Born in a small town in NW Iowa, I grew up in a huge family of 17 kids (yeah that’s not a typo). Exceling has always been what I did. I started a construction business in 1998. For the first couple years I had no idea what marketing was. I actually went to the newspaper and said I need to place and ad. She said what do you want on the ad? I said I don’t know I just want customers. It was this exchange the led me in the journey to searching for marketing success.
I went to the book store and looked over the book selection and noticed a book that stood out. It was the “No BS Guide to Marketing” by Dan Kennedy. As I read just a few chapters in I was starting to see that marketing wasn’t a glossy ad in a magazine, it had rules, formulas that led you to success.
After reading the rest of the book in every extra hour I had, I landed on one strategy I wanted to try. I had always wanted to do business in a neiboring town but could never get any marketing to work. The book encouraged me to try a free standing insert into their news paper. A free standing insert is simply a marketing piece inserted into the daily newspaper like in the ads in the Sunday paper. It was a dreadful ad, just some text on a white sheet of paper that didn’t even have pictures. Only copy (text) that I had written.
As the paper was delivered for the next few days my phone just kept ringing. Bottom line that simple item I only spend $114 on resulted in over $65,000 of new business. I was excited and amazed. The simpliest tactics worked. It was then on I was hooked. I then just devoured every book I could find on marketing that Dan wrote. I started to go to his “super conference” every year and exchanged ideas with other small to large business owners that I met. Writing notes feverishly for new ideas to implement when I got home.
Ultimately marketing (and some business changes) resulted in a huge increase to my bottom line.
So after many years and several businesses I honed my skills and have the experience and knowledge of marketing to help others. In 2010 I started working with a partner. We had a business doing coaching and consulting. Those years made the business of coaching second nature to me. It is now my turn to go out on my own. In 2023 I started my business One Eyed King Marketing. My focus is to work with small business owners to grow their businesses to the greatest success they can be.