By Maria Cammack
Fail Forward is the name of this year’s Get Smart conference. To Chellie Thompson, CoFounder and CFO at Monarch Media & Consulting, Inc. and speaker at this year’s Get Smart Conference on September 13, Fail Forward means not being afraid to fail but instead to focus on how you can learn and grow if you do.
Monarch Media & Consulting Inc. is a boutique custom publishing company and one-stop-shop for Austin’s businesses looking for publishing services, marketing strategies and advertising tactics. When co-founding Monarch Media in 2011, Chellie brought with her extensive experience in pretty much all areas of sales, an experience that has benefited her client relationships greatly.
In the break-out session “Missing your ROI, How to Recover the Project” Chellie will be sharing her extensive knowledge and experiences from her own missteps along the way. Join the session to learn how to identify when your time, capital or creative investment might not pay off and how to recover the project.
We talked to Chellie about her experience with Monarch Media and the break-out session she will be hosting at Get Smart.
WCA: What was your biggest fear when starting your own business and how did you overcome this fear?
Chellie: My biggest fear was finding the right clients that would generate enough revenue to pay both myself and my business partner. We overcame this fear through thoughtful planning. We both had income streams from other sources for the first eight months which allowed us time to build our client base in a thought-out way.
WCA: Thinking about the projects you have worked on with Monarch Media, what have been some of your biggest challenges?
Chellie: Time. Time is always the biggest challenge when you have multiple clients with multiple projects with deadlines that coincide. The other challenge is learning to say no when a project isn’t a good fit or being able to walk away from a project when it no longer makes sense.
WCA: What experience from your long career in sales did you bring with you to Monarch Media and how did this help your business?
There are numerous things that I have learned during my career in sales – customer service is key, knowledge of numbers is helpful to daily business operations, and relationships are the foundation to successful sales. Out of all these, my love of numbers has directly benefited Monarch. I like to analyze our success based on numbers whether it is revenue, efficiency with time or number of clients we are able to help. I attach a number to each of these scenarios. This love of numbers gave me the ability to be the CFO for Monarch and handle the bookkeeping for the company. This gave us the opportunity to save precious dollars that we needed to retain in the first few years of our company’s development.
WCA: What is your advice for women looking to start their own business?
Chellie: Plan. Plan. Plan. In the beginning you need to have a DIY mentality. Learn as much as you can about running a business from other business owners and professional development providers before you ever launch. Have the necessary pieces in place before you seek your first client – a company name, a website, a professional email, a designated phone number, and business cards. Have a network of people both business and personal, and be actively involved in that network. The best clients usually come from word of mouth through your network.
WCA: Who should attend your session at Get Smart and why would you encourage them to attend?
Chellie: This session will look at perspectives from a business owner and an employee. If you are currently working on a project where the Return on Investment is in jeopardy, then you should attend. If you want to learn how not to get into a situation where ROI is missed, then you should attend.
WCA: What is one thing you hope participants in your session will walk away with?
Chellie: By better understanding how ROI works and being able to measure it, you can hopefully identify potential problems early, fix the problems and not jeopardize the final ROI.
Ready to learn more? Go to GetSmartAustin.com to register and to learn more about this year’s speakers and sessions.
- Progress of Women: Unlocking the Full Potential of Women in the U.S. Economy - November 20, 2013
- Progress of Women: Unlocking the Full Potential of Women in the U.S. Economy - November 6, 2013
- Speed Mentoring: Fall Breakfast, October 19 - October 2, 2013