By Beth Cochran: Entrepreneur, PR and Content Marketing Strategist, Collaborat
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When something is broken, oftentimes, the natural instinct is to turn a blind eye and hope someone else will fix it — but this wasn’t the case for Paul Roetzer. While working at a public relations agency early in his career, Paul was having a hard time reconciling the services he was providing for clients with the cost of their retainers. So, he set to work on a solution that would standardize PR services and prices. And in 2005, Paul launched PR 20/20, a marketing consulting and services firm that became the first firm in HubSpot's certified partner program which now includes thousands of agencies from around the world.
According to Paul, success isn’t solely financial — it’s about bringing true value to others and aligning yourself with people who have a similar take on life. He truly believes his career successes — from growing PR 20/20 to authoring two books (The Marketing Performance Blueprint and The Marketing Agency Blueprint) to launching the Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute — is a direct indication of this.
In this episode, Paul discusses why getting uncomfortable and making small bets on yourself is one of the best ways to fuel your career and achieve the goals you set for yourself. This mindset has helped him successfully manage the rapid growth of PR 20/20 while dealing with the tragic passing of his best friend — an event that forever changed his perspective on life and business.
Read on for a selection of questions, and listen to the entire interview by clicking the player above.
What led you to create PR 20/20?In the early 2000s, I was working at a PR agency and I didn't really understand the business model. Everything was billable hours and in my young mind, it didn’t make sense. I would send invoices to clients every month and it'd be a block of text of all the things we did. The client would call me and say, “this looks great, but what did we get for $12,000 last month?”. I wanted this process to be more tangible for myself and for clients, so I started working on this idea of standardized services and set pricing.
“PR 20/20” was originally a paper I wrote about how the industry needed a new vision for how it did everything. A year and a half after writing it, I went home and told my wife that I'm going to start a business. She said, “okay, what does that mean?”. I said, “I don't know, but I'll make sure we have health insurance and a paycheck when I do.” That was a Wednesday and on that Sunday, I got a $25,000 loan from a family member and I started the business two weeks later.
What was one of your darkest moments, and how did you emerge from it?I was 27 when I started the agency. I didn't have any kids and my wife and I had been married for four or five years at that point. Life was pretty good and then my father-in-law passed away suddenly of cancer. We tried to figure out how to move on with life after that and then the following year, my best friend died in a tragic accident. Here I was in the midst of 100% growth, and from the outside, it seemed as though I had everything figured out. On the inside, I was a wreck and was trying to figure out how to piece together the next day. I threw myself into business even harder because it became my escape and the growth distracted me from dealing with the reality of life.
It was the reality that took me a long time to kind of come to grips with. No one wants to live through that stuff, but I have a totally different perspective on life and business once I eventually made it through.
What has been one of the best things you’ve done for the business to grow it?I made a bet on HubSpot in the very early days. I think what I've done well in my career is finding people I wanted to surround myself with — people who had really interesting visions and who I thought had the will to see them through. HubSpot was very much a bet on its people, not on its technology. I truly believed Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah were committed to building a different kind of company and eventually a much better product that would help our clients and us. Many of the doors that opened in my life — like writing books to eventually moving into the AI space — came from these early days and the relationships I built at HubSpot.
How have you managed to juggle the growth and sustainability of both 20/20 and the Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute?Part of the way I balance everything is that I never get too high or too low on anything because stuff goes sideways all the time. I teach my team that when something goes sideways, you can't get caught up in the totality of the thing that went wrong. You have to break that thing into little pieces — and then attack those pieces and solve them one at a time. As long as you stay focused on the thing you can actually affect, then you don't get caught up in the bigger problem that can make you feel overwhelmed.
Are there one or two connections you’ve made along your journey that made a big impact?Dharmesh Shah and Brian Halligan at HubSpot. They're just good people. Jay Baer also comes to mind. He is one of those people who is bigger than life on stage, but is probably a 10 times better person in real life. Other people I can think of include Ann Handley, David Meerman Scott, Mitch Joel, Marcus Sheridan, Joe Pulizzi, and Andrew Davis — they're just incredible humans. I've been really lucky to not only become peers with them on the speaking circuit and in the author world, but actually become friends with them to the point where we can grab dinner, jump on a call or drop a text message. They've always been there and that's just the kind of people they are.
