Jeremy Weisz 3:29
Did you have any mentors, whether distant or personal. As a copywriter? Were there any specific books or mentors I love to hear because I geek out and I think copywriting I was actually telling my 10 year old daughter this yesterday. It was like if you can learn copywriting it is so valuable for everything that you do. It’s the foundation, I feel like for a lot of things.
Michele Tonkovitz 3:52
I think you’re absolutely right if you can, if you can articulate not only in conversation, but through the words on paper, or I don’t know if paper really exists all that much more now. It’s through text messages and digital platforms. It can take you so far. And you can write until you can’t write anymore, right. It’s something that will stick with you, you know, for the ages. I know was a kid I started off just like many other boys and girls out there and I had a journal. And so I used to write down my thoughts. And then as I continued going on, you know, through my schooling, I really took a liking to creative writing classes. In Milwaukee, we used to have a food critic and his name is Dennis ghetto, and he passed away a few years ago. But when I had gone to school at UW Milwaukee, Dennis ghetto was one of my adjunct professors and he was hard and if anybody out there is listening to knows Dennis, you know that like he pushed you and he made me such a better writer and so I Just give many props and blessings and thank yous to him. Then when I started my career, I worked at an agency called the Roberts group. And at the Roberts group I made I met a very wonderful woman who actually was became my mentor. And her name is Cheryl DeShambo, and I’m meeting with her for dinner tonight. So here we are. 21 years later, from when I first met Cheryl, two, we’re still great friends this day. And she has provided me really wonderful insight on how to navigate the agency world when I was young. And now even more so. Being that strategic marketer being that leader, and just being that friend, I have said this time and again to people, we are 100% professionals every day when we, you know, get on our computers, go on calls, do interviews like this, but ultimately, we’re just people. And if we can make that relationship, Jeremy, like you were talking about at the beginning, building those relationships. I think that is just as important, if not more than knowing the technical skills to do your job.
Jeremy Weisz 3:54
Yeah, yeah, one of my I would consider a mentor and also got to meet him and hang out with him. And his book is Joe Sugarman, who just passed away. I’m sorry to hear about your one of your mentors, Dennis. But his book on copywriting is amazing. And then the Boron Letters is also a book that was written by Gary Halbert, his son Bond Halbert, kind of, I think, updated it since. So those are two of my favorite resources. As far as copywriting goes. And you mentioned, you know, one of your mentors, Cheryl, about kind of being a guide and agency. So I want to talk about growth and some of the stuff you’re transitioning when you transition from solo to a team, which you have done, what were some of the key things that you did you know, someone listening to this, whether they want to grow their team even more, or they are transitioning from solo to grow to a team, or some of the key things you did
Michele Tonkovitz 7:01
to grow? I love this question. Because growth is something that’s fairly new to me as, as green onion creative is getting ready to celebrate its ninth year in business, like you just said, I’ve been a solopreneur for the bulk of it. And it was through a great client of mine, that they said, we can’t figure out how to clone you. So we want you to build your onto your team and add on a few additional writers. I didn’t really know how to approach that. So I had to as a business owner, but also as a mentor and a leader. I just was really honest with my new employees. And I said, Hey, this isn’t really like my space that I’ve groomed my career to be. But if you work with me, I’ll work with you. Right, communicate back to me, it’s all about this relationship building that we were talking about. If you have faith in your employees, and they will in turn have faith in you, right. It’s hard not to micromanage sometimes, but you have to let people be the champions of what you’ve hired them to do. And so now, my employees, Nikki Ackerman and Emory Churness are my two really strong creative writers that I have on the team. I am letting them just run with projects. But now I’m in the space to where businesses growing, I need to continue to add on to the team. And I think that’s one of the struggles I’m having as a business owner right now is just finding the right talent to fit in for our client needs.
Jeremy Weisz 8:41
So why do you think it took seven years? Because I’m sure you’ve thought about it previously? Was it something you were resistant to? Or was it something like I just kind of like it being me? What was the thought process of why you hadn’t grown the team up until that point being pushed by your client? Like, hey, we need we need more people like you we need you kind of leading the charge here. What What was it?
