Out of high school, at the age of 17, I had no clear direction on where I wanted my life to go (who really does at that age, anyway?). After attending a few classes at the local community college I decided that the military sounded like a good idea, so I joined and served in the United States Air Force for four years where I was trained as an aircraft electrician.

During my time in the Air Force, I learned many things about business. The first was that ANYTHING is possible. We performed seemingly impossible tasks daily, and never said, “that’s not my job”, or “I don’t think I can do that”. If there was a job to be done, no matter how complicated or how short the timeline, we found a way to do it. I also learned that I didn’t want to work for anyone but myself. So, after my departure from the Air Force, I decided to merge my love of music, and my love of not working for idiots, and I built and operated a small recording studio in the Los Angeles area. Along with the recording studio, my business partner and I started an independent record label.

I quickly learned that succeeding in business was so much more than knowing how to record or engineer music. As I began to understand what it took to establish, build and succeed in business, I quickly became intrigued by the world of business. I had taken business courses in college, but actually building a successful business as an entrepreneur was quite different than what I learned in the textbooks. My desire for a successful career caused me to dive in to every learning opportunity I could find. I began to read every business and marketing book I could get my hands on, went to training seminars, surrounded myself with other successful, some VERY successful, business owners, and learned a lot simply through trial and error. As I learned more about business, it became my passion. I love good business and good marketing, and I love the process of building systems and implementing the incremental, evolutionary, and revolutionary improvements that make a business great.

After owning the studio for a little more than four years, I decided I needed to move in a different direction, so I sold the company and began to look at other business opportunities. In time, my wife and I purchased a high-end retail stationery store, Paper Mulberry, which had been around for about seven years. We moved the business to a new location, and began to build systems, and grow our customer base. Yvette and I found that it was important to have clearly identified, and differentiated roles, so Yvette dealt with the customer service side of the business, I handled the operations and marketing.

As we adapted to our roles, and grew as a team, we enjoyed great success in business. Paper Mulberry grew rapidly, and we added staff and expanded our product line. We also built a successful website and online store to enhance our brick-and-mortar business. It was during the first year of business, that I really fine tuned my marketing skills. I had read and learned many things about effective marketing, but I hadn’t had the money, or opportunity to really put those things into practice before. With our purchase of the business, I definitely had the opportunity, and the business was producing plenty of money to put in place a very effective marketing and advertising campaign. Through the use of coupons, and direct response, I was able to track the effectiveness of each new campaign, and constantly worked to improve the results. Over time, our advertising became like a“faucet” and when we wanted to turn up our business, we just turned up the “faucet”.

In 2005 Yvette and I were blessed with our first child. Because we both wanted Yvette to stay home as a full-time mom, and I really couldn’t see myself selling wedding invitations and birth announcements forever, we decided to sell the business. It was when we listed the business, that I truly realized the impact of our marketing and system building efforts. Like many business owners, we had concentrated on the day-to-day aspects of building the business, and had never really stepped outside of the business to truly evaluate the effects of our efforts. Our business broker was excited to inform us, that we had the highest earnings per square foot of any business he had ever worked with. Every square foot of our little retail store produced almost $13,000 per year, in sales. Also, he was relieved to find that all of the preparation that goes into listing a business for sale, was already done. We had an up-to-date business plan, an operations and management manual, comprehensive business systems, and complete (and honest) financial records. Most importantly, the business was profitable. It made his job much easier, and added value to the business.

With the sale of Paper Mulberry, I began my career as a business and marketing consultant, and almost immediately, fell into a long-term consulting position (and Marketing Director title) at a real estate company. During this period, I helped other businesses on a short term basis, but was mainly focused on growing that business. In addition to bringing about great changes in the business, this was a great period of growth for me. I was able to dive deeply into the specialized world of real estate marketing, and attend some excellent seminars and classes. I made it a point during this time to take advantage of every opportunity I could, and it paid off.

When I arrived at Realty Response, the business was in a period of gradual decline. Even though the real estate market was still booming (for a while), Realty Response was stagnating. No one was responsible for advertising, and there was no marketing plan. Worse, there was no real direction, or plan for improvement. Suffice to say, dramatic changes were needed, but luckily, management was willing to allow major changes, and big successes followed.

During the first few weeks that I was there, I focused on reorganizing staff, and developing a cohesive plan for improvement. I began to systematize the business and wrote several manuals including business operations manuals, training manuals, and developed client presentations. As the plan was being refined, we began to implement some basic changes, that led to big results. The first thing we did, was begin a well tracked, direct mail advertising campaign. This allowed us to test marketing messages and begin to develop target markets. We would, later, shift much of the advertising budget away from direct mail, but this was a very good venue to begin a tested advertising campaign, and get the company moving forward again.

Over the next 2 years, we were able to increased sales leads by more than 300% and bring the company to top 10% performance among 400+ local real estate companies. We maintained, month-to-month, lead growth of 16% by continuously monitoring and refining advertising campaigns to increase their effectiveness. We were able to increase per transaction commission rates by 40.8% by revising the company’s commission structure. We started a sister company to provide referrals to the parent company, which produced over $1.5 million in business in its first year, and we launched an award-winning website, and implemented the company’s first complete Internet marketing system consisting of over 20 unique branded and unbranded URLs. Eventually, we reduced total advertising expense 75% by shifting focus from direct mail advertising to direct response Internet classifieds, pay-per-click, and other print campaigns, while continuously increasing the effectiveness of the company’s advertising.

Unfortunately, and as a testament to the depth and extent of the real estate market downturn, all the improvements couldn’t save Realty Response. The company had to make major cutbacks and relocate in order to weather the storm, and that meant I had to move on. I quickly found myself in another long-term consulting position at a market leading motion control company, and have remained there until now. While I have continued to work short-term consulting jobs for other small businesses, I have been blessed to be able to have a few long-term clients, and have been able to focus on the success of those companies. I am enjoying my position with a this very successful company, and am relieved to be able to focus on business improvements, rather than having to bail water from a sinking ship.

It is a great blessing to be able to expand my consulting reach through Renegade Marketing Strategies, and help many more small businesses achieve success. It is my passion to see these businesses flourish, and I am always happy to help.

garritt@renegademarketingstrategies.com