Blake: [00:00:00] welcome to the micro-influencer podcast. Today we have a special guest, Kathleen Booth, who is the VP of marketing at Attila security and really excited to talk all things email today, but first off, Kathleen, how are you doing?

[00:00:15] Kathleen: [00:00:15] I'm great. Thanks, Blake. How are you doing?

[00:00:17] Blake: [00:00:17] I'm fantastic doing really well, and I'm sure the audience is going to get a lot out of this one today because many of us, myself included, are trying to build an email list.

[00:00:27] We know how important that is to keep nurturing that and building that up. So I'm excited. Personally to ask you tons of questions, but first off, I would love to get some quick context on you.

[00:00:37] And first and foremost, just curious what you think your professional super power is. Just to give an idea to the audience of who we're talking to.

[00:00:44] Kathleen: [00:00:44] Oh boy. Professional superpower. that's a really good question. you know, I'm like many marketers, I'm great at marketing other people and terrible at marketing myself. so I guess, you know, the thing that I've really. I seem to have specialized in the last few years that I'm really passionate about and that I love is coming into really early stage companies as the first head of marketing, building out a marketing team, developing the strategy, and basically putting a growth engine in place.

[00:01:13] And so that, that's what I love and that's what I seem to do over and over and over.

[00:01:18] Blake: [00:01:18] Awesome. Well that's going to be super helpful then. Cause that startup mentality is exactly who we're talking to. That's, that's the audience here. I'm curious what the story, if you could give a brief elevator story of how your career has gone so far. Basically the story of when you started to where you are now and then we'll get into a lot of the tactical

[00:01:37] Kathleen: [00:01:37] Absolutely. So I did not actually start out in marketing. I had a whole nother career for 10 years working in international development, but about halfway through that time, I started to kind of shift over to focus more on. Marketing and communications, because a lot of big international development projects have, have trouble getting off the ground because of poor communication.

[00:01:57] And so I started to shift my focus and that eventually led me back into marketing, which is what I had done my MBA and many, many years ago. I started my own agency and had that for 11 years. that after that I, I sold it to another agency. Then a couple of years, they're transitioning everything over and then left to really pursue my passion, which is working with startups.

[00:02:20] And, since that time, I've been VP of marketing and a couple of different startups, recently specializing in cybersecurity. but really I'm just, I'm all about helping entrepreneurs make their businesses successful. And I think that's because I was an entrepreneur myself for so long, and, you know, I might not have my own business now, but I still need to scratch that itch.

[00:02:37] And so I like to do it with other business owners and help them see success and maybe not make some of the mistakes that I made. I'm also a podcaster, so I have a podcast called the inbound success podcast where we talk all about, how to get more ROI from your inbound marketing efforts.

[00:02:54] Blake: [00:02:54] Fantastic. So fellow podcast or fellow entrepreneur. I think this aligns really well. so let's, let's dive into the email side of things, cause I know that's what we want to cover today for the most part. And I'm really curious, starting out, you mentioned you are an entrepreneur that's very much at the heart of who you are.

[00:03:10] I'm curious what email, email marketing, building an email list has looked like for you? What have you done in the past for yourself?

[00:03:19] Kathleen: [00:03:19] You know, this is such a fascinating topic to me...