Now, are you considering a major career change, but unsure how to leverage your existing skills in a new field?
Today’s Social Pulse: B2B Edition, powered by Agorapulse, guest Bretta Provost knows exactly what that’s like. After spending years as a successful civil environmental engineer in Denver, Bretta found herself at a crossroads when faced with potential layoffs. Instead of staying the course, she chose to completely reinvent her career path. Today, Breta is the founder of Front ROI marketing where she helps businesses optimize their digital presence and marketing systems for growth. Her journey from engineering to entrepreneurship demonstrates how technical expertise can translate into business success. Breta brings practical insights on how to successfully pivot from a technical career into entrepreneurship.
[Listen to the full episode below, or get the highlights of the Social Pulse Podcast: B2B Edition, powered by Agorapulse. Try it for free today.]
Could you start by walking us through that career transition from engineering to marketing?
Bretta Provost: Yeah, it is a little bit of a different story to come from engineering into marketing, I will say so, as engineers, we are a special breed. If you’ve ever met any of us, you know that this is true. I’m actually married to an engineer, and I will say that I’ve always been a people person as an engineer.
So, in engineering, I did end up being in business development and marketing part of it, and project management. So I’ve always enjoyed having the introvert aspect where you’re doing problem solving, and then the other portion of that where you are interacting with people and doing different teams and activities.
And so I did that for close to 10 years, full-time, full force in Denver. As you mentioned, one of the companies I was with got bought out. There were threats of right-sizing, downsizing, and layoffs. I ended up in the digital space, I had an online health and wellness business, so that gave me an introduction to the online world.
That’s when social media’s starting to explode, Facebook, everything that we now know as just everyday life. I had a very successful career on the side while I was building up that business and using just organic social media through Facebook. Now, it’s a totally different world. And then I don’t know if you can duplicate it today with social media, but I got a lot of that experience, and then ended up rekindling a college romance with my now-husband. And then we moved well from Denver to Coeur d’Alene. We actually ran a hotel here in downtown Coeur d’Alene for 11 years and were doing some of the marketing. So, I had left behind the engineering part of it in Denver. We were running the hotel together, and we did that for eleven years, and I helped with a lot of the marketing and the business development, and then a portion of that, he ran the business. Then we had babies, and I stayed at home, and then I went back and helped run the business.
We took turns running the hotel. And then one of his best friends actually reached out to me, and he has a very successful company, it’s called Tran Creative here in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. A lot of people have heard of it. Very successful branding company. And we actually started Front ROI Marketing together. And then when his business took a different shift, he started going more from working with businesses into tribal working with the tribal community, so Native Americans.
And so he’s shifted to do that. And then here we are, fears later. Lots of ups and downs, lots of different excitement, as we know, for anyone who’s an entrepreneur. It’s a bit of a rollercoaster ride sometimes, not for the faint of heart, and we have a new, incredible business partner, Mallory Shields, and things.
It’s definitely when you hit that five-year mark, I think, for any business, that three to five-year mark, some of the magic starts to happen.
What were the initial challenges that you faced at the point of starting a marketing agency?
Bretta Provost: I think one of the things that engineering teaches you is to be a problem solver.
That’s a lot of the challenging part of school is that I’m faced with whatever the situation is. What are my knowns? What are my unknowns? What do I need to do to figure out the problem?
I think a lot of marketing, especially nowadays, I swear sometimes half of it is I feel like I’m an IT person trying to fix programs: “Whatever’s not working, it’s okay. Here, reload your app, do this.”
So, I think taking some of those skills and thinking about it in that direction, where, all right, we have some kind of issue that we’re trying to solve, and we can solve some of that through marketing.
And there’s a good part of it that is somewhat technical, so it’s creative on the one hand and then technical on the other hand.
What were the key strategies that you used early on to grow?
Bretta Provost: I think putting a lot of systems in place.
I think that’s one of the things that a lot of business owners when it comes to social media, most business owners, and I’ve been there, I’ve done it, I’m sure we all have as a business owner, where you get to the end of the day and you think, “Gosh, I haven’t posted anything. I need to post something today ’cause I know I need to be on social media, but what am I going to post?”
