The Power of Environment in Business Success: Featuring Michele Tonkovitz, CEO/Founder of Green Onion Creative

In this episode of the Ag 45 Soul Aligned Strategy Podcast, host Katherine Breuss speaks with Michele Tonkovitz, owner of Green Onion Creative. Michele shares her journey from being inspired by her media-buyer aunt to owning a strategic and creative marketing firm. She emphasizes the crucial role of a positive environment in both personal and professional life, recounting her experiences with a less-than-ideal advertising agency and the importance of surrounding oneself with uplifting relationships. Michele discusses achieving business alignment, the impact of intrinsic motivation, and the significance of building a supportive team. She also offers advice for business owners about the value of networking, hiring the right people, and focusing on one's ‘why’ to make the entrepreneurial journey more fulfilling and successful. 

Find Michele - https://www.greenonioncreative.com/ 

 

[00:00:52] Katherine Breuss: welcome Michele Tonkovitz to the Strategy Line podcast with AG 45. Uh, you are from Green Onion Creative, and I would love for you, Michele, if you could share with audience a little bit about you, but also your amazing business. Well, thank you much Katherine, for having me on the podcast. 

[00:01:14] Michele Tonkovitz: This is very exciting. Um, I am currently the owner of Green Onion Creative. I started my strategic and creative marketing firm rooted here in Milwaukee back in September of 2013. But my passion for marketing and advertising started when I was eight years old because my aunt was a media buyer here in the Milwaukee area, and we got to go to the Wisconsin Dells theme parks. 

Um, the lucky Admirals games, she always got tickets to events. She got to meet Mr. T and Jay Leno back in the eighties. And as a child of the eighties, I was  this is the coolest thing ever. You get to do this for your job. I want that to be my job when I grow up. Yeah. And I took my passion for creative writing as a child and had that man out my career path as I was going through high school, going through college. 

Going through the different jobs until one day I sat at my table after leaving an advertising agency and going, I don't know if I wanna do this anymore, because I didn't enjoy that last advertising agency environment that I was in. Hmm. I thought about taking a career shift until my phone started ringing and people were asking, Hey, can you write a flyer? 

Hey, we have somebody going out on maternity leave. Can you fill in, do our social media? We need public relations, media relations, and that's how the green onion started growing. It's from people in my network who I worked with, either as clients or colleagues along the way, and it's through them and their belief in me that the onions here today. 

[00:02:50] Katherine Breuss: The onion. I love it. And  and funny, Mr. T, I have not heard that name in a very long time, but I remember that the A team. Yes. Oh my God. For those of you who are too young to know that you go online and look up the A team. Well, who doesn't know who that is. Yeah, I know. Um, gee, I  I'm glad you brought up something. 

Because this is, how I see it's a key component to being aligned. You mentioned your environment and the, the environment of the last place you worked in, the last agency you worked in didn't align with you. So can you share a little bit more in terms of the impact of our environment and how that can create or destroy what we want? 

[00:03:44] Michele Tonkovitz: Absolutely. the environment that you're around, whether it's personally or professionally, impacts every bit of your being. Because if you are in a place that makes you feel icky, that you can't focus, that you feel restricted, that that people are talking outta both sides of their mouths, you are not going to feel good within yourself. 

You're not gonna feel good within the work that you're doing. I am such a relationship builder, right? And if I don't have a good relationship with my coworkers, the space that I'm in, the people that we're doing the work for, I'm not proud of the product that I'm pushing out. the same thing holds true in our personal lives. 

Sometimes it can feel more of a. Oh, you're being tied to certain environments because of tradition or family or your ability to financially get out of the situation. But you also need to step back and look at yourself, and this is a journey that I'm also going on from a personal level of there are brighter things, better things, things I deserve, that I want, that I need and I can get them. 

And  Basically with your personal life and your professional life coming together and making sure that you're having positive environments in both. I, I know for myself that anything is possible in my future. 

[00:05:16] Katherine Breuss: Yeah, and, and you're a hundred percent on when you talk about that alignme