Kristin Stith, vice president of marketing at Bristlecone Holdings (@BristleconeHold) & 2013 MBA graduate from the University of Nevada, Reno, spoke at our Personal Branding class (led by professor Bret Simmons) on Tuesday about job hunting, marketing, grass roots movements, job changes & city-wide rebrandings.

Kristin’s got an awesome story. I actually knew of her name in a former life while covering her little sister, Katie Stith, as a catcher on the Wolf Pack softball team while I was a sports reporter for The Nevada Sagebrush.

Kristin moved to Reno in 2003 to play second base on the Nevada softball team, and a few years later, she had a decorated career on the team as well as bachelor’s degrees in Speech Communication & Marketing. After moving back home to Orange County to “find herself” after college, she moved back to Reno to start her MBA – with no job and no clear direction of where she wanted to be.

Once she was accepted into the program, she eventually landed in Dr. Simmons’ (@DrBret) Personal Branding class where she began to blog about small businesses in Reno…little did she know, this class blog (http://kristinmstith.com/) would launch her career.

Kristin started interviewing local businesses to ask about their story. She would then post their stories on her blog, and then market it out through her social media platforms. All the meanwhile, these businesses would retweet her, re-blog her, and link back to her content. She was making a name for herself in the Northern Nevada scene.

“After a while, businesses were starting to contact me & ask to be interviewed, instead of the other way around,” she recalled.

All the meanwhile, she started making connections, building a network and creating deeply embedded relationships in the community, something she credits her now eventual success to.

Eventually, all of this good content she was putting out led to gigs managing social media accounts for various businesses in the area, she said.

And in August 2012, she was officially brought on board with the Dolan Auto Group where she managed Marketing & Community Outreach for one of the area’s largest volume dealers.

Photo Credit: Brian Cooper (@ACT_In_Mind)

While at Dolan, Kristin says she was approached by Abbi Whitaker (@AbbiJayne), owner of The Abbi Agency – a digital marketing agency in Reno. Abbi invited Kristin to attend a meeting of some of the ‘who’s who’ when it came to Northern Nevada media and influencers.

“I looked around this room & saw some amazing photographers, journalists, key marketing people – and I kept asking myself, ‘What am I doing here?'” Kristin recalled.

Abbi called the meeting for one reason: To re-brand Reno.

Abbi was tired of the bad rap Reno had, the bad images that came to mind when ‘Reno’ was mentioned, the ‘Reno 911‘ references, all the ‘worst’ lists Reno made – there was more to this city & she wanted to get the message out. And most of the people in that room jumped on board and got to work.

They revived the moniker “Biggest Little City” (@BigLittleReno) and aimed at totally rebranding Reno’s image – and Kristin was heavily involved in the outreach efforts.

“Anyone who would hear us out, we would go talk to them,” she said. “No matter if it was two people or hundreds – we just wanted to get the message out about the great things happening in Reno and highlight some of the amazing stuff around here.

Lo and behold, the movement gained traction and Reno has got on the #BiggestLittleCity train. The movement is still ongoing daily, and Kristin says the Biggest Little City team – comprised of a couple dozen committed & driven volunteers – can’t truly measure it’s success since, “The best things can’t be measured,” but from the response of the community and image at large of the city, she said the campaign has been tremendously prosperous and will continue.

Now, Kristin has recently joined Bristlecone Holdings, a powerful startup that specializes in niche market financing for furniture & pets.

 Now, all that being said, one major point stuck out to me about Kristin’s presentation to our class.
(This was my absolutely favorite message she conveyed):

Be Opportunistic!

Kristin came back to Reno to enroll in the MBA program at UNR without any idea of what was to come. She bartended while in college, but when she enrolled in Simmons’ class and was given a chance to blog on anything she wanted, she took that opportunity and ran with it.

Kristin didn’t know what she was going to do with an MBA when she joined the program. She didn’t know what her career was going to be. She didn’t know what starting a little class blog was going to end up in. But she was OK with the process being emergent & she worked HARD to maximize every opportunity that came her way.

Even though she tried to downplay her work ethic, it shone through everything else & I loved that about her speech.

She developed a personal brand as THE voice for local businesses.

How many of us would take that course assignment and just blog about something irrelevant or something that would get us a passing grade? How many of us would’ve done what was required, just to get by?

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Kristin took this opportunity and blew it out of the water. She says she was sometimes doing 5 interviews on local business per week while she upkeeping this class blog. She called it a ‘full-time job.’ She took a small window of opportunity and made a name for herself in a developing & thriving community.

“I just put my head to the ground and worked,” she said.

THAT’S why she’s successful.

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Love your story, Kristin, keep rocking it!

Have you met Kristin or have you come across the #BiggestLittleCity movement? I’d love to hear your comments below!

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