Published: March 09, 2009 03:11 pm      

Envision of St. Peter

As companies nationwide announce job cuts seemingly every day, as everyone with a 401(k) is a little bit poorer on paper than six months ago, as houses sit on the market, vacant because their owners just gave up in one way or another, it’s tough to think, “It’ll all work out.”

But really, it will, says Liz Beaudry, owner of the Envision marketing firm in St. Peter. Just six years ago she was laid off from a corporation’s marketing department and was wondering what the future held.

First, the present. Envision is a marketing and design firm that can help a business with its brand in myriad formats: Web site design, print ads, e-mail newsletters, print newsletters and magazines, letterhead, logos and more. Clients come to Envision with a goal to achieve, and its staff helps them determine how to get there.

Beaudry, whose background is in business and art, explained that Envision’s process begins with interviewing a client’s employees to identify what is at the business’ core, what separates it from the competition.

“One core thing said over and over and over and over again is way more powerful than 10 things sporadically here and there,” she said. “This is one of the strengths that we bring to the table.... It makes designing quite easy or Web development quite easy because we’ve already established, ‘What is the thing they want to say about their business?’ and ‘What is the feeling that they want to portray?’ ”

Envision is not just a “design it and forget it” type of business. Beaudry said she finds it rewarding to develop more of a partnership with a client to help it achieve its goals, because having a strategic marketing plan is more than running one ad or sending out one flier. She said it often takes seven interactions with a business’ marketing to bring in a new customer, such as seeing a piece of direct mail, then a newspaper ad, going to a Web site, then reading a news release about the business — and that’s just four.

“That’s really where the consistency piece (to a marketing plan) comes in,” she said.

If clients stay on a consistent program and plan, and they’re not just relying on one medium, they’ll be more successful in establishing their brand, she said. Consistency also means marketing whether the economy is down or up. “You have to ebb and flow on some level, but for the most part, that consistency is key.”

Beaudry has owned Envision for the last two years, and the two years previous she was an independent contractor working with it on a project management and marketing basis.

Before that, she took a job offered by friends, just to have a job. It was a turning point and a stepping stone for her career, though she did not know it at the time.

She and her husband, Jeff, had moved to Mankato from the Elk River area so he could go back to school. (He’s now a flight instructor.) Her corporate marketing job had been the main income in the family, and even though she had a couple of months’ notice that her layoff was coming, it was still a very stressful time, complete with a lot of soul-searching and reliance on faith to keep her grounded.

Fortunately, she’d gotten to know Michael and Angela Hennek through New Creation Church of Mankato. The couple own 4.0 School Services, which runs school buses in many small districts in southern Minnesota, and Eagles Wings Limousine. At the time, the bus company was expanding from five school districts to eight, adding Tracy, Minneota and Ivanhoe to its existing districts that include Lester Prairie, Glencoe and St. Peter. They needed an “everything person.”

She worked on payroll and the business’ manuals, answered phones, did training, stuffed envelopes, whatever needed to be done.

“At first she was a little frustrated because the job she took with us was more of a downgraded job,” Michael said, “if you look from the corporate end of it, I should say. But never despise the door to the door. The job with us was really a door to her future.”

It was the year and a half working for them that she realized that corporate America was not the only option for her.

“It was this humbling time, but it was also this learning time where, again, you just learn to pick up different things and different skill sets.” She learned the financials and the general operations. She even occasionally drove a bus.

“It kind of goes back to this point that things do always work out. At the time I didn’t say to myself, ‘Well, this will give me good experience to run a small business because I’m going to own my own small business someday.’ ...(But) even rabbit trails can lead to your ultimate destination,” she said. “And believe you me, I thought it was a rabbit trail when I was driving bus.”

Having to be independent in her St. Peter office (the owners’ office is in Webster), was solid on-the-job training for Beaudry. “That was a really good experience for me because, of course, working for a large corporation is very, very different from running your own small business.”

Michael said that people should follow their passion and they’ll find the opportunities, even in these seemingly down times.

“Sometimes the worst times in our lives when we look back are the best for us, he said, “if we keep our head up and learn from all that.”

The Henneks knew Beaudry would be moving on to other things eventually. “They were the ones that encouraged me and said, ‘You know, you’ve been doing this strategic planning and marketing for large corporations. Couldn’t you do this on your own?’ and so it was from that that my independent business launched.”

She’s particularly proud of and rewarded by the way Envision’s ownership transition went, which can be stressful for both the new boss and the employees — even when the employees know the new person taking over. The quality of the company’s work remained at its high standards, she said, and there was no loss of client base with the change.

“We’ve been busier than I thought we would be,” she said. “Our whole focus has been to do really good work, and the projects have followed that.”

For more information on Envision, go to www.thinkenvision.com .