Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Michael Duke. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Michael, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. So, let’s start with trends – what are some of the largest or more impactful trends you are seeing in the industry?

When OpenAI burst onto the scene with ChatGPT in late 2022, we knew immediately that the marketing industry was one of the most ripe industries for disruption. The technology just integrates really well with so much of what we do as marketers and especially so for content marketing. Since then, we’ve seen a lot of new software concepts come to market that package the technology in interesting ways to deliver a cost savings either to end users or marketing agencies.

We don’t believe that it is a fad by any means and in fact, we have invested significant resources into developing our own proprietary in-house wrappers that utilize the technology in ways that we can build new revenue streams from. So, we definitely have seen our own business impacted in terms of what we are working on but it’s exciting to be at the forefront of what we believe is the most significant new technology in marketing since the internet.

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?

Where to start with this one? Originally, Solkri Design was just a website design project but today, we have become a full-stack digital marketing firm serving customers across the nation. We started our agency initially because marketing is a core function to all businesses, and it is an asset-light business where by you can produce recurring revenues. While a lot of companies might cut marketing spend in a recessionary environment, the contrarians will increase budgets to steal market share from competitors who took on too much leverage in boom times. So, in that respect, I like how building a marketing business like we do around a well-executed and integrated tactical approach is somewhat counter-cyclical.

At Solkri, we consider ourselves to be the marketing agency for business owners who want the expertise and execution of a full-scale marketing organization without the huge budget or complicated contracts. We try to make it as easy as possible to do business with us by being over-communicative and applying a completely unique approach to each customer, because every business really is different. What we do can be tedious internally at times, but we have been pleased with the response we have gotten from our clients and have found success with our way of looking at the world.

If I could pick one differentiator that we have, it’s that we work best as “Your New Marketing Department”. We want our small businesses to feel like they have a singular point of contact they trust to devise and execute on multiple different marketing channels at one time. We are able to deliver this service with meaningful cost savings over hiring full-time marketers on staff because of our significant investment on automated in-house workflow systems.

We are always thinking about how we can deliver our service 5-15% more efficiently, and continue to iterate through that process in new and creative ways. That way, we aren’t motivated to upsell our current customers on stuff they don’t need or consistently raise their prices in order to see the healthy growth we are targeting. I’m really excited about what this approach has done for us so far and where we are headed, and I hope those reading out there get as geeked out over stuff like this as I do!

Can you talk to us about your experience with buying businesses?

Before I was an entrepreneur, I worked for several years on a private equity acquisitions desk. I was deeply involved in sourcing, negotiating, and closing $100m+ of commercial real estate and small business transactions. That was a lot of fun and there was a lot of insight gained from that time about acquisitions of course, but I the fondest lessons I got from buying my first rental property… two single family homes with a seller-financed note.

See, I didn’t come from a lineage of entrepreneurs or real estate investors, so I didn’t have the playbook of what not to do. I was used to investing my money in the markets… where you need to understand the businesses but not run them. I (foolishly) did not realize that buying a home is like buying a business, because when you are providing a place for people to live, you are providing an essential service and you have to do it well to turn a successful investment.

The mistake I made was taking on a short-term debt maturity without having a plan to create value and refinance the two houses at a reasonable value. That taught me that the way a business is initially capitalized sets the tone for the entire venture. If you are over-leveraged from the start, it’s a needlessly stressful mad dash to get to monetization, with plenty of downside risk waiting for you on the other side. If you don’t take on any debt but give up too much equity at the beginning, then you might not be properly motivated to manage the company in a way that prioritizes long-term value creation. If you give up control along with a big piece of the shares, then that’s a whole different ballgame.

Once I got into the world of acquisitions, I saw this principle manifest itself over and over. Sometimes, the capital stack of a company made the ownership group forced sellers. Other times, it became a distraction when new capital was needed to fund growth. I think a key function of a business leader is properly capitalizing the business not just with the right amount of funds, but with the right type that is accommodative to the long-term growth plan.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I love this question. The first thing that comes to mind is unlearning where money comes from. I think society and my parents did a good job of teaching me that income and economic security come from working hard and competence. What is interesting about the way that manifests as a mental framework is that competence is something I thought needed to be ordained to me by a governing body or institution, like a university or certification board, etc. What I’ve come to learn about where income and economic security really originate, it is in providing a good or service for which there is demand, and providing it at a price that people are willing to pay. Looked at through that lens, your resume really has nothing to do with how well you can actually deliver a good or service.

Your knowledge and competence are extremely important in your success by all means, but not in the way I used to think. What I’ve come to believe about success today is that one’s success is largely determined by how well they can allocate the resources they have at their disposal. For example, how successful can one person be at turning one unit of their time into dollars? Then, how successful can they be at turning those dollars into in-demand goods or services, which will inevitably create more dollars? And of course, success isn’t all about how much money you have but ultimately, how much time you have to spend on the things that matter to you. So, in the final piece of the puzzle, how successful can one allocate their dollars into time and bring the cycle full circle? See, I learned that time is money, but I had to unlearn that to also learn that money is time! I’m still learning everyday a new element of this very concept, but I do really believe that it is fundamental to how our world as entrepreneurs and professionals works.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.solkridesign.com & www.localmavensmarketing.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michaeldukeid/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-duke-533b9a132/

Image Credits
AJ Long