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Crafting Luxury Brands: Insights from Madison Hollimon

• Ed Drozda

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Ever wondered what it takes to thrive in the luxury marketing space? Madison Hollimon of Mad Marketing House joins me on 'The Water Trough' to discuss her unique path and the secrets of impactful storytelling. Don't miss it! #LuxuryMarketing #CreativeJourney #ListenNow 

Welcome to The Water Trough where we can't make you drink, but we will make you think. My name is Ed Drozda, The Small Business Doctor, and I'm really excited you chose to join me here as we discuss topics that are important for small business folks just like you. If you're looking for ideas, inspiration, and possibility, you've come to the right place. Join us as we take steps to help you create the healthy business that you've always wanted.

Ed Drozda:

Good afternoon folks this is Ed Drozda, The Small Business Doctor. Welcome back to The Water Trough. Today I am joined by Madison Holliman. Madison is the owner and founder of Mad Marketing House, a marketing firm that specializes in authentic creation and branding for businesses, particularly in the luxury and personal brand space. With over a decade of experience in marketing, including five years as an agency owner, Madison has worked with over 1000 businesses to transform their digital presence. Her expertise in visual storytelling and social media content has helped countless brands grow their digital footprint and generates significant returns on advertising spend. Madison's agency has successfully managed over 1 million in ad spend yielding more than 50 million in revenue for her clients. Madison, welcome.

Madison Hollimon:

Thank you for having me.

Ed Drozda:

It's a pleasure to have you here today, Madison. So tell me, what gave Rise to Mad Marketing House? Where'd the name come from?

Madison Hollimon:

So, have you ever seen Alice in Wonderland and you have this Mad Hatter that's just crazy. So for us it was, we are a house of creatives that are just super, hyper creative and I just felt like it was a fun nod to the unlimited opportunity to be creative and drive results for businesses within the marketing space.

Ed Drozda:

I love the origin. That's fantastic. Would you say you've always been a creative sort or did it come to you further on down the road? What was your first foray into the world of creativity?

Madison Hollimon:

Even at a young age I enjoyed painting. I would draw and then as I got older I had this interest in fashion. Actually my first business was a screen printing business, and I paid my way through college selling t-shirts to schools and contractors, because they would place large orders. And I had a guy that worked for me that would print the shirts and I would go out and sell the orders and deliver them, and I was able to pay my way through college with my screen print business.

Ed Drozda:

Sounds to me like a fascinating form of scholarship, if you will. Mm-hmm. I know that a lot of people depend upon other forms, financial aid or whatever, but to go out there and put yourself through like that is a pat on the back moment. So congratulations to you for that. Thank you. I think that's really cool. And then having done that, you just never lost the spark.

Madison Hollimon:

Yeah, I started working for my dad and I did marketing for him. He owns an international brand. They sell center consoles for$2 million speedboats all over the world. So I worked for him. He taught me how to do graphic design. He actually had a lull in his business as I was graduating high school. So we had a lot of time together where he would sit there and he would help me do the t-shirt designs in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. And I just quickly picked up on graphic design and then started doing it for other people, designing a logo, helping them build their website. Then once I graduated, I went and worked for a plastic surgeon and managed their$1 million a year in marketing across the board for whatever they spent. Half, half a million,$10 million over the period of time that I was there. And I just had this love for it because I was able to see the direct impact it made on a business to have really good marketing.

Ed Drozda:

I'm one of those that believes that sales is secondary to marketing. Sales is a function that can survive because of marketing, but without marketing, without effective marketing, what have you got to sell and who's gonna know you've got it, anyway. I'm definitely a fan of marketing, I think that it is very, very powerful. And one of the things that you mentioned in your story is that you like to help people deliver their marketing message through storytelling. So tell me more about that if you will.

Madison Hollimon:

Yeah, so when you're posting on social media, you're always telling a story, whether it's in a video format or in a carousel swipe format. You wanna keep people engaged and interested. No matter what you're doing, you're always trying to communicate something or promote something or educate, and you do that through storytelling.

