Radically Transparent

Chedva Kleinhandler, CEO and Founder of Rooms and Words, gets radically transparent in this episode about her unconventional career path.  Starting as a translator in an ultra-orthodox Jewish community, she became a wildly successful, award-winning serial founder, featured on Forbes, BBC, Wired, Thrive Global, and more.

Chedva also candidly unravels how she tackled imposter syndrome throughout her career, and what she is doing now as a leader to ensure her team overcomes any feelings of fraud. She even reveals the questions she asks her team to help get them out of their comfort zone and into their “Genius Zone”  (originally coined by Gay Hendricks in his book, The Big Leap) in order to unlock their highest potential.

For Chedva, there is no room for imposter syndrome! Yet, she does acknowledge that it’s a completely normal feeling to have at any stage of your career. The cure? You’ll have to listen to find out!

Serving as the Head of Marketing at Zest, Adam Clarke, stopped by the Radically Transparent podcast to disclose how challenging it can be as a marketing leader to keep up with the advances of technology. He opens up about self-pressure and doomscrolling and emphasizes the importance of how an employee advocacy program gives employees the opportunity to feel confident with their peers and customers – which is a key component to creating a positive employee experience. 

Hot Topics of this Episode Include:

- The top tools in Adam’s MarTech stack that have been essential to his success as a marketing leader (Yes –Oktopost is one of them!)

- How employee advocacy is positively impacting colleagues, the workplace, and workplace culture with the confidence to impact an organization’s bottom line in both revenue and headcount

- Why now is the time to make employee engagement a burning priority; and the role content plays in it to keep the momentum going

Keith Messick, CMO at LaunchDarkly reveals the one thing keeping him up at night professionally and it's far from actual marketing. It's people and math.

What does he even mean by that?!

Talking through some of a CMO’s greatest dilemmas, such as how everyone wants the title, but nobody wants the job, the non-existent playbook, and how to spot good marketing versus marketing BS, Keith highlights how a successful CMO can impact an organization both in revenue and growth while implementing the highest levels of innovation.

Oracle's Director of Global Social Media, Lisa Marcyes, stops by the Radically Transparent podcast to discuss what social media leaders are doing differently to forge intimate relationships with customers, cater to new expectations, and give their audiences an authentic view of the people behind their product.

She shares her opinions on why content that is relatable, personable, and showcases the humans behind the handle resonates best with a global audience and how the power of speaking to audiences across social as if they were at a backyard BBQ – which she adheres to today -- is a tone that resonates well with most audiences. Her number one rule when it comes to social content? No highly produced copy!

This approach has completely shifted the way B2B social media is perceived in the marketplace and is proving to transcend across all languages and cultures – which comes in handy for Lisa as she is responsible for communication to over 11 million followers.

This episode will have you at the edge of your seat as Lisa dives into some of her most wild moments leading the Oracle social team. Listen to what she’s learned along the way, and even a few tips and tricks when thinking about your own social media strategy.

Hot Topics of this episode:

- How B2B brands can meet audience expectations in the social advocacy arena to stand up and make a difference as they respond to amazing moments in history – and what to do if you don’t always get it right

- Why LinkedIn Newsletters are the engagement hack you didn’t know you needed – and other ways to add value across social media

- How she's creating a personalized experience for 11 million followers in a meaningful way

Forbes 30-Under-30 and Marketing Leader at Debbie, the first debt payoff platform that rewards borrowers for adopting healthy financial habits, Matthew Balcerek stops by the Radically Transparent podcast to reveal to Jennifer Gutman of Oktopost the secrets behind achieving hyper-personalized experiences in banking and what marketers and customer experience teams need to do in order to be goal-oriented with personalization as the primary goal.

Matthew even opens up about his experience in the entertainment space (Act III Productions (Sony Pictures), Unique Features, FANMADE) and what it has taught him about creating unique bonds between brand and customer in the fintech space– that every marketer in banking should hear.

Listen, learn, and don’t forget, if you are looking to pay off your debt, Debbie can help!