Michele Tonkovitz 9:06
So the biggest hurdle, and I’m going to be very honest and vulnerable here is I don’t like admin. I work in words. That’s why I’m a copywriter. I don’t like to work in numbers, and technicalities and things like that. So it was really just the the biggest hiccup was just going through all the rigmarole of trying to add on to the team. However, when you establish again, good relationships and honesty with people, I went to my accountant and I was like, Look, I gotta add on some people. What do I do? And she’s like, Don’t worry, we’ll help you through it. You know, we can do this that the other thing through my connections with the American Marketing Association, I’ve been able to go to other conferences I’ve been able to network. I said I need a new small business attorney. I have one that I got connected to I absolutely love Have Melnick and Melnik here in Milwaukee. And in fact, I had a wonderful call with them today to talk about some of their marketing needs. And who knows, maybe that relationship will turn from one where I’m their client to where they can become our client.
Jeremy Weisz 10:14
So it was kind of the thought of this daunting thought of time and energy and effort of all the new stuff that you would have to do. And sometimes it’s interesting, whether it’s creating a standard operating procedure, SOP or adding a client’s like, well, I could just get done this done in 10 minutes, and actually transfer that knowledge to someone may take for hours, we sometimes default to the easier, faster approach, right?
Michele Tonkovitz 10:43
Hmm, absolutely. And that easier, faster approach over time, is not because the volume picks up, and you’re really only one person. And just like that client mindset, I can’t figure out how to clone you, I can’t figure out I’m a clone myself, either. And so it’s okay to say I need help. And make sure that you are aligning with the right people that fit not only your personality and your style, but those of your clients as well. Right. That’s what makes a great working relationship. And again, just being honest, and seeing that every day, each of these people are coming into work, they’re doing their job the best that they can, but they have lives too. And sometimes we don’t get a good night’s sleep, or the dog throws up or, you know, there’s bills to pay. And there’s other things that linger in the back your mind, if we can just be understanding about that. And work together. We can achieve great things, not only for our clients, not only for our green on your creative, but for ourselves, personally and professionally.
Jeremy Weisz 11:44
That client, you had basically created that breaking point for you. So you’re like, Okay, I’m just gonna do it. I’m gonna jump in and do it. And you mentioned about adding talent. Right? So you before we hit record, here, we’re talking about some of the things that you look at, and how do you add talent? So at this point, that’s what you’re one of the things you’re focused on. So what what are you doing to add talent.
Michele Tonkovitz 12:09
So through networking opportunities, again, with the American Marketing Association, I’ve been able to find people in our marketing community here in Milwaukee who are either in transition, or are looking to take a leap. I am so excited to say that honestly, before we got on this call, there is a a gal who is a college student at Mount Mary College here in Milwaukee, her name is Taylor, and I think she might be getting ready to graduate. She specializes in social media, and I’ve got an interview lined up with her on Monday. So I think that for myself, dipping my toe into the talent pool, I’m really trying all different different areas, whether it’s new grad, whether it’s somebody who’s seasoned professional, maybe it’s somebody, again, who’s transitioning, what I’m hearing a lot more of as well, is that there are people who have degrees and experience outside of marketing, who really are interested in getting into the marketing field. And so in those cases, I’m very happy to work with somebody, maybe it’s on a 1099 contract basis, like let’s do a project or to see how that works in goes. And maybe they can either become I’m hoping that they will either become an ongoing contractor, or potentially we can add them onto our team, too.
Jeremy Weisz 13:32
Yeah, yeah. I love your approach with that, because oftentimes, we just default to job boards or things like that. But you’re like, you know, there’s a resource there of new grads, possibly, or getting training people from locally, right. So it’s someone local to you Milwaukee. So you have that affinity there that proximity. And there’s lots of wherever you are a lots of universities all over the place. And, and actually, there’s a resource I had on Frederick, who was founder of Absolute Internship, and they actually help pair university students with internships with companies and then they can continue to work with them. So I love that idea of going locally as well. Because I think it’s it can be virtual. And so talk about, you know, from the client perspective for a second, and I know that you do lots of different things content, optimizing digitally creative websites, and lately addiction recovery.