Ed Drozda:

Storytelling is one of the most powerful means of getting points across. People can certainly relate in some form or another. If I hear your story, obviously I am not you, you are not me. But there's always little glimmers of something that can spark the imagination, spark potential, and stories do just that. Your experiences are different than mine. Your story then gives me a vision of things that I just don't have any idea about, and that's a fascinating thing. So how did you choose the audience that you work with? What brought you into that space? Because it seems as if you're in somewhat of a niche space. How'd you end up there?

Madison Hollimon:

I think from my background, working with a plastic surgeon and doing a high end luxury product, I was exposed to a higher ticket sales, essentially. Mm-hmm. And we do work with some other smaller businesses that have lower ticket products or services, but I think we really excel in the higher luxury product or service, just because that's my experience. I mean I grew up in a household as my father was an entrepreneur my whole life, so I was privy to witnessing him sell a boat and make half a million dollars, or he was in construction at one point. So I think it's just all I've ever known, so I just became good at it.

Ed Drozda:

So that was your journey. You kind of grew into it, or I guess you could say you grew with it. Yeah, exactly. Now imagine you're talking to people who are contemplating going down this path. Not necessarily the luxury path, but they find the luxury path to be very intimidating. The fact that from an early age you were exposed to it, that certainly gives you a leg up and you feel more comfortable there. But what would you say to the people that find it to be too intimidating? They're just simply afraid of the idea, but heck, I'd like to be in that space. What do you say to them?

Madison Hollimon:

I would just go get experience. I would go work for somebody that's in the space that you're interested in, whether it's an internal marketing position or an internship, and get all the experience you can, because I would definitely say as I'm hiring, I love the fact that somebody can graduate from a prestigious college and have a really great project they worked on at the end of the year. But what I really looked at is what is your experience? What does your portfolio look like? Are you creative? What areas are you creative in? Are you hardworking? Because if you can check those boxes, you can learn anything and grow into any position that you truly put your mind to.

Ed Drozda:

All right, that's great advice. I appreciate that. When you are engaging with your clients, and I think this is something important for people to understand, would you consider yourself a technical consult, a creative consult, a hybrid of the two, or yet a third that I didn't mention?

Madison Hollimon:

Initially we do a strategy. We look at their digital footprint before they hire us or work with us. Then within that strategy we say, okay, here's the end goal, and this is what we're gonna do in between starting to work together and to get you to this goal. And essentially we will adjust that strategy every three months or every quarter, so that we're constantly seeing on trends, algorithms are changing, new content shoots are needed. So we're able to keep our pulse on what content's working, what content's not working. What are other people in the industry doing that we're seeing convert so that we can always stay on top of the game and make sure that every month when we're going into the next season, we're two steps ahead. The way we are able to do that is we have 15 to 20 people on staff working 40 hours a week, thousands of hours we're investing in these platforms. That's the only way that we know as much as we know about them.

Ed Drozda:

So vastly more important, certainly more time spent in the actual development of the utility of the product, versus the actual act of creating the product. Is that fair?

Madison Hollimon:

Oh yes, absolutely. A lot of the pre-planning and shooting and editing to get it to that final moment is what all that work, essentially what you're paying an agency to do is all that work leading up to the moment of hitting post.

Ed Drozda:

What kinds of things go into creating a marketing persona for a client? I'm looking at you as a technical expert. I'm asking these questions'cause I envision these are kinds of questions that somebody who's curious to go into this sort of engagement might be looking to have answers for.

Madison Hollimon:

Trying to come up with that, we call it an avatar essentially, is who we're selling to and who's buying this product or service. Usually it's a couple different personas that you're going after. You typically look at your data so far, like who has purchased from you and how have you obtained that client. Mm-hmm. What is their age group? Where are they located? What are their interests? What, are they buying from you? Are they coming back? And then you're able to determine, okay, this is who my avatar is. Now I'm gonna go to this platform because we know this age group is on Instagram or TikTok or YouTube. Then we're gonna serve that avatar with content that speaks to them. As a business owner, a lot of people wanna see things that makes them feel good and speaks to themselves, but you can't do that. You have to speak to who's buying your product or service.