Get Early Access -> https://www.joindebbie.com/

Jeff also addresses the current gap between higher education and professional training: how students who want practical skills and professors who want to teach critical media thinking can come together for students to excel in the professional world.

Listen and learn!

Meet Shoshana Kordova, Director of Product Marketing at Datarails. She stops by Oktopost's Radically Transparent podcast to reveal why her product marketing team owns Twitter and how product marketing is incorporating social media (both paid and organic) into their Go-To-Market and Product Launch Processes.

For starters, Shoshana suggests that since most product marketing teams lead market research, it makes sense for product marketers to own the company Twitter handle. This gives the team the ability to learn from customers and competitors by easily listening to what is being said across social. This research can oftentimes support and inform product and can even influence a product roadmap.

With listening being a critical part of the job, Shoshana leans on social listening to learn from her customers and competitors, and even uses the social network to go beyond “primary” research.

Taking listening to new levels, Shoshana even breaks down how she built an “Interdisciplinary Squad”, a team of people who come together to listen to one another and work towards reaching shared goals rather than duplicating efforts across departments.

- How social listening is playing a significant role in the Go-To-Market and Product Launch Processes; and why product marketing owns Twitter

- Shoshana’s revolutionary initiative, coined “the interdisciplinary squad,” that’s being used to bring the right teams together to reach shared goals without duplicating efforts

- Why product marketing should incorporate both paid and organic social media into their product launch processes

Inbar Yagur, VP of Brand Marketing of GrowthSpace shares her perspective on what makes thought leadership content resonate with audiences, regardless of the amount of digital noise, and shares how:

“Good thought leadership happens when you have an intersection between something that is newsworthy and a value proposition that brings your company forward.”

Throughout the episode, Inbar challenges listeners to find the “moments that spark”– and guides us on how to use those moments to create meaningful thought leadership content that breaks through the noise and converts.

While she candidly admits breaking through the digital noise is still something that is keeping her up at night, she also shares the radically transparent truths behind how she is doing it leading an agile marketing team, along with how difficult it can be to strike the right balance between sparking creativity and managing tasks that will ultimately drive business results.

- The formula for impactful and meaningful thought leadership content that converts

- Finding balance as a marketing leader in an agile marketing team

- Staying focused on pipeline while keeping a pulse check on creativity

Maya Sweiry, Vice President of Human Resources at Oktopost stops by the podcast to talk about the importance of employer branding and how Marketing and HR need to work together to differentiate the employee experience.

Similar to the way organizations compete for customers by driving value of their products and services, businesses today also need to compete for talent by showcasing authentic company culture.

As Maya suggests throughout the episode, an important piece to this is employer branding – the unwritten story of your organization and often, what people are saying about you when you are not in the room.

Employer branding helps bring a company’s culture to life and human resources cannot go at it alone. According to Maya, Marketing and HR need to partner together to play an active role in creating, building, and maintaining the organization’s story and messaging as it pertains to current employees and potential candidates.

- The importance of Marketing and HR working together to impact the Employer Brand

- Maya’s perspective on where Marketeers can lean better into Human Resources to tell the unwritten story of their organization

- How to create and nurture a positive company culture that continually grows the talent you have, and attracts the talent you need

Meet Christopher Willis, the CMO/CPO of Acrolinx. He joins the Radically Transparent podcast to talk about an interesting lesson he learned back in 2011 that he wished he would have known sooner.

Throughout the episode, Chris opens up about a former rebrand that happened to coincide with a magic quadrant where the organization he was leading at the time was being tracked. That specific year, there was no product launch or major product innovation, yet they moved up and right (which is the direction you want to move on a quadrant!) but the question remained, how did they do that?

Christopher attributes the move in the right direction to all the work the team had done in rebranding around defining the true identification of the brand. He even opens up about the multiple challenges of category creation, and some of the biggest obstacles he’s facing today as he creates a new category while trying to align everything together.

- Going beyond the product and how to talk about all the things that matter to the outside world about your organization

- Christopher’s biggest challenge when it comes to category creation and what he would have done sooner to make the concept of content governance easier to consume

- How to get your competitors to speak the same language as you, so your audience understands and sees value in both you and your category