This week on Own It we’re talking to Kristen O’Neall of Mirage Media. She came up through the account services side of the business and founded Mirage Media last year.
Kristen is an admitted workaholic and is passionate about being a strategic visionary for her clients.
We had such a fun conversation about her journey, her influences and her thoughts on the state of gender balance in advertising agency ownership. She is so energetic and smart. We learned a lot from this conversation. We're sure you will as well.
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Kristen comes from a fifth-generation line of entrepreneurs, deeply influencing her journey and approach to business ownership. This background, including witnessing her parents build their home inspection company, instilled in her the value of hard work, leadership, and understanding the importance of every lead.
Kristen learned early in life, by observing her father's dedication to answering every phone call for his home inspection business, the immense value of each potential client. This experience shaped her philosophy of managing client budgets as carefully as her parents' bank account, ensuring every marketing dollar is treated with utmost importance.
While delivering excellent results (high ROAs, lower cost per click, brand awareness) is a given for her agency, Kristen emphasizes a higher benchmark: making clients' lives better, faster, and easier. Her "North Star" is to be their favorite meeting of the week, going beyond typical KPIs to provide exceptional service and genuinely improve their clients' overall well-being and success.
Kristen shares that her first year as an agency owner, while a dream come true professionally, was also the hardest emotionally due to a significant personal loss. This experience revealed her deep resilience and capacity to continue leading and building her company amidst profound grief, highlighting the internal strength required for entrepreneurship.
Kristen argues that simply having more women owners in a "broken system" within the advertising industry is not enough. She advocates for changing the system itself, discarding old ideals, and fostering a collaborative environment rather than a scarcity mindset. This involves actively mentoring and supporting the next generation, sharing mistakes and resources to empower them to "do better."