Ed Drozda:

It's an important distinction. Your client is trying to serve their own clients and you have to thread the needle between their expectations and what their own clients are looking for. Tell me about that. That must be an interesting experience for you.

Madison Hollimon:

Yeah typically what we found is a lot of your clientele, a lot of people go after something and say, oh, this is my niche. This is where I wanna work. But then along the way you'll find out that actually it's something different and you may find that you enjoy that more and that it's easier for you to produce or to serve as a business. And when you're able to do that and streamline, that's when you're able to scale. Because you understand that clientele so much that you can do it across the board everywhere, and I feel like it kills any business that does not niche down and find their audience. Because when you're trying to service everybody, you can't do that on a mass scale. You can't expand your business that way.

Ed Drozda:

As a business coach I can tell you I've encountered a number of clients over the years who have done just that. These are folks in both mature businesses as well as those who are new in business just developing. They frankly just don't know who their clients should be. And let's face it, it does start with the business owner. It's up to me to figure out who I can serve, right? Not for them to tell me what they want necessarily, because I still have to be able to provide them a bill of goods. It's a curious place isn't it, Madison? You're chuckling. Obviously, you've been here.

Madison Hollimon:

Yes, it's funny because in my line of work I always say it takes me 90 days most of the time to learn my client and learn their style, how they communicate, what they're gonna like. And I'm laughing'cause as we're meeting right now, I'm having somebody emailing me that's been a client for a week and we're trying to learn how to work together. And a client might get frustrated about something, but for us that's a simple easy fix, let me do that for you really quickly. You just have to tell me that's what you're looking for.

Ed Drozda:

Right, but I don't know what I'm looking for.

Madison Hollimon:

Exactly, and we figured that out through trial and error, giving you different examples and you know.

Ed Drozda:

I think that's an important thing for people to realize too. I believe a lot of people are going into business thinking that they can build something. For example, a website, a business plan. Something concrete. Okay? And they may be technically good at doing those things. But they undervalue the importance of their ability to draw the client out so as to create the thing most suitable for that client. It's not possible to create a good website for example, if the client is not party to the situation that leads to the creation of that website. Yes? Yeah. Now if I go to you and I say, well I want this site and I want this kind of market immersion and presentation, I want to reach this particular group of people. If I come to you with all these ideas, it would be easy for you to sit down and put that together as is, right? Of course. You're technically capable, you got the people to do it, so boom, okay, fine. Done. End of story. Mm-hmm. But the value add is that you can say hey Ed, hold on a second. Tell me more about what you're trying to do. Tell me about who you're trying to reach, about what engages them, and so on and so forth. I believe it's that person who's technically capable that can provide that additional support. They become a valued, a trusted advisor, not just a producer. I think this is the most important step in the relationship.

Madison Hollimon:

Absolutely, I agree. A lot of that value does come from if somebody comes to us and knows exactly what they want versus if they don't, because I can say we have another client over here that did it this way and this was their results. So if we kind of mimic that strategy a bit and utilize this platform that we know does X, we can get you here, but we're gonna need this much extra money in ad spend or whatever to get you to your true goal. And a lot of it is just tweaking and adjusting as you go to get where you wanna be. You may say it's gonna take 12 months to get there. It might take 18, it might take six. You don't know until you start doing it. Once you get in the groove and get on a roll with your efforts in marketing, you're able to determine what works for you and your business and your audience.

Ed Drozda:

It's quite a process, that's for sure. So think of the biggest challenges that you face and the people such as yourself, face out there in the marketplace. Tell me about them.

