Meet Brody Rotzoll

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Brody Rotzoll a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Brody, thank you so much for opening up with us about some important, but sometimes personal topics. One that really matters to us is overcoming Imposter Syndrome because we’ve seen how so many people are held back in life because of this and so we’d really appreciate hearing about how you overcame Imposter Syndrome.

In all honesty, I do not believe “imposter syndrome” is something you want to overcome. (If you do, I feel you are stagnant and not progressing)

For the longest time, I fought the dreaded “imposter syndrome” and was spinning in circles with stress, feeling I wasn’t good enough. There was an endless cycle with each new initiative, where I would stress myself out about not doing it right, feel like I couldn’t offer it to clients because I “wasn’t ready”, then ultimately feeling as if I mastered it, launch it to clients, then start the cycle all over again with the next endeavor.

That ultimately was a never-ending cycle that messed with my drive to start new projects because I knew that inevitably the “imposter syndrome” would come back.

What helped me “deal” with “imposter syndrome” (notice I did not say “overcome”) was understanding that having some sort of “imposter syndrome” is actually a great thing because I know that I am pushing myself outside of my boundaries, and I WILL make sure the project or goal is totally fleshed out. (Because of my imposter syndrome I wouldn’t let the initiative be half baked)

In total, I have not overcome imposter syndrome, but I have embraced it to make sure our team’s product offerings are ALWAYS improving and NEVER stagnant.

If you are not getting better, you are getting worse. – David Goggins

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

My story started out working in a series of retail oriented jobs throughout my teenage years, which helped to shape my understanding of consumer behavior on an early basis. From there I went to Radford University and graduated with a degree in Business Administration with a major in Marketing. With working in the retail space for so long (such as being a waiter, cashier, host, gas filler, shelf stocker…) gave me the drive to move toward marketing.

After Radford University, I had an amazing internship at Northwestern Mutual, then proceeded to a local Bank. At the local Bank I was fortunate enough to work in almost every department. From the front line teller and retail manager, to mortgage ops and dealer division, I got a wide understanding of the financial workings of a bank. My last stop at the bank ended me up at the Chief Marketing Officer, which is what projected me into my first marketing role after college. I learned a great deal and was fortunate enough to earn my Certified Financial Marketing designation from the American Bankers Association.

While at the Bank, we built their website which got me for the first time into development projects. I was absolutely fascinated with this, and several bank customers came up to me to build out their sites. Because this was a conflict of interest, I was not allowed to build the client sites while at the bank, I decided to start Tegrity Marketing and go out on my own.

The first few years of Tegrity Marketing my amazing wife helped out and together we built over 100 WordPress websites! We were totally in on websites, and because of this saw declines in sales during the summer. (Because everybody was on vacation) With this issue in mind, I was on a run with my now business coach but at the time friend, Jared Riter with Off Square One (https://www.offsquareone.com/) and I let him know about our issues with the retained earning during the summer months. He turned to me and recommended “recurring income”. A light went off immediately! With my background in marketing strategy and implementation, we can start offering fractional CMO services for clients to bring in the recurring revenue! To say that increased Tegrity Marketings capabilities would truly be an understatement.

I spent the next several months building out our recurring revenue along side our websites and ultimately added a CMO service to bring in additional recurring revenue. During this time, my amazing wife decided to switch careers from Banking over to Cosmetology and it has been a pleasure to be able to help her out the way she did when we started Tegrity Marketing.

After the increase in revenue, while working with Jared, we decided it was time to start onboarding team members. That was where it all started shooting up! I can not say enough about the team that we have been able to bring together and we would be nowhere without them! We currently have a team of 7 including myself and are offering services from Brand Creation, to Strategic Copywriting, to Fractional CMO, and beyond!

The journey at Tegrity Marketing has been a long slow one, but we have been lucky enough to work with amazing clients and our team is next level.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

1. Your business is not over until you say it is over: Perseverance: In business, there will always be things that come your way. (The more your business grows, the more issues you will have) But knowing when to not take a rash action, and “take a knee” is extremely important. Too many times people have an issue come up and instead of thinking it through, they react quickly and without thinking. Make sure that you assess ALL options for each situation! I imagine you will see that you have more options than you think!

2. Don’t take yourself too seriously: Keep it Light Hearted: I don’t care if you are Elon Musk or the Queen of England, you are only good at what you are good at. The moment you think you know everything, you will be educated real quickly. Make sure to ALWAYS keep an open mind, and do not take anybody for granted, as they may know someone, who knows someone.

3. You are not listening if you are talking: Keep an ear out: I really enjoy the quote “If you are the smartest person in the room, you are in the wrong room.” Make sure to surround yourself with those that are doing what you look up to, and LISTEN!! They will drop nuggets all day long!

Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played in important role in your development?

I would say books are truly the backend of our growth! It is extremely hard to pinpoint one book, but the book that started everything for me is “Atomic Habits”.

This book discusses the importance of the little habits we do everyday that compound over time. Also discusses the importance of “habit stacking” and making your good habits easy and bad habits hard. This is something that I implement on a daily basis with my person and professional life.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.tegrity.marketing/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tmarketingllc/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TegrityMarketing/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/

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