Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in marketing but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Natalie Micale, Owner and CEO of Oh Hello, LLC., located in Lincoln, NE, USA.
What's your business, and who are your customers?
Oh Hello is a full-service, award-winning creative digital agency. Our global team believes in the power of storytelling, and we’re on a mission to develop businesses into powerful brands that touch hearts and minds. Our approach starts with brand strategy, leveraging research and tech to better understand our client’s audience. Then we build the nuts and bolts of the brand, brand identity, messaging, and website. Once we’ve nailed the brand’s basics, we offer comprehensive digital services that expand a brand’s reach and drive ROI. Getting concrete results for our clients and driving their brand’s growth forward is why we exist.
At Oh Hello, we specialize in empowering mid-level, blue-collar businesses entrenched in time-honored industries, crafting powerful brands that set them apart from the competition. While our expertise transcends industries, we thrive in nurturing synergistic relationships with clients in these traditional sectors, making it a major focus area of our agency. Our diverse clientele spans industries such as construction, manufacturing, electrical services, solar, and even blue-collar associations.
Tell us about yourself
I started my professional journey in TV as a reporter and anchor for a local CBS affiliate in Lincoln, Nebraska. I left TV to work at a digital agency, Evol Empire, which I helped grow into an entity that was acquired.
It was there I realized that my passion for storytelling could transfer over into the digital marketing world, and when that agency was acquired, I had already had a taste of entrepreneurship leading the sales team there, so I felt ready to make the jump to starting my own agency. I’m incredibly proud to be the CEO of an agency where I was able to start and grow. I’m motivated every day to become the best leader I can be because of the people who work at Oh Hello. They are talented, passionate creatives who truly care about every client we serve!
Another major motivator for me: shattering more glass ceilings. Only 3% of female entrepreneurs ever hit a million dollars of revenue in business. And so that motivates me to continue going to the next level and bringing more women with me and showing them that women in the agency world, typically a more male-dominated industry, can be successful and lead the way.
What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?
My biggest accomplishment as a business owner is being able to nearly double my business during a pandemic year when it felt like moving mountains to close clients. Not only did our agency pivot and thrive during the pandemic, but we also helped many of our clients develop more robust marketing strategies that allowed them to be successful in a global pandemic. We’re proud of what we accomplished!
What's one of the hardest things that comes with being a business owner?
Riding the middle wave. You’re going to have a lot of ups and downs, and how do you stay consistent with your perspective, mindset, and even your wellness through these ups and downs so that you continue to make forward progress? That’s the real challenge. I embrace it every day!
What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?
- Start before you’re ready. Your website’s never going to be perfect, and your offer’s never going to be perfect. This perfectly packaged-up thing that you have in your mind that “everyone’s just going to fall in love with when you launch” isn’t real. So if you just start and believe in yourself before you’re ready and start acting, you’ll figure it out along the way and evolve your business. But you have to start.
- Go lean and learn. With Chat GPT and virtual assistants and the evolution of freelancers, you can start a business and be profitable and lean. If you understand how to leverage outsourced talent and technology to automate, there is nothing you can’t do. Learn what you can offboard and stay lean!
- Start a business and build your business around the lifestyle you want to have. If you want to go work on a beach every day with a laptop and that’s the life you want, pick a business that allows you to do that. Think about the life that you want to have and build your business around that life. Don’t build your life around your business. That doesn’t work for anyone and won’t lead to long-term success.
Where can people find you and your business?
Website: https://oh-hello.co/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NatalieEMicale/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nataliemicale/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nataliemicale/
If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.
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