When it was early 2024, and I had finally decided to pull Stigma Marketing & Development back out and relaunch it, I obviously needed a website. However, money was tight, and I needed to get clients ASAP. At the time, I worked with what I had, which was an old WordPress template and a rough idea of making authenticity and marketing work together. Other than that, all I had were ideas, and the marketing world was not only big but also changing fast. If you didn’t know, AI kind of changed everything.
Sometime around the Fall of 2024, I started talking about redoing my website, but I just kept putting it off. To be fair, there was work, the holidays, my step-father’s wedding (he’s also one of my retainer partners), we were beta-testing Every Human’s Journey (expect to hear plenty about that in the future), and really I was still trying to figure out this business model.
Why a Website Doesn’t Matter?
It doesn’t matter if you don’t have a thing. If you don’t know how your business works, how you make money, how you help people’s pain points, then what is there? Don’t get me wrong, if you have a good idea, run with it and see if it works. But so much of not just our world, but even marketing and business is done backwards, and upside down. We often try to start from where we want to be, instead of accepting where we’re at. In part, this is no fault of our own: it’s that constant cat and mouse game, keeping-up-with-the-Joneses, and the myth that with enough self-delusion, we can make anything work. There’s the hustle culture.
It also doesn’t work when there’s no plan or intention around it. So many websites fail because people aren’t using their websites. It’s easy for website and marketing companies, mine included, to mention that a website is a 24/7 brochure that works for you. I use this very line and still mean every word of it. However, websites without a business to manage it, to use it, a plan to funnel to it, with no matched services or products on the other side, is what some marketers call putting lipstick on a pig.
The whole “secret” sauce for Stigma Marketing & Development was the idea of skipping the inauthentic part and simply being authentic while being intentional and strategic. The latter are all normal in marketing anyway, so why not take the snake out of the oil and just sell the oil?
What Was Happening Under the Surface
In truth, when I had launched Stigma M&D in 2024, I had a wealth of ideas and possibilities. Included with that was the education and experience I’ve had with AI and the business courses at the University of Montana. Early networking and coaching conversations around marketing and AI’s disruption, as well as the fact the market has plenty of competition and there’s a diversity of marketing (“marketing” is a big big word now, a lot bigger than when I was first playing with HTML and Adobe CS Photoshop 6.0 in Idaho Falls High School). My strengths were people and development—marketing was a fun “hobby” and I was, at best, a jack-of-all-trades.
Along with this, I was doing some research in marketing and business trends. There were a few things I noticed:
- Marketing, which was most recently about “transformation,” was moving toward transparency and meaning.
- Trust was also a huge factor. (94% of consumers are more likely to remain loyal to a brand that offers transparency – Simon Kingsnorth)
- In business, transparency and trust were also being reported as the #1 factors by consumers.
From my business studies at the UM, I had learned about the increasingly decentralized internet. Along with this, I had learned about new “old” monopolies that were not just intimately connected to technological development—they were standing for disruption themselves. Then the Google monopoly was broken up. These two things, along with the arrival of AI, gave me a hunch that this method, with some intentionality, would naturally and organically work. Not like magic or anything, but the trends were going that way.
It meant being faithful to best practices, but also leveraging them differently. (Minor example: the way I write ALT tags, if I do, is completely different now. Instead of simply describing what’s in the photo, I tell a mini story.) And then, terms like GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) and AI SEO (my favorite of the two) came out, and the marketing experts and influencers were also talking about it.
So, here I was, on a very long, personal journey with vulnerability and authenticity, had an idea about “erasing the gap between marketing and business,” and doing it “backwards,” then all of this hit me. Now, Stigma’s website was on an outdated template, my business model was rapidly evolving, pivoting, and refining, and I had to pay bills in the meantime. As a startup marketing and development business, I also had to market myself, and there I was, lost in the maze of marketing options, drowning in opportunities with a highly evolving and competitive market, and not much money to work with.
Where the Retainer Model Started to Click
If this sounds familiar, good. It’s in some sense when my retainer model, the M&D Partnership, came together as a concept, but even then it needed time for me to know what it was I could do, would do, was capable of, and what my scope and capacity was. My retainer was one aspect of my model, and a very necessary one.
Similarly, as a former pastor, I was trained in things like People Raising (a fundraising model). Books like How to Win Friends and Influence People, Leadership and Self-Deception, and Daring Greatly, were fundamental to the way I was trying to live life, and also how I wanted to leave my mark in marketing and business culture. Shortly after getting sober in my second rehab, I did networking, development, and some marketing for a local, Missoula veteran nonprofit. I learned a lot from the people I worked with and got a taste for what networking could do. In business school, I took two negotiation classes because they helped me psychologically and to be less afraid of meetings. The rest of my background was management, and pastoral leadership skills—like counseling, public speaking, volunteer management, and organizational development.
