I began my marketing career in 1990 when I became involved with public relations in the Air Force. At the time, I was 1 year into a 10 year military career where I traveled the country and the world. During my time in the military, I developed a solid national and international view of politics and business. This was a result of my PR involvement and my job as an Information Manager (which is basi
cally an office manager) working with military and elected leaders on a national and international scale. I won national awards and recognition. During my last few years in the Air Force, I began to make the transition out of Information Management and into IT – I loved working with computers, servers, and networks. When I left the military, I worked as an IT manager for a large international staffing company – so my view of business remained on the large national and international scale. While I continued side work with PR and marketing through this time, it wasn't until I moved back to my hometown of Farmington, NM in 2003 that I began my marketing career in earnest running the only marketing department for the City of Farmington. I worked with many organizations, but the Downtown Association was the one that intrigued me most. It was then that I developed a real sense of local business. Through that 9 years of experience, I was able to develop a laser focus on local business and politics – and became very good at generating real results with little to no budget. I am most definitely a night owl – so I work until very late – in fact, that’s when I’m most effective. To relax, I take my dog Molly to the lake with me every weekend. I fish – and socialize – and generally just wind down from the week. I’m also an artist, so I like to paint when I find the time. While I am an artist, I have more of an analytical mind. I am most comfortable when I’m brains deep in a big pile of numbers to analyze. And while I grew up in the world of traditional PR, marketing, and advertising – constant analysis of the results began to prove these methods were no longer effective. At the same time, I was becoming proficient with Internet marketing methods – constant analysis of those results proved that Internet marketing was clearly the best way to go. My passion is helping small business owners understand the difference between traditional marketing and Internet marketing strategies and how to implement those strategies for less cost and more return than the traditional methods. Through my marketing agency (Ken Collins Marketing) – I get to do that every day – and I couldn't love it more!