Insights from a Brand Management Expert

TL;DR: Having never received formal education in the subject of marketing, I apply my experience in education, real estate, Teflon™, cannabis, and so much more to create unique marketing services that work in the real world. You will not find classroom theories at Intech MKT. You will find an owner who knows what it takes to educate, sell, engage, connect, and grow.  

It’s not a simple path to entrepreneurship, but it is one that brings a bevy of practical capabilities to the table to benefit small businesses bold enough to grow and humble enough to know they can’t do it alone. 

Marketing is misunderstood. 

The term can mean one thing to the person who is in marketing and something else entirely to the person who is looking for marketing services. 

In the digital space, marketing has become a game of whack-a-mole with algorithms changing what counts as engagement and constantly re-ranking what gets the highest visibility. 

Google’s job is to make people stay on Google. Facebook’s job is to keep people on Facebook. LinkedIn’s…you get the point. 

The job of a digital marketer is to drive people to the company website and keep them there. 

See the issue? 

In the content space, everything can count as content: the copy on your website, the sales assets you use, social media posts, video promos, and more. If content is everywhere, then does that mean a marketer does it all? 

In the design space, marketing can be about everything from a billboard design to custom graphics, trade show booths, swag, and even professional photography. 

To put a fine point on it, “marketing” can mean almost anything. 

The kind of marketing a company gets depends on the expertise and background of the individual or team they hire.

For Intech MKT, it means everything I have done comes together to inform on strategy and the best ways to connect with people who will give a client more of their business. 

For the first six years of my professional life, I was a secondary English teacher, which means I taught 7th-12th graders. 

I spent my days finding new ways to present what felt like irrelevant or unimportant material to teenagers. I had to know the texts deeply to pull out what would speak to them, pique their interest, so we all could get what we wanted and needed from the class.

First, I had to get them to read the texts. 

In my English class, students learned to think and communicate clearly, accurately, deeply, and in a well-organized manner. Those were the takeaway skills I could provide through it all. 

After my sixth year, when I expected to feel settled, I felt stuck. Growth is limited for teachers who want to stay in the classroom, and I wanted more than a career in education could provide. 

I pivoted to become a licensed Realtor™ and spent the next seven years building up my own business under a broker who supported me. My success equaled their success, and the metrics of success simple: units moved and money collected. The more houses I helped people buy and sell, the more revenue flowed into the business, and the more opportunities I created for referral and repeat business.

Unlike teaching, where I had a captive audience, real estate was a competitive market. Everyone knows more than one Realtor™ so getting someone’s business was not going to happen passively. I had to market myself. 

I learned about the kind of buyers and sellers I wanted to work with - and the ones I didn’t. I learned the language of a whole new industry right when the ground shifted under the public’s feet from the housing crisis. Short sales and bankruptcies littered the landscape turning what used to be a straightforward process into one that has new and unexpected obstacles pop-up. Buyers and sellers were looking for someone with the authority and experience, and I had to gain both rapidly. 

I doubled my gross revenue year-over-year for four years straight and then continued to grow at least 50% every year after. I studied and practiced principles on relationship sales and how to get repeat and referral business. I mastered using social platforms and events to raise awareness and stay connected to my ideal clients. I found that direct mail wasn’t dead and e-mail marketing wasn’t going anywhere. 

It still wasn’t enough though. 

I didn’t like the unpredictable schedule, touring homes and signing contracts on nights and weekends, driving two hours to appointments that contractors, clients, or other agents no showed. I missed writing and innovating. 

Through a client, I stumbled into a part-time content writing role for Intech Services. My buyer/seller was with the company for years as a Teflon™ salesperson and knew the owner wanted a good writer to create a handbook and generate more marketing copy. 

I started out part-time, convinced I would never give real estate up fully after working so hard to build such a great book of business. 

I was wrong. 

I loved working at Intech Services. I was constantly learning. I was encouraged to ask questions and use my creativity to reimagine how things could be different, better. Working closely with the owner, I helped to fundamentally change how the company ran by setting up a structure that removed the need for middle management and offered autonomy to those who wanted to rise to the occasion. It rewarded good work, encouraged personal and professional growth, and brought people working across multiple projects together. 

I also reimagined how to get information on a mature, technical, regulated project like Teflon™ to the people who were busy running their own businesses. 

The owner became my mentor, and I went full-time, quickly moving into the role of Marketing Director. I would assess what skill gaps we had, who we needed to hire, create ways to share content, and develop concepts that brought in more revenue. 

I could educate and sell. 

I was infinitely curious and plainly communicative. 

I helped bring the owner’s vision to life and witnessed up close what went into running a successful business in the B2B industrial world. 

Years into what I thought was my forever employment, the owner approached me about partnering up to go into business together in the emerging cannabis industry. The company’s sales and marketing expertise was desperately needed in the chaotic and unchartered waters of the “green wave” of cannabis. 

I put my real estate license on ice and dove headfirst into the opportunity to pioneer something with a partner. 

Working in cannabis took everything I had learned professionally up to that point and then taught me a whole new set of rules and ways to look at the B2B world. My partner spearheaded sales while I took on marketing. We shared responsibility for growth. 

It would take another 2,000 words at least to share what I took away from the experience. Suffice it to say, the time was well spent and the experience a rich one, even with the clients that would break contracts and not pay their bills. 

In 2023, Intech Services was acquired, which necessitated shutting the doors to the cannabis business as well as moving the Teflon™ business to a new company. 

With guidance and support from my mentor, I opened Intech MKT. The name is an homage to the business that put me where I never knew I needed to be professionally. 

It’s a name with integrity, quality, and values that I want to continue putting out into the world. It’s a company that may identify as a B2B marketing business, but truly is about teaching people how to grow, nurture, maintain, and maximize the relationships they have with customers and gain news ones. 

Like Marketing, Intech MKT is not one thing. As Walt Whitman wrote in Song of Myself, “I am large. I contain multitudes.” 

So do you. 

Your origins are unique. Your offering is special. People deserve and want to hear about it. 

Scared you’ll annoy people by contacting them?