Mastering Your Marketing Outreach in Manufacturing with Emily Wilkins

Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturers' Network Podcast. Our guest today is Emily Wilkens. Emily helps job shops make bigger profits and an even bigger impact by building them a radical brand and marketing machine and empowering them to use it in a few days. Emily, welcome to the show. Emily Wilkins: Well, thank you so much for having me, Lisa. Lisa Ryan: Please share a little about your background, what led you to do what you're doing, and particularly in working with manufacturers. Emily Wilkins: I grew up near Detroit, and most of my family worked for GM or in the auto industry, in some way, shape, or form. I have always been around manufacturing and mechanics and how things work. My dad had three daughters. I was the first of three girls, so I was his son. My dad did a great thing and got me involved in all that. Mom also worked for GM. They met at GM. She worked in product development, returned to school, and became a calculus professor. She's at Kettering University, which used to be GMI, in Flint. I had one choice when it came to college. It was Kettering. It's a unique school because it has a Co-op program that starts from your freshman year. I had a full-time job in the automotive industry before I started school for three months, so you switch from school to full-time work every other term. I had friends that were in management positions. I had friends that worked building or designing roller coasters or Disney like crazy cool opportunities as college students. I started in mechanical engineering, worked in the automotive industry, and found myself hanging out in the design studio. I was pretty bored with all of the mechanical engineering tests they gave me, which were mostly like busy work on spreadsheets and getting bored with being in a meeting with 20 people arguing over half an inch and bored. That's not the experience for all engineers, but that was my experience. I thought about attending art school, and then I switched to business. I stayed at Kettering as an asso