Magnolia Strategy

10/15/2026

So excited for the Cookeville-Putnam County Chamber of Commerce Women's Conference next Wednesday! 🎉 This is such an incredible event for connection, growth, and empowerment.

If you haven't grabbed your tickets yet, this is your sign to go ahead and secure your spot before they're gone! 🥂

10/13/2026

Would you eat your own dog food?

I was listening to a podcast recently with Adobe’s CMO, Lara Balazs, and the way one idea was presented made me proud of how we work here.

Adobe tests its own products inside the company before customers ever see them. They call it “dogfooding,” and we appreciate the absurd visual.

This practice is nothing new at Magnolia Strategy. We stress test our SaaS, content, strategies, and productivity here first, before we recommend any of it to a client. When we looked at AI tools, we tried them on our own work before they went anywhere near a client’s. Before we built a project management system for a client, we tested it on our own team. We’ve lived inside our own CRM, GoHighLevel, before setting one up for anyone else.

The reason it matters to us is simple. A business is someone’s livelihood, often the work of a lifetime, and when an owner trusts us with the systems that run it, we want that trust to rest on something we’ve tested ourselves.

Jodi Pitts, CEO
Magnolia Strategy

10/09/2026

Do you have a gut feeling you’re meant for more, but your comfort zone keeps winning?

Our founder, Jodi Pitts, was on Good Morning Cookeville yesterday to talk about the Cookeville-Putnam County Chamber of Commerce Women’s Conference, where she along with Elizabeth Lisic will be speaking about saying yes to new things that push your life forward, even if it makes your stomach drop a little. On October 21, she’ll be opening up about how it actually feels to say yes to something that feel a little scary.

If you haven't caught it yet, watch her segment, cued up to where she comes on: https://bit.ly/4jUssmm

If you would like to join the conversation, register for the conference: https://bit.ly/4zoum3e

If a woman in your life is sitting on that gut feeling, send her the clip. We’re cheering for Jodi, and we are here to cheer for you too.

10-08-2026 Good Morning Cookeville on Hub Plus, a service of Cookev...

09/30/2026

If you've been eyeing a tool that promises to take a chunk of work off your plate, consider this. 👇

It's an easy promise to believe. Once this is automated, it'll take care of itself. Sometimes that turns out to be true. Other times the software goes in, and three weeks later you're still approving the quote, chasing the invoice, and answering the question the system was supposed to answer. The tool did its job on a process with a problem nobody had written down, and automating a mess just gives you a faster mess.

That's why we map a process on paper before we automate anything. We follow one job from the first trigger to the last handoff and mark who touches it, where it waits, what gets fixed by hand, and where it lands back on your desk. The map usually shows that the slow part is a decision only you are allowed to make, and no software fixes that until there's a rule someone else can follow.

Everything we build starts from how you already run things, so you aren't relearning your own week. The workarounds get fixed at the source, and whatever is left is clean enough to automate, which is when automation actually helps.

09/24/2026

Looking for a speaker who can make strategy actually useful to a room of business owners?

This is what I already do with clients every week, and it's what I speak on regularly, most recently on positioning. Defining your real ideal client. Building an actual strategic plan. Messaging that doesn't blend in. Finding out where your revenue is quietly leaking.

If your group is planning something and wants a speaker in the room, send me or my team a message!

Sincerely,
Jodi Pitts, CEO of Magnolia Strategy

09/23/2026

Thank you to Workforce Connections for the shout out, and for having Jodi Pitts lead this Canva workshop alongside Andrea Kruszka Photography at the Cookeville-Putnam County Chamber of Commerce.

A room full of people walking out with tools they'll actually use in their day to day work is exactly why we love this kind of work in the community.

We're grateful for the people and brands who support what we do, and we're just as grateful when someone who has sat in one of our sessions takes the time to recommend us or share their experience. Recognition like that means more than most people realize.

Our team recently attended a Canva workshop presented by Jodi Pitts of Magnolia Strategy and Andrea Kruszka from the Center for Rural Innovation at Tennessee Tech University , where we had the opportunity to sharpen our design skills, explore new tools, and learn ways to make our content even better. We explored everything from collaborative whiteboards and presentations to new ways to create professional materials and make the most of Canva's tools.

We're always excited for opportunities to learn and bring new ideas back to our work.

09/22/2026

There's a phrase we repeat to each other constantly around Magnolia: "you must do the thing you think you cannot do." On October 21, Jodi Pitts is going to stand in front of a room and talk about exactly that, in a session called "Welcoming the Disruption," on what happens when the plan you had gets interrupted by a new responsibility, a career shift, or an opportunity you never saw coming.

We're proud to have her on that stage alongside Elizabeth Lisic, and we can't think of anyone better suited to lead that conversation at the Cookeville-Putnam County Chamber of Commerce Women's Conference. Jodi has built her whole career around the idea that saying yes, even to the thing that scares you, is sometimes the best decision you can make for yourself. That's not a theory for her. It's how she runs her business and how she leads the women around her.

Link to register is in Jodi's post below.

✨ Speaker Spotlight ✨

We’re excited to welcome Jodi Pitts and Dr. Elizabeth Lisic to our Women’s Conference for a conversation about navigating change and disruption in our lives!

Their session, Welcoming the Disruption, explores how unexpected responsibilities, career changes, and new opportunities can create space to rethink success, make a strategic pivot, and choose a path that reflects what matters most to you.

Jodi is the founder and CEO of Magnolia Strategy, where she helps entrepreneurs build businesses that thrive without consuming the people who built them. Elizabeth serves as executive director of Mustard Seed Ranch and has spent her career helping people and organizations navigate change through thoughtful strategy, strong relationships and better questions.

Together, they’ll remind us that changing direction isn’t falling behind. It may be exactly what moves us forward.

Join us on October 21 for a day of connection, inspiration and encouragement to take your next step, even if it looks different than you once imagined. Sign up today! https://bit.ly/4xW0PNY

09/17/2026

Our CEO and Project Manager just got back from Orlando and we have to show you what a real client content day looks like.

We flew down, met the client on-site, shot by the vans, in the warehouse, and on the forklift to show the smiling faces behind the operation.

And yes, the husbands came too, so we had to do Universal properly.😉

This is how we turn one brand shoot into months of content that actually converts.

09/16/2026

Get asked fairly often why we start with an assessment instead of just getting to work.

Fair question. It feels slower.

Honest answer: the two weeks spent understanding a business before recommending anything has never been the part I regretted. Starting work on a business fast, frantic, hurried...that's the projects I come to regret.

When the diagnostic step gets skipped, you end up building something genuinely good that solves a problem the business might not have. Everyone is pleased for about ninety days. Then the real issue is still sitting there, untouched, and there is less money left to deal with it.

Slow at the start is usually the fastest version of the whole thing.