What's advice would you have for fellow entrepreneurs looking to launch a side hustle or second business?Having talked to a lot of entrepreneurs, they think success is what their family, friends, peers or competitors think of what they're building, but none of their opinions matter. I think not enough successful entrepreneurs tell the emerging entrepreneurs that they get to define their own success, so that would be my takeaway for them.
Speed round:
When a routine –– and very common –– medical procedure went awry, it prompted a major career and life shift for Stephanie Schull. Stephanie’s mother underwent a procedure that hundreds of thousands of women have undergone, and like many that have –– which they would soon come to learn –– her outcome was unsuccessful, leaving her in pain for the rest of her life.
Refusing to accept this fate, Stephanie left her career as a philosophy professor in pursuit of a better solution for the many women who—like her mother—experience pelvic floor issues.
Today, Stephanie is the founder and inventor of Kegelbell, the only FDA-registered external vaginal weight that provides a natural way to get stronger pelvic floor muscles. Through Kegelbell, she is aiming to remove stigmas around women’s health and bring a voice to pelvic floor issues that have been kept quiet far too long.
In this episode, we learn about Stephanie’s sweeping move from academia to the business world, the challenges she faced in producing solutions for what is still mostly a taboo subject, and the creative ways she’s been able to run her company with a lean team.
Read on for a selection of questions, and listen to the entire interview by clicking the player above.
What led you to create what is today known as Kegelbell?My mother got a pelvic mesh surgery that didn't work well for her and she will be in pain for the rest of her life. When I learned about this, I was shocked to know that she had problems with her pelvic floor for all these decades. And I was shocked that there was a surgery with such a questionable success. My response to the problem was to research it. That's when I realized that most women have problems with their pelvic floor and as of five or so years ago, people weren't talking about it. The solutions, as a result, were flawed because there wasn't enough conversation. As I dug, I saw that there was a good option, it was just not being utilized. When I talked to people about it and discovered they weren't going to make it right, that's where I decided I had to get involved, so I quit academia and started Kegelbell.
What's been one of the biggest challenges you've had to overcome in building Kegelbell?The first challenge was that the subject of pelvic floor issues was taboo. My mother had the problem for decades and didn't tell us about it. When I started wanting to fundraise, I heard a lot of “no, that's not really a problem” and “it's too expensive to educate people about it.” Something else that I got pushed back on was the solution I was proposing to fix, treat and prevent weakened pelvic muscles. A lot of investors were saying, “you need to provide an ongoing band-aid solution that keeps the customer on the hook.” I ran into some pretty systemic problems right out the gate.
What was one of your darkest moments, and how did you emerge from it?The darkest moment is an ongoing, everyday concern. With a physical product, I'm looking down the barrel of bank account and cash flow issues every day. Looking at cash flow problems is uncomfortable and it's like I'm flying too close to the sun all the time. As I get bigger, it's the same problem, just with larger numbers. This isn't going to go away. I have to adjust to this reality, which is a bit different than the things I've been used to up until this point.
What keeps you going?Listening to podcasts like these so you don't feel alone. It’s important to hear from other people with multi-billion dollar companies and hearing them say it's never comfortable and that they're always close to the edge. I recently heard the founders of Lyft talk about how some of the scary moments just don't go away, and I’ve been telling myself that. Finding comfort in hearing from others is why I wanted to share my experience in hopes it helps someone else.
What has been one of the best things you’ve done for the business to grow it?Not giving up. If you stick with it, it grows a little bit incrementally and then that growth becomes exponential. It's been hard because I haven't paid myself this whole time. We have very few paid people, but that helps us grow. Also, finding the right people to have around. In this case, it's people willing to work as a volunteer for free or at a reduced rate because they really love the mission. I need their energy and talents for this to work, so bringing on more people, even though I didn't have the money to, really mattered.
