She’s in Business! From Idea to Impact with Sommer Gay
In this episode of the Kindling Project podcast, host Melissa Halpin speaks with Sommer Gay, founder of Launch Marketing Co. They discuss Sommer's journey into entrepreneurship, the importance of niche marketing in hospitality, and the challenges of work-life balance for women entrepreneurs. Sommer shares insights on amplifying women's voices in branding, overcoming imposter syndrome, and the significance of community support. They also explore the need for simplified tech solutions for small businesses and Sommer's future projects that align with her passions.
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Listen to the full episode:
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Melissa Halpin (00:11)
Welcome to the Kindling Project podcast where we talk to the bold and brilliant women lighting their own fire and helping others find theirs. Today's guest is the founder of a marketing agency that doesn't just build brands, it amplifies purpose. Please welcome Sommer Gay, founder of Launch Marketing Co.
Hi Sommer!
Sommer Gay (00:31)
Hello.
thanks for having me.
Melissa Halpin (00:33)
How are you? I'm
so excited to have you. So Sommer's my friend. We've been online friends and then real life friends and then business collaborators for, gosh, a lot of years now. Yeah, and she just has like an absolutely fascinating mind for solving problems. That's what I always talk to my team about is we need Sommer on this problem. She's the puzzler.
Sommer Gay (00:45)
Mm-hmm. It's been a minute.
Melissa Halpin (00:57)
But I'm super excited to have you, and I've been super excited to watch your brand grow. And I think that it would be just a good story for a lot of women in our community who are either finding their way to some kind of marketing or communications work, or they have an entrepreneurial project where they need marketing and communications work. So let's get into it. Yeah. So you named the Business Launch Marketing Co.
Sommer Gay (01:17)
Great.
Melissa Halpin (01:21)
Tell us what that means to you.
Sommer Gay (01:23)
Yeah, so I really wanted to be, not to get super meta about it, but I really wanted to be the launch pad for brands to be able to amplify their story, amplify their presence in the online landscape.
Melissa Halpin (01:39)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
And what's the spark behind the brand? lit it up for you for Launch Marketing Co.? Where was the moment that you knew you wanted to take this path on your own?
Sommer Gay (01:49)
Yeah, so I would definitely say that it was a little bit more of like a wet flint that I continued to strike over and over and over again and have been furiously blowing on the flames ever since to keep it going. you know, ultimately it came down to I was in a career that I absolutely loved but was not sustainable with a family and with being a mom and had to make some hard decisions and reprioritize and decided that I needed to be home.
Melissa Halpin (01:57)
Yep.
Mm-hmm.
Sommer Gay (02:15)
more and that sort of led into this meandering path of not realizing that being in the events world how adjacent that really is to marketing and how much I had actually learned through my years of working in events and working as the venue, working in casino marketing, how much I actually knew or didn't know and you know sort of
Melissa Halpin (02:16)
Mm-hmm.
Sommer Gay (02:36)
was at that point during COVID when all of us events people were very very very unemployed and really just trying to figure out you know what am I going to do and I can't just you know continue to rip apart bathrooms and remodel them because I really don't know how to do that either. So decided to yeah yeah I still look at it every day and I'm like man but it's okay.
Melissa Halpin (02:49)
Yeah, that's a hard lesson in life.
What was I thinking? Well, correct
me if I'm wrong, but I think also over time now you've really kind of merged your event background with your marketing business and sort of specializing in hospitality clients.
Sommer Gay (03:07)
I do, yeah. So you and I had an interesting conversation where I called you one day and I said, Melissa, I said, I have to niche down as much as I appreciate global freight logistics and what they do for the world. It's just not, it's not where I need to be at the moment. And that actually was a pivotal moment when, you know, that conversation that you and I had and from there, you know, a few things, I just got clarity on a few things. And one of them was that I need to be working in a space that I'm passionate about, that I love.
Melissa Halpin (03:20)
Right.
Sommer Gay (03:33)
that
is known and familiar to me that I want to continue to stay as close as possible to. And that's definitely events and hospitality.
Melissa Halpin (03:41)
Yeah, yeah, it suits you.
So.
In all of the marketing spaces and I think especially in anything event, hospitality, entertainment, it's a crowded space. So how are you doing it differently?
Sommer Gay (03:54)
Yeah, so it definitely is a crowded space, but what's interesting is that there's not a lot of marketing companies that are focused on event and hospitality companies, which is so strange to me because events and marketing go hand in hand. They're tied together. But the event suppliers, the producers, the AV companies, the linen companies, all of these companies don't necessarily have any real marketing behind what they're doing.
Melissa Halpin (04:08)
Right.
Sommer Gay (04:21)
A lot of them have founded organically through trial and error and everything like that, but there's not a lot of companies that actually focus on marketing for event and hospitality companies. And even the ones that I've come across, there's a lot of stories of both past and current clients that were with other companies that just don't understand what our industry is or what we do or how to market because it's such a unique blend of B to C plus B to B and you have to be able
to talk to both, to be able to figure out, to be able to market in both channels successfully. And I keep hearing over and over, there was a lot of stories about having to explain again to their marketing company why they're not just going after weddings or why they're not just going to company picnics. So being able to really understand that if you're an AV company and you're a rental company, that's not just
Melissa Halpin (05:04)
Mm-hmm.
Sommer Gay (05:14)
like
throwing up a speaker at an event. That's like full stage production for a multi-day conference for a thousand people and there's just if you're not entrenched in this world in this industry that's sometimes a very difficult thing to understand and if you don't understand it how do you market it out to other people?
Melissa Halpin (05:30)
Right. And so you brought
a lot of that background with you when you started a marketing company from your decades in hospitality and events. You know, the other thing you mentioned, which applies to me and it applies to just so many women, is one of the factors was some form of work-life balance with raising kids. How are you managing that? I mean, that's a constant question we all have.
Sommer Gay (05:37)
Yep.
Melissa Halpin (05:54)
What are your tips? Is it even working?
Sommer Gay (05:54)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
It's
working better than it was because even if I have weeks where I'm working a ton, I'm home and I can still, I can step away for 15 minutes and I am one of the very fortunate few that has multi-generational help close by. I have a community, I have family that would, you know, if I needed something would hop on a plane, would hop in a car, would get here to, you know, to help. You know, I'm also fortunate that I have a partner and a spouse that
takes on just as much responsibility for getting kids to doctor's appointments and getting them to after school activities and dropping off at school and picking up at school and I mean that's a huge part of it too and also something that unfortunately a lot of women don't have where you know where the bulk of the responsibility falls on them to work with no help but then also to be the main caretaker and the main you know bill payer and the main you know cleaner and all of that stuff and you know it's not perfect.
