In recognition of National Women-Owned Business Day, we’re celebrating the women whose leadership, vision and resilience have shaped FatCat Strategies. Caitlyn West Noble’s journey from Content Strategist to Managing Partner reflects that evolution. In this feature, she shares the lessons, mentors, and pivotal decisions that have influenced her approach to leadership, ownership and growth.
When Caitlyn West Noble joined FatCat Strategies in 2017, she came in as a Content Strategist with a background rooted in communication, storytelling and service.
She did not yet know that, within a few years, she would help shape the agency’s specialization, step into business ownership and eventually become its Managing Partner.
Her path to leadership was gradual. It was built through an expanding scope of responsibility, from content strategy and account management to client services, digital strategy and, eventually, ownership.
Today, Caitlyn helps lead FatCat’s vision, growth and client success for home improvement companies nationwide. Her work spans long-term strategy, lead generation, client relationships and performance-driven digital marketing, but the foundation of her career still traces back to one thing: communication.
Caitlyn graduated from North Carolina State University in 2014 with a degree in Communication, with a concentration in Public Relations, and a minor in Nonprofit Studies. Her early professional experience included work in the nonprofit sector with Audacity Factory/ENDcrowd and Habitat for Humanity, where she developed a strong appreciation for purpose-driven communication, service and community.
Those experiences, combined with agency internships, eventually led her into digital marketing.
When she joined FatCat, the agency itself was entering a period of evolution.
Founded in 2002 by Janet Mobley, FatCat began as Fat Cat Marketing and grew from a home-based business into a full-service agency. Caitlyn joined more than a decade later, at a time when the company was beginning to sharpen its focus and rethink where it could create the most value.
As the agency evolved, Caitlyn’s role evolved with it.
She moved from content into broader strategy, account management and leadership, becoming increasingly involved in the work of helping clients connect marketing to real business outcomes.
Then came a defining shift.
The Pivot That Changed the Business
Around 2018, FatCat made the strategic decision to focus more deliberately on home improvement, home services and contractor marketing.
At the time, much of the agency’s client base was local to Raleigh, Wake County and the greater Triangle area. The move toward specialization meant thinking beyond geography and placing a more intentional bet on an industry the team believed it understood.
Caitlyn remembers the decision as a real risk.
“We love this industry, we believe in this industry, we want to put a flag in this because we’re good at what we do and we can generate leads for you,” she says, recalling the thinking behind the shift.
Caitlyn became instrumental in that transition.
She helped develop lead generation systems designed around the realities of how home improvement companies sell, follow up and grow. Rather than treating marketing as a collection of disconnected campaigns, the goal was to create strategies that aligned more closely with sales processes, lead quality and measurable business outcomes.
The decision to specialize created clarity, but the validation came later.
As FatCat began working with more contractors outside North Carolina, referrals followed. Clients introduced the agency to peers in other markets, expanding FatCat’s reach and reinforcing the team’s confidence in the direction they had chosen.
For Caitlyn, that was one of the first moments when the strategy truly felt proven.
“Okay, we do know what we’re doing,” she remembers thinking. “This is amazing.”
That same year, her role took another major step forward.
Recognizing her leadership and impact, Janet invited Caitlyn to become a partner in late 2018.
What had begun as a role in content strategy had become something much larger.
Learning to Lead
Caitlyn’s progression into ownership also changed the way she thought about leadership.
Janet played a central role in that.
As FatCat’s founder, Janet built the company from the ground up. But for Caitlyn, one of the most important parts of Janet’s leadership style was the space she gave people to learn.
“She led in a way that gave everybody space, including myself, to learn and grow and make a lot of mistakes,” Caitlyn says. “And you can’t grow without making mistakes.”
That lesson has stayed with her.
By nature, Caitlyn likes to stay close to the work. She describes herself as someone who wants “to kind of micromanage and have a pulse on everything going on and have my hands in everything.”
Over time, though, she has learned that leadership is not about controlling every detail.
“What I’ve learned over the years by working alongside Janet is you have to step back and let people fail,” Caitlyn says.
“You have to let people also know that they can come to you with their mistakes and have an open, gracious mind about that,” she says, “because every single opportunity is a lesson to grow and be bigger and better.”
Today, as Managing Partner, Caitlyn works across teams and client relationships to ensure FatCat’s marketing strategies remain connected to business goals. That can mean generating a more consistent lead flow, improving lead quality, strengthening reporting, or helping clients better align their sales and marketing efforts.
The work is strategic, but it’s also highly relational. For Caitlyn, the two are closely connected.
Ownership Means Making the Call
If leadership has taught Caitlyn when to step back, ownership has taught her when she has to step forward.
One of the biggest surprises of becoming a business owner has been the sheer number of decisions.
Financial management. Payroll. Taxes. Staffing. Operations. Clients. Sales. Marketing.
“I think being a small business owner, ultimately, it falls on you,” she says.
There is a practical weight to that realization. Caitlyn knew, in theory, that ownership meant responsibility. Living it was different.
“I thought maybe there were magical elves working in the background,” she jokes.
Her eventual conclusion was simpler: “The endless amount of decisions.”
And not every decision comes with an obvious answer.
Staffing has been one of the clearest examples. Growth creates constant questions about when to hire, how quickly to add capacity and how to anticipate what the business will need next.
“You don’t have all the right answers,” Caitlyn says.
