Reflecting on 22 Years of Growth and Leadership with Misty Klobucher

Hello friends, Misty here, and welcome back to Marketing Sweats. What a gift it is to be sitting here with you today. Not many people get the chance to share what I get to share with you in this moment. So I want to start with gratitude, real gratitude for this platform, for this opportunity, and for all of you, my listeners.

You know, when I started this podcast, I never imagined I'd make it to 100 episodes, not even close. And I definitely never imagined that episode 100 would be the last. But here we are, marketing sweats, at least the Misty era of it, is coming to a close. And I've been thinking a lot about that lately, about endings, because endings are strange.

They don't feel final at first. They feel blurry, like you're standing in a doorway with one foot still inside something very familiar and one foot stepping into something you can't quite see yet. And people will ask you what's next, and the honest answer is you don't fully know. You just know something is shifting.

A few weeks ago, I shared that I'll be moving on from Samantha. And with that comes stepping away from this platform, this show, this space that has been one of the greatest gifts of my career. And I don't use that word lightly, gift. Because this wasn't just a podcast.

It was a proving ground, a place where I had to show up consistently, publicly and vulnerably, even when I didn't feel ready or well. I've always said I wanted a talk show, but it wasn't for the spotlight, despite popular belief. No, it was for the stories. I've always been drawn to people, what drives them, what shapes them, what they believe and why.

And this show gave me access to that in a way that I never imagined. But before that, it gave me access to myself. Because somewhere along the way, I found a voice that I didn't know that I had. And if I'm being honest, at the beginning, I wasn't sure it was a voice anyone would want to hear.

There were definitely moments early on where I would record something and listen to it back and think, is this even worth putting out there? And more than that, is anyone going to want to listen to me? But I kept going because something in me knew that if I didn't do it, I would regret it. There's a very specific memory I have of sitting at my kitchen table on a weekend because this show never got done during working hours.

And I remember opening LinkedIn and typing a message to someone I deeply admired, asking them to come on the show, someone I thought that was completely out of reach. I'd write my message, and I'd rewrite it, and I'd overthink it, and I'd rework it half a dozen times, and then I'd hover over send, and I can still feel that moment, that hesitation, that voice in your head that says, don't do it, you're not ready, they won't respond, and then I'd click send anyway, and more often than not, they'd write back and say, sure, let's do it, and just like that, it sounds small, but those moments changed me because they reminded me that the distance between where you are and where you want to be is often just one moment of courage.

So before I go any further, I want to thank you again to every guest who said yes, to every listener who turned in, to every person who shared an episode, sent a note, or stopped me on the street and said, hey, I listened. This show was never just mine or about me. It was built conversation by conversation and moment by moment together. But today I want to do something different.

I want to share my story because April 16th, 2026 marks 22 years for me at Samantle. 22 years. I joined Samantle my senior year of college at 22 years old and I sit in front of you today, now 44, more than two decades later, deeply grateful. When I first walked through these doors, I was still figuring things out, still trying to understand where I fit.

To be honest, I didn't really even know what Samantha was. My friends told me, Misty, it's the best agency around. You should be so honored they invited you on board. And I was.

I was especially grateful to my then boss, Susie Ketter. After one meeting with me, where I was actually the client at the time, serving as an intern in Caterpillar Global Mining, she called me and said, hey, we've been looking for somebody like you? Do you want to come on board? That small invitation to a young woman who didn't yet know her way changed everything.

In that moment, my life took a direction that was desperately needed, and I just didn't know it yet. It wasn't long before I was sitting next to Susie in all the big meetings, watching her, modeling her, admiring her ability to think quickly on her feet, build connections, and inspire the clients she cared about so deeply. One of my first client meetings was for Caterpillar. We were planning Mine Expo 2004.

The room was full of people I thought knew way more than I did. They were more experienced, more confident, more certain, and the room was stuck. We couldn't land on a theme for the show, and I remember sitting there listening, really listening, trying to piece together what everyone was saying, trying to I was like I going to be a little bit more inside of you telling you to say the thing out loud And immediately another voice showed up in my head the one that says no stay quiet You too new You don know enough yet And I sat in that tension probably longer than I needed to, but eventually I said it.