Michele Tonkovitz 14:37
So talk about that. So I am so proud to announce that green onion creative helped a nonprofit here that’s Wisconsin based, called start healing now introduce their new website. So the nonprofit was formerly known as stop heroin now, and they decided to Do a rebrand. And so working with another agency and some other individuals, they were able to create their new logo identity, as well as the start healing now name. And they came to me via a referral and said, We need help building on your website or start healing now, can you help, the resource that they had been working with, really just fell off the face of the earth. And it happens more often than not that we have clients who come to us and say, Hey, we just launched this website, and then the company that did it went under, or I had a friend’s, you know, husband do it. And now they got divorced. And I can’t, we can’t continue on with this website. So I’m pulling together, the resources that we have, from the green onions, you know, regular team as well as our trusted, subconscious subcontractors, we were able to honestly launch the start healing now website from concept to finish in record time. I think we started in February one pretty much as when we kicked it off. And we had the website launched right around the end of April. So if anybody has written, designed, approved, tested a website, you know that that’s, that’s no small feat. So kudos to my team. And if you want to see a sample of that, you can go to start healing now without Wait, starthealingnow.org
Jeremy Weisz 16:32
I want you to walk through the creative process for a second, because it’s a big change. It’s almost like a 180 from the negative right, stop here, one now to start healing now how what walk me through a little bit of the process of that transition of the rebrand. Right?
Michele Tonkovitz 16:51
So I’m not quite sure the backstory on how they settled on that name. But definitely when the start healing now people, you know, showed us their old website, it, it was black, it was red, it was harsh, it was kind of scary. And we know that people and families who are in need, the last thing that they need is fear in their life. And so by working with the client, we learned that purple is a color associated with recovery. And they had already developed a really great looking like color palette for some of the other materials that they were creating. So really, we helped capture their vision that they had in print, and execute it. Oh, nope, there we go. And bring it forward. Yes. Through, you know, a nice bright feel we wanted to be embracing, easy to navigate. So we we use stock photography, and we’re able to capture some good stories, some good quotes, by working with the client, their team of partners is wonderful. And the best thing about it is start healing now is an all volunteer organization, so So the people who are contributing to their advisory council, to their partners, to people who are going to continue on with ongoing in website maintenance, you know, they all believe in the mission. And when we can provide a product, right, when we can provide a website that feels good and works good for them, then we know that we did good for our client. Yeah,
Jeremy Weisz 18:31
anyone who’s just listening the audio and you aren’t watching them, you could check out the video because we’re actually have on here I pulled up starthealingnow.org. And you can see what what Michele was talking about with the color scheme, and then how they design this and in general, right, and some of the navigation as well. And these are kind of these details that people don’t realize takes a lot of work, you know, you have all these dropdowns with the about us and our team partnerships, history, and then of the homepage, so I’ll just explore it from a it’s an amazing organization, but also from the sense of looking at it with Well, here’s some interesting ways they designed the website itself.
Michele Tonkovitz 19:12
And especially if you are creating a website that is going to provide some type of service such as this, you really want to make sure that it is as easy to get to the information that the visitor wants as possible. Right because sometimes people are going online and typing into Google like where do I get help because that’s their first line of like, trying to make a bad situation better.
Jeremy Weisz 19:43
The next the other what’s cool about what you do is you serve a lot of different really interesting niches and there is one called Bostick and I love to to talk about what they do. Oh my gosh,
Michele Tonkovitz 19:57
I love Bostick. Bostick is the As a client that gave me the little nudge to go ahead and get those employees, or, or, and so I’ll tell you, when I first started working with them, oh, I think it was back in 2018. I never imagined in my life, that I would be working for a client that creates adhesives that go in baby diapers, adult diapers and feminine hygiene products. But here I am, what, four years later, and I love it. I love the team at Bostick there. It’s a global team. So it’s really very cool to know that the content that green onion creative is writing. In some cases, it’s getting translated into nine different languages. We’re really helping, Bostick as well as the absorbent hygiene industry get very valuable messages out there that you know, products that were once thought of as being like single use and creating garbage in landfills. With this new lens of corporate social responsibility and the importance of having sustainable products. Bostick is going to the labs and they’re formulating and introducing new, new products, they are coming to the table with great ideas for their current customers, as well as prospective customers. And the neat thing is green onion creative, this tiny little shop here in Milwaukee, Wisconsin is a part of this. What can be really a globally changing consumer mindset.