Melissa Halpin (06:38)
Right.
Sommer Gay (06:49)
but you know I definitely am fortunate to have someone that steps up pretty significantly to you know to help with that kind of stuff as well.
Melissa Halpin (06:57)
Yeah. Well, it's nice to have
a voice in your home and to have a community. Do you find also that your clients are supportive of, know, hey, I'm taking this call with a sick kid at home or I'm going to be late because I'm coming from a sports practice, that sort of thing?
Sommer Gay (07:11)
you
Yeah, I do. you know, I...
talk about my kids a lot and my daughter will come in when she gets off the bus from school and even if I'm on a meeting we'll just come in and say hi and she's probably talked to all of my clients at this point and they all will like say hi ask her how it's going and you know I maybe talk about her a little too much because they all know what she's doing in the sports world and in golf specifically and we'll just ask her how it's going and that they saw her and all this kind of stuff so she's definitely an integral part and I don't know that I have any clients that have
I mean, at least maybe they've never told me, but that seemed to have an issue or a problem with it. And sometimes it's a nice little, you know, 30 second break before we go back to talking about big things. So.
Melissa Halpin (07:47)
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Yeah, well, mean, it's definitely for
me too, like one of the pluses of self-employment and entrepreneurship is that you can somewhat manage. Although I do find that there's certainly those days in those weeks where I don't have any more life balance than I did when I had a regular gig.
and sometimes less so because, wait, I can work a few extra hours after everyone goes to bed or I can work on the weekend when everyone else is doing something else. I mean.
Sommer Gay (08:23)
Yeah, I drove
the kids with another mom friend for spring break. We drove them to South Carolina so that they, you we live in Chicago. It's cold weather city and both of my kids golf. And so not being able to play on real grass is a big deal. And so I said, you know what, we're going to drive to South Carolina. I'm going to get an Airbnb for the week on a golf course. Kids are going to be able to golf before the spring season starts. And the way that I made it work was I got up at 5 a.m. and worked and
And then the other mom was super helpful. She jumped in, made breakfast every morning, got the kids ready. And I worked until about 11 every morning. And then we packed lunches and took them out for tea times on the golf course. And we'd come back and get everybody showered and fed. And then I would hop back on and make it work. while it is a great perk, it's also when you're the owner. ⁓ And that's also the flip side is you don't get real vacations. You don't get real life.
Melissa Halpin (09:02)
Right.
Yeah.
No,
Sommer Gay (09:14)
like. Yeah.
Melissa Halpin (09:14)
it's always a working vacation. But it just highlights how important it is to have also other women in your community that are supportive. Yeah. OK, so let's back up a little bit and go back to the company itself. So I think that marketing, one of the things I wanted to talk about was voice and visibility.
Sommer Gay (09:22)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, for sure.
Melissa Halpin (09:35)
and it can amplify or it can erase voices. What have you seen when women finally own their voices in branding?
Sommer Gay (09:42)
I mean, not to keep it to the most simple answer, but it is the most simple answer, is they become successful. You know, when, and being authentic about who you are and, you your personality and how you work best and, you know, the more that I think women are owning that and not apologizing for it, I think the more successful they are. I actually had a really interesting conversation with a mom earlier this week.
Melissa Halpin (09:47)
Yeah.
Sommer Gay (10:04)
her daughter and my daughter were practicing together and her daughter made a really good shot and just owned it. No shame whatsoever. I was rooting for her and cheering her on because I loved that. I loved that she was not apologetic at all. And her mom even started a little bit of like, I'm sorry, and I was like, no, no, no, no, no, that is awesome. We need more of that. the fact that they're, was like, the boys don't do that. They don't make a great shot and are super proud of themselves and then back.
Melissa Halpin (10:12)
Yeah.
I love that.
Right.
Sommer Gay (10:33)
up and apologize for being too like cocky or confident about it. So the fact that these girls are like this next generation of girls are coming in and doing that I'm so excited to see where they're gonna be in like you know 10 years 20 years 30 years versus us who were you know a lot of us especially talking about Gen X and Millennials you know we
Melissa Halpin (10:35)
No. No.
Yeah.
Sommer Gay (10:52)
Boys get a mower and girls get a broom, right? And we're taught very much that there's a lot of deference and there's a lot of making sure everyone else feels comfortable and accommodated. And the boys we're taught, you take up space in the world. And we're taught we make space for everyone else in the world. And overcoming that, I think for me and watching other women that have overcome that are really the keys to success. And I don't just mean financially, although I think that that's an effective
Melissa Halpin (10:55)
Right.
Yeah.
Yes.
Sommer Gay (11:19)
of that, but in not apologizing for work-life balance, not apologizing for deciding that you're going to take every Monday off over the summer because, again, living in cold cities, that's important because we don't get that year round. Or whatever the case may be, whatever success looks like across all of those metrics, I think is really what happens when we stop apologizing and when we just start living authentically and amplifying the voice that we have.
Melissa Halpin (11:36)
Mm-hmm.
Sommer Gay (11:45)
through marketing and that connects and it resonates with people too.
Melissa Halpin (11:49)
Yeah.
And I think it's so important for women because we did get all those messages about be nice, be modest, be thoughtful, be considerate, share your cake, share your seat, invite others to the table, which lead to some wonderful qualities about women, of course. But because we are undoing some of that messaging,
and how we take up space in the world as entrepreneurs, it flavors our business. And because we live in this world now of many of us, myself included, we're having to be part of the brand. Even if it's not really your mo- I I have all the messaging that all the other GenX women have, and I think by temperament I don't necessarily have.
Sommer Gay (12:17)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Melissa Halpin (12:35)
stand on the stage and take up space energy. think I tend to have more like creator workshop energy, like she's lost in her messy studio all day and then something just pops out at the end. And so that sort of pushed to be the face of my own business and to walk other women through the journey of becoming the face of their own business. I feel like I've learned a lot watching you do it and watching you help your clients do it. And I felt like,
you could just share some insights about overcoming those, whether it's fears or whether it's messaging or whether it's not your natural inclination. What are some of the easier things we can do to get out there in front of our own brand or in front of, or become the brand or get more comfortable with marketing and messaging if we have to be the voice or the face?
