Who Is Shawn Strawser? A Career Built on Sales, Marketing and Growth
Who Is Shawn Strawser?
My name is Shawn Strawser, and I have spent more than two decades building a career around sales, advertising, marketing, business development, and growth.
I began working in the advertising industry in 2005, long before digital marketing became the dominant force it is today.
Since then, my career has taken me from newspaper production and traditional advertising sales to corporate inside sales, record-setting outside sales performance, digital marketing, healthcare growth strategy, and business ownership.
Each stage of that journey has taught me something different.
But one principle has remained consistent throughout my career:
Results matter.
Whether I am developing new accounts, helping an organization improve its marketing, or building systems designed to generate sustainable growth, I believe the work should ultimately produce a measurable outcome.
Where My Career Began
My career started in the newspaper industry.
Working inside a local newspaper printing facility gave me exposure to nearly every aspect of the production process.
I learned about:
- Advertising design
- Newspaper layout
- Press operations
- Production
- Distribution
- Advertising deadlines
- Customer expectations
That experience turned out to be incredibly valuable when I eventually moved into sales.
I wasn’t selling a product I knew only from a presentation or rate sheet.
I understood how it was produced.
I understood what happened after an advertiser placed an order.
I understood the pressure of deadlines and the importance of accuracy.
And I understood that the advertisement being produced represented a real business investing its money in the hope of generating a return.
Those early experiences shaped the way I would approach customers throughout my career.
Becoming the “Rainmaker”
As I moved further into advertising sales, I discovered that new business development was one of my strengths.
During my time working with the Immokalee Bulletin and Caloosa Belle newspapers, I earned the reputation of being the company’s “Rainmaker.”
That reputation came from my ability to generate advertising revenue and develop relationships with businesses throughout the communities we served.
Advertising sales at the local level teaches you an important lesson very quickly.
You are not selling to a faceless corporation.
You are often sitting across from a business owner who knows exactly what every dollar means to the business.
They want to know why they should advertise.
They want to know who they will reach.
Most importantly, they want to know whether their investment makes sense.
Those conversations helped shape my philosophy toward sales.
Selling should never be about pushing someone into buying something.
It should be about identifying an opportunity where what you offer genuinely aligns with what the customer is trying to accomplish.
Learning How to Scale New Account Development
Later in my career, I moved into a corporate inside-sales position with a strong emphasis on new account acquisition.
That experience became another important turning point.
Within approximately six months, I brought in more than 300 new accounts.
The accomplishment mattered, but what I learned while getting there mattered even more.
High-volume new account development taught me the importance of systems.
You cannot manage hundreds of prospects effectively by relying on memory or motivation.
You need a process.
Prospecting.
Initial outreach.
Follow-up.
Qualification.
Presentation.
Closing.
Account development.
Then you repeat the process.
That experience helped reinforce something I still believe today:
Growth becomes much more predictable when you create repeatable systems around the activities that produce results.
From Inside Sales to Outside Sales
After succeeding in inside sales, I transitioned into outside sales.
The environment was different.
Instead of conducting most business remotely, I was meeting customers directly, developing larger relationships, managing accounts, and working more closely with businesses to identify advertising opportunities.
Outside sales allowed me to use everything I had learned about prospecting while developing stronger consultative selling skills.
It also gave me another opportunity to test whether the sales principles I had developed would work at a larger scale.
They did.
Becoming a Record-Setting Advertising Sales Representative
One of the professional accomplishments I am most proud of occurred during my time with SEPI.
I became the only Marketing Consultant in more than 40 years of the company’s history to exceed $500,000 in annual sales.
That accomplishment earned me entry into the company’s highest level of performance recognition.
It would be easy to look at the $500,000 number and assume that one major account or one unusually large sale created the result.
That was not the case.
It came from consistently doing the fundamentals.
Develop relationships.
Find new opportunities.
Take care of existing customers.
Ask questions.
Solve problems.
Understand the customer’s goals.
And continue building the pipeline even when business is going well.
That experience confirmed something I had already begun to understand earlier in my career:
Top sales performance is usually not the result of one extraordinary day.
It is the result of doing the right things consistently for a long period of time.
Why I Eventually Moved Beyond Traditional Advertising
The advertising world has changed dramatically since I entered the industry in 2005.
Print advertising once represented a major part of how local businesses reached consumers.
Today, businesses have access to an enormous collection of marketing channels.
Search engines.
Websites.
Email.
Social media.
Digital advertising.
Local search.
Marketing automation.
Content marketing.
Analytics.
Artificial intelligence.
The tools evolved, and so did my career.
Eventually, I moved away from newspaper and traditional advertising and began focusing more heavily on digital marketing and growth strategy.
The transition made sense to me because digital marketing still relies on many of the principles that made traditional sales successful.
You need to understand your audience.
You need to earn attention.
You need to communicate value.
You need to create trust.
You need to make it easy for someone to take action.
And you need to measure whether what you are doing actually works.
Shawn Strawser and Healthcare Marketing
Today, my primary professional focus is healthcare marketing.
