From Corporate Climb to Purpose-Driven Business: Janet Bartoli’s Journey in Digital Marketing

In this special 1:1 episode of The Founder's Lab, Janet Bartoli, founder of The Bartoli Consulting Group, takes the spotlight, sharing her unique journey from corporate marketing to building her own business.

Janet opens up about pivotal moments, mindset shifts, and the lessons that have shaped her as a founder. She also offers insights for aspiring entrepreneurs, highlighting the value of resilience, purpose, and aligning business goals with personal values.

In this episode, we cover:

• Janet’s early career in corporate marketing, including key roles and lessons learned
• The decision to start her own consulting business and her motivations behind it
• How mentors and inspiring figures influenced her approach to business
• Essential mindset shifts for founders, from resilience to overcoming imposter syndrome
• The benefits and challenges of leaving corporate life for entrepreneurship
• How Janet balances work with personal well-being through hobbies like hiking and travel
• Trends in digital marketing and the importance of ethical, client-centered practices
• The future of The Bartoli Consulting Group, with a focus on building community and mentorship
• Tips for founders on navigating the corporate-to-founder transition

TRANSCRIPT:

 I've been a founder full time since 2019. One of my first clients was StubHub.

The lessons learned have been wide and deep. Curiosity and tenacity are so key to my success in this episode of the Founders Lab. I start off my one on one conversation with me here, host of this pod and founder of the Bartoli Consulting Group.

Hey there, I'm Janet Bartoli and this is the Founders Lab, where I am showing you the smartest and most effective way to grow your business through mindset, skills and one on one conversations where I'll invite guests like you and experts across the internet to provide some insights that you can learn from. All right, let's get into it. This is going to be the first one on one conversation we have with the founder. And the founder is me.

I will be interviewing myself for this very first one on one founder conversation that will be having. I figured, why not? It makes sense. I do have other founders lined up, so you'll be hearing more about them in the coming weeks. But today this is my turn. I am Jana Bartoli, founder of the Bartoli Consulting Group, and I will start asking a series of questions. These are going to be in some way geared to those founders that I will be speaking with, but they're also going to be I'm choosing specifically relevant ones for myself.

So one of the questions that I might ask a founder, but I'll ask myself is, was there a pivotal moment or a mentor that influenced me? And my answer to that is there has been a lot of them over the years, because I have learned that you do need mentors, for sure. I think of people like Rich Rolle, um, who started a podcast from nothing. Um, I think it was ten years ago now, with million of subscribers. I think of all the women business owners, um, starting something while raising toddlers and working full time jobs.

It's what's motivated me to be a mentor to help influence new business owners. And there's been there's been a lot of people I have consistently had and looked up, look up to specific mentors, um, that are a few steps ahead of me. And I think that is what’s, uh, helped, you know, sort of drive the way I think. And, and the different actions.

Question. Next question I'll ask myself is describe my journey before starting this business. What skills are experiences prepared me for the specific venture? Now I will say that the journey has been long. Not easy by any stretch. I began my recent consulting business while working with Accenture. Um, back in 2004. I started a consulting business different than this because it was also a much different time, but it was much in the same way I did for my most recent company.

And so many have done and was because of a layoff or in that case, back in 2004, it was due to a firing. I was a salesperson selling Xerox machines because I didn't meet my quota. Like most salespeople, if you don't meet your quota in a period, that may be unreasonable. You're let go so that that's what happened. And that was the reason for starting my first consulting practice in 2004. I got to learn at a very academic level back then with SEO was I was building websites for local small businesses, but I also put the principles into practice, starting with those clients. As SEO became more and more important, I saw it work well.

Then due to typical problems so many business owners have, which is a lack of leads, I decided to work for digital marketing agency um in the New York new Jersey metro area. And um, two years later, I got to work. Well, you know, two years after starting my business, I got to work and learn even more. And. After um for 11 years I learned, applied, taught, I led workshops, I built lots of successful search programs. And I ended my corporate career with Accenture, I decided in 2014, and which was sort of an overlapping time. And this is what precipitated the thinking of starting my own thing again, was that in 2014, um, which again, it was ten years ago. 

