Thankfulness - Meerkat Media Group

Company: Meerkat Media Group
Owners: Kristin Chambers
Year Started: 2017
Employees: 1-10 (Emerging)

Welcome to An Agency Story podcast, I'm your host Russel.

In today's episode, we're joined by Kristin Chambers, the founder of Meerkat Media Group, a digital marketing agency based in St. Augustine, Florida.

Titled "Thankfulness," this segment explores Kristin’s accidental yet triumphant journey into the realm of agency ownership, blending vibrant storytelling with strategic marketing insights. Kristin shares some of her memories, both exciting and courageous.
Including a surprise Shark Tank appearance and humorous misadventures during a video shoot in the desert.

Through these stories, she reveals how embracing unexpected opportunities and maintaining gratitude have shaped her business philosophy and personal resilience.

Enjoy the story.

Show Notes Insights

Embrace Niche Specialization:Kristin's journey with Meerkat Media Group emphasizes the importance of finding and specializing in a niche. This focus has allowed her agency to excel in areas like travel, food and beverage, and nonprofits, which in turn attracts clients who are looking for specific expertise. Honing in on particular industries or service types can differentiate their business from competitors and build a stronger reputation in those fields.

Flexibility, Adaptability and Self-Care: Throughout the episode, Kristin discusses how flexibility and adaptability have been crucial for her agency's survival and growth, especially during challenging times like the onset of COVID-19. She highlights the importance of being able to pivot services and adapt business models quickly. In addition, the importance of practicing self-care, gratitude, and giving yourself grace through difficult times.

What did you find insightful or inspiring about this episode?   Send an email at russel@performancefaction.com to share.

Are you interested in a conversation to build specific strategies for your business like the ones mentioned in this episode?

Schedule a 15 minute introductory conversation here to learn more.

Transcript

0:02

Welcome to An Agency Story podcast where we share real stories of marketing agency owners from around the world. From the excitement of starting up the first big sale, passion, doubt, fear, freedom, and the emotional rollercoaster of growth, hear it all on An Agency Story podcast. An Agency Story podcast is hosted by Russel Dubree, successful agency owner with an eight figure exit turned business coach. Enjoy the next agency story.

Russel: 0:41

Welcome to An Agency Story podcast. I'm your host Russel. In today's episode, we're joined by Kristin chambers, the founder of Meerkat Media Group, a digital agency based in St. Augustine, Florida. Titled"Thankfulness". This segment explores Kristin's accidental yet triumphant journey into the realm of agency ownership, blending, vibrant storytelling was strategic marketing insights Kristen share some of her memories, both exciting and courageous. Including a surprise Shark Tank appearance, and humorous misadventures during a video shoot in the desert. Through these stories, your bills, how embracing unexpected opportunities and maintaining gratitude have shaped her business philosophy and personal resilience. Enjoy the story. Welcome to the show today, everyone. I have Kristin Chambers with Meerkat Media Group with us here today.

Kristin: 1:26

Thank you so much for having me.

Russel: 1:28

Start us off. What does Meerkat Media Group do and who do you do it for?

Kristin: 1:31

We're a digital marketing agency, just like many agencies out there, but we focus on inbound marketing and content creation. It's a little bit unique in that we also offer production and house. My husband's background is in film and photography so we were able to incorporate that into our, in our in house service offerings, uh, which is beneficial for everything that we do with content creation, digital ads, social media, email marketing, et cetera. We primarily serve food and beverage, travel and tourism, and non profits.

Russel: 2:03

That sounds probably one of the most fun industries you could possibly have to make videos for. I'm a little jealous there. Where's the coolest place you've gotten to go to film something?

Kristin: 2:12

Oh, gosh. I would have to say that would be Arizona and southern Utah. We did a commercial for a van company called Boho Camper Vans and got to take one of their camper vans out for two weeks and do a two week road trip, film along the way. They were a newer company and were on Shark Tank, so our video footage that we provided to them for the commercial was actually shown on Shark Tank as well. That was our big fame moment for prime time television, I guess you could say. And it was a beautiful journey going through Sedona and Monument Valley. That was also right when COVID started. It was a very interesting time. I think we were on the flight home as everything was being shut down.

Russel: 2:54

All right. I want to learn certainly a lot more about your agency, but, go back in time a little bit. I love the terminology used, when we met, of the accidental agency owner. But even before that moment, what was young Kristin doing? What were you going to be when you grew up?