Madison Hollimon:

I think as an entrepreneur we have these big goals and visions of growing big businesses and scaling. For everybody else is different. For us my goal was always to be a multi-million dollar agency within five years and you know first few years, it's really easy to double revenue. But once you hit that 1 million mark within 12 months it's hard to double it again the next 12 months to get to two and then to get to four. And you're starting to hit these numbers where your business starts to break a little bit because what took you to get to half a million is not what's gonna get you to a million, and it's not what's gonna get you to 3 million. So as you go, it's streamlining your process and your systems and having the team to do it because the team that got you to half a million is not gonna get you to 3 million. And you have to find those key players that as an entrepreneur and a CEO, I can't physically do anything at the$2 million a year mark. I have to have a team that supports me and I have to essentially pull myself out of it so that I can focus on strategy and sales and have my team execute. I think personally for me that's been the hardest part. We're going into year five, we're gonna hit our$2 million annual goal within five years. But it's the evolution of the team over the five years because you bring people in, you become attached to them, and they help you do certain things. And then they might decide that this doesn't align with what they want for their life. They don't wanna hustle and grow and be at a company that one day can do this and the next day do that. So I would definitely say it's scaling and systems and teams and having those breaking points as you hit those revenue goals.

Ed Drozda:

It is an awkward space. The vision is something that is nurtured and cultured in the principle, the founders, the owners, and it's personal. It's not something you can share with everybody completely. You can try and you can think you are, but the reality is, uh, you can't necessarily in such a fashion. Even if you could, you can't expect them to be fully aligned with you, as you say. I didn't envision I'd be working 60 hour weeks three years into it. I didn't envision this or that. Okay. And that, of course is their own journey. As a leader it's your responsibility and that of all the other small business people who are scaling and growing to understand that vision is personal. And it's also somewhat lonely. As much as you need support, Madison as you said, you can't do it alone and you know that, but how can you engage the right sorts of folks to participate in that vision with you knowing full well they can never share it with you completely.

Madison Hollimon:

I think from personal experiences, it's directly rewarding people financially for contributing, because at the end of the day they're here for a job and to have a living In today's time, the cost of living is insane. You know, what$50,000 a year 10 years ago gets you now is drastic, and I think it's important to be able to bring in a quality client that is paying a premium price so that you can have the talent that needs to be there that's capable of doing the work that can earn a livable wage. Being able to reward them as the business grows and knowing hey guys, if we take on another half a million dollars a year, yes we are gonna bring in support staff to get us there, but if you can step up into this role and make another$20,000 a year, that's exciting for people to have that kind of growth that fast. Within our company as we've scaled so much there has been a lot of growth opportunities for our team. I think that's why we're able to have the team that we are today.

Ed Drozda:

That's excellent, and that certainly is a goal for all to strive for. It's not a given, that's for sure. One of the most important things is that the leader, the founder, the owner has to be willing to share in that growth wealth. And I don't mean just financially either, but emotionally and creatively as well as in many other ways. Those things are extremely important. So when you look at your growth over the last five years, and you said this is your fifth year now, correct?

Madison Hollimon:

Yeah, we're going into year five. April 26th will be five years.

Ed Drozda:

We'll call it the fifth year because, in fact if you go zero to one and, you know that stuff anyway, as you now are in your fifth year and you look back over what you've done and what you've accomplished, what are the highlights that stand out for you? What sorts of things have you learned along the way that you wish you would've had knowledge of before you started?

Madison Hollimon:

I think for me, building this business at 25 years old, I was young and I was more mature than most 25-year-old because I am the oldest of five kids. When you're that age you lead more with emotion than you do rationality. Now I don't make decisions quickly. I think about things before I react. I take emotion out of the most that I can because I am a woman and my business is personal. I bootstrapped the company and I think for me, being able to think before I speak and lead as an example, not only for my team, but for my clients and have a servant's heart because I am serving these people and their businesses. I think it's really what has given us the ability to, in the past 12 months, triple our revenue by having that mentality and knowing at the end of the day, everything's gonna work out how it's supposed to. There's a plan and I have to trust it.

Ed Drozda:

I think we all go through a phase where emotions play a strong role and they've slapped us around enough where we realize, boy, I'd like to get to a point where I can keep them in check. Some of us succeed, some of us don't, but it certainly is a goal to strive for. It lends a little bit more stability to the environment. Wouldn't you say?

