This month I was honored to be interviewed by VoyageMIA Magazine as part of their Local Stories series. Below is the content of the interview. Read the full article here.
Today we’d like to introduce you to Diane Moura.
Diane, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I spent the first 26 years of my career in the corporate world, working and consulting with 30 of the Fortune 500 on their business and marketing strategies. I always worked closely with new technologies, and although I wouldn’t call myself technical, today I like to tell people that in addition to speaking English, French and Portuguese, “Tech” is my 4th language! I have always loved seeing the transformational impact of technology applied to business. What I find really exciting today is that many of the powerful tools that were only available to deep-pocketed corporations when I worked with them are now within the financial reach of small businesses.
My corporate career gave me the opportunity to travel to 26 countries, work in ten and live in three. My work brought me to the top of the Pyramid of the Sun just outside of Mexico City, to a cliff in Melbourne where baby penguins awaited the return of their parents from the sea, and to a view of Piccadilly Circus from my apartment window. I have seen first hand the highly unique cultures within each Latin American country, the incredible loyalty and attention to detail of Indian project teams when you know how to communicate with them, and the efficiency of global teams being able to effectively work close to a 24-hour day when work is properly handed off. I have learned business at scale.
But when my daughter was young I made a life choice. One day she had her little friend stay for a sleepover. As they looked out the window and saw the “wishing star”, my daughter told her friend that she wished for her mommy to stop traveling. At that moment I realized what had been bubbling up for some time. I did not have her so she could grow up without me while I was on the road each week. It was time to “retire” from corporate life and start something new.
As I became more local, I found that small business owners kept coming to me for guidance. I was being pulled toward something important. As I thought back to my undergrad when I was named to lead the small business consulting program at my University in Canada, I realized that was probably the most fun I ever had in a job. I started to build ZenChange Marketing, first with just me doing consulting, but as clients needed help with implementing websites and technology, I brought on team members to help. We have now grown into a full-service marketing firm, offering marketing services from deep strategy through to execution of all things marketing for small businesses and startups.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Despite months of planning, the day I walked away from my highly compensated corporate job to launch my own business was exciting but incredibly scary. I knew business at scale, but now I had to master business at no scale. I had to figure out what services to offer, how much to charge, how to find clients, and what help I would need to deliver. I have incredible empathy for people who go from side hustle to entrepreneur. It’s a huge step that is so demanding on so many levels. I feel grateful for how emotionally supportive my husband was through the process. He gave me the space to figure things out, while periodically jumping in with reality checks when I needed them.
Having gone through the process of climbing the corporate ladder to starting over and scaling a company, I really understand how passion must be your fuel, but it takes hiring talented people, establishing effective processes, finding the right tools and being really focused on internal and external communications to make it all work. I work with small business owners every day and it’s common to see them struggle with either getting their footing or with scaling to the next level. We have a #1 company value at ZenChange. We call it “No BS”. It applies to ourselves and sometimes delivering tough messages to our clients when that’s what it will take to help them. Tough love is sometimes the best thing you can do for someone.
ZenChange Marketing – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
Strategy workshops, business & marketing plans, web design, social media, SEO, paid ads, writing, branding, graphic design, you name it. We’re a full-service agency—a one-stop-shop. For many of our clients, we become their outsourced marketing department. For others, we simply start with a workshop, website project or monthly social media. There are many agencies that specialize in specific areas of marketing, but we have put together a team of vetted individuals in all facets of the industry. Our social media experts are influencers, our writers have “bestseller” attached to their work, and our strategists have taken startups and brought them into fruition on numerous occasions. We like to think of ourselves as an in-house marketing solution for companies who would otherwise not have the budget for one.
We’re unique in that we care about our client’s business as though it were our own. We have a real passion for helping entrepreneurs and startups to achieve their goals of growing and scaling. Our entire mindset is focused on the idea that in order for our company to succeed, our clients’ companies must succeed. We work one-on-one with owners and executives to create a unique strategy based on proven concepts in their field. We take a consultative approach to each client, knowing no two clients will have the same needs. We have agonized over our team makeup, processes, tools and communications in order to create a marketing experience for our clients that truly is positive and different from what they can experience anywhere else.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
I always find that to be an interesting question because each mistake and a hard lesson I have had along the way has made me that much stronger and more passionate about what I do. Hindsight is always 20/20 and with the benefit of that knowledge, I think I would have found a way to hire more experienced talent sooner. When the right people bring their talents to your company, their ideas contribute to growth in ways that you may not have foreseen. That and I wouldn’t have had our prices so ridiculously low at the beginning! We’re priced really fairly now and have options for every budget but at one point we were delivering platinum level services for bronze-level prices. Not only is that not sustainable, but clients actually appreciate you less.
What Were You Like Growing Up?
It was pretty boring I think! I grew up in Ottawa, Canada in the quiet, safe suburbs. I walked to school every day from Kindergarten through High School, rode my bike on weekends during our all-too-short summers, and had a small circle of friends, several of whom lived on the same street. We had a really multi-cultural neighborhood and I was never aware that prejudice existed until I moved to the U.S. in my early 30s. I always did my homework and did well in school. My mom stayed home so she was always there when I returned from school.
I was an only child and it wasn’t like today where parents get their kids involved in a ton of activities so it was a bit lonely at times. I was pretty active though–swimming classes every weekend and then cross-country skiing in the winter, but I wasn’t what I would call athletic. When I was 16 we got our first dog and I got into competitive obedience training, which meant driving to different cities on weekends and practicing every afternoon. I became the youngest person in the country to complete the highest achievable level of competition without error. Maybe that’s where my competitive streak began!
I was the first person in my family to get a university education. I couldn’t afford to leave Ottawa but received a need-based scholarship, which on top of the highly tax-subsidized Canadian education system, meant that I paid almost nothing for school and could live at home. Bonus! I did a business undergrad in marketing and technology and dreamed that IBM would come knocking on my door to hire me before I graduated. Well, it actually turned out to be their largest competitor who did the knocking so I finished off my last year of school part-time while working full time, and they even paid for all of it, plus later my MBA. I know I freaked my mom out as she was really worried I wouldn’t complete my degree, but I’ve always had the type of tenacity (stubbornness perhaps?) that makes me finish what I start.
My mom made it to my graduation, but barely, as she had been battling breast cancer and I lost her a month before Christmas that same year. Her death hit me really hard as we had been very close and I thought of her as my best friend. Time does heal but it took many years before I could talk about her without tearing up. Her influence remains with me to this day though which is why I’m such a health nut, have strong spiritual beliefs and why home and family are so important to me.