What does the future look like for Kegelbell?More products. I have so many products on the shelf that I want to launch. Everyone has warned me that it’s too soon and to wait until Kegelbell is strong enough. But, you have to innovate and offer more. The investors are right in that having just one product isn't sufficient. Once you've acquired the customer at that cost, you need more than one product. So, rather than give them a solution that isn't permanent, I'm just going to give them more products that do different things and solve different problems. I hope to be known as a company that solves problems in a novel way.
Are there one or two impactful connections along your journey that made a big impact?I think a big deal for me was getting connected to SEED SPOT, which is an incubator/accelerator for businesses with a social impact. I went from having no business network to immediately being connected to a world where people were helpful.
One of my favorite memories of another impactful connection stemmed from an architecture trip to LA I went on with a friend. During one of her meetings, I went to a pot pie place. There was a nice gentleman there behind the cash register. He came by and asked me how the pot pie was. Eventually, I began to tell him all about Kegelbell. He started asking questions and then he offered some advice. I found this guy to be really resourceful and that he had some useful information. He said he'd be happy to look at my website and give me some feedback. Later, I found out that this guy was not the cashier at a pot pie place. He was a former CMO at Pixar, Disney, Nestle, and was the current CMO at Sears. He’s also one of the Harvard Business School Angel Association and has been a mentor and one of my advisors since that day.
What's one piece of advice you would give to fellow entrepreneurs looking to make impactful connections?Hopefully that story of the pot pie place is a lesson that you never know where a connection will be made. I’d also say that too many people are hesitant and take the safe route. Be a little more risky, because bold gestures often end up resonating.
Speed round:Coffee drinker, yes or no? Yes.
One business tool you’re geeking out over right now? Gorgias
Favorite piece of technology? The cell phone
What’s one book you’d pass along to a fellow entrepreneur? The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss
One person you’d like to make a connection with? Tim Ferriss or Sigmund Freud
What’s your favorite ice breaker when introducing yourself to someone (either online or off)? If someone says you look familiar, I say, do you watch a lot of porn? And then they're like, “Oh wait...no. Do you?” I say I don't but that I was just looking for a conversation starter. It slays every time, and if someone runs away scared, you probably didn't want to hang out with them anyway.
How many hours of sleep do you get each night, on average? At least eight hours, sometimes seven.
How can people connect with you or Kegelbell? You pretty much can find us on any platform—TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. You can also email [email protected].
Seven continents, 70 countries, countless books, studies in psychology, philosophy and physiology at Oxford with a specialization in brain chemistry were all part of a quest to figure out how to live a good life and what a good life even means.
And that search eventually led Arthur Worsley to create The Art of Living. Prior to, however, he had been working 80+ hour weeks at McKinsey for three years. Burnout and several other life events prompted him to leave and finally start to uncover what it means to live a good life. Today, after immersing himself in studying this, he is helping others get more out of life and achieve self mastery through his TRACKTION Masterclass and The Art of Living.
The following is the transcript from the show. But first, a few helpful links:
What led you to create The Art of Living?
I left McKinsey and I'd been doing a whole load of things. I'd been studying, I learned five languages, I did an ultra marathon through the Sahara desert, I'd been traveling and reading books, and I wanted a way to capture all of that. I stumbled on the Fineman method of learning –– learning by teaching it to someone else. I started putting this stuff down and people started reading it.
I've always been fascinated with being good at life. I had a father who was an alcoholic and despite having all of the advantages that he could have possibly had, he sort of threw his life away. If I look back at my decision on why I wanted to study psychology, why I've always been so interested in reading and why I went traveling, a lot of them link back to trying to get to the bottom of these questions, which is how can we live a good life? How can we not throw away everything that we're given? What does a good life even mean? That's where The Art of Living really came from.
What was the turning point when you realized you had stumbled onto something viable with The Art of Living?