Madison Hollimon:

Oh, of course. I do have legacy clients that have been with me for almost five years. My very first client is still with me today, so I think that speaks for itself. But I will say I feel like the clients that we've brought in, in the past year and a half, a lot of them I don't see going anywhere for the foreseeable future because they feel supported by the team. They are getting the results and they know that we're constantly looking for their best interest. Like I had a call today with a client that I had adjusted the strategy on and they got on the call to want to talk about adjusting the strategy, but we had already done it and we were ready to present it. And for us it's like making sure there we're always a couple steps ahead and if we can prevent things and be organized and communicate we will have always have a successful, thriving business and good company culture.

Ed Drozda:

Interesting that you talk about the legacy client. Five years is fantastic. To have somebody around from the get go is fantastic. It's also interesting that you note that you have some clients who I'm sensing what you're saying is a certain amount of dependency. We know that Madhouse is gonna take care of us, so we don't have to worry about it. I'm sensing and maybe I'm misreading, but it seems to me like you've got an inkling of an idea of what's coming next for you.

Madison Hollimon:

I do, and I almost feel a little apprehensive to it because...

Ed Drozda:

Sorry for poking you, but I just couldn't help it. Okay?

Madison Hollimon:

No, I'm an open book if you know anything. It's taken us so much to get here in the past 12 months. Years one through three were great. They were easier. Year four threw us on our backs and it threw us on our back in a very vulnerable time for me. I had just had my third baby and I basically had to rebuild the business last year. I was constantly asking myself, am I just not meant to do this? Is this not what the plan is for me? And I was at that point just ready to be done with it, and then it started to turn around and ever since then, it's like I've just been on the front seat of a roller coaster and I'm just hanging on for dear life and it is moving so fast. I'm always trying to, like I said, stay ahead, whether it's with the team and hiring or replacing our clients or scaling the business, and we're just growing at a really fast pace. It's happening organically, it's referrals, it's people spreading the word on how great of a job we've done for them, and they just wanna let people know. I had a client text me, he's my second biggest client in spend, and he's like, hey do you have a referral program? I'm like, absolutely I gotta a referral program for you. You refer me another great client, we'll take care of you. But in the back of my mind, I'm just like, there's only so much of me. And so it's like, okay, how do I replace myself? And I know that that's with having to hire three people.

Ed Drozda:

I want to tell you something. This might sound odd. I'm very happy for you. I'm glad you had that slap down in year four.

Madison Hollimon:

Oh, I needed it.

Ed Drozda:

I think we all need a slap down to give us an opportunity to take a good hard look at what's going on. As far as the front seat and the rollercoaster, come on girl. You know darn well that's what you got yourself into, right? Mm-hmm.

Madison Hollimon:

I wouldn't want to have it in any other way'cause if business was slow, I would be sitting around like poor, pitiful me. What's wrong? I move so fast. It honestly is been just a dream come true where we've gotten the business and the clients that we serve you best. I really have no complaints. I'm a mom of three little kids. They were sick all weekend. They got me sick yesterday. So I am a human. I do get tired and worn out. But I do believe that us entrepreneurs, we're more resilient than most people. We truly can take anything and get back up.

Ed Drozda:

I'm glad you're doing just that. So, Madison, our time is coming to an end, and before we part company I want to ask, is there anything you'd like to share? Anything at all that comes to mind that's important to you?

Madison Hollimon:

I think it's important to give credit to the people that truly help you get to where you are. For me, it's been the support of my family, my husband, my dad, my mom. I have two sisters that work for me, and we truly have a family business and knowing that you're able to put your trust in your family and they're gonna support you no matter what is really a driving force to the success that we have today. I really am thankful for the support that they have given me and sacrifices they have made to get us to this point. Because we can't do it ourselves and anybody that pretends that they did it, their self is not telling the truth. So it's important to give credit where it's due.

Ed Drozda:

Thank you for that. I think that's a lesson that we all need to understand and put into action. I appreciate that. Well, Madison I thank you for being here with me today. I'm very grateful to have you, and I wanna wish you the very best in all that you do from here on out.

Madison Hollimon:

Thank you, I appreciate it Ed.

Ed Drozda:

Folks, this is Ed Drozda and here at The Water Trough, I want to wish you a healthy business.