Get these business owners to realize, okay, we need to plan. We need to come up with a system so that we know what we’re going to be doing ahead of time, so that you can keep that consistency, that messaging, that branding.
So that’s a lot of the part that I think carried over in helping to create that consistency, and then just being one of the things you can see. I like your chief storyteller, chief integrity officer here, is that being honest with people about the expectations because I feel like a lot of marketing companies, sometimes we hear a lot of people say, “Oh, I’ve been burned by this other marketing companies because they promised X, Y, and Z, and then they didn’t do it.”
So that’s a lot of what. In the beginning, and then continuing with that, being very honest with people about what’s going to be effective and what’s not. And for example, let’s say doing ads. We tell everyone you need to be running your ads for three to six months before you, especially if you’ve never done any ads before, for things to be effective.
The same thing for our next social media. You’ve got to be doing these things consistently over time. And the people that have been the most successful that we’ve seen throughout our history here, as for ROI marketing, are the people that have been super, super consistent with all their channels.
Meaning they’re emailing, they’re running the ads, they’re doing social media, and keeping up with everything.
What role do you think that personal branding played while you were establishing yourself in this field?
Bretta Provost: I think the reason that Ben initially came and chatted with me is that I was doing a lot on my personal social media.
I have to tell the truth right now and tell you that I’m not so great at it now since I do it for everybody else. It’s “Oh yeah, I’m supposed to be posting on my own social media and doing my own thing. I used to be a lot better about it.” Like I said, doing all those Facebook lives, and as far as my own personal social media, it was.
A little bit more sporadic, but once starting the business and, but just that I embraced social media when it first started coming out and when I built that online business, I was posting all the time and I said, okay, told my husband I’m making my Facebook page public so it’s everybody can see it.
And then grew the Facebook page, which I would still say is where a lot of the connections and like my social media platform still, even though I’m on a lot of other ones that I enjoy, Facebook and LinkedIn. Some of the best and to grow that to have, I think I may have 6,000 followers, so it’s like a little micro influencer.
But took that and when I first moved to Coeur d’Alene, ’cause I didn’t know anyone here and had a big network when I moved from Denver, is I’m going to start fronting people and getting to know people and go to networking groups and get to know people in the local area and then support that with social media.
How do you adapt to everything that’s changing with marketing and the landscape of marketing today?
Bretta Provost: I think I end up going to listen to podcasts like we’re on right now, that talk about different marketing aspects.
So I have a whole list of people that I’ll listen to, and a lot of times, you end up researching things that you run into when you’re either having an issue, okay, I want to work on this new aspect of the business. And so then I’ll deep dive into a lot of researching and watching YouTube videos.
And that is the great thing about today, it’s not as though you need to go to the library and check out a book, though. I encourage people to still do that ’cause I am a big reader of books, physical books still, but we have so much information on our fingertips, and to be able to take the time and start researching, start Googling it. Now we have AI as well you can put in there to help you come up with some decisions on where to move in the industry. And it’s a fascinating time right now with AI. I am sure you have some opinions, as well as other people in the marketing industry, regarding AI.
So that’s what I end up doing and have found that I end up following on all of the different social media channels, including when you scroll through Instagram, and you’re like, oh, that’s a good idea. This is how this person is being successful. And then you see some more of that in your own feed when you have a few moments to check it out.
Mike Allton: I definitely have opinions about AI. I have a whole podcast all about AI, but I love your point. It’s a fantastic tool for coming up with a study plan, a research guide, the AI systems today, Perplexity, and Gemini, ChatGPT, you can ask them, I want to know about this topic or that topic.
What are trusted resources I can go to? Or you can even use the deep research tools to create a research project for yourself and summarize a hundred websites in 10 minutes. So that’s fantastic. But I’m reminded because a lot of folks right now are going into, or coming out of, or about to do a career change, I’m reminded of the accident where it says everyone’s either going into a storm, they’re in a storm, or they’re coming out of a storm. So I think a lot of folks today might be thinking about a career change. Some of the people listening may have just gone through a career change, and they’re still maybe struggling with that.