Sommer Gay (13:23)
Yeah, I mean, and I will tell you that I really, really, really, really struggle with this. And I still do to this day, and I actually drive my team crazy because our own social media accounts are so just like infographic, like educational helpful. And I'm not on any of them. And what few videos you do find of people or faces are typically of my team and not me. ⁓ I really struggle with that. I have a lot of
Melissa Halpin (13:27)
Yeah
Right.
Sommer Gay (13:48)
really
like big stage fright and I but I also have a personality that I'm like okay well if I'm scared of something I'm gonna go and like do it at the extreme and so I've like given big speeches and I've done big things but what happens is I turn the corner and like my knees buckle and I slide to the ground and I hyperventilate for 10 minutes after it's over ⁓ you know so like those yeah I mean those types of things are like just really really really hard for me and really uncomfortable for me but where I have come a really long way and a big part of this was you know when we were talking
Melissa Halpin (14:04)
Same, same. ⁓
Sommer Gay (14:17)
about my website and talking about my brand and what I wanted to do was
I came from an industry and worked in, you know, I come from event operations. I come from banquets, right? I was a banquet manager. I managed the food and beverage for the World Series at poker for a number of years. Like I've done some really, really, really big jobs, some really, really hard, difficult jobs, mostly with men. And I learned how to be tough. I learned how to be really sarcastic. I learned how to be very like quick witted and like off the cuff. I learned how to be back at house.
I learned how to cuss, learned how to tell jokes, all the things that I needed to do to be successful in that world. And then I got out of that world. yes, I do think that I'm pretty quick-witted and funny and can carry a conversation and stuff like that, but to do it to that hard, tough level that I needed to do it to be successful and continue to get noticed and promoted and all of that, I had to unlearn all of that. And I had to back all of that off.
recognize like I don't know who I really am without all of that I was just always this work personality right and I didn't really like I didn't have a husband I didn't have a family didn't have kids I wasn't interested in any of that I sort of fell into all of that unintentionally and wouldn't change any of it but at the same time like that journey to figure out and then be comfortable with who I am because I am cheerful and I am optimistic and I'm very like nerdy humor and I
Melissa Halpin (15:18)
Right.
Sommer Gay (15:40)
I
will sit and spend four hours working on a puzzle at home over the winter. These are things that I really like to do. I'm a massive book nerd. That's how I managed to finish school, was going back and getting a degree and reading books. It was awesome. It was what I needed in order to be able to finish. But knowing that and having spent so many years being this hard, tough, attagirl, Adam type of personality,
still have moments of massive imposter syndrome, right? Like I just listen and decide to trust the people around me who are telling me how I show up for them or who I am authentically. And the more of that I do, going back to what we were talking about before, the more I find clients that appreciate that about me. And we have a level of trust and partnership that's different from most client service provider relationships because...
Melissa Halpin (16:13)
Mm-hmm.
Sommer Gay (16:29)
I show up as exactly who I am and I'm okay with I'm not for everybody. I am not the right fit for most people. I am quirky. I do things in a way that maybe doesn't fit for some people. I don't typically align so much with type A personalities, but I'm also not a super creative and so I just have like really found my own way and like you said, like I'm a puzzler. Like if there's something you need to figure out, I am the right person to call because I will like
Melissa Halpin (16:52)
Yeah. Yeah.
Sommer Gay (16:55)
dig in and like I don't give up until I figure it out because it will just like drive me crazy right? But that's not for everyone there are people who don't want that and they don't need that and that's totally fine but knowing that there's enough people out there that I do connect really well with that do appreciate that I am candid that I will give you my real opinion even if I think that you know it's not gonna even if I think that you might not like it or it might not be what you want to hear I'm still gonna give it to you
Melissa Halpin (17:01)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Wanna hear it? Yeah.
Sommer Gay (17:23)
and you're going to know that it's coming from a place of wanting to amplify you and wanting to make you better.
Melissa Halpin (17:27)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, I mean, just to let anyone listening who may not really be tracking what we're talking about, my agency and myself included, worked with Sommer on her brand development and her website development years back now when she launched Launch Marketing. So that's what she's referring to. And then to her comment about me calling her a puzzler, we've sort of...
Sommer Gay (17:29)
Thank
Melissa Halpin (17:49)
swapped back and forth roles over the years now of I've done some work for her, she's done some work for me, we refer to each other to different clients that were better fits for each other. And I can really say to how you're describing your approach is I don't agree that everybody doesn't need a summer. I feel like your sort of approach to solving problems is...
It's sometimes the missing link with a lot of creatives. Like I have a team that's very heavily built on, know, we're all really a bunch of art school nerds, right? And left to our own devices. Who knows what we'd be making? It might not be websites. It would be like, you know, doll houses or movies or, you know, refinishing furniture. You know, there's a lot of creative energy in the agency that I built. And the reason that I like partnering with
Sommer Gay (18:28)
Yeah.
Melissa Halpin (18:38)
launch, not to say that you guys don't have creative energy, because of course you've got some great team members as well, is that you do have a systems brain, a problem solving approach, that you pick up on software quickly, and that you have the patience to look at all the different pieces and how they're fitting or not fitting together. I mean, more and more in the 25 years that I've been doing digital work,
That is a skill set that is more more required as we move into AI age and multiple layers of software on every project. People tend to think that when they pull out their phone and they're in an app, or when they're sitting at their desktop and they're in a browser, that somehow it all magically happens in the browser. And I think you and I really know behind the scenes, there's layers and layers of create
Sommer Gay (19:11)
Mm-hmm.
you
Melissa Halpin (19:28)
creativity and creation and math and finance and problem solving and it's usually like it's usually like a Rube Goldberg machine of software on the back end connecting all these things whether it's your website server and your hosting company and your creative apps and your plugins and your social media channels and I've always been impressed with your ability to navigate those things I feel like
I'm maybe I'm on the older end of GenX here, but like, don't think I really actually am. think I'm smack dab in the middle, but some of us are just allergic to like, or maybe we've just met our threshold of like 25 softwares is my max. Don't add 26. Like I can't take it.
Sommer Gay (20:06)
Yeah.