Kristin: 3:08

Well, that's funny that you said that. In fifth grade, I said that I wanted to be the president of the United States, and I'm glad I'm not in that position. But, yes, I am an accidental agency owner, and I feel like that's a very common term for many digital agency owners or whatever you're doing out there. I started out in journalism, so I was a writer for a newspaper, a freelance journalist for many years, a magazine writer in the music industry, covering music festivals. I think as the natural progression for many writers, especially in journalism, is to segue into either public relations or marketing. For one, being a writer doesn't make very much money so I was working two, three jobs at times in order to pay the bills. I worked my way up, found myself in the marketing industry, worked my way up to a marketing director for an international startup and, got a lot of experience learning as I go. Content for us is primarily writing and writing is my core background.

Russel: 4:04

One of the stories I found very interesting that, that I understand is, and I think this is when you were still in the corporate world, pre agency life, you'd had a eat, pray, love moment and just took off, out of the country and said, see ya, but, it didn't work out so bad for you. Can you share more about that?

Kristin: 4:19

Yes,, I was burnt out from the corporate world. I had worked very hard right out of college, graduating during a recession, like I said, working multiple hours. Worked my way up to that, uh, marketing director position for a large company and was working 60 plus hours a week. At that time I was in my early thirties and one night I was in bed on an app called Hopper and I found a ticket to Thailand for under 800 dollars round trip and I booked it. I didn't say a word to anyone. I didn't tell my family, my boss, I was not married at the time so I wasn't going to get in trouble with my husband, but I ended up backpacking Thailand for three weeks and it was a life changing moment. I got the travel bug, I went to Paris next and went around Europe. My job still had me, they still saw value in me and kept me on board for as long as they could until I had that, not necessarily an aha moment, but it was more of a natural progression of other companies starting to come to me asking for help. It became a side gig where I was helping them out, traveling, also working my full time job. Eventually I stepped away from that full time position.

Russel: 5:23

You're sitting on an app and you just book a plane ticket. Like, are you leaving, like, the next day? How fast did this actually happen?

Kristin: 5:31

I think it was like two months in advance, maybe. It wasn't. I didn't pack my bags and leave the same night necessarily. But yeah, I wasn't going to put anyone in that bad a position. Ironically, as an agency owner, we do have the freedom to be able to travel, especially when they work in digital, which is why I started my agency because I wanted the flexibility of not being stuck in the old corporate world of sitting in the cubicle. The great thing about digital marketing is that we can work from wherever we want, which is how I built the company is how do, what is the lifestyle that I want to be working in? That's attracted a similar mindset team. But we work very hard and we get to travel and enjoy all of these benefits of working in digital. Ironically, at the same time, now I'm working probably just as much, but now it's for myself. And when I travel, I'm still working. It's not necessarily time off as a business owner.

Russel: 6:22

In some ways that, you know, I'd say not only doing something like that, but then right, just getting to the place where you step out and start your own business. Do you think of yourself as a risk taker? Or is that, was those moments more out of character for you?

Kristin: 6:34

No, I would consider myself a risk taker. When I was working for a newspaper, I moved to New York City in my mid twenties and, a little different than most interns, I started interning when I was 26 in marketing. Like I said, my background is journalism but I wanted to get my foot in the door in public relations and marketing. I was freelance writing, cocktail waitressing, interning on wall street and took that risk to be able to go to a big city like New York and get that experience under my belt with some really cool companies. Then came back to Florida and that really opened up the world for me. We have a great intern program now, I'm trying to pass along that same, opportunity for people that come and intern with us

Russel: 7:13

I love that. I think there's so many good benefits that having an internship can be for both ways. I love how you said that kind of pass the torch or pay it forward, I guess, as they say. You stepped away, you started your own agency. Was that scary? What were some of those early months and days, weeks like for you?

Kristin: 7:30

Not having, I guess, job security, I think is scary for anyone. But I, when I stepped away, when I left my full time job, I think I had saved 10,000 after I was done traveling. I think I had 5, 000 left in my bank account, so I essentially started this company with 5, 000 in my bank. No help, no loans, just went with what I had saved and then just relied on business coming in and growing and it did. Had it not, it's not the end of the world. You can always go get a job, whatever it is doing, but I had that faith and just going with rolling to see what happened and it kept on growing in the way that I wanted it to. But it took a lot of hard work and it was definitely scary at times but we just had to like, trust that we're in the right position and keep on doing a great job and delivering for clients.

Russel: 8:17

Obviously it sounds like you're very comfortable in terms of the work you do and staying in your wheelhouse and who you do that for. Has it always been that way for you or how did you evolve to where you're specifically focused on as a business today?

