Interview with Accidental Pren-her Samantha Hartley

Today's special guest on The Accidental Pren-her Show, Stories of the Unexpected is Accidental Pren-her Samantha Hartley.

This quick-fire, 10 minute interview talks about how Samantha made the transition from being traditionally employed as a marketing manager for The Coca-Cola Company in Moscow, Russia to founding and owning her own company in the US: Enlightened Marketing.com.

It all began in 1992 when she wrote down on a piece of paper: I want to own my own business. Though she had no idea how this would ever come to be, Samantha did realize her dream. Today, she is a successful businesswoman living her dream.

You can download Samantha's interview and listen to it from your computer or read it in full below.

Enjoy!

The original Accidental Pren-her™

Author of Discovering Your Inner Samurai: The Entrepreneurial Woman's Journey to Business Success

Welcome to another episode of the Accidental Pren-her Show: Stories of the Unexpected. I’m your host, Susan Reid, and we have as our special guest today Samantha Hartley, owner and principal consultant of EnlightenedMarketing.com. Great to have you, Samantha!

SH:    Thank you. It’s great to be here, Susan!

S:    Let’s just jump right in and talk about your journey into entrepreneurship. At one time – and I love this, this is just so fantastic – I know that you were employed traditionally as a marketing manager at the Coca-Cola Company in Moscow, Russia. Now you’re back in the United States as a marketing consultant and owner of your own business. That’s got to be some kind of fantastic journey, so let’s get in and hear about it. When did this all begin for you?

SH:    I was hired by the Coca-Cola Company in about 1994, and before that I had been with a very small entrepreneurial venture. I remember one day – they were training a lot of us young people – we had one of those trainings on how to set goals and what do you do. This was very early in my career, in 1992, and they asked, “What’s your goal?” I remember always that she said, “Somebody is going to get their wish or their goal. Why shouldn’t you get yours?” I wrote down, “I want to own my own business by the end of . . .” I can’t remember what year I wrote, but some far point in the future. But, even then, I really thought that I wanted to own my own business and, as it turned out, I was right.

S:    So that was in 1992 when you had that intention.

SH:    I think so. I was very young in business. I was a theatre person in college and a language person – that’s how I ended up in Russia. So I was never really into “business” at all, but once I got into it I found I really loved it, and I thrived in it. My language skills and kind of my theatrical skills had a place, and I was just a natural at marketing and really loved it. I knew what I wanted to do with my life.

S:    I love that story. So many of the women who I talk to have that. There’s some little kernel somewhere that they’ve been sitting on, but they don’t understand why or even how that’s going to manifest.

It sounds very prestigious working for the Coca-Cola Company. How did you get from there to starting up your business?

SH:    You know, I moved from the field where you have a lot of action, activity, and accomplishments into corporate headquarters, and everybody who I’ve ever talked to who’ve worked in corporate headquarters had kind of a disenchanting experience because there it’s a lot more about – and I’m not saying anything bad about Coke because I think this is true about every corporation – you get there and it’s a lot about politics. The way I describe or define politics in a corporation is that it’s more about your personality than about the work. And I’m very good at the work! Not that I have a bad personality or whatever, but when you’re passionate about the work – and, honestly, I’m about to curse on your show – you get kind of pigeonholed as a bitch if you’re a woman and you’re passionate about your work in a corporation. I just wasn’t ready to be defined that way and to constantly have struggles. I just wanted to be in a place where I could do the work.

    So, in about 2000, I was very frustrated with what I was able to do – allowed to do – in corporate America, and I left. A lot of people started calling me and saying, “You used to work at Coke, and we left Coke, too, and would you come and work with us on a marketing project?” And I did, and I kind of got sucked up into consulting. I didn’t realize it was what I wanted to do, but what I loved was that my work was always different. I’m not that interested in the day-to-day workings of a single company. I really want to do what I do. Working as a consultant allowed me to work on exactly the piece that I loved, to give the best that I had to offer, and get the balls rolling or the plates spinning and leave, and then let the client continue to do that. So I kind of got led into that work, not really even intentionally, and that’s the business that I own today.

S:    You know, the best part about that, it sounds like you get in, you work with your clients, everybody feels great, then you get out and everybody goes their separate ways.

SH:    Exactly. Honestly, my passion and my desire to help people is received so much better there because I’m not stepping on anybody’s toes, I’m not making anybody’s boss look bad . . . We discussed this before our interview, but I got kind of hung up by stupid people when I was in a corporate situation where people were threatened by me because I was young, or people were threatened because I was young and female, and I just never run into that with my clients. I select them very carefully, they really want what I have to offer, and now my business thrives.

S:    Tell us a little bit about the vision or the mission or the purpose behind your company, EnlightenedMarketing.com.

SH:    What I do is I help my clients identify exactly what their value is, find the perfect clients who very much want to receive that value, and develop together with them how they’re going to deliver that value to their clients. Those are all different ways of saying I brand businesses. A brand is your unique value. It’s the way you’re delivering your gifts in the world. Some of my clients find that they’re working with clients who don’t really appreciate them, who question why things cost as much as they do, and the business owners are unfulfilled. The purpose of my business is to help everybody who wants to deliver their gifts to the world through their unique business and help them to thrive while they’re doing that.

S:    It sounds to me like you really give them individual, personalized attention, don’t you.

SH:    Yes. I’m very much about the intensity of individual work together, and even in the group programs that I do, there’s a lot of one-on-one feedback from me.

S:    So there’s no cookie-cutter branding in your business.