Yeah,
yeah, it definitely, you know, I've, when a client comes to me with a problem, it's, it, it like needles at me. Like I can't, it's like, I'm like, I know I can figure this out. I know that I can figure this out. I just need to like follow the trail. Right. And,
Melissa Halpin (20:17)
Yeah.
Sommer Gay (20:23)
A lot of times, talking about all the different software that layer on top of each other, I have a lot of clients that I've started with and that's really been the problem.
know, tech savvy enough to like, you know, they go to fix one thing and then that dominoes and it affects the 24 other pieces of software that are all connected and then, you know, something is broken on their website that seems very simple, like, you know, a footer that is like cut off in the middle with a color block where half of it is washed out and half of it's not. you know, I had another one today where the client has no idea like why when you click on the website, on his website, it like lights up in orange and he was like, I can't figure this out. I don't know.
Melissa Halpin (20:36)
Yes.
Right.
Sommer Gay (21:00)
And a lot of what I will do is, I like to give my clients information so that they can make an informed decision. as I've gotten older and I've been doing this more and more, at the end of the day, we sometimes think it's super catastrophic, like you have to make the right decision or it's the wrong decision. And that's not the case most of the time. Most of the time, it's just decision A or decision B and there's pros and cons to both.
Melissa Halpin (21:19)
No.
right?
Sommer Gay (21:26)
so I will come to them and I'll say, you know, I've done my assessment, I've looked at your tech stack, here's what I think. I think that what you are doing currently is overly complicated for what your needs are or where you are in your business journey. I work with a lot of micro to small businesses. I mean, we're talking businesses like, you know, yeah, yeah, right? And...
Melissa Halpin (21:45)
One to three employees.
Sommer Gay (21:48)
You know, and they think that they have this over-engineered product that doesn't fit their needs and then have to have somebody full-time on staff who understands the technological implications of every decision and can manage all of that for them. But at the end of the day, that's not a significant, like that should not be a significant portion of your salary and of your annual budget. It just doesn't need to be, but because you think, you need a
Melissa Halpin (22:13)
Right.
Sommer Gay (22:16)
and it has to be on this particular platform and then you have to have these certain plugins and then you have to have it talk to this software over here and then this software over here and then connect to your accounting software and at the end of the day if that's causing you so much grief that your website is broken and that's the first look that people are getting at you and your company you know I mean that's your front door right and if your front door is like you know holes in it and it's kicked in and it's scuffed and it's dinged up and that's your first impression because you have this over engineered solution
Melissa Halpin (22:35)
Right.
Sommer Gay (22:44)
that doesn't actually becomes an anti-solution, then sometimes you need to back up and you need to look at going back to basics and simple and at the end of the day not everything needs to be automated and I think we get into this and I'm definitely guilty of this because I'm like you can automate anything! I will save you eight seconds, know, 14 times a day and if you add that up it's this many minutes a week which is like this many hours per year of savings but at the end of the day if that is not something that is duplicatable and is scalable
Melissa Halpin (23:00)
Right, right, right, me too, me too. Yep.
Sommer Gay (23:13)
you're bringing on more team and more business, then it doesn't need to be automated. And there are things that also require that human touch as well. I think as I've grown in my own business, you know, that's one of the things that I really have been focusing on recently is, you know, what should be automated just because it can be automated, should it be automated, you know, and figuring that out and really simplifying a lot of these tech stacks for a lot of my clients. I want my clients to be empowered and not afraid to go into the back end of their own website and update
Melissa Halpin (23:15)
Mm-hmm.
Sommer Gay (23:41)
their services or their pricing or their contact form and where a lot of these clients are when I first get them is they're afraid to touch anything because they tried to update one plug-in one time and it broke the entire website and then they had to pay somebody two grand to come in and fix it. That is not a viable solution for a small business that only does a million and a half a year in revenue right like it doesn't make sense.
Melissa Halpin (24:02)
Right.
Yeah. I mean, I think I'm more in the camp of trying to get people to understand having some web slash tech stack maintenance budget, because even if you're paying a small retainer monthly and we don't touch it for six months, on the seventh month when you have a problem, we will definitely use up the six hours, right?
Sommer Gay (24:24)
Yeah.
Melissa Halpin (24:25)
And so if you know that you have us there in your back pocket to solve that, that's kind of where I've landed on. But this is an interesting conversation for startup entrepreneurs to think about is when they're talking to an agency or when they're building a digital product, how much responsibility for this am I willing to take on once it launches? And do I understand, you know,
On our end we build most of our websites in WordPress. Well, you got to update the version of WordPress and every time you've update WordPress you got to update all the plugins. Are you up for that or are you up for spending a few hundred bucks every six months having your agency or somebody on retainer do it? Or do you want a less customizable solution that might be more hardwired but less flexible, right? And these are all like really important questions like
Sommer Gay (25:11)
Yeah, I mean, I.
Melissa Halpin (25:14)
Where am I my business growth and what's my aptitude? Like is my aptitude 100 % non-digital or is it going to be easy peasy for me to update my blog every day? Right?
Sommer Gay (25:25)
Okay.
Right. And that's what it
comes down to is there's no right solution for everyone. And some people don't ever need a client login. Right. It's just not what they need. So but then some people are like, no, this is really important and integral to my business. And so they do need to be on whatever solution that is. But being able to give the pros and cons and I don't try to sway my clients one way or the other. I just say I've looked at your business, whether it's
Melissa Halpin (25:29)
Exactly.
Right.
Sommer Gay (25:54)
e-commerce or whether it's you need to be able to take orders or you need to be able to have venue rental or you need to be able to do virtual webinars or whatever the case may be. And I just list out here are the pros and cons of all of these different platforms, here are the softwares I would recommend for them, here's the approximate budget and price of what it would be to do that. Sometimes you do need a custom solution. I have a client that I'm working on building out a new website for with a custom registration.
because all of the solutions that he found were either very, very out of budget ⁓ or didn't have the logic that he needed in order to ask some very specific questions to his business. And so, you know, one of the solutions that we came to was this particular platform, but with a custom app script built on top of it. So, you you can't just pull stuff out of a box for the most part, but also just being very mindful of
Melissa Halpin (26:26)
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Sommer Gay (26:47)
just not over engineering a solution just because that's what the big guys use.
Melissa Halpin (26:53)
Right,
exactly. So how do you personally stay creative and stay energized while you're building a business?