I currently serve as Marketing and Growth Manager for DevotedDOC, a physician-led telehealth organization.
Healthcare marketing presents a different set of challenges from traditional advertising.
The person on the other side of the marketing message may not simply be shopping for a product.
They may be trying to find help.
They may be researching a treatment option.
They may be comparing providers.
They may be looking for answers to questions they have never had to ask before.
That means healthcare marketing requires a balance between visibility, accessibility, clarity, trust, and responsible communication.
My work includes areas such as:
- Patient acquisition
- Search engine optimization
- Website strategy
- Content development
- Local search optimization
- Targeted email outreach
- Digital visibility
- Conversion strategy
- Marketing systems
- Growth planning
One of the things I find especially interesting about healthcare marketing is the connection between marketing and access.
A healthcare organization cannot help someone who cannot find it.
Strong digital marketing can make it easier for people actively searching for care to discover reliable information and understand what options may be available to them.
Applying Sales Experience to Digital Marketing
My background in sales affects the way I think about marketing.
I do not see sales and marketing as completely separate functions.
Marketing creates opportunities.
Sales converts opportunities.
And strong organizations build systems where the two work together.
A website should not simply look good.
It should help someone understand what the organization does and guide them toward the next step.
SEO should not simply increase rankings.
It should bring the right people to the right information.
An email campaign should not simply generate opens.
It should produce meaningful engagement.
Traffic, impressions, clicks, calls, leads, consultations, customers, and revenue are all parts of a larger journey.
Understanding that complete journey is what makes marketing much more powerful.
Business Ownership and Casey’s Custom Decor
In addition to my healthcare marketing work, I am also an owner of Casey’s Custom Decor.
Casey’s Custom Decor operates through ShopCaseys.com and provides personalized products for individuals, families, schools, sports teams, businesses, and organizations.
Business ownership gives you a very different perspective on marketing.
When you are working with someone else’s marketing budget, you understand that performance matters.
When the marketing budget belongs to a business you own, that understanding becomes even stronger.
Every investment has to make sense.
Every improvement to the website should have a purpose.
Every campaign should support a goal.
Every customer matters.
Being involved in an e-commerce business has allowed me to apply many of the same principles I have learned throughout my sales and marketing career while continuing to learn from an entirely different business environment.
What More Than 20 Years in Sales Has Taught Me
If I had to summarize the most important lessons from my career, they would be surprisingly simple.
Relationships Still Matter
Technology can make communication faster, but people still want to work with people they trust.
Follow-Up Matters More Than Most People Think
Many opportunities are not lost because the customer rejected the offer.
They are lost because the salesperson stopped following up.
You Have to Understand What You’re Selling
Confidence comes from knowledge.
When you genuinely understand the product or service, you can have a conversation instead of delivering a pitch.
Activity Creates Opportunity
You cannot control every outcome.
You can control how consistently you prospect, communicate, follow up, learn, and improve.
Measure the Results
Feelings are not a marketing strategy.
Data helps determine what is working, what is not, and where to focus next.
Reputation Takes Time
One of the most valuable things you can build professionally is a reputation for following through.
People remember whether you did what you said you would do.
What I Am Focused on Today
Today, I am less interested in simply selling advertising.
I am interested in growth.
How does an organization attract the right audience?
How does someone discover the organization online?
What happens when they arrive at the website?
Can they find the information they need?
What causes them to take the next step?
Where are potential customers or patients being lost?
How can the process become more efficient?
Those are the types of questions that interest me now.
My career has given me the opportunity to see growth from several different perspectives.
Production.
Sales.
Account development.
Advertising.
Digital marketing.
Healthcare.
And business ownership.
Each has influenced the way I approach the next.
Building the Next Chapter
When I began working in advertising in 2005, I could not have predicted where the industry—or my career—would eventually go.
The tools available today would have seemed almost impossible then.
But that constant evolution is one of the things I enjoy most about marketing.
There is always something new to understand.
A new platform.
A new technology.
A new strategy.
A new problem to solve.
I expect my career to continue evolving as well.
What I do know is that the principles that helped build my career will continue to guide whatever comes next.
Work hard.
Learn the business.
Build relationships.
Create opportunities.
Measure results.
And keep improving.
That is the approach that helped take Shawn Strawser from the newspaper production floor to record-setting advertising sales and ultimately into healthcare marketing and business ownership.
And there is still plenty more to build.
About Shawn Strawser
Shawn Strawser is a sales, marketing, and business development professional with more than 20 years of experience in advertising, new account acquisition, outside sales, digital marketing, and organizational growth.
His career includes bringing in more than 300 new accounts within six months and becoming the only Marketing Consultant at SEPI in more than 40 years to exceed $500,000 in annual sales.
Today, Shawn Strawser serves as Marketing and Growth Manager for DevotedDOC and is an owner of Casey’s Custom Decor.
Learn more about Shawn: About Shawn Strawser
Current Work: View Current Work
Professional Inquiries: Contact Shawn