Mitchell Group Resolves to Have Successful 2009

Elise Mitchell, founder, president and CEO of Mitchell Communications Group, loves making New Year’s resolutions. It’s a way to set the bar, she said, and the perfect time to ask yourself if you are accomplishing all that you set out to accomplish.

So when the time came to make a resolution for 2008, Mitchell thought about the small public relations firm she started in 1995 and what she wanted it to become.

“We grew so fast, we never really had time to sit down and discuss, to think about what we wanted to create with the company,” she said. “I wanted 2008 to be the year we figured it out.”

The first step, Mitchell said, was to determine what MCG is as a company.

The staff held a retreat in 2008 to identify the company’s short- and long-term goals and come up with a mission statement.

COO Michael Clark said staff members looked at the company’s strengths and weaknesses and came up with the tagline: relationships, reputations, results.

“That’s what we’re doing every day,” Clark said. “We’re helping the client build relationships, improve its reputation and get better business results.”

The company also realized the value in establishing long-term relationships with fewer clients.

“That’s really been our model for success,” Mitchell said.

So with a stronger sense of self and an enhanced brand, MCG starts 2009 with a new Web site, five additional employees and a new office space.

Mitchell started the company out of her home with one client. The group now works out of offices in the Garrison Financial Building in downtown Fayetteville and has 12 full-time employees.

MCG works with clients such as Southwestern Energy Co. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. The company’s revenue has grown by an average of 53 percent for the past nine years.

In 2008, Mitchell made the decision to expand the company’s services to include professional training and development in addition to public relations, advertising and production.

Combining Talents

In December, MCG bought Executive Communications Consultants, a training company started by Mitchell and Blake Woolsey in 2001.

Mitchell said the consulting business was a side venture that eventually grew into a full-time operation, serving many of the same large corporate clients as MCG.

“The business needed more support, we had to make a decision at that point,” she said.

The decision was to bring the two companies under one roof and bring Woolsey on as the director of training and facilitation.

Woolsey has experience in public speaking, media training, team building and executive coaching. She previously worked with the University of Arkansas as the director of development, helping to secure a $50 million gift from the Walton Family Charitable Support Foundation in 1998.

Since last fall, MCG has doubled the training and facilitation services offered and organized them by tracks into a professional training series called ProFound.

With clients such as Tyson Foods and J.B. Hunt, the company offers training sessions designed to impact job performance, enhance leadership skills and improve organizational effectiveness. The company also offers one-on-one coaching for individuals in communication skills.

Learning to communicate effectively is often the key to improving the organization, Woolsey said.

The most popular service since the company’s inception is still the full-day session on public speaking.

Woolsey said there is a process involved in helping clients improve their organization and it starts with knowing the company, who they are and what they do.

“We want to know the client before we walk in the door,” she said.

She looks at whether or not the company has its business strategies defined, has identified its strengths and weaknesses.

She uses the same four-step process used by MCG: research, planning, implementation and evaluation.

Once a training session is over, Woolsey said the company always follows up with the client to see if they are applying the methods they were taught.

“We go back and look to see if we moved the needle,” Clark added. “We started here, we implemented our plan — did the needle move?

“Are we seeing results based on the work we’ve done up to this point, did we do our job, and if not, how do we change the plan to make it more effective?”

Getting results is the best part of the job, Clark said.

“Watching the clients be successful with the ideas we offer them, that’s the satisfaction I get from this,” he said.

Tracking Trends

In both sides of the business, Mitchell said the group is able to help their clients by identifying and understanding current trends

Several of their clients have been dealing with the issue of hiring from the new generation of young workers so MCG decided to conduct a series of focus groups with young professionals in order to research the issue. The result is a white paper on the subject called “Tapping Top Young Talent.”

The article, which is posted on the company’s Web site, provides recommendations to clients, including how to make the workplace more creative, how to create a stronger corporate culture and how to invest in professional development.

MCG is also closely monitoring the new methods of communication, including social and professional networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Clients have also expressed interest in learning to navigate the world of blogs, Web sites and podcasts.

“We find a lot of our clients are asking ‘How do I harness the world of digital media?'” Mitchell said.

Another issue the company is closely tracking is the current economic climate and how to advise their clients during a downturn while also making sound decisions for themselves.

Mitchell said she was inspired by an article she read last year in the McKinsey Quarterly titled “Learning to Love Recessions.”

The article examined companies that went through the recession of 1990 and 1991 and either remained industry leaders or became more successful.

The companies that emerged stronger “pressed their advantages” during the recession.

They didn’t live too high during good times, Mitchell said, but found a middle ground where they were comfortable making decisions. They invested more in research and development, in new innovative technology and looked at other companies to acquire.

“It made me feel better to know that other companies at a different time had faced a difficult climate and prevailed,” she said.

Mitchell said she feels like MCG has followed that model and made strategic investments.

“We feel like 2009 is going to be a great year for us,” she said.