We had the good fortune of connecting with Nikki Garrison and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Nikki, have there been any changes in how you think about work-life balance?
My husband and I worked for over 10 years in the tech startup world. We like to say that startup years are like dog years. After years of focusing on growing startups that relied heavily on millions of investment dollars for success (often from big investors who wanted their say), we decided in 2019 to refocus our business on something we had a bit more control over and that aligned more with our values.

We’ve always been small business owners, but changing our customer base from Silicon Valley investors to small business owners has been a game changer. Small business owners understand what it takes to put everything into what you do. They understand that balance is a must to prevent burnout.

Small business owners, whether they’re plumbers, therapists, or own the neighborhood bakery you love, at some point, they all had to make that decision to take the leap of faith and invest in themselves. Chances are they’ve had to make that decision to keep going more than once. We all have.

This is why balance and boundaries matter so much to us as small business owners. Burnout is real, especially today. I believe that mental health care is health care. I don’t buy into the whole “if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life” thing. I love what I do, so I work twice as hard to make sure I do a great job for our customers. Their success is our success. I find that most small business owners have similar mindsets. When you’re passionate about what you do, it’s easy to get locked in and not come up for air.

Some of the hard boundaries we’ve set for ourselves are:
– Set business hours – Even though we work from home, we have set business hours and don’t work outside those hours.
– Dedicated work environment – We have a dedicated space where work gets done. I know not everyone has the option for a dedicated home office. But having a dedicated space, even if it’s just a specific chair you sit in for work to get done, is a great way to put you in “work mode”.
– Value your time – This means don’t give it away for free. Time is valuable for business owners and it can be easy to get stuck on a phone call for an hour. If everyone got an hour of your time for free, when would work get done?
– No weekends – Our weekends are Saturday and Sunday. Your weekend can be Monday and Tuesday. Whenever it is, take time off and actually take it off!
– Turn off work email on my phone – I’m pretty good about not needing to actually handle something if I see an email, but I still have this compulsion of needing to know what’s going on during off hours. So, to combat that I just turn my work email off on my phone during off hours.
– No shop talk during off hours – This one applies heavily to us as a husband and wife team. We’ve worked together long enough to know that if we start talking about work when we’re not working, we’ll start working. So, we just save it for work hours.

What should our readers know about your business?
I’m an elder millennial. My generation literally built the Internet. As a kid, I used encyclopedias and typewriters to do my homework. I played outside and used my imagination. So, I’m definitely resourceful! Then, somewhere between high school and college, this Internet thing happened, Google was invented, and MySpace taught me how to code. So, I KNOW the Internet. I grew up alongside the Internet. It’s like an old friend and like any old friend, I understand what makes it tick. I speak its language. I know how to feed the monster that is the big, bad algorithm. Spoiler alert, it’s not that big or bad. I actually kinda like it.

I was a Secondary Education – English major in college. So, I wanted to be a high school English teacher. I did my practicum teaching and realized…maybe teenagers aren’t for me. 🤣 But teaching and English…that part is super fun! Around that same time, I was working for another big startup, that wound up turning into a multi-billion-dollar IPO. They needed help with training and since I was in school to be a teacher, I was tagged in. I developed their corporate training department. I loved that I was still able to teach, but didn’t need a teenage translator.

In true startup fashion, they also asked if I could help with marketing. I’d never done anything having to do with marketing. I was going to be a teacher. I knew nothing about marketing. They said they’d teach me. Back then, marketing was all tradeshows and radio spots. We had a website, but it was maybe one page and people only visited it to get the phone number. The basics of good marketing haven’t changed though. People buy from companies they trust. I loved this. Marketing was basically psychology and the further into the digital age we got, the more trust became important.

Digital marketing or inbound marketing, whatever you want to call it, is a whole different world with many branches. There’s social media, which I know is a must but I’m terrible at. Web design, which my husband is a genius at and I’m OK at best. Email marketing, PPC ads…the list goes on. My loves are SEO and copywriting, which are heavily tied together. I started learning SEO in 2016 and it just immediately clicked for me. Sure there are technical bits to it, but for the most part, it’s just about teaching search engines, which is something I love. I get to employ my writing and teaching skills to help small businesses get found online. I know it sounds nerdy, but I really do enjoy it. As a bonus, I now teach small business owners how to do their own SEO. This is the perfect fit for me.

We love supporting small business. As a small business ourselves, we understand what it takes to put your heart and soul, not to mention your family’s livelihood, into what you do. We don’t take it lightly and consider it a privilege that our customers choose Garrison Agency to partner with to help grow their business. In a world where building trust can be an uphill battle, we’re proud to help honest small businesses get noticed online and legitimately become giddy with each and every victory our customers experience.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Great question! My mom is visiting in a couple of months and though we probably won’t hit all of these, our dream itinerary would go something like this, in no particular order:

– Massages with Angie at IT Massage & Bodywork
– Cakepops from Silver Rose Bakery
– Coffee from 32 Shea
– Book shopping at Changing Hands Bookstore and Bookmans Entertainment Exchange
– Botanical Gardens
– Phoenix Zoo
– Hiking Papago Park

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
My aunt Keeb is my hero. She passed away in 2012 after a long battle with breast cancer. Before that, she was a first-grade teacher for 32 years. She taught me that every person is worthy of dignity and kindness, even if we don’t agree on everything or if they’re different from me. She taught me that if you’re going to do something, do it right. She taught me to never stop learning. She’s the one who introduced me to libraries and cultivated my love of reading from a young age. I could write a book about all the things she taught me. If I turn out to be half the woman or leave half the legacy she did, I’ll count that as a win.

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