Small Business Summit Center

Sheri L Koetting, MSLK Graphic Design

We first mentioned MSLK a few weeks ago, in our Marketing With Green post. They run a blog over at their site, and it helps them win business. Let's meet Sheri, and her partner Marc S Levitt.

AB: One of the recurring topics we've seen on this site is outsourcing. What tasks should the entrepreneur keep in-house, and what should get outsourced. Things like IT, SEO, accounting. What "outsourcing rules of thumb" have you developed as MSLK has grown?

SLK: MSLK realized early on that the number one thing we couldn't outsource was the responsibilities of design. So many agencies outsource the creative aspects of a job — and it shows! Clients are coming to us for our concepts, style, and vision, and you can't hire someone to replicate that. Instead, we outsource nearly all of our business support. We have a business consultant, a financial planner, bookkeeper, accountant, IT consultant, photographers, printers, and programmers who work with us either on a regular basis or are on-call should the need arise.

AB: What marketing tactic worked the best for you in 2007?

SLK: We use a variety of touch points for marketing. The one we use most often, we call the 1-2 punch, a print promotion, followed up with an emailer. A printed promotion is something tangible that recipients can hold onto. We work hard to create useful and informative pieces so that recipients can't resist keeping it out on their desk. Then the email arrives, they've been thinking of you and lo and behold, now here's a link in their inbox to visit your site. It's very effective.

However, the most engaging tactic we used in 2007 was launching our blog, "Reactions." Because so much of what we're selling is our relationship with clients, our sales cycle is a slow courting process. Our blog allows us to speak to potential and existing clients in a new dialog that we could never have on our corporate site. Here you can find what inspires us, our comments on how design impacts business, our commitment to the environment as well as an inside peek into life at our studio in Long Island City, Queens. The response to the blog has been overwhelming. One client even told me that they got more out of reading our blog than they ever learned reading other companies' marketing rhetoric.

AB: What would you do if you weren't in business for yourself?

SLK: The learning curve from being an employee to running a company is steep, but with 10 years of it under my belt, I can't imagine doing anything else. I see the world differently now and to do anything else would feel like I was moving backwards.

Business Bio
My husband/business partner, Marc and I used to work at competing graphic design firms. We decided to stop competing against each other and work together. We struggled forever to come up with a name for our combined vision on design, one night Marc realized that we shared two letters in our initials. I'm the SLK, and he's the MSL. We meet in the middle to form MSLK. There's a strong overlap and shared values on what makes great design, but we also have different expertise and interests. We developed a logo which emphasizes this.

We spent the first 5 years of our business learning the ropes on the evenings and weekends. This allowed us to continue to work on top level projects at our day jobs and grow further in our design skills, while also cutting our teeth on the challenges every new business faces such as how to find work, how to charge for work, etc. The lengthy work days/weeks were grueling at times, but I feel we are stronger as a result.

When we finally left our jobs and made the leap to a full-time operation, our company instantly flourished from the extra time and energy we could finally put towards taking things to the next level. It felt as if we had laid a good, strong structure for the company and with our full attention we were able to hit the ground running.