Kristin: 8:29

It's definitely not been like that way. I mean, when we're a little, we think that adults have it all figured out, but really no matter what age you are, you could be 60 years old, 70, and you're still figuring it out as you go. Experience is definitely a benefit and makes things easier. But, you know, especially starting a new business. I had never taken a business class before. I've been learning this stuff as we go, because as a small business owner, I am HR. I am accounting. Now, I have a great bookkeeper. I've learned agency math and certain, ways of making sure that we're profitable as a business. It's taking that knowledge that I already had and learned coming up into marketing and then putting that into the business mindset of now how do you run a company doing all of these things that you know? That was a learning curve for me. But fun, I really, I enjoy the business part of it too. I think my background, even working in hospitality, I was waiting tables for years when I was in college and all of that, learning how to communicate, multitask, work under pressure really translated to the jobs that I was doing.

Russel: 9:33

Love hearing just all the soft skills and hard skills. I love the term agency math that you were describing there. What about specifically more towards, how you've positioned the business? It sounds like you, you focus a lot on content creation and specifically for the travel and tourism agency. As you said, not necessarily exclusively, but that sounds like a big focus for you. Did you start out that way as well, or were you working for anybody and everybody?

Kristin: 9:54

Oh, I think we all work for everybody and anybody when we're starting out because you're taking whatever business you can. I think that's very natural for any new business owner, but at the end of the day, you're going to get more business when you do have a niche and you do have a specialty. That's where we over the years have fine tuned and gotten to that specialty and the areas that we wanted to grow in. That meant, doing case studies and sending commercials out for Addy awards and putting ourselves out there in a position for the target audience that we really want to attract. Part of that might be even doing work for trade at the beginning, just so that you can have that under your tool bell and under your case study and under your website to prove your work and prove yourself with results.

Russel: 10:36

That brings up such a great point. There's this tried and true way it seems like sometimes we're supposed to go up business. We're supposed to craft a, a good sales strategy and have a good sales process and all these things. And then when I think about my own journey, as an owner and some of the, bigger catalyst moments that we experienced. I'd say one of them was, we just had a really great project that had some notoriety to it and we did a great job of promoting it and had its own natural visibility. I honestly believe that was a huge bump for us in overall business. Just the visibility on a high quality piece of work. Sounds like that was a similar approach you were taking is do good work however you can get to that and just be strategic in how you promote and leverage that. Is that how you were thinking about it or did it happen more serendipitously through that?

Kristin: 11:17

No, I guess a little bit of both. Definitely strategic. That is our goal. That's why we were doing some of these bigger projects. You want an Addy award for doing a commercial for a restaurant and help promote them, and have a great case study to prove for it, which honestly, we, we have been very blessed with growth with referrals over the past six years that we really haven't done a lot of our own marketing. I think that's what a lot of agency owners fall into, or agencies, is if you're busy with client work, then you're not prioritizing yourself. So one of our goals this year is to treat ourselves as a client. We're actually going to be going after those businesses that we want. Having some of those businesses in the natural sense of that question is we started out in restaurants, um, with some of our clients. We were able to already have that experience and then those people were able to refer us to similar markets, so it was a little bit of both, I guess you say, because we were already

Russel: 12:12

I stand on the soapbox for it of being your own best client and how important and critical that is. We cannot neglect ourselves. We need to get the benefit of what we do best, for ourselves. I don't know how long you've been going down that path, but it sounds like it's working and something you're, finding a lot of benefit hanging your hat on. Is that right?

Kristin: 12:29

Yeah, definitely. I think a big part of it too, is having the resources. A big challenge of agency ownership and a business owner, no matter what industry you're working in, is the team that is helping support the business. That was a challenge for us for many years of finding the right players in place and that continues. We have a great team, a great core team now. But as we grow and evolve, that is a big component of business ownership and probably one of the hardest things, honestly, is the people component that are supporting your business. As you grow, they are the component that is keeping your business moving forward, whether or not you're dedicating those resources to marketing yourself.

Russel: 13:07

One other thing that I know was, a very formative moment, is how you described your, you know, you mentioned the onset of COVID with that Shark Tank experience. From what I understand, COVID was not a great time period for you for many reasons like everyone else experienced, but some unique things. What were you going through during that time?

