Today we’d like to introduce you to Michael Epps Utley
Hi Michael Epps, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
Wow – great question! I was a computer kid. I liked code, even if I was not great at it. I also loved reading. When I finished undergrad, the internet was kind of new and I was intrigued. My plan had been to work in education or publishing, and in my first job editing history books at a publishing house, I was offered a chance to work on their marketing.
Within a few weeks, I had built the company a new website (it slipped my mind to tell them until after it was live!). The website led to selling two copies of every book in the catalog to Amazon as they were filling their warehouses and working to maximize their SKU base, and that was the biggest order the company had ever had. I was hooked. Digital content and marketing became my focus.
After a career working for others doing bigger and bigger things in digital marketing, I decided to start my company. That was in 2012 and we have been going strong ever since.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It was knife fights every day all the way through. And it still is. After WW2, the US experienced a long, slow economic expansion. It turns out, that is the best environment for starting businesses. But the banking crisis and the pandemic have been tough. With the banking crisis, I decided it was not time to start a real company, so I took a role with a startup. With Covid, we saw a massive drop in business and had to build back. The inflation crisis we are in now is the latest – and we can see it hitting our clients across the US and Canada. But, each of these challenges was an invitation to get hard and strong. And that is why we’re still here.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about GoEpps?
We are a performance digital marketing agency that does a really good job keeping up with change.
Something I am the most proud of is that we are able to look at almost any marketing situation and find opportunities to improve it in terms of ROI. We do a lot of websites, SEO, ads, email, social, and video content marketing. But what I really see us doing is introducing buyers and sellers with better channel management and workflows.
We get more value with each piece of content planned because we approach it with an optimized workflow for the best effort to yield possible. If we want to speak to a topic for a client, that idea may be a blog post created for SEO, but we get it into our email, social, and, often, video, content planning at the same time. Or if we are producing a podcast, we can plan the episodes to be clip-ready and playlist-ready. This “overhead view” approach to planning is more proactive and cuts out a lot of wasted effort.
It’s all about the planning and smooth delivery of ongoing programs for us. The less sexy, the better.
Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
Being married to an entrepreneur is not easy, and my wife Tracy Utley is awesome. She is the best thing that ever happened to me. She has been both cheerleader and teammate to allow me to get this whole thing going.
For years, I have sent emails at random times to some of the people who hired and fired me. Cy, Gary, Erick, and Dave changed my life. I would not have made it this far without each of them letting me swing for the fences and fall short over and over, but learn, and grow, and get to where I wanted to be.
Jeana, Kailyn, and Barry at GoEpps have been critical to our success. We have been in the trenches together and would not have the growth we have if they were not the absolute, but tasteful, savages they are.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.goepps.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goepps/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/goeppsdigital/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/goeppsdigital
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@goeppsdigitalmarketing/featured
