We recently connected with Tracey Davis and have shared our conversation below.

Tracey, appreciate you joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

I did not set out to be a marketer. I set out to work with animals.
I have a BS in Wildlife Biology and a minor in Zoology, both from Colorado State University. I spent years in wildlife rehabilitation, did temperament testing on hundreds of shelter dogs and thousands more in daycare (over 6,500 dogs over my whole career), ran puppy social and training classes, and eventually became the Director of Operations at a multi-service pet care facility here in Silicon Valley. Daycare, boarding, grooming, training, the whole thing. If you had told me back then that I would build a business around email marketing and social media, I would have laughed and gone back to whatever dog was currently demanding my attention.
Then the company I ran acquired a competitor, and that acquisition came with an active Constant Contact account. Somebody had to figure out the email marketing, and that somebody turned out to be me. I started learning it on the job, mostly because there was no one else to do it.
Here is the part that hooked me. The results were immediate. Every single time I sent an email, new business walked in the door. Not “maybe in six months we will see a bump.” That week. I was genuinely fascinated. I had spent years in an industry where progress was slow and hard-won, and suddenly I was watching a marketing channel pay off in real time. I could not stop thinking about it. I started going to local seminars and learning everything I could get my hands on.
But the moment it went from “this is a fun skill I have” to “this is what I am supposed to do with my life” came a little later, once I started teaching what I had learned to other small business owners.
The same pattern showed up everywhere I looked. The dog trainer. The bookkeeper. The therapist. The photographer. The professional organizer. Not one of them had gone into business because they loved running a business. They went into business because they were passionate about the thing. The dog. The books. The client. The image. And every single one of them was being told they also had to be a marketer, and a content creator, and an SEO strategist, and a video editor, and a Google Business Profile manager, on top of doing the actual work they loved.
They were not ineffective at marketing because they were lazy or not smart enough. They were stuck because it wasn’t what they signed up to do, and most of the time, they didn’t know what they didn’t know. Meanwhile, the whole industry kept making them feel behind, kept assuming they were tech-savvy when they were not, kept handing them more free content, telling them what to do without ever sitting beside them to help them actually do it.
That is the problem I knew I could solve, and it was a real one. There is more free marketing advice available right now than at any point in human history, and people are still stuck. The information was never the missing piece. The missing piece was someone patient enough to demystify the tech without making them feel dumb, and to get them to do the work instead of just learning about it for the fourth time.
So my approach was different on purpose. I do not try to turn small business owners into marketers. I help them stay focused on the thing they love by making the marketing side bearable, sometimes even a little bit fun. I teach them enough to feel confident, I take the parts they truly do not want off their plate, and I make the whole experience kinder than the rest of the marketing world makes it. My coaching philosophy is “you drive, I give directions.” I am not going to do it all for you and leave you dependent on me forever. I am going to teach you to drive.
And the reason I knew it would work is that I had already lived it. I was not a marketer who decided to serve small businesses from the outside. I was a small business operator who became a marketer. I have done payroll, scheduling, hiring, firing, customer recovery, and marketing all in the same week. So when I tell a client a recommendation is doable, it is because I know what it actually feels like to run a business with not enough hours in the day.
There is one more thread that surprised even me. The way I teach humans turned out to be the exact same way I spent over a decade teaching people to train their dogs. Positive reinforcement. Patience. Small wins first. Build confidence before skill. Never punish the growl, because a “dumb question” is not dumb; it’s just information about what someone hasn’t learned yet. I didn’t realize for years that my pet care career was not a separate chapter. It was the apprenticeship for everything I do now. Turns out the method works on both species, because it’s all about how living beings actually learn.
That is the heart of ZingPop. The “Pop” comes from my love of popcorn and the promise in my tagline, “I will help your business pop!” The “Zing” is the energy I bring to a thing most people find draining. Both of those words say the same quiet thing: marketing does not have to feel hard. And helping someone go from “I have no idea what I am doing” to “I’ve got this” is still, after all these years, my favorite thing in the world.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am Tracey Lee Davis, an email marketing manager and social media coach for women in service-based businesses, who handle their own marketing but do not have the time, the know-how, or frankly, the desire to wrestle with it alone.
What I offer covers the marketing that overwhelms most business owners. I do one-on-one coaching in social media, Google Business Profile, and email marketing. I manage email marketing for clients who would rather hand it off. I have self-paced courses and digital products for the do-it-yourselfers, and an affordable membership with group coaching for folks who want ongoing support without a big investment. I am a Certified Constant Contact Partner and have used the platform since 2005. Email marketing is the part of my business I am most excited to grow, because it is still the highest-return tool most small business owners ignore.
The problem I actually solve is not a lack of information. My clients are not short on marketing advice, they are short on someone patient enough to demystify the tech without making them feel dumb, and to get them to do the work instead of just reading about it for the fourth time. So I do not try to turn anyone into a marketer. I help them stay focused on the work they love by making the marketing side feel doable. My coaching philosophy is “you drive, I give directions,” because the goal is for you to walk away able to do this yourself.
What sets me apart is a combination you do not usually find in one person: deep Constant Contact expertise, a real operator background, and a coaching style built on patience and small wins instead of overwhelm. I also have a special place in my heart for pet professionals, especially the force-free, fear-free, positive-reinforcement folks, because that is where I come from.
What I am most proud of is not a follower count or a revenue number. It is the moment a client stops saying “I have no idea what I am doing” and starts saying “I’ve got this.” When a woman who called herself “not techy” sends her first newsletter, or finally claims the Google Business Profile she has been avoiding for two years, or realizes she does not have to post every single day to matter, that is the whole job for me. My core values are fun, kindness, and impact, and I get to live all three every time I help a business owner feel capable instead of overwhelmed.
If there is one thing I want potential clients to know, it is this: marketing does not have to feel hard, and you are not as far behind as you think. You just have not had someone in your corner to show you the way. That is what I am here for, and I would be delighted to help your business pop.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