Sommer Gay (27:02)
So I, what's funny is, you know, there's two types of marketing people, They're either the creatives or the data junkies. I happen to be the second. Yes, 100%. I lean heavily, heavily on my creative team, on creative partners like you when those are the needs that come up. But, you know, in terms of,
Melissa Halpin (27:11)
Right. And you're in the data junkie category.
Sommer Gay (27:26)
Staying energized, think one of the biggest things was making sure that I'm in an industry and talking about stuff that I am interested in, that I'm knowledgeable about, that I care about. That's a big part of it. in terms of the energy of it, like...
Melissa Halpin (27:37)
Mm-hmm.
Sommer Gay (27:43)
I enjoy talking to people. enjoy figuring out these puzzles and these problems. And I feel really, really, really fortunate that I found the at-home online version of my previous career, right? Every project is different. Every client is different. Every need is different. And where I do have to remind myself to not continue to jump in is if somebody's like, well, have you, because I'm the person that people call when they're like, hey, have you heard of this software? Have you used it before? Do you have anyone else that's used it?
Melissa Halpin (27:53)
Right.
Sommer Gay (28:10)
And I'm like, no, but I want to learn it. But I can't do that. yeah. Yeah.
Melissa Halpin (28:12)
Right, right, right. ⁓ you are that person. Should I go with this CRM or that CRM?
Should I go with this email client? Yes, you're definitely that person.
Sommer Gay (28:21)
Yeah, yeah, and so I get those calls, get those emails a ton. I get texts all the time, that's what people want to talk to me about in person. And one of the things that I've had to learn going back to my energizing question is I have the energy to do this job. I have the energy to do this job well and I have the energy to do it a lot, right? ⁓ Where I start to tip and burn out is when I start to over promise because then I start to under deliver and I...
Melissa Halpin (28:39)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Sommer Gay (28:47)
Also, I am probably the worst offender of scope creep with my own clients where I'm like, man, this is so far out of scope, but this is such a problem and I know it'll make such a big difference for you. I'm just going to do it. I'm just going to fix it for you. And then what happens is then I'm putting out unbillable hours. I'm not compensating myself for my knowledge and for my skill set. And as much as it kills me sometimes, especially with smaller companies where I just know they're really struggling.
Melissa Halpin (28:59)
Yeah.
Right.
Sommer Gay (29:13)
I'll mention it and just say if you want to talk about that after, we can. It's just not part of what we're doing right now. It's a hard thing for me to say and do and something I'm really been focusing on. But by holding that particular boundary, I have found that I don't need to, I don't vacillate so hard between energized or burnt out. So it's more about just being in the middle all the time.
Melissa Halpin (29:21)
Yeah.
think this is a super important point that you're making because I like you am terrible about scope creep and and so and I've also built a lot of service oriented team members like yourself like myself where like our heart is of service or our minds of create are of creative solve problem solving and so we're never really actually thinking about the scope.
Because we're not hours and money driven. We're problem solution driven or creative solution driven. But I think even more than, we gave away 10 hours on that last project. What I've learned in the long run about doing that is you train people how to treat you. And you train people what to expect from you. And then all of a sudden what happens is
Sommer Gay (30:22)
Mm-hmm.
Melissa Halpin (30:24)
this client that you've had for six or seven years and that you actually have a really positive working relationship with, you, in this case me, I'm feeling like this resentment of like, why do they think it's okay to call on Christmas Eve? Or why do they think that, wait, we weren't able to edit this, can you guys just edit it for us? Well, you said you didn't need any kind of editorial services on this one.
Sommer Gay (30:38)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Melissa Halpin (30:50)
So it's more a matter of you make your own bed and then you end up having to lie in it that I've realized over time is the problem. Even more than it's not that I really even mind so much giving away some free work or solving a problem when it comes up. It's you really have to look at where you want your boundaries to be if you're in this relationship in five years.
Sommer Gay (30:56)
Mm-hmm. ⁓
Yeah,
well and the other thing that goes along with that too is starting work before you have a signed contract and a deposit and that's also a lesson I've had to learn the hard way more than once. ⁓
Melissa Halpin (31:19)
Yes, yes, that's
another problem. Yes. And sometimes, like I'm working on a proposal this weekend, right, for Monday. So it's like, it's gonna take my weekend. I'm gonna be doing this in between basketball tournaments. And I wanna do it. And I'm grateful for the opportunity. But I have to do a lot of work even to accurately write a proposal. Like there's not enough, you know, it's like,
So then you're always in this... So any of you other creatives out here who are listening to this, you want to have tips, like hop in the Kidling Project Ignite group and let Sommer and I know how you're handling this. I need to know more information in order to write the proposal. And if I don't gather that information, I'm not confident I'm solving the problem. But then I'm always kind of tentative of how much can I build in of that upfront time?
I mean, is it a matter of, well, we're gonna try to recover some of these hours or this is just part of the game. It needs to be in the overhead. This is like, I've been doing this business now for 15 years and it's a constant teeter totter. Yeah.
Sommer Gay (32:08)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, it definitely is. I've gotten better at it. One of the best things I did for myself this year was I got an admin, who is awesome.
Melissa Halpin (32:31)
⁓ yeah, that helps right
that house
Sommer Gay (32:34)
It helps a ton and having you know, have two anchor meetings a week where we just you know, we spend an hour and a half and we check in on okay What are we gonna focus on this week? And then we check in again two days later. Okay, how far did we get? What do we need to prioritize before the week is over and then you know what gets pushed to the next week and stuff and one of the things one of the first places that we started was as good as I am at organizing for my clients, I am you know, like a doctor who's its own worst patient like
Melissa Halpin (32:50)
Mm-hmm.
Sommer Gay (33:00)
my files were a mess, my contracts were a mess, all these things that I knew could be automated but I didn't have time to sit down. By the time I sit down to work on my own business, it's 10 o'clock at night and I just don't want to do it. I'm done. I'm done for the day. Having her and having that focused time, I prioritized myself and my company first when she first came on. One of the things that we ended up doing was standardizing the offerings and making sure the
Melissa Halpin (33:11)
Right.
Sommer Gay (33:25)
copy matched across all of the one-sheeters and across all of the proposals that we were using and all of that. And that has helped a ton because I've now shortened the amount of time it takes for me to get a proposal out, where before it would take me weeks, which it really shouldn't. I'm not doing anything super, as much as every client is different. These are not customized proposals. There's a limited amount of services that I offer, and yeah, maybe there's a little bit of scope adjustments.