Verizon was one of my clients at the time. I did a lot of amazing work to help them grow, but I didn't feel good about it. At a personal level, I always felt that I was just helping another billion-dollar company make billions more dollars. And, you know, don't get me wrong, working at Accenture was an amazing experience. Um, I got lots of great skills from my corporate experience, too. I learned a lot from working in a small boutique digital marketing agency and then working in-house at LexisNexis, and I got to speak with so many countries in Asia, Malaysia, Japan, in Europe, across the UK. And I got to work at Accenture and then even more from there. I appreciated all the clients I got to work with over the years, like Verizon and AutoNation and Arrow Electronics and Bank of Montreal and Fiat and. In with that client fee. I got to live in work in Italy, traveled around Europe for nine months. I grew a lot from that experience. I also lived through lots of layoffs at LexisNexis.

Then again, my last one was with Accenture. So many think owning a business is a risk. I think the risk is working with a corporation because they can at will just let you go. Then he needs to restart all over again with another company who will or can decide whenever they want let you go for any reason. So when you're the consultant, you get to choose your clients. And if you lose a client, well, you might have four or 6 or 10 more. And there won't be that loss in income as there is when you're laid off from a single corporate job.

So yes, one of the one of the big reasons was while working at Accenture in 2014 and helping. Verizon, which was one of their diamond clients at the time. Um, you know, just make more and more and more. It just didn't feel good. So in my in the way that I think about my why, it has always been to take those amazing skills, best practices and lessons I learned while collecting a very big salary and help those that are much smaller, that could never have hired me as a as a consultant. It would have cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars to work with me.

Now I get to share all my experiences and expertise with them at a much more affordable rate. Now I'll turn the question to the next topic. Um, many of the founders I will ask this, which is about mindset and personal growth. What mindset shifts have been crucial for my specific growth as a founder? Some go to strategies for staying resilient and focused, and balancing personal life and the demands of running a business, so that you'll probably have heard lots of morning routines or things that people do to, you know, get them all ready to go for the day or the week or whatever.

Yes, I think everybody should have a specific routine mindset to start with is always a big focus of my own and reading and taking in, um, conversations with mentors and and other leaders to really take what they say and see how I can apply it to myself and grow and become a better person. Um, the mindset is a big, big, big deal. And I know we'll talk a lot about this and the mindset episodes, but just understanding that what it is that you're doing, especially as a new business owner, if you are a new business owner and maybe you've been in business for 5 or 10 years, but you're still have maybe an imposter syndrome that somebody is better than you or doing it better than you, and you're not doing it good enough. And you know what happens if you lose two clients?

Then what? Um, you know, you it's a day to day focus on helping yourself mentally and not thinking of the negative, but focusing more on the positive and being appreciative of the work you have in front of you, and always thinking about not how much money that you can make, but how much can you help another person that would be a good customer or a client of yours? That should be the focus. Because when you do that and you do it really well, everything else follows. So that's how I kind of deal with the mindset aspect of things.

Now when I ask something that is fun, not necessarily business related, what is a surprising fact about you that not many people know? Um, so well, one of those things would be that it never went the traditional route. I didn't graduate high school and I didn't go off to college, but I did not finish college. Um, I was I had gotten I was a major in, um, recreation and leisure, believe it or not. And, um, I focused more on the recreation and leisure aspect of my freshman year in college. And so therefore I had left after one year. 

I did not finish college, but I did take lots of other college courses. And, um, you know, I, I probably got the equivalent of three years of college experience without having an official degree. Um, so I did join the Navy because, as I told, um, my 19-year-old self.

That was something I knew I could not quit. And so as a very tenacious person, I don't typically give up easily or quit things at all. Um, it's the mindset that you do need to be in business for yourself that you have to have that kind of tenacious, um, never give up because failing is giving up attitude. Uh, if you ever want to, to succeed.

And if you weren't in your current industry, here's another question I would ask myself. If you weren't in your current industry, what would you be doing? To be completely honest, I do not know. But when I was in the Navy, I wanted to be a photojournalist and, uh, be on the ground or hanging out of a helicopter reporting on world events. But at the time, women were not allowed to sign up for that kind of duty because we weren't allowed on the front lines. And I was about a year or two years short of that happening. So that didn't happen. I don't know if I would have done if that would have been able to be a possibility.