Kristin: 13:24

With COVID, I had just started my agency in mid 2017. We were very young. Like any new business, it was mainly just me at the beginning and some contractors, um, I think I had maybe one or two full time employees. My husband was also helping us out a little bit, but COVID hit, we got back. I was newly married in 2019, so that was a fresh start as well, we had a lot of new things happening. At the same time in early 2020, my family started going through health issues. My father was diagnosed with lung cancer, very aggressive, lung cancer. My mother was diagnosed with dementia, and also heart failure and was diabetic. It required a lot of care, and my brother, one of my brothers, was diagnosed with lymphoma. He passed first in the spring of 2020. Being COVID, we couldn't have a funeral for him. We did everything on Facebook. My mother with dementia didn't quite understand. My father was going through chemotherapy and I was trying to run a business by myself. As a business owner, you don't really get breaks. You can take breaks, but if you're the only one steering the ship, then you keep on working. Over that year, my father declined, my mother declined. I became a caregiver for both of my parents, which is not entirely common for someone in their mid thirties. Typically we all go through loss in life, but typically it's a little bit later. If you are lucky enough to have your parents later in life, then hold on to that. For me, it happened all at one time, and for me also, COVID wasn't really the issue. It could have been, it wouldn't matter if COVID was there or not. I was going to become a hobbit because my life became dedicated to managing caregivers when I was at work, managing my parents, staying overnight, feeding my dad morphine, hospice. My dad passed and January of 2021, I then had to work on caring for my mom who was alone and then finding a home for her, going in and out of nursing homes, hospitals, advocating for her.

Russel: 15:21

That is a lot. I don't think anyone would disagree with that statement, that is probably the hardest thing just about anyone could go through. How in the world were you running a business and dealing with all that? I mean, and this is a hard enough business. I just can't even imagine that. What was that side of things like for you?

Kristin: 15:38

Honestly, I don't even know how I did it. Somehow I kept pushing through and in a way the work was almost a nice escape from what was happening in my life. I didn't mind it, but a big part that got me through was doing gratitude every morning and I still do this. It kept me grounded. It kept me sane, but I would always take at least five minutes every morning, just sitting in front of my window and giving thanks for three things. It could have been that I got seven hours of sleep. It could have been my dog that was next to me, my husband. The tree outside, it didn't matter, but as long as I had something grounding me with gratitude, and then also Journaling. I journaled throughout my entire experience, mainly at night, so I'd wake up with gratitude and end the day, if I could, writing in a journal. It wasn't every day, but tracking my experience and being able to, you know, release emotions and reflect.

Russel: 16:27

It sounds what is a very simple, habit that you developed and it sounds like, and again, you've continued it, is that, I don't know, I don't know if there's a really good question there, but it just seems like, just if nothing else to reinforce to people, maybe this is something, folks who're even not going through, even as a difficult time as you were going through, that there might be a good benefit to them. How do we get them on board, Kristin?

Kristin: 16:47

I think it's really little, it starts with really small changes. It's not anything super time intensive, but it was, it, it was so helpful for me to be able to take that little bit of positivity when everything seems awful and there's challenges and there's the stress of running a business, but also your personal life and just taking that moment for yourself. It doesn't even have to be five minutes. It could be 60 seconds. Taking that energy and thinking about those things that you're grateful for, and then, also one thing that really helped me was when I could, I would try to move and get outside and exercise, so even for 20 minutes, a couple of times a week. That was really helpful because that increases your endorphins and your positive outlook on life. I think those combinations kept me somewhat grounded, but there were definitely times when I wasn't okay as well and my husband was there for me and I got through it and you all have those moments and I, I really had to give myself grace. That's one thing that a peer group that I'm a part of really taught me is, when I was breaking down to them, with an agency peer group I'm a part of, the owner of the company said, you need to give yourself a little bit of grace here. And now that really resonates with me on a much bigger level, just that terms like, it's okay to give yourself grace sometime. Things are hard.

Russel: 18:01

Even just agency ownership is hard. I ended up using that terminology a lot when, when folks get down on themselves, like, give yourself some grace, you're doing a hard thing here. This is not easy and keep going forward. I have 8 million questions I want to ask you, but I don't think we're going to have time for that, this month. I'll narrow this down to a few, but, you know, obviously it sounds like you're in a great place with the business, sounds like you're moving beyond the referral and trying to find new ways to get new clients, and that's going to, I'm sure, have some, already has and will have some great growth effects for you. When you really look at the big picture in the future for what you're trying to achieve, how do you describe that?

Kristin: 18:36

Oh gosh, big picture. Currently we serve small to medium sized businesses and I love serving them, but we are looking to grow a little bit, larger in the scape of being able to really focus on our goals with the different sectors that we're going after with serving non profits. We already serve a couple of national non profits. We want to grow into that. Serving more of the food and beverage industries that may distribute nationally or internationally, but also really growing a small but strong team, so in addition to doing our own marketing and growing into these areas, we really, a big component, like I was saying earlier is having the right people on board. As a agency owner, when you're at a certain point in your agency ownership journey, taking some of those responsibilities off of yourself and transferring them to the team and trusting them with that they can do the things that you were doing and hopefully do them better. That's my goal. I think that we are only as strong as the people that are on the team and under the agency umbrella, so just making sure everyone continues to grow.