Melissa Halpin (33:39)
Right.
Right.
Right.
Sommer Gay (33:52)
But at the end of day, I need to figure out how to get these projects to fit within the services and the packages that I already offer. forcing myself to do that, I've gotten to a point where it's a lot easier, where now I can turn a proposal around in two days instead of two weeks, which is huge. It makes a big difference. But I still find myself that when I go to pitch it and I talk about it, I tend to start wandering off and talking about all of these other...
Melissa Halpin (33:52)
Mm-hmm.
Sommer Gay (34:18)
are like great things that we could do and I have really forced myself to be very conscious and cognizant of that and at the end of the day like this is very much a version of self-care for me because this is saving me on my own downtime from being like I did it again and why didn't I just keep my mouth shut and one of the things that I you know that I've learned is when clients will ask or prospects will ask me a question my response now has been let me look into that and I'll get you an answer.
Instead of just saying like, I could do that for you. Because then I'm not telling them no, which is, know, as a reformed people pleaser is difficult, but also ⁓ gives me an out and gives me time to process. And what ends up happening is, is I can then say, we can absolutely do that for you, here's the cost. Instead of just saying, I can do that for you in a meeting, and then never talking about cost, and then all of a sudden the expectation that I've set is that I'm just gonna do it as part of the original
Melissa Halpin (34:45)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Sommer Gay (35:12)
quote, know, quoted amount of work.
Melissa Halpin (35:14)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah So that it sounds like you and I both have the same important boundary that we have to keep we have to keep navigating and reinforcing Are there any others that you would? tell other female business owners to be aware of
Sommer Gay (35:23)
Mm-hmm.
No, mean, it really depends. mean, everybody has different struggles. They have different life experiences that have brought them to where they are. Being the owner of a company, being an entrepreneur, you really have to get very real about who you are and how you want to show up, both personally and professionally. And if you don't have clarity on that,
it's going to be ten times harder than it needs to be. And that's a really hard thing to do though. mean that is something that requires daily commitment and daily practice and there are days where I just full on fail still. Like you know I get to the end of the day and I'm like well that wasn't a win like why did I do that to myself I know better and but then also again you know
always, always, always find the middle, right? Because again, like the highs when you own your own company are super high, man. Like they feel great. But the flip side of that is the lows are like you just want to burn it all to the ground. Like that's it, I'm walking away. I'm going to go find a salary paycheck where I can absolutely crush it for somebody else and not have any of this pressure and know that I'm getting a paycheck every two weeks, right? And that will drive you to your grave, honestly. Like you can't live at the...
Melissa Halpin (36:14)
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Right.
Sommer Gay (36:37)
constant extremes of like high high high emotions positively and negatively and for me it's really been about getting you know the highs are here and the lows are here and the goal is to always get back to the middle right and as long as I as long as I stay focused on just being you know neutral with you know and a client earlier today were reviewing a website and she you know she was very honest and she was like I don't like this and I was like great and she then she was apologizing and I was like don't apologize this is just
Melissa Halpin (36:49)
Right.
Sommer Gay (37:05)
doesn't feedback. There's no emotion attached to it. This is why we go through the process. This is why we check in. The things you're asking for you think are very big deals and they're really not. Like I'm adjusting your branding colors. Like it's not that big of a deal. ⁓
Melissa Halpin (37:18)
Right. No, I mean, I have found
that, especially when it comes to aesthetics and colors, but a lot of things, messaging, tone, there's just different ways of communicating how someone might feel about it. And then it's just like anything with human beings. People have different strong feelings about certain things. And there are those clients who don't know what they like. They only know what they don't like.
Sommer Gay (37:43)
Mm-hmm.
Melissa Halpin (37:43)
And rather than keep trying to guess and guess and guess and throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks with those clients. Like one of my tricks with those clients is if we get through round one or two of design and they just hated the first five things and then they hated the next five things. I usually take a break and I'm like, let's start a Pinterest board of all the things you don't like. Let's really look at.
What are your deal breakers? Because some people see the world out of like, I hate the Pepsi logo. I hate red, white, and blue. I hate, you know, like they know what they don't like. And I think that that client is, they feel more difficult, but often I get to the end and I'm like, they weren't trying to be difficult. They just have strong feelings.
Sommer Gay (38:16)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Melissa Halpin (38:26)
And
sometimes the client who knows exactly what they want, and they're like, I've always wanted a light blue brand. It reminds me of my grandma on the beach and our cottage up north. And they have a very narrow lane that they want to go down. Sometimes those start out really easy, but you can't move them off of it. You can't even move them an inch. So it's almost like I feel like our jobs are somewhat social scientists or psychologists as well.
Sommer Gay (38:52)
Thank
you.
Yeah, when I worked in, when I was working in events, you know, as the venue, you would have two types of clients, right? You would have the clients that were super easy during the planning process. And those are the ones I was always worried about because they would get on site and then everything was a change. Everything was a revision. They weren't happy with anything and they're wanting to shift and adjust. And it's like, you have a thousand people checking in tomorrow and I have a team of just my department of a few hundred that have been prepping based on
Melissa Halpin (39:11)
Right.
Right.
Sommer Gay (39:19)
this plan where you had no feedback and everything was wonderful and it was all like puppies and rainbows and now you're here and you know but then you have the the flip and my preference are the clients who through the planning process are like yeah no we're not doing that absolutely not no we're not doing this find a solution now because we would find it and then those they would get on site and they're like great perfect expectations met like let's go run a great show and they would actually have a better product at the end of the day because they were
Melissa Halpin (39:25)
Right.
Right.
Sommer Gay (39:47)
willing to give feedback and I find that I don't gel well with clients who are not willing to be honest about the feedback that they have and they're very they're the ones that and they smile the most and they tell you everything is great the most but they're the ones that end up leaving like those are the those are my highest churn clients are the ones that are unwilling to give me any real feedback like if you think that what I did sucked tell me it sucked because then I will go and find a solution and you will end up getting what you really wanted and you walk away feeling
Melissa Halpin (39:58)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Sommer Gay (40:14)
like you got your money's worth. But if you are not willing to give me that feedback because for whatever reason, I don't take it personally, like maybe you were raised for like, right, whatever the reason may be, I don't take it personally, but I also know that long term, we're probably not gonna work together and that's fine. Like I don't need to work with you, you don't need to work with me, there's plenty of other agencies and clients out there for both of us.
