We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Michelle Johnson a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Michelle, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What was it like going from idea to execution? Can you share some of the backstory and some of the major steps or milestones?

I was working as a director of marketing in Corporate America since I graduated college and got to the point where I was suffering serious burnout. I knew there had to be more than just the 9 to 5 (let’s be real more like 7 to 7). I also felt like my expertise and experience was being pigeon hold and no longer felt personal growth in my career.

I decided to take the plunge and start my own marketing agency for female-owned small businesses. Over the years I had helped friends and family members create and implement marketing strategies to help them grow and scale, and felt a ton of passion and fulfillment in that growth. So when I started my own business I knew that’s what I wanted to do.

Additionally, working with third-party marketing agencies throughout my years gave me serious agency trauma. So many of them took the money, delivered poor results (or no results at all), and made me lose hope in the integrity of working with agencies. I knew that I wanted to combat agency trauma and provide a real, honest, and trustworthy approach to marketing for these companies with limited resources.

The first thing I did was figure out my name and my target market. I secured my domain name which correlated with social media handles. Once I figured out my name I registered my business and knew the first big task was figuring out my brand. I knew I wanted a fun brand that exuded inclusivity, cheekiness, and fun. From the brand I started building out a website, social media posts, and email marketing. I reached out to colleagues, friends, and family to pass my information along to anyone who needed marketing help. And with all that ground work, my first client came along.

Throughout the past two years I have evolved a lot. My to-do list is ever growing, my business ideas and roadmap are constantly changing, but the one thing that stays consistent is my passion to help female founders develop a brand voice and find success.

Michelle, 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?

I was born in California and raised in Arizona. After high school, I went through the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communications at Arizona State University. Upon graduation, I landed a job in marketing in the wide-format print industry. With great time comes great expertise, learning more every day and eventually raising up the ranks to be a Director of Marketing.

I love everything about marketing, from branding to social media, SEO to graphic design, marketing is so fun because you can truly work on so many different things in one day. I love how marketing is always evolving and developing and therefore brands should too.

STAK Marketing is a full-service marketing agency as well as consultant that specializes in helping female owned small businesses grow and scale. We help analyze which marketing tactics you need as well as implement them. I have three goals with STAK Marketing:
1 – Combat agency trauma and rebuild trust with clients
2 – Help businesses grow to see success
3 – Make clients’ lives easier by offloading tedious marketing tasks

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Honesty and trust goes a long way. Getting a client is the hard part, but maintaining a client should be easy. I’ve noticed the more open and honest I am with a client, whether the news I’m sharing is good or bad, people react really well with the truth. Honesty goes hand in hand with trust. We deliver news to clients whether it’s what they want to hear or not, so they know they are going to get honesty out of us and trust what we have to say. Additionally, we always deliver what we promise when we promise it, reliability is the key to maintaining clients.

Any advice for managing a team?

Just like working with clients, working with good employees and contractors requires trust. I trust that who I hire will perform based on what is agreed upon. I am not a mico-manager and never will be, therefore I hire people who I know can self manage and don’t need handholding. I trust that they are going to do their job, and don’t need someone looking over their shoulder.

Pay people what they deserve. Good people can be hard to come by, great people even harder. I pay the people who work for me well to show them they are valued. I take them to lunch, I get them wedding gifts, etc. Pay can come in many forms but showing them you care about the value you bring to their business is critical.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.stakmarketing.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/stakmarketing
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/stakmarketing
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/company/70980545

Image Credits
First photo – Jenisse Photography Second photo – Madi Butcher Photography