Jeremy Weisz 21:40
To talk about some of the things you do with them, you mentioned, you then kind of translate what they’re doing for corporate responsibility onto their website that so other people know what other things do you work with them on?
Michele Tonkovitz 21:53
Yeah, so. So we definitely develop a lot of content that is live on the website. So optimizing that content for search is really really important, right? So that’s everything from the URL to the h1 h2 image, alt tags, meta descriptions. We do also help them create white papers and one pagers, which typically are PDF documents, there’s a lot of digital opportunities there to optimize. So make sure my advice to you is to pull those levers, we have helped them launch a podcast. So they’re now also in the podcast space. I think we’re about one year in now, to the attached to hygiene podcast. And with each of those episodes, green, our new creative helps them create the show notes, social media posts, as well as email newsletters, highlighting what’s in the episode and what additional resources are available. We’ve helped with everything from promoting upcoming webinars and trade shows, to writing press releases and traditional media like that.
Jeremy Weisz 23:05
What are big mistakes people make with SEO?
Michele Tonkovitz 23:10
Oh, one of the biggest mistakes, honestly, is the names of your files. So when you have, you know, image file, ABC dash 123, you know, dash question mark? What people aren’t realizing as, as we hear in the United States have the Americans with Disabilities Act right, the ADEA. More and more people are starting to use software on their computers and their phones and different devices where it actually reads to you what is in your email box, what’s on the page. And so all those all those instances of file names, image files, pre headers, for emails, if you’re not leveraging those as opportunities to communicate your message. Imagine just listening to an email and all of a sudden in the middle of it, it’s like ABCD EFG H JK, your it’s going to cause so much confusion. And so one of the biggest biggest things that I would encourage people to do from an SEO and optimization standpoint is really just take some time to rename those files and use we’ve learned that dashes are the preferred character between words versus an underscore.
Jeremy Weisz 24:36
And you know, we were talking about the you know, start healing now, and I’m sure there’s a lot of things you see when you’re redesigning the website from you know, here’s what we want to do now and rebrand and probably help with navigation and colors. What are some of the mistakes people make in their web design when you first go to the to their Say to, you know, to redo it,
Michele Tonkovitz 25:02
some people really have too deep of a website. And unless you are really following your Google Analytics, many times your site doesn’t need to be that deep. And so it just becomes a quagmire. And there’s too much information out there, and it can be overwhelming. And so many times, we recommend a more simplistic approach for launch. And then let’s continue the conversation and the build in stages two stages three, so we really want so in the case of start healing, now, they had a whole different URL, right, their domain name was different. So we really needed to create this new identity based on their start healingnow.org URL versus stop heroin now.com. And so, honestly, when, when we well, okay, and we’ve had other clients, too, who have had WordPress websites, and they just knew enough to be dangerous, and they never installed updates and plugins. And so things are broken. And that happens so often, too. And honestly, while there’s a lot of tools out there, like wix.com is great for creating a basic website, you can go ahead and WordPress, and start creating your own website. But unless you’re gonna give the time to keep it maintained, you really should look into using a partner because when those plugins start to break, and go outdated, it can cause big problems. And we actually had one where a client recently, somebody tried to make a bunch of fraudulent purchases on their WordPress website, which is using new cup but WooCommerce and QuickBooks identified those fraudulent purchases and shut it all down. And so the nobody could make any purchases. And so we had to go in and find some workarounds and some fixes. And that sometimes, the free auctions while they’re nice to start to get you like 95% of the way there, and it’s that last 5% that you really have to pay for. So. So please, I encourage you to also just put a little money on the side in the kitty for your website, not only updates, but sometimes upgrades.