Melissa Halpin (40:20)
Yeah, sometimes they don't have the vocabulary, right? Right.
Right.
Right. Yeah. Yeah, these are the lessons of agency life. Yeah. And whether you're in this kind of agency world, whether you're a photographer, a writer, a contributor, or you're starting your own agency, or if you're on the other side and you have a bakery, or you have a dog training school and you're looking to hire someone like Sommer or myself, it's important to see where these...
Sommer Gay (40:40)
Yeah.
Melissa Halpin (40:59)
where these intersections are, where the difficulties happen. And just to know how to show up prepared, know how to show up and communicate. I mean, I guess like everything in life, it comes down to good communication. Yeah. So another thing I wanted to talk to you about here is community, community and connection. I know you and I are both part of a bunch of different networks. And we sort of build networks around ourselves.
Sommer Gay (41:10)
sure.
Melissa Halpin (41:23)
powerful female founders. What is one thing you've learned from other women and growing alongside other women and other female-owned businesses?
Sommer Gay (41:32)
Yeah, I again, I think it's a similar theme of when I was first starting out, I would look at women that I perceived as being successful for whatever that meant for me at the time. ⁓ And then figuring out, you know, and then having this automatic like, okay, well, I have to get to know them. I have to be around them. I have to surround myself with them. And as I've gotten older, real, you know, or more experienced in being, you know, an owner of a company is that, you know, again, there's so many paths.
Melissa Halpin (41:42)
Mm-hmm.
Sommer Gay (41:59)
To being successful and that still does not make you the right person for me or for my network or my community ⁓ You know and there's you know, there's just And we have to be okay with that like it doesn't it doesn't mean that I don't wish you success It doesn't mean that you shouldn't wish me success. But you know at the end of the day I Need to find and surround myself purposely with
Melissa Halpin (42:06)
Right.
Sommer Gay (42:22)
like-minded women in terms of, you know...
growth mindset in terms of what they consider a good work-life balance. The metrics aren't just always financial, it goes on lot of vacations, owns two homes or whatever the case may be. And I think that a lot of times we set those things as successful or maybe they're on stage 10 times a year. I would love that, but it's not gonna be me. That's gonna be a struggle for me because it's just a place I'm not comfortable in. I see women who will post-report
Melissa Halpin (42:49)
Right.
Sommer Gay (42:54)
three times a week where they're on and talking and I'm like dying with anxiety because I was you know I'm like I could never do that like it just and I should I know what the benefits are and what the ramifications of doing that are but you know I think it's you know it's okay that it's okay to be okay with not being okay with those things right like and and recognizing
Melissa Halpin (43:01)
Yeah.
Sommer Gay (43:14)
finding women and surrounding yourself with women and building a community of women that
have the same values that you do is really, really, important and it doesn't always need to be the top person, the top three people, the top five people in the food chain, right? you know, and I think that that's, you know, that that's really important, but I think that there sometimes is a little bit of like hero worship when you first get started and you're like looking around and you you think that just because they're in this position of, you know, power or visibility.
Melissa Halpin (43:22)
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Mm-hmm.
Sommer Gay (43:47)
that that's who you need to be around. And I think having the experience or the mindset to be able to pause and look at them more holistically before you decide if that's somebody you're gonna bring into your community. And it's not just a one-way street, right? Sometimes we think about it like a ladder, like, you know, it's opportunistic, like, this person is above you, well, you need to climb up to them. No, it's not that way. It's, you know, it's a circle, right? And you need to put yourself in the center and then you need to fill the rest of your circle.
Melissa Halpin (44:11)
Right?
Sommer Gay (44:15)
with people that are going to support and lift you up and that's not necessarily the people that are looking at it like a ladder, right?
Melissa Halpin (44:21)
Right. I have been
asked to speak about mentoring on a number of occasions for Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses, which I'm a graduate of that program. And I say this to people about seeking mentors all the time. If you do have that ladder mindset, you don't necessarily need the person at the top of the ladder to mentor you.
Sommer Gay (44:43)
Mm-hmm.
Melissa Halpin (44:44)
Just
look at somebody who's just one or two rungs above you. That's actually the person who has the most current and recent information solving the problem that you tried to solve. And they also are more likely to have the time and the availability for you if you're only a rung or two apart. And I like the circle metaphor as well, because there's that saying of you become the five.
Sommer Gay (44:47)
Thank
Melissa Halpin (45:07)
people you spend the most time with or some kind of saying like that. And even if it's not becoming, like energetically, if, you know, I'm in a couple of these small groups of women that get together and, you know, talk about family or talk about business or talk about our neighborhood, just having those shared values and also having the time and the commitment to supporting somebody else.
Sommer Gay (45:29)
Mm-hmm.
Melissa Halpin (45:29)
Is it somebody, is this person that I water them, they water me? Is it reciprocal? Because oftentimes mentoring relationships, whether you're the mentor or the mentee, are beneficial to both people. But are you connecting in that way where both people are benefiting from this? It's like an important filter when you're trying to build your community.
Sommer Gay (45:35)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Melissa Halpin (45:52)
And do you have any issues with balancing like how much commitment you've made to community versus self or business or? Yeah, right. Right. Yeah, me too.
Sommer Gay (46:01)
of course. Of course I do. I sit on a board in a.
Yeah,
that's a doozy. ⁓ There's a whole set of unique problems of doing that because at the end of the day it's a volunteer position and you're dealing with other volunteers as well. And it's compounded in a very particular way when you sit on a board in the events industry because people will fall off the radar for six weeks and it's totally normal because they've got back to back back back events and there's just no way around that. So you are working on something and then you're going
Melissa Halpin (46:10)
Yeah.
Right.
Sommer Gay (46:34)
for six weeks and then they're gone for three weeks and then you're gone for a week and then they're gone for two weeks and now this thing that should have been simple to do has now been pushed three four five six months right and that already happens in in these volunteer board positions anyway but yeah I mean it's it's definitely it's definitely a balance and I was at a point about halfway through I've been on the board for almost two years now about halfway through where I was like I'm spending
Melissa Halpin (46:44)
Right.