When I started out and people started resonating with the stuff I was writing, that was the first moment where I thought, maybe this is possible. The moment that I realized that this was really going to be something cool was when I was with one of my partner's friends who’s a retired CEO. I was chatting to him and his wife about the life philosophy that I'd put together, the way I organize my weeks and my days and how I avoid burnout and they said, “Hey, would you give us some coaching?” I'd never really thought about coaching people on that, and that is when I realized that the business was probably going to be viable.
What were the early days like? Once you knew you wanted to build this, how long did it take you?
I started out reading a lot of books and it was a huge learning curve for me. Some people start a business and they come from a strong marketing background and then they find a product that they can sell. Some people have a product or a cause that they believe in, and then they're trying to work out the marketing aspect of it.
For me, even though the product had been evolving, I knew what it was I wanted to help people with from a very early stage and I focused on one channel. I’m a big search engine optimization guy. I love the idea of just optimizing something and then leaving it out there and having it slowly accrue more people. That was my top-of-funnel and then I had to work out how to turn those readers into subscribers and those subscribers into buyers? That was a long process of trial and error and learning from people who'd been there before me.
It’s quite a different path than McKinsey, was there anything you had to overcome mentally to let go of that chapter and pursue this as a new path?
I think it's surprisingly similar to McKinsey in two ways. The first is that what I do involves taking really big problems and breaking them down into really small problems that are easy to solve. The reason I'm able to help people find more balance and meaning in their lives is when you break it down into eight different areas and five different time horizons, suddenly it becomes a set of much smaller problems. The second thing is that it's all about learning super steep learning curves. I would start a project at McKinsey knowing nothing about oil and gas or defense or healthcare or supermarkets in the UK and within three months you're helping the CEO clarify decisions they're going to make. One of the things that I did struggle with is I've always loved problem solving for the sake of problem solving and that tends to mean that I put more energy into solving the problem than it necessarily needs. I have to keep catching myself not to get sucked into spending more time than I need solving the problems that are in front of me.
One of the things you’re most known for is your TRACKTION productivity system. In that, one of the first steps is to diagnose what’s holding you back. Can you share some tips on how to identify that?
There's two kinds of people in this world: those who know what they need to be doing and aren't doing it, and the people who genuinely don't know what they need to be doing. For a lot of people, getting clear on which of those they are, is important. A lot of people know what's going to move the needle and what the most important thing in their business is, and they just can't seem to focus on it. For those, I think one of the most important things you can do is start tracking your time and creating a bit of an inventory of what it is that you're actually working on. When you track your time, it creates accountability. I don't mean on a minute by minute basis or with an app where you build pie charts. You can do this very simply on a piece of paper. You say, 7:15am start breakfast, 7:45am start work, whatever it is that you do. You get a lot of clarity around how much of that time is not being spent on the stuff that's important.
For the people who genuinely don't know what to do, the most important thing is to just sit down and work out what that most important thing is. You can go through a basic planning method where you work out what it is you're trying to achieve. The model I use is ‘what, why not, how, what if and what next’. You ask yourself, what’s the what? Then you write down all the reasons that you're not already there. Then you go, how can I solve all of those things? Then you go through a what if phase, which is where you anticipate anything that could come up that could derail you. Then you look at that entire list and go, what's the most important thing on this list that I could be working on and you get on with that. If you do that, you'll naturally squeeze the stuff that doesn't matter off your plate.
How do you then identify things you may be doing on a daily basis that don’t really matter?
The most powerful way is when you have a vision of what awesome looks like for each area of your life. Something I like to get people to do is write down all the things they're working on right now and then you give each of those things a score from minus five to plus five. Minus five is any activity that's taking you strongly away from that vision that you've written down. Plus five is anything that's taking you strongly towards that. It creates a huge amount of clarity to go down that list and give everything a number. What people who are really struggling tend to do is they have a few minus ones and minus twos on that list and those are things you can easily get rid of. What people who are very productive but are struggling to get to the next level find is they have a lot of plus ones and plus twos and those are things that are hard to give up because they're not doing you any harm and might be slightly pleasant, but they're not as important as the plus five and plus four stuff that’s getting you towards your vision. Doing that process is super helpful for getting clear.
