After being laid off during the financial crisis of 2008, I was an angry young man. Faced with no real job prospects and a 4-year old son to raise, I decided to go out on my own.
Thankfully, Vermillion Systems knocked on the door. This was the start of a great business relationship that has lasted for 15 years.
I grew, added some contractors, and things were “popping off” as the kids say.
But the twists and turns of the business had me traveling different paths by 2014. Business slowed to a trickle, then dried up. I embarked on a personal MBA, took sales positions to learn the craft, then continued to add skills every year. I became HubSpot certified, dove headfirst into marketing, and wound up at the deep end of the marketing and sales pool.
I learned that sales is the lifeblood of the business, and marketing and sales alignment can be the most powerful force in your success. Ever since my journey into sales, I have focused on this critical part of business with every project I have taken on. My work does you no good if it doesn’t help you make more sales, grow your customer base, and get you to your goals. I still have a lot to learn in this game.
As I mature, I realize the only thing I really want to do is to wake up, do great work with quality people working on projects that matter, and making magic in the small so I can wake up tomorrow and do it all over again.
Skills
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Packaging:
• Experience in private label product design for beauty and the food/beverage industries. Examples include the entire Great Clips product line as well as wine and cheese labels, pasta sauce, liquors, and granola.
UX:
• Information architecture
• Wireframing
• Prototyping
• Visual design
Software:
• Illustrator - Expert level (as tested by C2 Graphics)
• InDesign - Expert level (as tested by C2 Graphics)
• Photoshop - Expert level (as tested by C2 Graphics)
• Premiere & Audition - Functional level of expertise -
• Hubspot certified for inbound marketing, content marketing and sales software. Experience with workflow automation, lead tracking, email campaigns, and sales enablement.
• Email Campaigns - 5 years of experience in email campaigns, managing Shopify—Mailchimp integrations, campaigns and sales data.
• Google Analytics Certified. Currently working with GA4, Google Tag Manager and Data Studio.
• SMS marketing automation - 3 years using AI-enabled apps that integrate with Shopify data to provide insights on personalization and targeting, increase abandoned cart recovery, employ predictive selling, and send campaigns on new product releases.
• SEO - 10 years of SEO experience. Professional level course completion in fall 2023 from Joshua George, CEO of ClickSlice—an Award Winning SEO Agency based in the UK.
• Copywriting - 5 years experience in writing sales materials, landing pages, and email campaigns for agencies, retail, and fintech startups.
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8 years of sales / business development:
• outside sales rep for Weather Tight Corp.
• director of business development for Pocket Giants and Non-Affiliated.BONUS:
Having a solid design background while being skilled at sales and pitching work gives unique value to the design agencies I work with. -
• Web Development: HTML5, CSS3, CSS Grid, Flexbox, Bootstrap 4
• E-commerce: Shopify
• Email: Mailchimp
• CMS: HubSpot, Concrete5, Wordpress, SquareSpace
• COS: HubSpot - inbound & content marketing certified
• Project Management : Podio, Basecamp, Slack, Trello, Asana