Mike Sullivan, born and raised in the Metro Detroit area, attended Waterford Our Lady of the Lakes from 1st Grade all the way through 12th.
A football standout, Sullivan played Quarterback throughout High School and received several college scholarship offers to play at the next level. He committed to play football at St. Joseph’s College of Indiana (NCAA DII) after being recruited by a young coach named Mike LaFleur, who’s currently the Offensive Coordinator of the New York Jets.
Upon playing his Freshman year of football at St. Joe’s in 2011, Sullivan quickly realized the NFL was not in his future! However it was there in Indiana where he began to pursue, and fall in love, with the Communications world after studying Marketing and also Broadcasting for the school’s radio station.
Sullivan transferred back home to Oakland University and spent the next two years studying, broadcasting at OU’s radio station, working at the Nike Store, and interning for 97.1 The Ticket. Sullivan graduated from Oakland University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Communication. He was the youngest graduate in his 2014 class, at age 20 years old.
Immediately upon graduating college, Sullivan was offered a full time position at 97.1 The Ticket in June of 2014 where he spent the next 6 years as the Executive Producer of the Valenti and Foster show and also became a well known on-air personality.
In addition to being on the airwaves at 97.1 The Ticket, Sullivan also had the opportunity to cover sporting events, write feature articles, and also work on-air with WXYZ (Channel 7 ABC Television.)
Sullivan decided to leave 97.1 The Ticket in the summer of 2020 to fully dive into a new business venture with his partner Kyle Bogenschutz, who was also a radio host at The Ticket.
The two founded Brand25 Media LLC, now known as Make The Turn, as a result of several clients and local businesses asking them for help with social media and content creation. They dove into this venture head first and began assisting companies with their online presence, at a time when digital was more important than ever. Within two years, the firm quickly grew to 8 employees and over 50 clients who were contracting Brand25 for services such as social media management, digital advertising, content creation, and website management.
On January 1st, 2023, Sullivan and Brand25 officially rebranded their digital marketing firm to Make The Turn. A name that fits perfectly, not only because of their love of golf, but mainly because it speaks to what the firm does best: Helping businesses make the turn into the digital world and get to the next level.
As CEO, Sullivan’s role at Make The Turn consists of operational strategy and growth, on all levels, and working on a daily basis to ensure the firm’s clients achieve success. Sullivan prides himself upon work ethic, networking, professionalism, and exceptional communication with both his team members and all of the firm’s partners.
Sullivan resides in Royal Oak with his Siberian husky, Bryce, and enjoys golfing, traveling, lake days, and hanging out with friends and family in his free time! He credits his parents, Mike and Lori, for instilling core values such as work ethic, honesty, and respect. Sullivan also believes that playing sports has helped shape his drive and competitiveness!
In Mike’s Own Words:
I can’t give just one reason why I love our firm, so I’m going to give you three below!
Industry Agnostic + the “Unwrittens”
I honestly love that we are “industry agnostic,” so to speak. It’s a true pleasure to work across many different industries, constantly learn daily, and use our experiences across different sectors to help our clients grow their businesses.
While I understand the benefit of being niche and focusing on one industry, I believe working in many industries is more beneficial for our clients. The ability to connect dots across our professional network has been massive for everyone. I can’t tell you how many times this comes up. I’m not only referring to clients who have a direct synergy with the other, such as referring a mortgage company to a real estate agent. But even on a more anecdotal level, too… such as a client who’s a car dealership and passively mentions doing a holiday lunch for their team, which leads to us referring them to one of our other clients’s who’s a grocery store chain and caters it.
These “unwrittens” are super important to us. We really pride ourselves on always networking and always thinking about our partners. We’re fortunate to have a handful of incredible business mentors as well who we lean on for guidance.
Ultimate Transparency
I also love our level of transparency when it comes to a new client partnership. If we believe we can help, that’s awesome, and we’ll tell you how. But if not, we won’t sell just to sell. We’ll be honest and still provide our best recommendation for your business’ marketing needs. And at the same time, we’ll look forward to staying in touch or running into you for a drink, and helping connect dots however we can.
The only way we continue to succeed is if we help our clients grow!
Our Team
Every day is different. We aren’t a 9-5 company, and I think it’s fantastic. We all have different skill sets and have experience across so many industries.
I’m proud of how we communicate with one another, not only internally, but externally as well. We want to be involved in our client’s business. We want to touch base every single week, at minimum, and hear about what’s going on.
It’s what we do best. We either step in and BECOME the marketing team for a company. Or, we COMPLIMENT their current marketing team and fill a hole. We’ve had a significant amount of success in both of those avenues.
Our entire team here at MTT does a great job of communicating and attempting to over-deliver for all of our clients. It’s very fulfilling to hear and experience positive results and feedback from our partners