That has become one of the most important lessons of ownership.
“You’re going to make the wrong calls a lot of the time, but you’re also going to make a lot of really great calls.”
Her takeaway is to stay informed, trust her instincts and keep moving.
“Trust your instinct, trust your gut,” she says. “You’re smarter than you think you are.”
Experience has not eliminated uncertainty.
It has made her more comfortable operating within it.
The Team Behind the Growth
When Caitlyn talks about FatCat’s growth, she consistently brings the conversation back to the team.
“The team that we have here is talented, driven, scrappy,” she says.
Those qualities, she notes, have been part of FatCat’s identity since before she arrived.
But adaptability is equally important.
“The biggest key to FatCat’s growth is our ability to pivot, to learn, to constantly learn,” Caitlyn says. “We don’t get stagnant.”
That mindset matters in digital marketing, where platforms, technology and client expectations can shift quickly.
“We’re challenging ourselves in every possible way, shape and form to expand in this crazy world called digital marketing,” she says.
For Caitlyn, flexibility is not a side benefit. It is part of the business model.
“Flexible, smart people, and just ready to go after it,” she says.
That willingness to learn and adjust has helped the agency move from serving primarily local clients to working with home improvement companies nationwide.
Today, FatCat’s approach is built around measurable performance, with an emphasis on lead generation, client service and marketing strategies designed to support actual business growth.
Caitlyn’s role sits at the intersection of all three.
When Trust Comes Before the Sales Call
For Caitlyn, one of the clearest examples of FatCat’s growth came during a recent sales conversation.
She was walking a prospective client through the agency’s experience, approach and case studies when he told her something unexpected.
“You’ve already earned my trust,” he told her.
The reason: he had been listening to the agency’s podcast.
For Caitlyn, the moment was startling in the best way.
“My soul left my body,” she jokes, remembering her reaction.
The prospect had already spent time listening to more than 100 episodes of FatCat’s podcast. He had heard the agency’s thinking, its expertise and its point of view before the sales conversation even began.
“They know what we’re talking about,” Caitlyn says. “We practice what we preach. And now we just have to go show it.”
For a marketer, it was satisfying.
For a business owner, it was validating.
It was proof that credibility can be built long before the pitch.
The Women Who Shaped Her Leadership
Caitlyn does not talk about her career as something she built alone.
When asked what advice she would give women who want to lead or own a business, she starts with mentorship.
“Find some amazing mentors,” she says.
She points to former managers, business owners, friends, family members, neighbors and community connections as people who can shape a career in ways that are not always obvious at the time.
“Surround yourself and immerse yourself in that and ask questions,” she says. “Be curious.”
Her own career was shaped by leaders who gave her that kind of access.
Janet is one.
Bonnie Ashley, whom Caitlyn worked with at Habitat for Humanity, is another.
Caitlyn remembers Bonnie as transparent, accessible and trusting of her staff.
“I felt like I could always come into her office, just as I could with Janet, and just be as honest and transparent as, ‘I don’t understand something,’ or ‘I have a question about something,’” Caitlyn says.
That openness mattered because it gave her somewhere to bring uncertainty without needing to disguise it.
“Knowing I had a resource and an outlet, both in Bonnie and Janet, to go to and ask some of life’s biggest questions made a huge impact in my life,” she says.
Now, she wants to offer that same kind of support to others.
“I hope I can do the same forever and always.”
Her advice to future women leaders is grounded in that experience.
“Look within your own network of who you have,” Caitlyn says. “Who’s in your life right now who can mentor you and challenge you? Find those people and run with that.”
Loving the Work
Ownership has also clarified something more personal for Caitlyn: how much she genuinely enjoys her career.
“My gut response to that was how much I love to work,” she says.
She is quick to put that in the context of the rest of her life.
“I’m a mom and a wife and sister and daughter and friend,” she says. “And I think what it’s taught me is that I still, above everything else, genuinely enjoy and love what I do.”
For Caitlyn, that matters because work does not exist in isolation.
“If you don’t love what you do, it’s going to impact all of those relationships,” she says, “and you’re not going to be the best version of yourself.”
She also credits the people around her with making that career possible.
“I couldn’t do it without the tribe and the support of all of the people who have helped with my son and have kept things going,” she says.
Her view of leadership, in other words, includes not only independence, but interdependence.
Still Building
Janet retired at the end of 2025, and Caitlyn and Meredith Medlin have since taken on the next chapter of leadership at FatCat.
For Caitlyn, that transition is significant, but it does not feel like an endpoint.
“FatCat has a long way to go,” she says.
“I’m really proud of the referral network that we’ve built with our own clients and the longevity of the clients that we’ve had,” she says.
But pride, in Caitlyn’s view, does not mean settling.
“We’re going to continue to become something bigger and better and even more great than what we’ve reached at this moment,” she says.
That outlook mirrors her own career.
She started in content.
Then came strategy.
Then account management.
Then partnership.
Now, as Managing Partner, she helps guide the agency’s long-term direction while staying closely connected to the clients, team and work that shaped her path there.
Her story isn’t really about arriving at a title; it’s about continuing to evolve.
Eight years after FatCat made one of its defining strategic pivots, Caitlyn is still looking ahead.
“We’re still doing this,” she says. “We still have incredible clients, incredible sales opportunities every single day. And I truly know we’re making a difference.”