Board Member - Marketing
Mike Gastin is a brand and marketing strategist with 25 years experience creating growth. Mike is driven to help privately-owned companies—the unsung heroes of our society’s material success—to thrive. He works with these companies to create marketing strategies, develop their brands, and implement the people and processes necessary to drive and sustain growth. He brings conceptual thinking, problem solving skills, innovation, and pragmatism to every challenge.
Mike became convinced of the importance of private companies through his own entrepreneurial journey and like many entrepreneurs started young, mowing lawns and shoveling driveways. In order to save money for college, he ran a contracting business after high school. He got his professional start in corporate sales and marketing positions. As he progressed he returned to his entrepreneurial roots, starting and acquiring businesses, until he settled on his current work as a strategic business consultant.
In his corporate roles Mike always had revenue generating responsibilities. In two years he doubled sales in the North East US for a manufacturer by establishing high-volume OEM and private label relationships. He was recognized by a national publisher for winning more new business than any other rep across the country. And, he took the failing distribution division of an industrial products company and quickly lead it to profitability within a year.
All these experiences convinced Mike of the primacy of revenue generation, which is the impetus behind his main offering today: brand and marketing strategy.
In 2004 Mike purchased a distressed design agency and drove it to profitability and national recognition. During his years at the agency, he led multiple key client projects, including the creation of a unified brand system for Wegmans Food Markets’ organic line. The project was so successful that it resulted in an explosion of consumer demand, causing the line to outgrow its niche positioning and to become fully integrated into Wegmans’ core offering.
In 2016 he decided to close his agency in order to focus full-time on developing and delivering strategic solutions for his clients.
During his career Mike has worked with Wegmans, Kodak, Fisher Price Toys, Mattel, Birdseye Foods, NextPress, Corning, Xerox, and a host of mid-sized and smaller privately-owned business-to-business and consumer products companies.
Mike has been a board member for a number of organizations. He served multiple years on the board of the Western NY chapter of the Entrepreneurs Organization. He was part of the three-person executive committee of the Rochester Credit Bureau board of directors. He was Chairman of Rochester’s Agape Christian Counseling and is a founding board member of the Commission for Reproductive Health Service Standards. Mike also served multiple years on the board of the Rochester Chapter of the American Marketing Association.
In addition to his consulting work, Mike serves on a number of business advisory boards. He publishes business-related content to his website, www.mikegastin.com, as well as to YouTube and LinkedIn. He hosts a podcast called “The Currency” where he interviews entrepreneurs and talks about their entrepreneurial journey.
Mike Gastin studied Communication and Graphic Design at Roberts Wesleyan College.
