Just a small-town girl who got a wild hair.

My path into automotive is a little unconventional — and honestly, that's what makes it worth telling. After getting married, my husband and I moved back to our hometown. I was scanning the local paper for work when I came across an ad for a service department manager at the Ford store in town.

Zero experience with vehicles. Zero experience in service. But I have always had a "fake it till you make it" personality — and something told me to go for it. So I applied. Got the job. And dove headfirst into a service department where I was both the manager and the only advisor.

A couple of years later, a marketing position opened up at the dealership group. Three rooftops across two towns. Again — no formal marketing experience. Again — I applied anyway. I dove in, self-educating constantly, spending every available brain cell getting better. And what I found is that I genuinely love automotive marketing.

The industry changes so fast. What excites me most is that you don't need decades of experience to be on the cutting edge — you just have to move as fast as the industry does. That keeps me motivated every single day.

Today, marketing at a dealership is a full-stack operation. I manage it all — and I do it without an agency.

The biggest shift I have seen in this industry? The playing field is leveling. Rural dealerships can compete with big-city stores in ways we never could before — if we are willing to embrace the tools and put in the effort. The dealers who figure that out are going to win.

So I started writing. A lot. I built an entire content strategy around the real questions our customers are asking before they buy — and watching those traffic numbers climb has been one of the most satisfying things I have ever done in this role. No expensive agency package. The right tools, and the confidence to back myself.

I also use AI tools — Claude and ChatGPT specifically — as an extra set of hands and a second brain. They have completely changed how I work as a solo marketer. What used to take a team now takes one person who knows how to use the tools available. That's the edge I bring, and it's the edge I write about here.

Outside the office, I am a ranch wife living along the Missouri River in Mobridge, South Dakota. We have six horses — each one completely different, each one with a story worth telling. Two of them are named after John Wayne films, because that is exactly the kind of household we run.

I grew up riding my uncle's horses but never had one of my own until just after high school, when I bought McClintock with my income tax return. He has bucked me off more times than I can count and is the sweetest soul I have ever known. Every horse that followed has its own chapter — and now those stories live here, on this site.

My daughter has Outlaw — a spunky little one-eyed pony who was kicked as a baby and lost an eye. He is fiercely protected by every person and horse on the place, especially Echo, our retired heel mare who thinks he is her baby. You will go out and find Outlaw sunning himself in the pasture with Echo standing guard over him like her life depends on it.

This is the life I share here — alongside the marketing, alongside the fishing, alongside all of it. It's all connected. It's all real. And it's all mine.