If you don't have time to think about what awesome looks like or you haven't done any visions for the different areas of your life, you can use a few heuristic models. I tend to use three nets. The first is the ABC method. A is something that if you did or didn't do, it would have a big impact and C is something that would have no impact at all. B is something that would have a little impact. You go down the list and you go, this is an A task and if I stopped doing it, stuff's really going to start going wrong. This is a C task, if I stopped doing it, nothing will really happen. The second model, I call “hero-based thinking”. Think who's your business hero and then look at each of the things on your task list and go, would my hero be doing this or not? The last net is the $10 task test. Go down the list and ask, how much would it cost to outsource this to a freelancer and that will give you the final clue, which is, is this something that I personally should be doing? If you're an entrepreneur and you aspire to be paid $1,000 an hour, and you've got a lot of $10-tasks on your list, or even a lot of $100-tasks, then you're short changing yourself. Those three nets will tell you, is it important, should it be done at all and should I be doing it?
You work with a lot of entrepreneurs who are facing burnout whether because their work has taken over their lives or they feel like they have to compromise their lives in some way to grow the business. Is there a common thread among these entrepreneurs that you’ve seen –– something that’s keeping them in that pattern? How can they start to break free from that?
The two most common ones are lack of energy and lack of clarity. For lack of energy, I talk about three kinds of days: A days, B days and C days. An A day is a work day where you're working on the most important projects. B days are planning days where you work out what success looks like or get clear on your inboxes. C days are recovery days where you get to the end of the day with more energy. For the last four weeks, mark in your calendar as an all day event if it was an A day, B day or C day. Suddenly people go, I haven't had a C day in four weeks, no wonder I'm feeling a bit run down. Or, I've only had two C-ish days because I was at a wedding and that doesn't really count.
A lot of the time, it's just creating clarity. It's so easy to forget how long and how hard we've been working as an entrepreneur. And then you can put for the next four weeks when are you going to do your A, B and C days. My rhythm is five A days, one C day and one B day every week, and every four weeks, I try and take at least three or four consecutive C days to recuperate my batteries. The second is, a lot of the reason people end up just working on work is because they don't have a best alternative to working on work. I encourage people to get really clear on what it is they actually want out of the other areas of life. What does success look like for their family, their health, their wealth, the learning and growth that they want to through? When you're offered a choice, it doesn't just become a default of I'll do more work.
On The SuccessLab Podcast we talk about the idea of impactful connections and how they can really transform the trajectory of your career or your business. Are there one or two along your journey that made a big impact?
One of the most important set of relationships that I've had are the mentors in the books I've read. There are two ways that you can approach a book. You can approach it as you listen to what it is that's being said to you, or you can treat it as an active dialogue with the author. Those relationships are very powerful. That's a kind of academic answer so I think the most important relationship that I've got at the moment is my partner, Erin. She's amazing. Lastly, I have a very specific set of values that I look for in the friends that I keep around me and all of those people are constantly inspiring me, making me feel grateful to be alive and showing me new ways of thinking and challenging some of the parts of me that need more development.
What's one piece of advice you would give to fellow entrepreneurs looking to make a change in their lives?
It’s really helpful to get smart at breaking problems down. Peter Drucker says, if you give two highly competent people a role and they both fail at it, the chances are it's not the people, it's the role that needs to be broken down into more specific roles. I think the same is true of problems. If you throw a lot of people, time and effort at a problem and you can't solve it, it's probably because you haven't worked out how to break it down yet. One of the most important pieces of advice I got when I started out with my blogging was to split my efforts into readers, subscribers, and buyers. That seems like such an obvious thing to do but the moment you break that problem down, it clarifies everything you need to do. Learning to break problems down into smaller pieces is really helpful. Another general problem-solving tip is to invert things. If someone says what does success look like for your business or what should you be working on? You can invert that question and ask, what's the thing that I shouldn't be working on or what don't I want from my business? That will help you narrow the solution space in a way that makes getting to the positive answer more easy.