SH:    No, there’s a system, but there’s no cookie-cutter. Everybody is unique and special like snowflakes, so you can’t really take the exact same approach with every single person. You really have to see each individual business to understand the value of it, so it’s heavy communication.

S:    What are you excited about now in your business?

SH:    I’m very excited about the direction my business is going and that I’m more able to reach out beyond my geography – that’s just the beauty of the internet – and to help more and more people in their businesses. I have clients all over the world, all over the coasts. I’m in the middle of the country in Arkansas, which is a place with fabulous nature where I love to be, but through the internet I’m able to access and work with more and more people. That has helped me in two ways: I’m aligned with other service providers who can do the parts of the business that my clients need that I either don’t do or choose not to do, and I’m able to do exactly what I want to do. One of the mottos of my business is “Only do what only you can do.” It’s important to be in integrity with that message, and right now only I, I feel in my business, can do the branding the way that I do it, and some other people can help out with other aspects of it. That’s what I’m now able to do.

S:    That’s great, because you really then focus on your strengths and you parcel out the rest to other people.

SH:    Exactly.

S:    Thank you for that. We’ll all take away that message. We really appreciate that message.

Now we’re at the last part of our interview, and I have five questions that I ask everyone. So here we go:

    What word describes your life today?

SH:     Blessed. I really feel the way that the Universe has brought so many gifts into my life. Blessed.

S:    Blessed. What quality or characteristic is most important to you?

SH:    I think integrity. And the way I define integrity is about “integra”, which is the root word for “whole”. It’s really about being in alignment, so I look for alignment in thought, word, and deed. I look for alignment of the things you stand for and the action behind it. Integrity is also about trust and honesty.

S:    What turns you off?

SH:    Negativity. Pessimism.

S:    And what inspires you?

SH:    I’m inspired by people who are motivated and passionate about their business.

S:    Yes. I am, too! What’s the most precious thing you’ve learned along the journey from Accidental Pren-her to entrepreneurial woman?

SH:    Every one of us has a unique gift that we have got to deliver to the world.

S:    Indeed we do. Samantha, once again, thanks for being on the Accidental Pren-her Show today, and I know that you’ve got something special that you’re offering our readers and our listeners. Tell us about this special. Tell us how they can get a hold of you and what they will get when they do.

SH:    Well, I have developed this really amazing tool that I’m really excited about. It’s a Brand Assessment that is specifically for small businesses, and it helps you determine how valuable your small business brand is. It’s unlike anything else I’ve seen anywhere else. If you go to EnlightenedMarketing.com, you can take that free Brand Assessment and when you fill in your responses to 31 questions, 31 dimensions of your brand get analyzed and you’ll get personalized feedback from me that will help you learn how to improve your brand power, attract perfect clients, and skyrocket profitability. It’s very similar to the brand audits I do for my clients, only it comes without the $500 price tag.

S:    And I love that! I went over and I took that just to test it out before our call today, and you’re right. Out of those 31 things that come back for you, it really has very detailed and well thought out responses to however it is we respond. So, yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, let me suggest that you get over to www.EnlightenedMarketing.com and sign up for that Free Branding Assessment. It’s free. It’s worth $500, but Samantha is offering it to you for free. Get that feedback on your branding.

    Samantha, thank you again for being here, and we enjoyed having you!

SH:    Thank you so much, Susan. I appreciate being with you today.

Comments

[Carol McClelland of Green Career Central]

Great to hear more of your story, Samantha. Congratulations on your new Brand Assessment. Sounds fabulous. I'll stop by and take a spin.

[The Original Accidental Pren-her]

Yes indeed, congratulations on your new Brand Assessment. It really helps business owners get a bead on where they are and what they need to do.

[Samantha Hartley]

Thanks, Carol! Please let me know what you think of your feedback.

Susan, I appreciate it! Thank you for helping me get the word out to more accidental pren-hers!

[Jeanne Adams - Author]

Hi Samantha! What a great interview. Isn't it fun hanging out with Susan? She's great, and has been a wonderful help to me in defining my brand issues. As an author, and a former marketing guru as well, I knew what to do, but tweaking it to meet the different market conditions of branding ME was quite a challenge! Not traditional marketing at all. Ha! I took your assessment and got some good feedback. While only 60-70% applied to me as an author/brand, it was still incredibly helpful! Thanks for being here today and thanks Susan for continuing to introduce us to such cool women!

[The Original Accidental Pren-her]

Didn't you find that assessment helpful, Jeanne? Though not completely applicable to a specific brand like author, it is a wonderful overall assessment of how you're doing in branding.

You're welcome. It is such a pleasure meeting and introducing such wonderful women . . . such as yourself.

[Moschel Kadokura]

Thank you for the information about your company and your generous offer. It was a very informative and inspirational interview.
Moschel Kadokura, Timely Matters Inc.

[Samantha Hartley]

Thanks, Jeanne. I too had trouble branding my business - even marketing myself! - when I first left Coke. It was so far out of my paradigm to apply those techniques to myself ... and I'd never had to look for work before.
Glad to hear the brand assessment was of some help to you.

Moschel, you're very welcome! Thank you for your sweet comments.

[Jina Daigle]

Hi Jeanne. Great interview. I ditto everyones thoughts about how great it is that Susan allows us to connect with fabulous women and wonderful success stories. I liked the idea, from your talk with Susan, about focusing on doing what we WANT to do...and aligning with our strengths. It seems when we are operating in our passions... processes happen more effortlessly, opportunities appear, and we feel a sense of purpose and flow. And...in delegating the rest... we are empowering others success as well.
Thanks for some great inspiration and reminders about what is important!