What advice would you give?
Bretta Provost: I would say if it’s something that you’re passionate about to go for it and just dive in head first.
I think all entrepreneurs, especially if you’re starting your own business, or maybe you’re shifting careers, but there’s always that excitement and that fear, and you’re always going to be learning.
When you make that shift, you get that opportunity to learn this whole new area of being. And I feel like a lot of us. If you ask a lot of people, I know I talked to my team the other day. I feel like they have impostor syndrome, and I think we all have a little bit of that, and just to do your best to get over that and think about: What are the small steps that I can make today or tomorrow that are going to move me closer to my goal? And put it down into a little bit more incremental steps and short-term goals that you can have towards that career change. Whether that’s, Hey, I’m going to fill out resumes, or I’m going to look into the Secretary of State.
What is it going to take for me just to say, oh, look, I have a business? Oh, I got a domain name.
So, make those small improvements each day.
What are some myths that you’d like to dispel?
Bretta Provost: I think there’s always going to be that period, especially if you’re starting a new career, that you think, “Oh, I’m going to have to start over.”
Maybe monetarily, I’m going to have to start at the bottom, and maybe start thinking about, “Okay, what are some of my skill sets that I have in this other area of a career? Then I can apply to this new career or this new business.”
Because there may be a lot more things that you can take with you, and even if you’re a stay-at-home mom, and then you’re going to go start a career again, you have skill sets that you’re probably not even aware of. And so focusing on those things, okay, these are the things that I’m good at, these are the things that I’ve achieved. How can I make these happen in this other career path?
And then it seems a little less scary.
How did going in-person networking help you?
Bretta Provost: I think it helped a lot!
So there is, like I said, the bridge between doing social media and things in person. So I’ve frequently had people around town be like, “Oh, I saw your face live,” or “I’ve seen you on social media,” and putting that connection together.
One of my best friends here in town, I walked up to her at a chamber meeting, the Coeur d’Alene Chamber, and was just like, “Hi, I’m Bretta. It’s nice to meet you.” I didn’t have to come up with some special kind of question, just a “hey”.
One of the things that I learned a long time ago, doing training, and just happened to talk to somebody else, but it’s called FORM, which stands for family, occupation, recreation, and motivation. So those are questions that you can go back to: “Hey, are you from [XYZ]? Are you from Coeur d’Alene? Do you have a family? What do you do for a living? What do you like to do for fun?”
Those are all simple icebreaker questions that you can talk to people about.
We all like to talk about ourselves, right? And so it’s easy to answer those questions and be like, “No, I don’t have kids, but I have three dogs. Or I like to go skiing on the weekends. Oh, gosh, I love to ski, too.” And then suddenly you’re in a conversation and not as fearful that you’ve made a friend already, so you aim to get to know people, get to know a little bit about them, and the rest of it, the business part, will take care of itself down the road.
Can you share any other tools or resources that have been critical to your entrepreneurial journey?
Bretta Provost: I am an avid reader, so I have some of the books that are right behind me.
- I’m always reading, and the pivotal ones, that’s back here right behind me, for taking our business to the next level, was the book Traction, which is the entrepreneur operating system. I’ve read a few books by Mike Michalowicz. He’s good. That’s Clockwork and Profits First. But I like Traction in terms of the business.
- I have a business coach, so I’ve gone off and on where I’ve had a formal business coach or maybe an informal one, and just continuing to learn and grow every single day. And I can’t remember the name of it, which, who, I’m reading one that’s like about kindness for profit. We’re talking about how acting more kindly and being grateful can impact your business.
- So I’m always gathering new ideas and reading new books and meeting new people who can provide insights into whether that’s into life or business.
- And my other favorite book, which I will mention later, is Never Split the Difference. I don’t know if you’ve read that book or heard much about it. So he was actually an FBI negotiator, and there are a lot of helpful tools in terms of just communicating with people in a little bit of a different way that I found to be very helpful.
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