Russel: 19:38

Love how you explain them. Wouldn't have expected any difference, given what I know about your story, love to hear that. All right. Two random, curious questions that I probably should have asked some point earlier in your story. One of them got subtly mentioned once or twice throughout there. You and your husband are both in the business. What's it like running an agency with your husband?

Kristin: 19:57

It's really nice actually. It can be a lot of after work chatter, so that's a challenge because it's hard to turn it off the switch when you and your spouse are doing the same work for the same company. We might be on a date and we start talking about a client. We really have to be more cognizant of, of when we're, when we're on, but it's really nice. It's been a journey with him starting as more like a contractor role and helping us with photo shoots and film, and now he's really come into the agency more and is in the office and helping lead the team with me. I think it's great to have that support. He's very talented. I completely trust him with everything and he has a different expertise than I do with the production side of things. It's a great marriage, not only in life, but in business, because then we're able to expand into the area of production.

Russel: 20:46

And then the other question, I don't know how I forgot this one as well, you have a unique name. How did you come up with your business name?

Kristin: 20:52

Ah, Meerkat Media Group. Yes, so I'm an animal lover and I knew I wanted some sort of animal name in our company. I don't discriminate on what animal that is. I did a big list of names and I also wanted it to have a ring, so some sort of alliteration and also be able to be found easily on Google. A real estate for a branded keyword search, as we know, with SEO, and came on to Meerkat Media. There is limited other companies with the same name, so I knew that we would have good search visibility as we grew. For the clients, however, meerkats are a very social creature, and they're female led. They are great communicators. They work in small packs. They're very creative and fun.

Russel: 21:34

Now I know so much more about the meerkat and, why that's a cool name for your business. Thank you for sharing that. Begin to wrap up here, last big question for you, Kristin. Are entrepreneurs born or are they made?

Kristin: 21:45

Oh gosh. I think they're made, honestly, because I wasn't born an entrepreneur necessarily. It did come to me, but there's so much that you can learn and have to learn and continue learning as an entrepreneur. You can develop yourself in that way. You have to make yourself. If something's handed to you and you're born into it, it may not necessarily be what your dreams are. It may not be a good fit, but I made myself into an entrepreneur and it was an unexpected life journey for me, but I never thought I was going to be a business owner, but here I am, going into seven years somehow.

Russel: 22:20

Took you to Thailand and here you are today. Maybe that was the main catalyst. Great, well, if people want to know more about Meerkat Media Group, where can they go?

Kristin: 22:27

MeerkatMediaGroup.com. We are also on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. We have a TikTok, but our TikTok's not super active because we do a lot of other social for other people, it's one of our initiatives

Russel: 22:39

Obviously, the word of the day is grace and self care and how critical that is. Thank you so much for sharing those moments with us and for being on the show today, Kristen.

Kristin: 22:47

Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

22:53

We hope you've enjoyed this episode of An Agency Story podcast where we share real stories of marketing agency owners from around the world. Are you interested in being a guest on the show? Send an email to podcast@performancefaction.com. An Agency Story is brought to you by Performance Faction. Performance Faction offers services to help agency owners grow their business to 5 million dollars and more in revenue. To learn more, visit performancefaction.com.

Kristin: 23:29

When we did the commercial for the van company in Arizona, uh, and they presented it to Shark Tank. We signed over the rights. We knew that it was going to be on air at some point, maybe, but we didn't really know what they were going to be using from the footage that we shot. I got a text one night from my cousin in California being like, I just saw you on Shark Tank! I was like, what? Because I was actually in the video in the commercial. My family started pinging me from all across the United States being like, you're on Shark Tank. I didn't even know when it was airing or what they were showing or anything. I'm like, how am I, how am I on shark tank? You know, I'm like, cool, that's my claim to fame being on there. But we didn't know that it was going to be aired and, they were going to be using footage of our faces. That was a pretty funny moment to be getting texts from my family.

Russel: 24:15

People had to tell you, you were famous.

Kristin: 24:17

Yeah, it was, I think not. We didn't even get to see the episode for a while because we couldn't even figure out how to watch it.

Russel: 24:24

Did you get your true 15 seconds of fame?

Kristin: 24:26

Oh, yeah. We got over 15 seconds of fame.

Russel: 24:29

Bucket list, life item checked.