Jeremy Weisz 27:26
Yeah, I love that advice. Because sometimes free, nothing’s really free. And also sometimes those plugins or whatever free, they stopped supporting it. And that leaves holes in your website that can be security issues and take your whole site down. So sometimes it’s worth just spending extra 1050 100, or whatever it is, so that it doesn’t affect the business. I’m sure you see that time and time again, they’re trying to do it on a budget first, but then it can bite them later. Absolutely. You know, first of all, I want to I have one last question. But before I ask it, I want to point people to Greenonioncreative.com. And check out what you’re doing there the other places online, we should have people check out.
Michele Tonkovitz 28:08
Absolutely. So go to our website, you’ll find our presence there. And just so everybody knows that we are in the process of also redoing our website. So depending on how soon you go, and how often you revisit, you might see that there’s a little different look to green on him. From there. We also have links to our social media pages. And if anybody ever wants to get in touch with me, you can always find me on LinkedIn. And that’s Michele, M i c h e l e. Last name Tonkovitz T o n k o v as in Victor i t z as in Zebra. You can always find me there and connect that way. Or you can just email Michele with one L at GreenOnioncreative.com.
Jeremy Weisz 28:54
Awesome. Michele, last question is, you know, for me in my career, what’s what’s helped me the most is being amongst peers in communities and groups. So I’m wondering what your favorites are. And, of course, I’d love for you to talk about the American Marketing Association in Waukee.
Michele Tonkovitz 29:11
So I am proud to say that I am the current president of our AMA Milwaukee chapter. I’ve been involved with the organization I want to say for about five or six years. And I got started with the AMA, just as a chair for events. And so I was helping coordinate events. I ended up becoming the VP than President Elect and now I’m president and actually I’m looking for the next president elect. I really encourage people to check out local organizations like your ama or maybe if you’re in PR then it’s prsa. We have another marketing type of agency or agency organization, that’s called a n a. And another great ones that stand for
Jeremy Weisz 29:57
So American marketing ama for Anyone listening to American Marketing Association, there was an AMA, American Medical Association, but we are talking about the American Marketing Association. What is the AMA? Stanford? You know?
Michele Tonkovitz 30:12
I do not forget, I
Jeremy Weisz 30:14
mix up all these acronyms. I feel
Michele Tonkovitz 30:17
like it used to be like it’s one of those where I think it used to be named something else like, right, at least you’ll have like, like direct mail Association, and then, you know, Central
Jeremy Weisz 30:26
and national average. There’s so many different associations. There’s an association of national advertisers, it looks like it’s called AI. Is that the one? Okay,
Michele Tonkovitz 30:40
that could be it. All right. Well, I think I want to put on everybody else’s radar, another great association that is, was started here in Milwaukee, but it’s actually getting a global reach. And they’re a great friend and partner of the American Marketing Association, Milwaukee chapter. It’s called the Idea Collective Small Business Incubator. And I’ve gotten a chance to work with Pat Miller, their founder, he puts on amazing content. That is, like on Facebook, like they do this thing called night school, and you can learn different tips and tricks and techniques. They had their first ever retreat last year, and they had brought in all of these wonderful speakers that talk. I mean, literally from like, around the country, and I think even around the world to talk about different areas of marketing and where to find opportunities. And we did this thing called an idea slam, and we all had lunch together. And it was like, Hey, how do I do this, and like, we all just talked about it and kind of throw out ideas. And the idea of collective is really growing. So again, that’s the idea of collective small business incubator, and I’m excited to continue developing a relationship with them through the AMA organization, but also getting a green onion creative, more involved, because there’s other small business owners like myself in that group, and I can not only provide insights to them from a marketing perspective, but I have so much that I can learn from other small business owners to help me continue to grow the Green Onion.
Jeremy Weisz 32:26
Awesome, Michele. Thank you. I check out other episodes of the podcast Inspired Insider checkout greenonioncreative.com checkout Rise25 And thanks, everyone. We’ll see you next time.
Michele Tonkovitz 32:28
Thank you.
