If you follow our newsletter and our blog, it’s no news to you that it’s been a full decade since I launched The Mather Group. It’s not news to me either, but that doesn’t stop it from being sometimes shocking and altogether gratifying. It was never set in stone that I (and my team!) would be here today. As I reflect on the journey, ten lessons have popped up, one for each year. If you want a glimpse of what life has been like on the inside, here they are.
- Niches Are Powerful. We started our digital reputation work focusing on Google and Wikipedia. Ten years ago these areas were considered to be intimidating, and not a lot of reputation companies were diving in. This hasn’t altogether changed. By choosing not to generalize and sticking with these niches, we’ve grown into experts in two of the areas that are foundational in shaping online reputations today. We quite literally wrote the book on Wikipedia. Our work here makes us invaluable to clients.
- Credibility Is Your Real Currency. Clients, journalists, and search engines all care about whether or not you are credible. The content you publish, the sources you cite, and how you behave over time will be remembered forever. Transparency and integrity pay dividends in the long run.
- Systems Beat Hustle. This one was painful to learn. I’m very pro-hustle, but hiring people who are excellent when it comes to system creation and management made a huge difference in our ability to execute well, living up to our standards of proactive excellence.
- Your Team Defines You. From the beginning, we’ve put a lot of work into defining, developing, and protecting our culture. Every single employee we’ve added has exemplified it. Without them, we wouldn’t be here and we wouldn’t stand out. I am incredibly proud of our team. People start working here and never leave and that is one of my greatest successes.
- Clients Remember How You Made Them Feel. They might forget some of the jargon and the reports, but they will always remember if you listened to them and if you went the extra mile on their behalf. We’ve had POCs leave a company and then contact us for their new company because of this relationship building.
- You Can’t Predict What’s Going To Happen With Technology. Three years ago no one had heard of ChatGPT and today it’s mentioned in almost every conversation we have with clients and industry professionals. We have to be able to adapt quickly, test new ideas, and learn how they work so that we can give advice and guide clients through the maze.
- Marketing Never Really Stops. We teach this to our clients, but it’s true internally as well. We hope our work speaks for itself and keeps clients queuing outside the office, but we can’t get complacent. We have to constantly be out there, keeping in touch with people, reminding them who we are and what we do.
- Boundaries Create Sustainability. Every marketing firm starts out the same way – by taking any business they can. However, you can’t and don’t want to continue in that vein indefinitely. Eventually we all learn that you have to stay in your lane, in your niche areas of expertise. Not every project or client is right for us and determining that before signing a contract was a necessary part of growing our business.
- Small Things Compound. For example, doing a newsletter one week is easy. But putting it out week after week for years is much harder. However, it pays off. People start to know who you are and what you’re doing.
- Reinvention Is Required. We are constantly looking at how we help clients and what we can do to better help them with their business goals. The digital reputation landscape is always changing and we need to be right there alongside it or we quickly become outdated.
How long have you been in business or in your current role? What would be your top ten lessons? I’d love to hear.
And to all of my team, our clients and partners – and yes, even you skeptics – thank you. I’ve learned more than I ever expected and am thrilled to still be involved in this space. Here’s to starting our next decade.
Check out more people’s learning at our LinkedIn newsletter here.
The Mather Group LLC is a digital marketing agency. We specialize in enhancing online reputations through authentic content and expert digital brand management. Clients trust us with Wikipedia, GEO & SEO, LLM optimization, search reputation, and more. Don’t like how you’re showing up online? Let’s talk.
