Meet a Member: Taylor Bartosiewicz

Taylor Bartosiewicz is a marketing associate at Yeo & Yeo in Saginaw, Michigan. Taylor’s firm has 250 employees across nine offices in Michigan. Watch or read this month’s Meet a Member to learn more about what Taylor is currently working on at her firm and what she is planning for 2023.

Rachael: Good. The topic for this month’s Minute is about marketing, strategy and planning. So tell us about your department structure and how you go about creating a marketing strategy.

Taylor: We have six members of our marketing team, including myself and a part-time intern. And our firm’s strategy is what guides our marketing team strategy. So every five years, our firm leadership—partners and presidents—get together, and they develop a plan for what they want the next five years to look like. They develop goals and champions and different tasks that they think will help grow our firm and make us a better firm for our people and our clients and our overall communities, too. So we actually just finished strategic planning for the next five years for our 2026 strategic plan in January. We solidified everything, and we identified three aspects that we want to focus on as a firm: our people, our clients and growth overall. Some of the things that we’re focusing on specifically for 2022 that align with those goals are recruiting, training, DEI, innovation and M&A. These overall firm goals are what we use as a marketing team to determine what we need to focus on for the year and what strategy that we need to have to support those goals and move us along on our strategic plan.

Rachael: So based on that information, what were your priorities for 2022? And have they changed a lot for next year?

Taylor: For 2022, it’s recruiting, training, innovation, M&A and there’s a few others, but those are some of the bigger ones. As far as what we’ve done, for example, for recruiting, we created three recruiting videos that we pushed out on our website and on our social media platforms, and we also launched a campus recruiting web page. We hired a new recruiter, too. So we’re building that whole department up so that we can be at more events, be at universities, at campuses, meeting people and prospective people to join the firm. So that’s one thing we’ve done specifically for recruiting, but going into 2023, we’re adding a few other goals on top of that. Retention is one of them, and then a focus on BD culture —continuing that mindset of growth and growing our practice through business development. Our are people reaching out to clients and learning how to sell our business.

Rachael: So do you have any people on staff or is it the marketing department’s responsibility to help educate the staff?

Taylor: We have some specialization within our marketing department. One of our team members is actually dedicated 100% to business development. So she does a lot of one-on-ones with our people, a lot of coaching. She teaches them how to ask difficult questions as well as how to look at a client and ways to see that they might need other services. Like maybe they have a really big financial portfolio. And right now we’re doing just their financial statements when we could be doing financial planning for them or wealth management for them. So she helps our people connect those dots. And she’s a really great asset to our firm for sure. She’s guiding a lot of that BD, but also working with other champs in the firm, other principles to move that along to.

Rachael: What is the biggest project you’re working on right now?

Taylor: Our biggest project relates to our strategic plan. We’re doing a huge brand refresh, so we are getting a whole new look for all of Yeo & Yeo: new colors, new logo, new imagery, new everything—except the name, essentially. It’s a really big undertaking, but it’s really fun. We get to reinvent who we are, to some degree, and reposition ourselves so that we’re approachable, we’re friendly. We’re everything that people say that we are, but we want to embody that in our new look and feel and our new brand. I’m really excited to bring it to everyone. It’s just a huge project for the team, and it supports all the strategic initiatives. If we have a brand that really embodies who we are, then it empowers our people to go out there and be proud of it. It educates our clients and shows our communities more of what we do. It’s a big undertaking, but it’s really cool to be a part of it.

Rachael: That’s awesome. Are you doing that in-house or have you outsourced some of it?

Taylor: We are working with a brand agency here in Michigan. They are called Fire Group. They helped design our logo. They did a lot of interviewing, both internally and externally, to hone in on what our messaging should be and get the essence of what our company is. But our brand feels authentic. They’ve been a huge help to us, and they’re amazing. Couldn’t recommend them more. And then they will also help us create some collateral so that we can start doing design things on our end. We’re about halfway through the process now. We have solidified what we want our new brand to look like, and now we’re in that implementation phase of, okay, we know what the logo is, but how does that look on a poster? How does that look on a presentation? How does that look on a proposal?

Rachael: I went through a rebrand a few years back, and it was really fun and really stressful at the same time. So I’ll be excited to see how that turns out. Let’s do a couple of fast facts, just real quick questions. What’s something people may not know about you?

Taylor: I have a pet tortoise. His name is Eggs Benedict. He is super pampered. He has a two story enclosure, and he lives the life of luxury. It’s great. It’s like owning a dinosaur. I love him.

Rachael: Pizza or tacos?

Taylor: Tacos. 100%.

Rachael: What would you do if you didn’t become an accounting marketer?

Taylor: I originally went to school to be a teacher and I’m so glad. Teacher I know it sounds bad, but I love marketing. I never thought I would be doing this and here I am and I’m so happy that I found it.

Rachael: $1,000 to spend anywhere. Where would you spend it?

Taylor: Italy. I want to go to Italy next year. My husband’s already been there. He took a four week vacation there right when we met each other. And we’ve been talking about going for a long time. So Italy.

Rachael: Dream vacation.

Taylor: We’re going to Lisbon in September. And that’s been like a big dream on our bucket list because it’s our honeymoon, like delayed by two years because of COVID. So that’s yeah, that’s in the works.

Rachael: What are you currently reading?

Taylor: I’m reading “I Heard God Laugh,” which is not related to marketing at all, but it’s a really good book.

Rachael: Besides turtles, would you choose cats or dogs?

Taylor: Dogs

Rachael: What is your go-to gas station purchase?

Taylor: This is really boring, but gas. I never buy anything else.

Rachael: Swedish fish is mine. So, bucket list item?

Taylor: I’ve been skydiving, so that’s already kind of checked off. I would say more traveling. I would love to just travel the whole world. Like, if I had nothing else to do and no other responsibilities, that’s what I would do.

Rachael: Currently watching?

Taylor: I’m watching “The Nanny,” like the old sitcom version on HBO. It’s good.

Rachael: What couldn’t you give up?

Taylor: Swimming. I love swimming and chocolate chips.

Rachael: Five words to describe yourself.

Taylor: I could not think of five words when I looked at this question earlier. I’m an extroverted introvert. We all take those personality tests, right? And mine said I was an extroverted introvert, and I feel like that describes me extremely well.

Rachael: I think that’s fairly accurate for a lot of marketers in accounting firms. You kind of have to have both sides and be in the middle to relate to all people around you. Hobbies?

Taylor: Swimming is one. Hunting and hiking. Pretty much anything that describes Michigan. That’s what I like to do.

Rachael: Well, Taylor, thanks for taking the time to tell us a little bit about yourself. Like I mentioned before, the whole issue of the Minute this time is about marketing, strategy and planning. So take a look at our articles and then hop over to the Open Forum and tell us what you have in your plans for 2023.