Seth Godin & Me
I must mention Seth Godin. I learned some of his stuff in marketing classes. There are some podcasts I’ve listened to and interviews I’ve watched. When I was looking for a good marketing book to get me in the “marketing mindset,” I chose Tribes. I highly recommend it as it has formed a formative part of my marketing philosophy. He discussed movements, growing organic followings, and using our authentic selves to serve people—not with our selves but with the solutions and services we provide.
“Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories you tell.”
– Seth Godin
Lost in the Maze (And Why That’s OK)
Between social media, website (plus the strategies there), podcasts and YouTube, paid ads and paying for leads or marketing funnels, and an inbox full of AI-based service emails—I was overwhelmed with what I should do. In truth, I needed to update my website. It had to be done. I am grateful it’s done, and it’s not “that” good yet, but it’s roughly right. In truth, right now, not too many people are going to notice.
And that’s a secret to long-term success in marketing, I think (I wouldn’t know, but maybe others might agree): it’s thinking in years, not days. It’s being able to seamlessly connect what you do with the person who needs you to do that. If a website does it, great. If attending Hellgate Venture Network and other Missoula business events with a simple business card and a solid elevator pitch is it, AWESOME. Just do it well, authentically, and keep at it. Over time, relationships and reputation compound. Small stories become bigger ones. Eventually, your ideas become others’. This is when a brand has an evangelist.
“Do What Doesn’t Scale”
I sought some advice from my business coach, and he told me to do what already works. Another meeting with a local marketing all-star, Mario Schulzke of IdeaMensch. He had some solid nuggets, like “Do what doesn’t scale.”
So, while I kept finding excuses and reasons to put off my website, and while I tried and started it several times, it turns out, I have no regrets that it took me this long. I was networking and getting more websites and projects, more M&D Partners, and getting my craft and person even more down. I was also a business that didn’t fully match his website, and that’s because I didn’t know what Stigma M&D was. That turned out to be in part because I had to do more work to nail me down more.
The Pig Was Still Programming
However, I was asking people to pay me to make websites for them, and had built a few of them. My prices were low, for a reason, and I needed to increase them. My old website also didn’t have any of the new material, an outdated template that was broken and didn’t even support a proper header or menu, and I wasn’t even sure what subject matter I could talk about when it came to marketing and development (the career shift was new to me, remember. I was still learning and relearning… and unlearning.)
But my website was getting in the way, and I eventually had my goal for retainers and enough of everything else down, and I felt confident about it—that I was ready to get it done.
What was happening behind the “lipstick” was the pig was still working his program—figuring his crap out, learning business disciplines, finding the negative thought patterns in the way, refining Every Human’s Journey, doing a local free suicide prevention workshop in partnership with Suffer Out Loud, attending several networking meetings, hours of coaching (one day I’ll write about my financial coach, but I need to first schedule another meeting with her), and growing my clientele, local relationships, and figuring out what kind of business I want and what kind of business person I want to be.
Now That the Site Is Live
With the website out of the way, I now have my “content hub” set up to share my experience and expertise, and pull people organically towards my website while I continue building out my “marketing engine” (it’s an upside-down marketing funnel), which means a blogging strategy and doing a bit more social media, and that’s it for now. My marketing is working already, and now I have a better site with more function and capability.
It’s room to grow and refine it, even if it’s not perfect: I’m not happy with the copy, the blog single-page template isn’t done, it needs AI and coaching language, and has some bugs, but I got tired of my old site and it was still better–”roughly right.” The rest of my marketing is built into the trainings, EHJ, partnerships, and networking.
Final Word: Flip the Table
So, wherever you’re at in business or marketing, first off, don’t believe the next sales pitch or expert’s opinion. Take your time and know where you are first. The marketing maze is real, and it’s a rat race, so here’s the question: do you want to play that game or flip the table? Still follow best practices, wisdom, and the like, but do you want to keep trying to prove yourself first and then hope you have it? Do you want to keep pushing an exterior image when your business isn’t solid on the interior?
Don’t hesitate. Don’t do nothing. But take your time and slow your roll. Do intentional, small things, and follow through. Time takes time, and people are in a hustle, distracted, and fickle.
Visit www.StigmaMarketing.com to see the site (finally) live.
Check out the Authentic Marketing Philosophy & Model while you’re at it.
Or find me in Missoula. I’m usually somewhere around the margins, building stuff that matters.
So, keep calm and keep going. One intentional move at a time.