What I have gone into journalism, I don't know it. It would have been interesting. Next question. How do you unwind and recharge after a long week? And I will be asking a lot of you who I'll be speaking with this question, because this is really important to detach yourself from your work. I make it a point to get outside and run at least 2 to 3 times a week. It really helps clear your thinking. I think it's also a good use of time to solve problems in wherever your business, your personal life, whatever. It does help a lot. Clears your head, and many times I will listen to a business podcast and come up with ideas, and I'll have to stop on the trail and record some things or send myself an email of things that I want to try, or different ideas that I get along the way based on who I'm listening to. So that's kind of how I, I like to unwind in that way.

Another way is travel is something I always love and will do even more of that soon. Visiting other countries and learning new languages and learning in general about everything is is a lot of fun to me as well. Now, I'm going to end this episode with another question that I'm going to likely ask as well. What's next for your business in the upcoming years? So I will just let you all know I am working on building more community, mostly online, because I do want to reach as many as I can though.

This podcast is, you know, there's ways I can do that. I can do it through this podcast. I can do it through my new YouTube channel, but also through my mentorship program. And if many of you don't know, I'm going to be talking a lot about that in the coming weeks as we get closer to formally rolling that out.  and in many of the freely available workshops and trainings that I will be hosting a lot more of soon.  I've also shifted my business over the years, but especially this year in how and what my clients need most help with.

That's why I established the digital marketing assessment and my mentorship program. I continue to educate them on the biggest changes happening in search, and how they can avoid getting caught up and getting overlooked. I have a free course Amplify Your Brand. And if you're interested in that, you can go to Bartoli consulting.com/amplify. It's free. It's a it's a three video course where I'm basically showing you the frameworks and what it is you need to do to really amplify your brand. And that is really what I'm going to be focusing on for my business for, for at least the near future, for sure. I think it's so important, to, to do that.

I don't want you to have your brand get overlooked and get ignored, and there's some really good ideas in there, so go check that out. I'm also working on reaching more service providers. I know who are smart and you know those that won't screw you over. it's important for me to refer really good quality service providers that are very trustworthy and will do really, really good work.  I will have more of those that I will be able to share with my clients. I have a stricter vetting process to avoid working with those agencies or vendors that just do half assed work, because sadly, there's still many out there, or they're just they're just simply to collect their monthly retainer. And I don't You know, I don't want to give any more to them.

I want to help those that do a really great job and that that care about their clients. What trends do you see shaping your industry and how do you plan to adapt? So the trends I see, and there are many that I don't think my my journey will be looked at as that original necessarily. I think there are many that will leave the corporate world to start their own special organization. Since the pandemic, so many realized they just didn't want to have to commute hours each way to an office, sitting in an antiseptic cubicle, dealing with a really, bad people manager that frankly couldn't care less about whether or not their direct reports get promoted or supported in any way.

There is a generation of new founders that will come along because they place such an importance on their personal health and well-being above any shareholders, political bias or corporate line that they must tell. Now, as an American or society, has this hustle culture closely linked with the bro culture that isn't at all appealing to so many and including myself. And frankly, it just does more to create burned out people and imposter syndrome. And when I look at so many other countries in Europe in particular, um, the emphasis is placed on your health and your family and your space. When I was working in the Netherlands, I remember, um, work and learning how serious the Dutch took stopped at stopping work at five sharp because it was not an option to stay late. They had to get home to eat with their families.

That is part that is built into their culture. So if you are someone who works in a corporate environment and you look outside at the parking lot and you see somebody leaving it like 415 or 4 30 or 445. They're always looked at like, well, that person's not going to get promoted because they're not here past 5:00.  and, and or staying later than their boss, which is just a sick way of thinking. I mean, who knows where that person's going?

Maybe they're going to a doctor's appointment. Maybe they're leaving early because they want to see their kids soccer game. That's just normal things. But unfortunately, the culture that we live in, it doesn't. It's it's not work. It doesn't work that way, or it hasn't worked that way for way too many generations. So I see so many positive things out of a newer generation. The specially the, the younger millennials and the Gen Z, uh, just different people that have a much healthier way of thinking.

So with that, I want to thank you for allowing me to be the first founder to be interviewed on this podcast. I'm going to be bringing you so many others with fresh new perspectives and ideas, and maybe some that will even help you think differently about your own situation.

So, until the next time. Thank you for listening. I'm Janet Bartoli, and if you want more of a deep dive in any of these topics, head over to my website or in my YouTube channel at Janet Bartoli. The links are in the show notes. I want to answer any digital marketing questions that you have, so here's what you can do. Just drop those in the comments into the reviews section and keep showing up.