Today we’d like to introduce you to Michael And Jillian Leonard
Hi Michael and Jillian, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
It was July of 2019. I had just started a brand new job 30 days ago that I absolutely loved working as a manager in the wedding industry for a rental company. I had left my comfortable job of 5 years to be closer to home and make more money. Everything finally seemed to be falling into place in my life … until my boss called me into his office after my 30th day.
I was told that my management style was “too lax” and that they were choosing to let me go. In an instant, I felt my entire world fall apart. I can still remember the drive home, calling Michael, and crying uncontrollably. What were we going to do? Money was already tight, and now I had just lost my job. I could feel myself being crushed by the weight of all this. Through the tears I told him I just needed the day then I’d start looking for a new job tomorrow …
I expected him to be upset, to tell me I shouldn’t have taken this job and stayed at my safe bet job from before, but he didn’t say any of that … all he said was this:
“Maybe this is a sign that we should start our own business like we’ve discussed. What if you just stayed home, worked on starting our business, and I’ll pick up extra hours if we need it.”
So that’s what I did. I started our business and began building the foundation while he worked to provide for us. The first 6 months were hard. We didn’t land a single client and because money was so tight, we even had to borrow some to pay our rent one month.
It was times like that when I wondered if we’d really made the right decision …
But then that 7th month rolled around, and we signed our first client, then another one, then another … and things finally started looking up. We finally started to figure out a recipe that worked for us and kept continually doing the things that we now knew were going to help us build the business that we wanted. We were able to pay off all our debt, and eventually 10 months after that, Michael quit his job and we were able to work together full time.
4 years later, we’ve gotten the honor of working with some of the biggest brands on the planet, like Google, Forbes, Facebook, and many others. If you’d have told me that 6 years ago I’d be living the life we’re living now, I would have never believed it. But we never gave up, used the skills we had, and added value where we could.
We feel like every day we’re living a dream, and that we get to help other business owners achieve the dreams they have for their businesses and their lives as a result. We couldn’t ask for more.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Definitely not. Me getting fired from my job and having to live off one income and even borrow money for rent was a big one.
Another struggle was during the first 2 years of us building our business, I was going through health challenges that to this day have never been able to be diagnosed. I would get dizzy spells every time i stood up so Michael had to help me out of bed, to the bathroom, and even help me shower through those times.
Last year, Michael had a tumor removed and was told by the doctor that he believed with 100% certainty it was cancer … at the age of 40. After multiple tests, thank God it ended up not being cancer, but we didn’t get the test results back for a month, so Michael spent that month more depressed than I’d ever seen him in my life.
Various arguments throughout the 6 years, because marriage is already stressful, but add that you’re now working in business together and that adds a whole new element to the mix.
We’ve also had deaths in the family: 2 years ago my grandma who I was super close with passed away after medical complications. It came out of nowhere and rocked not just me, but our entire family.
But instead of letting these things stop us or derail us, we chose to push through and persevere because it’s what we knew we were supposed to be doing with our lives
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about The Market Vibe?
We are a full-service marketing agency that helps businesses in the Utah area build custom campaigns through social media and other online channels to raise brand awareness and grow their business online.
We are most known for our social media marketing, branding and website design, as well as advertising (Google + Facebook). What sets us apart from others is that we don’t pass off the work to others, instead, over the past 20 years, we’ve learned and continue to learn how to provide all of these services ourselves, which means when people hire us, they get US, not someone else they’ll never talk to.
We like to refer to ourselves as a boutique agency because we only take on a certain number of clients to ensure that the highest quality work is done for the businesses we collaborate with. We are proud of the fact that most of our business comes from business owners seeing work we do for a client, then inquiring about the work we’ve done. It’s the highest compliment we could ever receive.
I think what I’d want people to know most about our brand is that we built our business not for money, but for our relationship. We used to spend all our time going our separate ways, working corporate jobs, and putting our relationship a distant second. Now, we get to wake up and put our relationship first every day.
We offer a wide range of services to fit a businesses needs but one thing we do like to do that is different is offer a free, full marketing audit where we take a look at everything from your website to socials. We then take what we’ve learned as well as the goals you have for your business and align the areas we think need the most improvement and how we can help the most based on the goals you have.
What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
I think that AI is obviously going to play a huge role over the next 5-10 years in how businesses market themselves. However, I caution businesses to use AI for things like systems, processes, and procedure rather than things like content creation and writing (emails, blogs, etc.)
In a world where people already feel isolated, it is very easy to tell the difference between something that was written by a human vs AI. Plus, no matter how smart AI gets, they’ll never be able to tell the stories you and your business have as well as you.
Pricing:
- Social media packages start at $1500+/mo
- Website design packages start at $3000+
- Branding design packages start at $2500+
- Consulting packages start at $1000+/mo
- Advertising packages start at $2500+/mo
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.themarketvibe.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themarketvibe/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelandjillianleonard/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheMarketVibe
