently and have shared our conversation below.
Michael, appreciate you joining us today. Looking back, do you think you started your business at the right time? Do you wish you had started sooner or later
I started Reify Marketing a little over four years ago and looking back, I wish I’d stepped out on my own long before that. The pandemic was still surging and I was living abroad (in Amsterdam) when I left the agency I’d been with for years to start a solopreneur venture. It was, in so many ways, a wild time to put myself out there and begin building my own client base and brand.
In retrospect, I had just about everything I needed to start my own business for many years. Perhaps the biggest thing I lacked was permission. The authority and permission I needed was something I was unconsciously withholding from myself. I remember stewing (endlessly, it felt) in the same questions and uncertainties for years. Will I stand out enough in a competitive field to win clients? Is my experience deep enough and rich enough to provide real value for my hypothetical clients? Do I have enough energy, focus, and drive at this stage in my life to carve my own path and press forward under my own steam?
All of those things were clear and affirmative. But I let an overly cautious — a fearful — dose of resistance keep me stuck, keep me small, and keep me scratching my head about when and how to make a change.
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.
Poetry is my primary work, but it doesn’t pay my bills. I’ve been in marketing and PR for over 15 years. That’s how I earn a living and enough money to support my poetry work (submission fees, promoting my debut collection of poetry, traveling for readings, etc.). Early in 2021, I founded Reify Marketing with this pared-down, uncompromising mission: “My work is to amplify the good work of others.”
If I unpack that just slightly, I’ll say that one of the great joys of my work now is doing whatever is needed on the marketing side (and sometimes the sales support side, or the business operations side!) to help more people know about the folks and organizations doing work that worth doing in the world. God knows there’s plenty of work not worth doing. And there’s even more that’s outright harmful, caustic, destructive, etc. And as my own boss — I don’t have to support that work.
In the past four years I’ve worked with clients across wildly different industries and niches: educational publishing, flight simulation technology, sports training, personal health, dentistry, spiritual direction training, executive coaching for women, software for professional and trade associations, and more. Most of the clients I work with either don’t have a marketing department in-house, or their internal marketing team needs support. So, about a third of my work loosely falls under consultation (where should you focus and spend your marketing money?) and the rest of my work is about getting in there and building out whatever is needed (or finding the specialized talent to get it done).
Because my work is different for each client and my clients cover such a range of industries, I’ve often described my work as ‘a marketing handyman’. I help wherever the help is needed — even if that means figuring out how to do something that’s not in my wheelhouse.
But these days I’m moving toward a more specialized focus for new clients. I want to focus more on serving the associations (professional, trade, and non-profit) that are doing good work for their members. I’ve had more and more opportunities to connect with those organizations in the last seven years, and there are so many of them doing such important work. There’s a poetry connection in this pivot for me, too.
For almost a year and a half now, I’ve served as the VP of Communications on the board of the North Carolina Poetry Society. This has given me such a helpful (and challenging!) working knowledge from the inside of a small, budget-conscious membership organization. I know I have a lot to offer associations that are trying to navigate member recruitment and retention, non-dues revenue streams, event planning, how to use AI wisely, database management, and so much more.
And mentioning the NC Poetry Society brings me back to my real work: poetry.
In September of 2024, my debut poetry collection was released with Wildhouse Publishing. It was the fruit of almost seven years of writing (since going back to grad school for an MFA from Seattle Pacific University in 2016) and a lifetime of halfway owning my identity as a poet. I’m really proud of that work and the milestone of releasing a debut.
Two days after the book came out, Hurricane Helene tore through the region I live in (we’re about 40 minutes north of Asheville, NC, on the French Broad River). The upheaval for me and promoting my new collection of poems was nothing, of course, compared to the losses of so many here in NC and across the southeast. We live between Marshall, NC and Hot Springs, NC — both of which are still in the depths of recovery and rebuilding.
I’m on the verge of releasing an audiobook version of my collection (which is called The Long Invisible). This is a long-time dream for me, too. I’ve done a lot of professional voice work and videography over the years, and I’ve begged publishers off and on for the chance to record an audiobook for one of my literary heroes (Frederick Buechner and others). But I finally got the chance to record one — my own book of poems. I’m just thrilled about that and plan to donate part of any profits to the ongoing recovery efforts here in NC.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
One of the biggest things I’ve had to unlearn and keep learning to unlearn is that “I can do this on my own.” Some solopreneurs can do it all (or at least seem to be able to do it all). I’m not one of them, though.
Part of how I’m wired — and one of the qualities of my work and offering I’m proud of — is that I’m adept at sorting out how to do something that needs doing, even if I’m not an expert at it.
But too much of that work can have a quiet, but significant impact, over time. When you’re working ‘outside flow’ and too often at the edge (or beyond) your core gifts and competency, that’s a stress recipe. Do it long enough and you can really give imposter syndrome a solid foothold.
One of the best alternatives is to partner with other teams or solopreneurs who do have those core competencies. But, wow, that’s hard for so many reasons, too. Not only have we all had group project disappointments and disagreements, but pulling other folks into your work flows (which always need some housekeeping, right?!), granting them admin access to your tools and platforms, wrangling with each other over creative direction or how to execute … the list of complications just burgeons with even one collaborator for one client project.
And yet. The more honest I become about needing other trusted partners for the stuff I’m not quick or particularly skilled at, the better my workdays seem to flow and feel. I’m still unlearning and regrooving a foundational mindset around this, but the progress on this front is helping.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
Well, as I already mentioned, I’m in the midst of a business pivot now. I’ve completely lost track of how many major pivots in my career and my personal life I’ve weathered by now.
Several things have come together in the last year to create the conditions for this current shift in my business.
One is that AI has so dramatically altered the SEO side of marketing. I was late to that game and spent many years as a copywriter and content developer who was dependent on the SEOs to feed me keywords and the fruit of their arcane magical research. I was angry about not being able to get direct answers to what seemed like simple questions related to ranking websites and pages. When I started Reify Marketing, I spend much of the first year training and doing deep-dive work to be able to offer that service (SEO consultation and optimization) along with my other offerings. That was fun for me (I love learning) and I gained a ton of practical knowledge that has really helped my clients. But I’ve also learned that I’m not going to be a powerhouse SEO without deep, ongoing training, especially when AI is eclipsing itself every few months and changing the SEO rules faster than anyone can write them.
Another part of this pivot is a renewed commitment to my mission. I want to actively seek out and partner with individuals and associations that are doing good work that nourishes communities, that protects and serves our most vulnerable neighbors, and that won’t compromise the fragile integrity of our democracy. Even in a best-case scenario, I don’t have that many years of vitality and work left before me. And who knows? I might not even have one more year. I’m in that mid-life existential soup that is radically clarifying my need and desires to do the best work I can — whatever does the most good — while I can.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://michaeldechane.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wordtender/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/michael.dechane
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-dechane-3a2a71a/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@mdechane
Image Credits
Stephanie Beaty