About

Mike Saunders, MBA  

 

Mike Saunders holds an MBA in Marketing and helps small business owners increase sales using online marketing.
In addition to coaching and consulting clients in his firm Marketing Huddle LLC,  Mike enjoys teaching Marketing as an Adjunct Marketing Professor at select Colleges and Universities.Mike also is a Marketing Consultant with the Denver Small Business Development Center (SBDC).

By visiting www.ThePrismSalvation.com  you can download the 1st chapter of his new book: "The PRISM Salvation-a 3-Step Solution to Social Media Domination for Busy Business Owners". You can also download: "The Social Media Dashboard" for Free which gives 1-click access to simplify your social media marketing.  

Through his coursework for his MBA in Marketing, Mike created the Marketing Huddle which is a marketing coaching firm focusing on helping small business owners use the latest cutting-edge marketing tools and systems in their business to increase new business, sales and referrals. Most businesses owners realize that they need marketing, but they do not know how to get started. The solution is to set up automated systems to keep in touch with prospects until they buy and keep in touch with clients to receive referrals and stay top-of-mind to stimulate repeat sales.

 

Mike has been married for 13 years and has 3 Daughters and a Son and enjoys spending time at their family's cabin in the mountains of Colorado hiking and riding ATV, and enjoys playing acoustic guitar in the College and Career Sunday School class he teaches at church.

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Reflecting back on what brought him to this point in his career:
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I grew up in Virginia and remember the financial struggle my parents dealt with after losing their home in foreclosure because of a bad business deal my Father's boss put him in. We went to live with my Grandparents in their basement apartment, and it was nice enough with a kitchenette, bathroom and 1 bedroom. This was pretty tight quarters with my parents and sister and I…and I kid you not, since there was not enough room, I slept in the workshop. Right next to the lathe and workbench!

I didn't realize it them, but this time in my life really made me realize that I would do everything I could to keep this from ever happening to my family. Looking back, it actually was a motivating experience…because it was something I didn't ever want to have!

Fast forward 10 years: After graduating from college at Liberty University, I made some very poor financial decisions regarding the use of credit cards. Even though my parents taught me the dangers of consumer debt, I still wanted to have all the "stuff" I wanted and in about 4 years ended up with over $35,000 in credit card debt with minimum monthly payments as much as my mortgage payment! I even made an appointment with a Bankruptcy attorney to file Chapter 13, but sitting in the office filling out the info sheet on the clipboard it hit me that I just couldn't do that.

I decided to tough it out and make it work, and I don't have an easy answer or a spectacular story of how "this one little idea turned into hundreds of thousands of dollars"…because in life that type of story is just plain rare!

What I did is become diligent like Proverbs teaches about the success of the diligent, so in my job with my new Wife, I just put my nose to the grindstone and worked hard, then when I was tired of working hard….I kept at it!
We had moved from Virginia to Colorado where my Wife's family is from, and stayed with her parents until our house sold thinking a few weeks in close quarters wouldn't be too bad. But the housing market in 1998 in Virginia wasn't all that great and it turned out to be 8 months and after our 1st baby arrived (still living in her parents extra bedroom) we decided to buy our own place even though we would have 2 mortgage payments. While finances were tight, the job I had, provided opportunities to earn sales commissions and it was during this time that we were able to systematically pay off each and every credit card!

In fact as we wrote the check for each final payment on each card we literally took the statement out to the back yard and burned it signifying that we would never get into that situation again. And we never did! In fact, because of my constant desire to learn sales and marketing and just devouring books and audio programs, I began to see a trend that I slowly started to build on in my marketing. IT turned out that setting up automated marketing systems kept me busy with new prospects and clients. As I kept improving my marketing I achieved many awards and trips and even was the #1 Producer in the entire country 2 years in a row for the major financial institution I worked for.
We were blessed during this time in my career, not only with 3 more children, but also such an dramatic increase in commissions that we systematically paid off our $300,000 mortgage as well.

I was told by many financial advisors who would tell me there was a much better place to put my money, but I just kept telling them the story of living in my Grandfather's workshop and I didn't want to ever have a chance of letting that happen to my family!

When the "Credit Crisis" hit our economy in October 2007, it became clear to me that business would never be the same and I decided to enroll in an MBA in Marketing to expand my potential future. One of the motivating factors in making this decision was my Wife's encouragement, and the other was my Father who at age 60 had just finished his PHD in International Business! So I figured at age 40 I could handle my MBA!

As you can read in the "Interview with Mike" the MBA program is what caused me to create the Marketing Huddle and bring together all of the critical marketing tools and strategy that I had tested and tried over the years that had proven to be so successful. Building off of that foundation by adding the cutting-edge technology that we have available to us today truly allows the business owner and sales professional to make great strides in achieving their business goals by finally taking care of their marketing!