Sommer Gay (47:00)
30, 40, 50 percent of my work week and my billable hours doing things. And just because they need to be done doesn't mean that it's my job to do them right now this week. ⁓ And I've had to be okay with looking at stuff that like even still like I'll look at the website and I'm just like, there's so many things on there that just need to be fixed. But at the end of the day...
Melissa Halpin (47:10)
Right.
Sommer Gay (47:20)
I just, can't not do client work to do volunteer work. It just doesn't work that way. And again, you know, talking about, you know, self care isn't just, you know, the things you do in your off time. It's also the things that you do in your work and the decisions that you make so that you're not getting to that burnout point. And that's, you know, that was a hard one for me because again, like, I want to solve the problem. I want to fix it for you. I know, I know it's possible.
Melissa Halpin (47:21)
Right.
Right.
Right. ⁓ and it gets even harder if you love the organization, right?
If it's a dear friend started the organization or it's a community cause that you're passionate about, then, I've had that. then because often folks like you and I are at, just like there's an attorney on the board, there's a MarCom person on the board and they need the MarCom help. But at some point it's like, yep, I'll make simple.
updates to your website, that's going to be part of my contribution. But if the whole thing needs to be overhauled, I can help write a scope of work. I can help review RFPs. But I can help try to raise some money. But this is an actual piece of work that's not volunteer-able. I don't have the bandwidth to donate a whole new website.
Sommer Gay (48:27)
See, I should have called you before I said yes.
Melissa Halpin (48:29)
And just
saying like, OK, listen, here's what I can do. How many hours of board meetings and strategizing and also actual manual labor that I'm signing up for. then I can help you manage the scope or help you pay for the scope. Help find the money for it.
Sommer Gay (48:44)
Yeah.
Well, the thing with, you know, the thing with Mark, with MarCom roles also is 95 % of the feedback that you get is when something is wrong. Either a typo, you didn't tag the right person, you didn't, you know, you didn't write the description correctly, you didn't put the photo credit in, and, you know, so it's like it's always, you know, it's always this just like downhill one-way like communication of all these things that you, you know, that you missed or weren't quite right or didn't, weren't what the
Melissa Halpin (48:55)
Right.
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Sommer Gay (49:14)
expectation was or whatever So it's also you know, it's it's it's that also makes it difficult to and that's not to say that the other rules aren't difficult But you know when when you're responsible for the face of it but it's also a volunteer position and everybody else is doing as much as they can and they're they're pushing as hard as they can and Things still go out. It's you know, it's it's honestly it's a lesson in humility and it's a lesson in looking at stuff and being like Great, I have to move on
Melissa Halpin (49:38)
Yeah, yeah,
Sommer Gay (49:39)
anyway.
Melissa Halpin (49:40)
yeah. It's either move on or it's I'm putting this gift in the universe and I'm just gonna count on it coming back to me at some later point, right? Well, tell us what's next and tell us how we can support you.
Sommer Gay (49:49)
Yeah.
Yeah, I, you know, talking about work-life balance and how I like to give myself some and then take it away again. I'm actually working on something new that's going to launch over the summer that is... ⁓
Melissa Halpin (50:07)
Okay.
Sommer Gay (50:09)
focused on something that's really important to me in my personal life. So, I'm not quite ready to talk about it yet. I'm still putting a business plan to paper, but it's definitely gonna be within the digital marketing space. it's, yeah, it's gonna be really cool because it will really help better blend where I spend most of my time when I'm not working. So, yeah, I'm pretty excited about it.
Melissa Halpin (50:12)
Okay.
Yeah.
Sommer Gay (50:32)
I'm hoping
Melissa Halpin (50:32)
cool.
Sommer Gay (50:33)
it's something that the kids will be able to jump in and help me with as well. yeah, I think I'm solving a pretty big problem or filling a pretty big hole. So yeah.
Melissa Halpin (50:41)
⁓ I love that for you. Well,
we will definitely have all of your handles and your website in the show notes. So if anyone wants to follow Sommer and she pops into the CanLiem Project Ignite community once in a while, so you can find her there. You can find her on her own handles. I'll have her website linked in the show notes and everywhere you can find us.
Is there anything else you want to tell us before we wrap up here?
Sommer Gay (51:05)
You know, mean, other than just thank you for having me on and having this, you know, being able to have this conversation, really, as much as sometimes doing stuff like this is just not my comfortable place. I'm such a back-up house person and, know, you know. ⁓
Melissa Halpin (51:16)
Mm-hmm. Right. Me too. I mean, I'm doing it, but I'm
kind of a strange bird to be doing it, so I really relate to that. mean, Catherine, three years now, she's been the podcast manager. She's making more reels, and she's encouraging me to just get comfortable in my own skin. But I can't watch them. Yeah. I feel like I'm too... Why am I so squirrely and strange? Why am I so fidgety? So I really relate to that. But I feel like...
Sommer Gay (51:24)
Yeah.
You
Melissa Halpin (51:42)
for both of us, as we are guiding others through this process, it helps us to know about their feelings and how to overcome them by trying to do it more ourselves. Yeah, whether it's standing on stage, whether it's getting on a podcast, whether it's having a photo shoot, the more you do it, I don't know if it gets more comfortable, but you just, it's more familiar, right? And you're modeling it, and you're modeling it for, you know, you and I have daughters, I think it's so important to model for daughters.
Sommer Gay (52:02)
Mm-hmm.
Melissa Halpin (52:09)
and for other women and that you don't have to be perfect and you don't have to be young and beautiful. I mean, not that you're not young and beautiful, but like all these pressures that we put on ourselves that are all the reasons why we can't do it, we're just making that stuff up. We're just making that stuff up.
Sommer Gay (52:23)
Which means you can make
up the other stuff too, even if you don't believe it.
Melissa Halpin (52:28)
Yeah, right? Yeah, what you tell yourself comes true. Well, I'm super glad we got to connect here on the podcast and I'm grateful to have you in my community and I'd love to have you back for some other things. And I do think that the space that you're in and kind of that we're both in, lots of people have questions about it. So seek somewhere out, look up Launch Marketing Co. You don't have to be in Chicago to take advantage of our services. Like we're all working remote these days.
Sommer Gay (52:31)
Mm-hmm.
Yep, thank you so much for having me.
Melissa Halpin (52:57)
You're welcome. Till next time.