After 20+ years of corporate experience, Matt Dickerson established a coaching and consulting business in 2020, which has grown into a successful company employing almost two dozen consultants.
Matt is also the author of a growing series of books, including his first published work: Valued: The Six Coaching Habits That Turn Subject Matter Experts into Enthusiastic
Talent Developers.
Katie McNamee founded Elevate Online, a marketing agency, in 2016 after graduating from Purdue University. Since then she’s helped dozens of businesses create meaningful relationships with their customers and increase their digital marketing ROI.
Katie is also an author and has a newsletter, Creating with Katie, that you can learn more about here.
Launching my coaching practice in early 2020 taught me a lesson I had not anticipated. I believed that decades of corporate leadership experience and my coaching certifications had prepared me for the work ahead. While those experiences prepared me to coach leaders, they did not prepare me to build and grow a business.
I was developing confidence in my coaching, but I lacked the experience to make sound business decisions with consistency. At that stage, I did not know which questions deserved my attention, much less how to answer them. I found myself navigating unfamiliar territory, and it became clear that I would make far better decisions with the support of people who had already traveled that path.
I was fortunate to be surrounded by mentors and advisors who encouraged reflection instead of simply offering answers. Among the most influential was my branding, marketing, and website design partner, Katie McNamee. She had spent years helping consultants and entrepreneurs build businesses that reflected their own vision and pace rather than following someone else’s formula.
That experience continues to influence how I work with clients today and why partnering with Katie through LEAP felt like such a natural fit. We believe that meaningful growth begins with clarity, and clarity begins with asking thoughtful questions. Every client brings different strengths, aspirations, and definitions of success, so every path forward should be just as unique.
Rather than telling clients what their businesses should become, we help them think more deeply about what they want to create and why it matters. Together, we explore possibilities, challenge assumptions, and develop practical next steps that fit their goals and strengths. Helping people build businesses that are authentic to who they are is meaningful to me because someone once invested that same gift in me.
In spring 2016, I sat in Kris Taylor’s consulting capstone course at Purdue University and looked ahead to my inevitable graduation. I’d be leaving Purdue with Highest Distinctions for my degree in Public Relations and Strategic Communications and my Certificate in Entrepreneurship and Innovation. I had a solid digital marketing skillset and a small portfolio, but I didn’t know my exact direction.
When Kris offered a digital marketing internship for Evergreen Leadership, I jumped on it, and she gladly accepted me. As part of her internship, she spent one hour weekly on professional development. Through these discussions, we realized that I was both called and well-positioned to start my own small, digital marketing firm.
From these talks, Elevate Online came into creation. That summer, I launched as a one-woman agency doing anything from graphic design to social media posts. Since then, Elevate Online has grown as I’ve gained experience, worked with dozens of clients, improved my skillset, and found my passion.
As my LinkedIn page states, living at the intersection of strategy and creativity, I make fantastic digital marketing results happen for my clients! I use influencer outreach, affiliate marketing, content marketing, and web design to generate significant ROI and create real, meaningful relationships between brands and their customers.
Choosing this career path was the best possible choice I could have made.
I love the ability to partner with my chosen clients, help them better define and understand their goals, and put together fun, creative marketing that helps them succeed. I love the work, like seeing how one strategic, influencer campaign can bring in big results for clients. I love my freedom to travel and bring my work with me on my laptop. I love that I can recharge my way throughout the day, whether that’s a dog walk or a ten-minute yoga session.
This isn’t to say there aren’t hard days. There are, but overall I don’t mind them because it means that I’m getting to have this very fulfilling career and life.
When I was speaking at Purdue recently, someone asked me if I had a back-up plan when I first launched Elevate Online. At first, I laughed and said no! But then I said, “My back-up was, well, I could always just get a job.”
I shared this exchange with my mom. She laughed and said, “It’s funny because you don’t consider what you’re doing a job!” And I realized that she was right!
I believe that what I’m doing is part of filling my overall calling. I’m building and creating something that betters this world. I find great satisfaction from my work, and it’s something that I hope others find, too.
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