Speed round:
To leave the corporate world at the beginning of a financial recession to start a company requires big thinking and even bigger action—and Rebecca Clyde has both in spades. Add that to her ability to outhustle and outwork her competitors and it’s no wonder Rebecca was able to quickly find innovative paths to revenue and growth for her clients despite all odds.
Today, Rebecca has built one of the most highly sought after marketing communications agencies in Phoenix, Ideas Collide, in addition to co-founding her newest venture Botco.ai, a platform that offers chat-nurturing solutions for businesses. How does she do it? By leading with value and operating under the mentality that if you pay it forward, the rest will follow.
In this episode, we talk with Rebecca about the forces that drive her enterprising spirit, the hard lessons she’s learned along the way, and how she creates channels for paying it forward.
Read on for a selection of questions, and listen to the entire interview by clicking the player above.
What led you to leave the corporate confines to build your own company, Ideas Collide?
At the time, I worked at a good company and really enjoyed everything I did while I was there. But I wanted to take more control of my destiny and my income and I realized the corporate world had a lot of limitations. I realized I had outgrown my ability to work for somebody else and was ready to spread my own wings.
In those early days, what were some of the challenges you had to overcome to achieve growth?
We started the company in the middle of the recession in 2008. The very beginning years were scrappy. Our goal was to help our clients find a path to revenue and growth despite all of those downward forces. We were also lucky that we were a startup. We didn't have the overhead of a big agency so we could charge less, be nimble, try different things and experiment without a lot of risks. Our clients really appreciated that and as a result, some of our fastest growth years were during that period where most other companies in our industry were contracting.
What was the turning point when you realized you had stumbled onto something viable with Botco.ai?
My co-founders and I had a hypothesis that the world has shifted to become on-demand. Everyone was struggling to keep up with that on-demand world because the marketing technologies, processes and frameworks that have been built were not designed for it. If we could shift that, and make businesses really responsive, then they would be able to attract more customers and retain them for longer. Last year, one of my customers at Botco.ai A/B tested a campaign where half of their customers were driven to a ‘chat with us’ experience in which they got to interact with the Botco.ai chat. The other half went to their typical landing page to book an appointment. What we learned was when people have a chance to ask questions and get an instant answer, they're twice as likely to convert and become customers. As soon as I saw the results from that effort, I knew we were onto something.
Was it tough to make the decision to leave Ideas Collide and go full time with Botco.ai?
It was a transition I had to plan over a good amount of time. I couldn't just walk away from it without being very thoughtful. One of the things I did was make a list of all of my duties and responsibilities and slowly began training people to take on each one of those tasks. It was a way to be able to step away from that business so I could start a new company, but it was also a really great way to develop my team. It created that growth trajectory for many of the team members to step up, take on ownership, and truly have an opportunity to run the business, not just be an employee. It was also a growth opportunity for me because it was time for me to build a new company. There was a lot I needed to learn. I needed to have that space to be able to fully give Botco.ai the attention it deserved.
What was one of your darkest moments and how did you emerge from it?
With both companies, it had to do with the loss of a major customer or client. With Ideas Collide, there was one particular client that was doing a lot of work with us until they essentially shut down and disappeared. I felt like a punch in the stomach. We had all these outstanding payments with this one client and I had not put in good measures to protect ourselves against that. It was a good lesson. Sometimes these learnings can cost a little bit from a dollar standpoint, but we recovered.
With Botco.ai, we also had one client that was hit really hard with the pandemic. Unfortunately, their business contracted almost down to zero overnight. They had to go dark and having to deal with that again was a big blow. Very quickly we had to pivot our value proposition to target customers and industries that were not affected by the pandemic, or at least were affected in a different way. We realized that everything we had put in place could be easily adapted into other sectors. We took those knowledge bases and workflows we had created for our old industry and customers and pivoted those for the sector that was going to be having a lot of movement and activity as a result of COVID.
