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

Suzanne, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Looking back on your career, have you ever worked with a great leader or boss? We’d love to hear about the experience and what you think made them such a great leader.

Before I got into marketing, I was working at a high-end furniture store while I was going to school. They needed a COO and hired Rusty Boshard to do this. He was quiet at first, just observed so much for a while. After a couple months he came in and made impactful changes and such a huge difference in our lives. I was put in charge of a huge sale we were having at the warehouse. I was talking to him while we were there, and I asked about when he was hired vs. then. He said something that hit me and has stuck with me forever. He told me that he observes and learns how and why a company does what it does. From the attitude of the employees to the processes that drive the company. He gets in and understands why it was set up that way, how it has functioned and then asks what can be done better. I asked him, you were made the lead over it all, why not just come in and make sweeping changes like all the other managers had done before him? He said, without understanding why a company does what it does, we cannot make the correct changes that will propel the company forward. As I went on to have leadership roles in many companies after this, I have always kept this in the forefront of my leadership. Learn why and how the company functions before making changes.
Since I got into marketing, I started working with Steve Reich. He was the VP of Associated Foods for 20+ years and has been one of the most impactful people I have ever known or been blessed to work with. As VP he was involved with some incredible things and was able to work directly with the President of Associated Foods for years. When he would travel with him, he would arrive 10-15mins before the president. As people would come in, he would say “Can we make sure to have a bottle of water and a pen for him.” He would talk about what changes he has made and the incredible services he had done for his company. He would always talk him up so as he walked into the room those in the meeting would have a higher level of respect for him. A man Steve would joke with and had a close friendship with, in meetings he would show the utmost respect to. Steve calls this being a #2. He encourages all of us to be #2 to those we respect and look up to, that we enjoy working with. We can be a #2 to other companies, we can shoutout how amazing they are a help build their reputation. We can have that effect on other people and companies all the time. This has been, again, another life changing moment for me and I strive each day to be a #2 for those I work with and care for.

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?

I feel like I have been in marketing for my whole life! When I was in elementary school in North Brunswick, New Jersey we would spend the 1987-1992 summers doing a lemonade stand on the corner where we lived. We were just down the street from a popular Summer Camp so we would be out there each morning as parents were dropping off their kids with lemonade, brownies, cookies and rice crispy treats. We would be out there all day then head in before the pick-up rush and freshen the goodies for the parents to pick up their dessert on the way home. It was my job to draw people into the stand, so I made signs, sent riders around the neighborhood with information to give out. We had to position ourselves at the right time and place to see everyone. Knowing these things as I graduated school, went to college and helped businesses build themselves I had to build on these ideas. In 2020 I moved to Arizona and opened a cookie bakery and drink shop. In a matter of less than 30 years I built my lemonade stand into a brick-and-mortar location. It had come full circle for me! When I got married in 2021 and moved to Utah, I started working at R Marketing Dept.
Here we specialize in Customized Strategic Marketing, meaning no two marketing plans will look the same. We have such an incredible creative team who can sit down with a client and build the marketing plan they want for their company and have the feel and flavor they are looking for. I love the creative aspect of what I get to do every day. It is such a great thing to be able to help entrepreneurs build and see their dreams become a reality. Helping them to do this with Marketing and the creative side of the business is one of the best things I get to do in life.
We love to sit down with clients and get a feel for the voice they want their company to have. Fun/Silly, Adventurous, Serious, Elegant, Functional…. We could list this all day!!! We get a feel for the owner and the vibe they want to get across to their target audiences. We love to teach people how to do this for themselves as well. We teach classes on Business Growth, Social Media Secrets, Rapid Growth, Sales and Public Relations as well as do product launches. We of course do all of these items for the clients we have, but we love to teach people and help them understand how important marketing is in the growth of their company.
We are called R Marketing Dept, we go by this name so people can take ownership of the marketing done for their company. When people say to the owner “I loved this marketing campaign you did. Who thought of that?!” The owner can say R Marketing Dept did. What people hear when this is said is ‘OuR Marketing Dept’ and that is what we are. We are the marketing department for all of these companies that we work with!

Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?

Setting a standard or differentiating yourself can be a scary thing but is very needed. In Utah, you can throw a rock in any direction and hit a soda shop. We had a client, Java Espress who came to us and said, we have the clients in the morning who come for the coffee but by late-morning through the evening we are down for numbers and need to let people know that we do sodas, smoothies, energy drinks, protein shakes… not just coffee. We brainstormed some ideas and after looking through everything we contacted Guinness Book of World Records, and we approached them with a new world record. We had to pull together media, press, Guinness, and get people out to this event. The record was held by a company in China. We knew that here in Utah, we could beat this record. We gave ourselves a timed window and we had to have over 254 people at this event from 11am-1pm. The previous record did not do this in 2 hours, so this was a big deal. We reached out the local media, we contacted the papers, we went to networking groups and reached out to the local chambers. The owners of Java Espress were amazing as well. They found local vendors that came and did booths there for free to drum up business for Java Espress. The day arrived and the event got started, we were about 30mins into the event and hit 100 people at that point. I was so nervous we had not done enough but reassured myself I had the best team working with me and we would absolutely do this. One hour into the event, my co-worker Anne came to me and said, “We just hit the record, the next one to show up will break it!!” We ended the event at 1pm exactly with 361 people who came out for this event and crushed the world record. Hours later I was out with my family (still wearing the Java Espress shirt from the event) and I had people approach me about how much they love Java Espress and wondering if they can still participate! I told them the event was over but stop by Java Espress and they will give you a discount for today only. The number of sales for the event blew their median numbers for that time and date out of the water and solidified them as not just a coffee shop but one of the best drink places in the state of Utah.

Any advice for managing a team?

Keeping morale up in the office can be very difficult. Life happens and as hard as we try to keep life and work separate it is hard to do. Making your team feel appreciated, knowing they have a role in the company and that you are open for them to talk to and always available for them. Management by Walking Around is a huge key to this. Talking to them each morning to see what they are working on and how you can help them in what they have going allows them to know that they are important and what they are doing matters. Helping where I can, not doing it for them, but helping them figure things out and make decisions they are trying to work through is huge. While working at Vivint, I worked with a gentleman Jeff Mendez, he was asked in a meeting once “How did you build your team so quick and produce so much?” His answer was simple, “I hired the right people, then got the hell out of their way!” I loved this so much! Everyone has a skillset, and they have a desire to learn new skills as well. As a manager, it is our responsibility to get to know their skillset and allow them to develop and grow as a person and an employee. It has been amazing to me the number of people we have hired from universities who come in and say, ‘I want to run social media’ then 3 months in they say, ‘actually I prefer to do the creative meetings and PR planning for clients.’ I love this because they come into their own and realize they have an incredible skillset and the ability to do things they had never thought of before. It is our job though to allow them the opportunity, then get the hell out of their way!!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://rmarketingdept.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/suzanne_bradshaw_millard/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/suzanne.bradshaw2/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/suzanne-millard-bb623882/

Image Credits

N/A