What if the theme is commitment makes the difference? And then silence. And then, yeah, maybe that's it. Months later, I walked into that trade show in Las Vegas and I saw those words, my words, printed across something so big it didn't seem real.

And I remember standing there looking at it thinking, how did I get here? Because just months earlier, I was sitting in a room trying to decide if I should speak up at all. And that moment taught me something I didn't fully understand at the time, but I've carried with me ever since. Sometimes the difference isn't ability or experience.

It's not seniority or title. It's the willingness to say the thing out loud. That moment gave me a word that followed me for 22 years, and that word was commitment. Working at Semanal, I had a deep commitment to the work.

I had a commitment to the people. I had a commitment to growth. And I learned something early, that when you care deeply, the work becomes personal. And when the work becomes personal, it changes you.

My career didn't follow a straight line from there. It evolved. In my 20s, I learned how to work, really work. I was on the road consistently, trade shows, training, events, packing boxes, setting up booths, staying up late, writing event recaps, doing whatever needed to be done.

And I didn't always love it. But I learned from it because I was surrounded by people who expected excellence from me and from themselves. I'm so lucky to have learned from people who modeled a strong work ethic, people who showed me what good looks like and what great requires. Susie used to say, it's not there yet, or that's not it.

And as a young person, I didn't always understand what she meant, but I certainly do now. It's a gift to develop that creative eye so early and be brave enough to call it when you see it. In my 30s, things started to shift. It wasn't just about execution anymore.

It was about thinking. I stepped into research and strategy, into new business, and I started to see patterns. I became very good at bucketing, organizing, and making sense of gobs of information. Susie used to say, creativity is the art of seeing connections.

And man, did I see connections everywhere. I started to understand that this wasn't just about the work in front of me. It was about the systems behind it and the vision in front of it. And around that same time, digital became real.

It was no longer one guy in the basement trying to do the work. It was everywhere. And we realized we were no longer being hired to just do the work. We were being hired to build the systems for how the work would get done.

And that, my friends, was messy. It was unclear and uncomfortable to build this man away from scratch, to take the ways we'd always done things and rethink them entirely. But I sat in those uncomfortable rooms and I led the messy conversations, and I was incredibly grateful for the opportunity because that's when I started to realize that growth doesn't happen when things are stable. It happens when things are uncertain.

And what a lesson that is for the world we live in now. Then, in my late 30s, I stepped into leadership. I remember standing at a whiteboard presenting an idea of a future we could not see yet, and Susie looked at me and she said, hey, who's gonna lead research and strategy? And I said, I don't know.

And she said, well, I think it's you. I was honored in that moment, not because of the title, but because of the belief in me. The belief that I could lead a function of our company called strategy. To me, strategy meant leading and navigating change, helping organizations move when they weren't sure they even wanted to, helping some mantle move when we weren't sure how.

And that's when it clicked for me. My role going forward at this company wasn't going to be about marketing. It wasn't going to be about messaging. It was going to be about building momentum.

helping people move forward, even when it was going to be hard. And then in my 40s, that's when life got bigger than work. There was loss. There was love.

There were moments that forced me to stop and ask, who am I outside of this? Because for so long, Samyano wasn't just where I worked. It was part of who I was. And at some point, that reality forced me to decide how I wanted to evolve, despite what others wanted for me or for themselves.

I realized in my 40s that I was changing, but so was everyone around me. And I decided something that I think matters deeply. You can love your work, but you cannot lose yourself in it. It was around that point that my business partner, Maggie Misselhorn, reached out to me.

In many ways, she took over for Susie. She extended her hand and she said, Misty, you have one life. You get to choose how to live it. And that stayed with me.

Because you have to be intentional. and if you're not, work will take everything you're willing to give it. But through all of this personal growth, Semantle grew too. When I started, we were 22 people and today we're more than 150.

We built capabilities in more than 20 practice areas. We expanded geographically. We evolved who we are to the world. And at some point, I stopped seeing Semantle just as a company and started seeing it as a platform, an engine, if you will.

