Influential Woman · Marketing Consulting

Missy Day

Marketing Strategist, Missy Day Consulting

Seattle, WA

Certifications · Degrees · Memberships

Degree Bachelor's Degree in Accounting from Xavier University Degree Bachelor's Degree in Marketing from Xavier University Degree Bachelor's Degree in International Business from Xavier University Degree MBA from Xavier University (2018)

Her Story

About Missy

I've been in marketing for about 15 years, and I've been running my own independent consulting business for almost 5 years now - it'll be 5 years this September. In the first 10 years of my career, I worked for big corporations like T-Mobile, Kimberly Clark, and GE, where I learned how to do marketing tactics on very big budgets. Now I primarily work with small businesses, helping anyone from individual freelancers and public speakers to small business owners who want to escalate their business further. I come in as their interim CMO and set up the fundamentals of marketing for people who are usually engaging in marketing to this big of a degree for the first time. I work with very small and scrappy businesses - sometimes it's just the owner and operator running the entire show - so I teach them what I know to get started, and they often come back and hire me later once they have a more robust team. I do everything from setting up their branding, tone of voice, and website copywriting to email marketing campaigns, SEO, and introducing them to Google ad campaigns. I'm kind of a generalist in a marketing sense, but I primarily focus on overall strategy. Over the past 5 years, I've learned how to be really scrappy with small marketing budgets to help small business owners stand out and compete with giant corporations.

Her Interview

Ten minutes with Missy

01What do you attribute your success to?

I feel really lucky that most all of my bosses during my time in corporate America were women, and I just feel so lucky that I had so many really powerful female leaders that I got to look up to. Watching them navigate how to balance being a new mom and also being a really intense career woman while also having their own personal life was really inspiring to me. Even though I'm not a mother myself, seeing how they managed all of that gave me incredible role models to follow throughout my career.

02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?

When I was thinking about leaving corporate America and starting freelancing, I was terrified of leaving a really steady corporate job where I could kind of see the trajectory of my career. I was wanting more flexibility, but I was also terrified of the unknowns of being a business owner. Another fellow business owner who had been consulting for 5 years told me to just trust myself, because anything in life, you never know if you're going to get fired from your job or start hating what you're doing for a living, regardless. So the best investment is to invest in yourself, and if you're feeling called to do something, then you should listen to it. Whenever you invest in yourself, it's always going to pay off. That advice really stuck with me.

03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?

I think that we're all a lot more capable than we realize. It's a really well-known stat that men, when they apply to jobs, only have to feel like they're 50% qualified, whereas women need to feel a lot closer to 100%. From my experience, when I've given myself permission to try for something that I felt like I wasn't qualified for, so many times I've gotten those opportunities, because you don't have to be 100% ready to take that leap to the next level of your career. I think we so often learn on the job, and so I encourage young women to believe in themselves and believe that they are a lot more capable than they might think that they are.

04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?

For marketing specifically, and copywriting which is something I do a lot, a lot of small businesses are turning to AI software to create their marketing strategy and their branding. I think to some degree that is really helpful, but there's lots of opportunities to actually speak to a marketing person like me who can help direct them a little bit better. If you go into ChatGPT and say 'I'm new at marketing, what should I do?' it will give you pretty generalized marketing advice. Free is always great, but I think a lot of times small business owners are kind of scared to make investments in things when their money feels so tight. But normally, if you find the right people to invest in, whether that be tax accountants or people to help them with things that are outside of their skill set, it's great to develop that skill if you could invest money in your business, even if it's scary to do so. It normally can pay off.

05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?

Flexibility is a really big one for me. One of the reasons I moved into freelancing is because my dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and I couldn't work full-time and appropriately take care of him at the same time. Freelancing and consulting has given me that flexibility to be able to care for my aging parents while also having a really robust career. Just having more ownership over where I'm spending my time every day so I can have that flexibility to take care of my family is incredibly important to me.

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