In March 2017, I started my business with nothing more than a handful of clients who were willing to pay me to create admittedly subpar social media content for their businesses. I say subpar because for 2017 Iowa advertising on Facebook, it wasn’t bad, but when set side by side with today’s standards it was less than impressive.

I distinctly remember sitting on the chair in my living room with my oldest off at kindergarten and the three little ones down for a nap, trying to figure out how to add text to an image of popcorn to celebrate National Popcorn Day. I downloaded an app on my iPhone 7 (probably) and picked the prettiest one I could find.

Now, I had a limited graphic design background (read: one class in college to satisfy the requirements of my Educational Technology minor), so I had an eye for layout and alignment, but I didn’t know much about brand fonts, colors, and the importance of sticking to your branding. So let’s just say learning how to create these graphics had little to do with brand guidelines and mostly to do with vibes of the moment.

Was it pretty? No.

But did it work? Yes.

People paid attention.

They talked to the owner of the business about seeing what he was posting on social media.

He gave me more opportunities to try things out.

The Next Frontier: Video

So I applied my video editing abilities to the business. I used a free Adobe app and a prayer to create a video for our local high school basketball teams as they headed to the state tournament, and I used short clips (pre-TikTok, might I add), emotional music, and text overlays to tell the stories about roads and where they take us, all while reminding the viewer that our business was the one to sell you the gas to fuel your vehicle on your next journey.

It went gangbusters.

I learned that I didn’t need to have the degree that said “MBA” to make a difference for my business and the clients I served. I needed curiosity, grit, and a commitment to just figuring it out that would serve me well in the years ahead.

Pretty soon other businesses were paying attention, reaching out with questions and asking for help. I knew I had identified a gap, and that small-town businesses wanted to capitalize on this new marketing method available through social media, but they didn’t know where or how to get started.

MKM Live

That spring, Facebook was pushing hard on a newer method of content delivery: live video. I read in an industry article that adopting new features in Facebook and Instagram would often result in improved reach and awareness, so I took to the live video one night after my kids went to bed just to introduce myself and my business.

I was so fucking nervous.

Like red-in-the-face, stumbling-over-my-words nervous.

Like, I didn’t stop to think that the words I wrote out on paper and planned to hold up to the camera to make key points would be mirrored in the live display and read backwards…which flummoxed me even more.

I kept going and saw names pop up on the screen of friends and family watching my livestream (including my husband, who watched from the room adjacent to my office), and comments rolled in saying “hi” and encouraging me in my new endeavors.

I cannot underscore enough how this was entirely new technology almost a decade ago.

Seeing a regular person’s face in real time on your device was completely out of left field, so people were showing up from every facet of my life to watch what was happening.

I can’t remember much of what I talked about that night, but I can remember how embarrassed I was when I ended the feed. I remember rolling into bed next to my husband, mortified by what I had just done. I remember saying to him, “If I still feel like this in the morning, I’m deleting the video.”

But by the next morning, the views had dramatically increased, not exploded or viral by any means, but enough to make my page following grow and feel like that minor embarrassment was all worthwhile.

…And enough to make me realize that I needed to do it again.

I created a Facebook event announcing the next time I would go live so people could plan to attend, and I coupled it with a giveaway. This time, I had even more viewers and even more conviction that this could be a legitimate top-of-funnel strategy (I had no idea that was what it was called at the time) for increasing my following and establishing me as the go-to for small-town small-business digital marketing in my area.

What these videos led to was what I called “MKM Live,” a weekly broadcast on my Facebook Page where I would teach a skill or strategy that small business owners could apply to their own marketing. I didn’t have a paywall, I didn’t gatekeep, I just showed up and shared what I knew or had figured out so that others in my area could benefit too.

Often, I held these broadcasts during nap time…so my kids would inevitably crash the party and lead to a show of their own. I was embarrassed again, but it made for some adorable conversations in the grocery store with people from my community who I had no idea would be paying attention, much less watching my little business develop.

MKM Live then led to local speaking opportunities to be in the room with business owners who wanted to learn how to market themselves better online: our local Chamber of Commerce, a neighboring community’s Young Professionals organization, a local real estate company with realtors who were eager to leverage social media to help them sell properties and connect with home seekers. Pretty soon I became known not just as the person who could do the content creation on behalf of my clients, but also the go-to for training and coaching so they could improve their own marketing.

What the Early Years Taught Me

I worked with convenience store chains, Airbnb owners, freezer meal businesses, an online fitness coach, an electrician, a financial management brokerage, a grading and excavating company, a private school, a shit-pumping business, a manufacturing plant, bars and restaurants, and more. A variety of different industries, various purposes for what they wanted to accomplish online, but the throughline that united them?

They were businesses in small towns who knew that using a digital landscape to tell stories and connect with others on a human level was the best way to grow their businesses.

Some of these were sweeping successes, like when we could connect businesses with new hires who saw a job opening on their Facebook Page or when we got to create something fun like a series of Reels with Barbies or timely memes for the freezer meal company that spoke right to their ideal audience.

Others were lessons I learned along the way, like times I had to cancel contracts because the client and I weren’t aligned in our work styles or when I had to address negative reviews or angry inbox messages.

Each and every client and project I had the opportunity to work with solidified the fact that I was a business owner and I had a skill set that could help others.

Every project honed my craft, helped me tell better stories in words and visuals.

Every post was a demonstration of the good they put out into the world and how they benefitted our community.

Every client and every post was worthy and worthwhile, and while it was incredible to scale, I was not stepping into raising my prices, using my voice, or stepping into the leadership role I needed to at that level.

Rather than delegate my processes, I was often on my phone during mealtimes or working long after the kids were put to bed. Rather than narrow down to the services and projects I enjoyed most, I took on any project that came through my inbox. And as a result, my to-do list held everything from Facebook content creation to Snapchat filter design to website build outs for pennies on the dollar because “it was easy for me.”

My default was avoiding discomforts, downplaying my skillset, saying yes to every opportunity, underselling my services, stretching myself thin, and applying Band-Aids instead of solving the real problems that were popping up.

I needed to make a change to make more revenue and free up some of my time. So I started to consider what else could be possible in 2020 and 2021.

More to come…or catch up on Part 1 here.