A place where if you pay attention and you connect ideas and you step forward you can become something you never imagined Personally I rewrote my role every few years not because I had to but because I wanted to because growth was always there within reach So for this, my final episode, what do I wanna leave behind? Well, the truth is, I don't believe any of us are just doing marketing. In fact, we're building careers, we're building companies, we're helping change lives. And all of that is a lot harder than it looks.

there's this idea that I keep coming back to. If you're not pushing something forward in your role or your company or organization, there's a high likelihood that something is pushing back on you. I've always pictured it like a boulder rolling downhill. That boulder doesn't stop.

In fact, it picks up steam if you're not ready to stop it and push it back uphill. It doesn't wait till you're ready. It doesn't slow down because you're tired. It just keeps rolling.

And the only way to push the boulder back to the top of the hill is to decide that you're going to push anyway, no matter how heavy it feels and no matter how fast it's coming for you. And this applies not just to marketing or leadership. It applies to you as a human being. So I want to share some lessons I've picked up along the way that I think about that boulder.

These aren't just lessons about business. They're lessons about how to show up when things are hard, when things are unclear, and when they're changing. They're for anyone who wants to do meaningful work and build a meaningful life. And they aren't polished or perfect, but they're real and they've been hard-earned.

Lesson one, you have to raise your voice. Just as I did when I was 22 years old, Susie would always tell me to be fearless because a lot of people aren't. I've seen it for so long. People sit in rooms, they have a thought, they see the answer, but they stay quiet.

Maybe out of fear, maybe out of self-doubt, maybe because they assume someone else in the room knows better, but I see it on faces when I lead meetings. The problem with this is that fear doesn't stay internal. When other people can feel it in your posture or your tone, it becomes the thing not just holding you back, it holds the room back. So yes, this work, this life, it requires bravery and bravery requires by saying the thing to yourself first, then to another person, then to the room, whatever that room is, your home, your work, your friends, your church, say the thing that no one else will say, and learn to trust that voice because it's coming from a place inside you that matters, a place of deep intention to do the right thing, and that is worth honoring.

Lesson two, you have to do your homework. Early in my career, I had the chance to work with Kevin McConaughey, one of our past owners, to build our research function. My desire to look deeper into what I was being told was innate in me. And quickly, I learned that what seems obvious might not be.

Surface level data or the surface level story will sometimes lie to you. And humans most certainly will too, even unintentionally. What people say is not always true. And it's not always representative of what they'll do when push comes to shove.

Through that work, I learned that attempts to simplify something too early are just edits before you're ready to edit. Later as an owner, I had to learn a whole host of legal and financial topics that required me to go down rabbit holes I never expected. And usually easy answers didn't solve real problems. So yes, I've been told I go too deep.

I'm too detailed. I'm too complex. But my feeling is that that's where truth lies, underneath it all. So if you're not willing to go there, you may not actually be willing to solve the real problem.

Lesson three, you have to work hard. There's no version of this work, especially in agency life where you don't. The idea of work smarter, not harder sounds great, but it's probably incomplete because this kind of work requires both philosophies. It takes time, energy, and reps.

It takes showing up again and again, even when it would be easier not to. My team teases me for waking up at four in the morning, and that's fair. But I really do believe you have to put in more hours than the average human if you want to keep up in a business like this. Number four, work is personal.

I know firsthand that some analytes care so much about the work, and some of us internalize it deeply. I don't always think that's a bad thing. I fight against the story that making your work part of your identity is automatically wrong. We spend more time at work than in almost any other dimension of our lives.

It allows us to use our gifts and actualize them. So don't buy into the belief that your work or your creative thoughts are something you always have to compartmentalize because the moment your work stops being personal is the moment you disconnect from the outcome. And when that happens, the work loses something and you do too. Lesson five, as Maggie once told me, you have one precious life.

Yes, work hard. Yes, care deeply. But remember this, work that doesn't fit your value system will take everything you're willing to give it. It'll happen slowly and quietly until one day you look up and realize something important is missing.

