Mel Ohlinger:  I am a carwash marketing agency. It is growing so quickly. I went from being one person to 9 now. We are growing more than I ever expected. Especially with the pandemic. I opened 2 years ago October.

RM: Who do you serve, who is your target audience? 

MO:  My clients are carwashes and carwash manufactures. They are the people who make the support equipment for the carwashes like the actual carwash or chemical suppliers. 

RM: What has been the greatest impact COVID 19 has had on your business?

MO:  We were in the middle of the tradeshow rush. For the carwash industry, the major tradeshow is called the Carwash Show. We had just been finishing up a lot of the printed items and designs, and once it was announced that it would be cancelled, a lot of the things we had already made didn’t go to print so it was switching everything over to be for design only. Helping all the clients downsize as quickly as possible. I just thought that was a start of a couple of quiet months. We had like two quiet weeks, and then the calls started coming in.

RM: What actions (pivots) have you taken to make a difference?

MO:  I hired people. Before that, I was just doing it on my own. Once I got all those orders, I reached out to some people I used to work with and asked if they were interested in taking on additional projects. We went from being a team of me to a team of 4 within a couple of weeks. That was something I was completely unprepared for. I had never seen myself as a boss kind of person. I am a very silly person, and I don’t like hurting people’s feelings. I ended up working with a business coach. After all that, the consensus is bosses can be all different kinds of people.

RM: It has been said that smart people learn from their mistakes and wise people learn from the mistakes of others. What mistakes did you make along the way, that other entrepreneurs can learn from?

MO:  One of things is that I priced my things way too low. I had priced things for one person working on something. I should have priced things out from the beginning to accommodate more than one person. I had to do price hikes which was not something I had wanted to do right away. None of my customers noticed, but I felt terrible. Another thing that I wished I had done from the beginning was set up a file system. Now, going through and organizing things, is going to take months. Develop some sort of organized system.

RM: What is most inspiring to you today?

MO:  I started off in art. I went into the Navy because I was told going into Art School was a waste. Then, when I was in the military, all of my promotions were around making murals, photography. I figured if I could get promoted in the Navy for art, when I got out, I would go to Art School. I did. I graduated, and the whole time I was working. In all those jobs too, the same thing kept happening. I would get promoted for something creative. I realized that this was what I was meant to do.   

Contact Mel Ohlinger.  www.ruleofdesigninc.com

Offer: Go to the website and submit your artwork by 5-31-2021 to enter to compete for a $1000 art commission.