The biggest lesson I had to unlearn is that being the expert means doing the talking.
When I first started coaching, I came in loaded with everything I knew. I wanted to share all of it, all at once, because I figured that was the value. Here is the strategy, here are the ten things you should do, here is the right way. And I watched smart, capable women nod along, take notes, thank me, and then never do any of it. Not because they were lazy. Because I had buried them, I had handed them a firehose when what they needed was a glass of water and someone standing next to them while they drank it.
The backstory is that I should have known better because I had already learned this lesson once, with dogs. You do not teach a nervous dog by overwhelming it or correcting every mistake. You meet it where it is, you break things into the smallest possible wins, and you build confidence before you build skill.
What took me an embarrassingly long time to realize is that those years were not a separate career I left behind. They were the apprenticeship for exactly what I do now. The “dumb question” a tech-shy business owner is afraid to ask is just information about where she actually is, which is the only place real teaching can start.
So I unlearned the lecture. My coaching philosophy now is “you drive, I give directions.” I do not do the work for you, nor do I bury you in everything I know. We go at your pace; we start at kindergarten, not university; and we celebrate the small wins until the big ones stop feeling scary. I show you how something works, then I have you do it while I watch, and we practice as many times as you need.
The result is clients who leave more confident and more capable, not more dependent on me. That is the entire point. And it is a much kinder way to teach a person than the marketing world usually does, which is to make you feel like you are already failing before you have even begun. You cannot shame a dog into learning. You cannot shame a business owner into marketing either. You can only set them up to succeed and reward them for trying.

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

Hands down, my best source of new clients has always been relationships. Not ads, not going viral, not some clever funnel. Real, human relationships with people who know me, trust me, and send their friends my way.
That probably sounds a little old-fashioned in a marketing world obsessed with reach and algorithms, but it is the truth, and it is consistent year after year. My clients come from referrals, from people I have met through networking, from former clients who tell other business owners about me, and from folks who have seen me speak and felt like I actually got what they were going through. Almost none of it comes from a stranger stumbling onto a post. It comes from trust, and trust takes relationships.
I believe in this so much that I not only practice it, but I also co-own a business built entirely on it. I am the Vice President and co-owner of Women’s Networking Alliance, a networking organization for women business owners that runs on a simple idea: build relationships, and your business will grow. No pressure, no hard selling, no collecting business cards you will never look at again. Just real connection, with nine chapters to choose from across virtual, in-person, and hybrid formats. Getting to lead an organization founded on the exact philosophy that grew my own business has been one of the most rewarding parts of my career.
Here is what I would tell another business owner about why this works, especially for service-based businesses like mine. People do not hire a coach or a marketing expert off a cold impression. They hire someone they feel safe with, because the work is personal and a little vulnerable. You are admitting you need help with something. So the businesses that grow on referrals and relationships are not getting lucky. They are getting chosen by people who already trust them, which is the strongest possible way to start a working relationship.
The catch is that relationship-building is slow, and it does not give you the instant gratification of a viral moment. You have to show up consistently, be genuinely useful, and play the long game. But the clients you earn this way tend to stay longer, refer more, and are a far better fit, because they came to you through someone who knew you would be right for them. For me, that has been worth more than any quick win a paid ad could ever buy.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.zingpopsocial.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zingpopsocial/
• Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/zingpopsocial
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/traceyleedavis/
• Yelp: http://www.yelp.com/biz/zingpop-social-media-san-jose
• Other: Google: http://g.page/zingpopsocial?gm
  Alignable: https://www.alignable.com/san-jose-ca/zingpop-social-media

Image Credits

Photo with the phone: Kim Ebbets, Photos by Kim E.
Photos outside with green top: Carla Bohnett, CB Design Photo
Popcorn: Kristina Rust Photography