So decide early on what matters most to you and protect it above all else. Even if it's not your natural tendency, set a boundary so strong that if necessary, it protects you from yourself. And then go after the life you really want ruthlessly Lesson six make cool shit I always believed this business is built on the passions of our people Never question whether you should create or explore something new that inspires you Try things that have nothing to do with your title or your role, because creativity doesn't come from repetition.

It comes from living, experiencing, experimenting, sharing with other people. Ask for permission sometimes, but mostly make it part of your process. No one owns your creative process but you. Lesson seven, define your own leaders.

If there's one thing this business has taught me, it's that someone has to decide. Things do not work well by committee forever. Someone has to take responsibility. Someone has to do the hard thing, even when it's unpopular.

But sometimes leaders appear in places you aren't looking. Sometimes the leader is the client. Sometimes it's the teammate. Sometimes it's the person quietly carrying the truth in the room.

Sometimes it's you. And keep in mind, you don't always have to like the person you choose to follow, but you do have to respect them, believe in their ideas, and help them execute. Lesson eight, seek advice. This one is simple.

The moment you think you've got it all figured out, you don't. There's always going to be someone that knows more than you do. and the faster you surround yourself with people who challenge you, the better you get. If I could do it all over again, I'd probably establish a seminal board of directors made up of people who truly lived and worked in places beyond Peoria.

Instead, I built my own board of mentors and I met with them weekly. They are what kept me strong in the hardest of times. So build your board. Lesson nine, plan ahead, but stay flexible.

No one on this planet loves a good vision setting meeting like Misty. In the past few years, I've pushed our organization to think longer than 12 months and then shorten their execution cycles down to as small as humanly possible. Heck, I've even encouraged people to think about impossible dreams just to see what would happen. But what I've learned is this.

Things change, people change, and you'll change too. And if you hold on too tightly to one version of your future, you'll miss the one that's trying to unfold. So commit yourself to the outcomes of your work, but trust that the outcomes of your life have infinite possibility, and more than one version of that life can be good. And finally, lesson 10.

Break the rules. Because they're all made up anyway. Every process, every system, every this is how it's always been done, all of it was created by a human being. One just as flawed and no smarter than you.

So question it. Be willing to drive outside the bright white lines you've created in your brain. And when necessary, rewrite the rules. Be on the right side of history.

And be brave enough to say when humanity has to trump the corporation. People matter more than process, always. And here's one more lesson, a bonus, if you will. Leadership, marketing, and strategy, they're not separate anymore.

They are the same conversation. If you want a seat at that table, you have to be willing to step into all of it. I was in a meeting the other day, and a leader I trusted and admired said, leadership is marketing at its core. And another leader I admired said, no, leadership is strategy at its core, because strategy comes first.

The truth is, they were both right. Before I close, thank you. To the people who built this with me, who supported it, who believed in it, who made it possible, I have to give a special shout out to Chris Main, my consummate creative director, the man who wiped glycerin and dirt on my face and custom carved cardboard wings for my little girl. Chris, you always saw and supported my dreams.

You made this possible. And of course, Carrie, my producer, who held this together for so many years. The show started in 2020 and she came on board somewhere around episode 30 and has been with me ever since. Patience is this woman's middle name.

I'm forever grateful. And finally, Maggie Misselhorn. You named the show. You told me that spending time with Misty was kind of like a workout, and thus the term Marketing Sweats was born.

For anyone who works with me in a future life, you'll probably be completely exhausted at the end of our time together, but you'll be really glad you took the time. So what's next? Well, For Semantle, I hope this show continues because great things evolve. And for me, well, I'm just getting started.

You'll find me at mistydasheffect.com for now. Still doing all the things I love, hopefully with new people, new teams, and new clients. You'll also find me with my little girls.

I'll be at way too many dance competitions and gymnastics meets. But as time allows, I hope we can also travel the world. And as we round out the show today, I want to leave you with this. that boulder, it's not going away.

Life doesn't stop pushing. The question is, will you push back? Will you speak up? Will you step forward?

Will you do the thing before you feel ready? Because maybe the difference is simply having the courage to say it out loud. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being a part of this.

And thank you for 22 incredible years. We'll see you next time.