What’s one of the best things you’ve done for Botco.ai to help propel its growth?
Getting really plugged into the Arizona startup ecosystem. Phoenix is a very young scene for the startup world. Many people would say we're largely underdeveloped, but because of that, there's a lot of desire to help and a lot of great resources. What specifically helped us was winning last year’s Arizona Innovation Challenge. We were one of 10 companies to receive a $150,000 grant. It also came with incredible wraparound services that I am incredibly grateful for. We got to participate in a 500-startup entrepreneurship bootcamp that was really transformational for the business. It's resources like that that have helped us get more visibility and teach me things that I didn't know.
Are there one or two connections along your journey that made a big impact?
I could write a list of the people in my life to whom I am deeply grateful. Mike Denning has been my coach for many years and has been instrumental for me in terms of my leadership development. Meghan Bednarz, one of my first bosses at Intel, was one of those people who believed in me and my abilities and presented opportunities to me that propelled my career in many ways. Dorothy Dowling at Best Western has also been an incredible mentor and opportunity provider. She’s super visionary and an incredible leader that I admire hugely. Gina Corley is one of those quiet forces here in Arizona who is doing a lot to move businesses forward and to modernize the state of digital marketing in this town. Zack Ferris over at Coplex has been an incredible mentor and friend. Eric Miller at the Arizona Tech Council.
One of the big things I really believe in is surrounding myself with positive, high energy, experienced leaders because they have so much they can share and if I'm willing to listen and pay attention, then maybe some of that will rub off onto me.
What's one piece of advice you would give to fellow entrepreneurs looking to make impactful connections?
The most important thing is to always give and provide value first. For every ask I make, I give 10 times. In my case, I do a lot of giving back through Girls In Tech. I also get asked to support a lot of other organizations here, whether it's teaching a seminar for Local First Arizona and helping small business entrepreneurs, or helping a friend that just wants to learn a little bit about software or sales. Or supporting a fellow founder that just needs a friend to listen to or confide in. There's so many ways we can give back, but unless we're willing to do that on a pretty regular basis, I think the asking will fall short and we'll ring hollow. Make sure you have channels for paying it forward, and then the rest will just take care of itself.
Speed round:
Coffee drinker, yes or no? Sometimes
One business tool you’re geeking out over right now? Botco.AI, obviously.
Favorite piece of technology? The Hypersphere. It's a workout ball that helps loosen up your muscles so that you're not so tight.
What’s one book you’d pass along to a fellow entrepreneur? Pitch Anything
One person you’d like to make a connection with? The founder of Infusionsoft/Keap, Clate Mask.
What’s your favorite ice breaker when introducing yourself to someone? I would say, “My name is Rebecca Clyde. I'm the CEO of Botco.Ai and I'm helping businesses double their conversion rates with intelligent chat.”
How many hours of sleep do you get each night, on average? Not enough. Probably about five.
How can people connect with you and Botco.ai? It's probably best on LinkedIn. Just mention in your note about how you heard about me, whether it was on this podcast or at a conference or wherever. Just include a little note because I'm most likely to see it that way. You can always email me at [email protected]
When MeiMei Fox submitted her first book proposal, never in her wildest dreams did she think it would lead to a life-long writing career. But, a fateful connection to the right person (combined with her innate writing talent) soon catapulted MeiMei into the ranks of the New York Times bestselling authors.
Today, she is also a contributor to Forbes, The Huffington Post, and Self Magazine, among other publications, and has co-authored several other notable titles. On top of all that, she manages to find the time to serve as a life coach and mother to twin boys. What’s her secret sauce? Fear less, love more.
In this episode, we talk to MeiMei about how she fearlessly pursues audacious goals, how she overcomes challenges and her approach for getting big things done: worst first.
Read on for a selection of questions, and listen to the entire interview by clicking the player above.Your background is in psychology, so what led you to writing?
I studied psychology then I went to work at McKinsey as a management consultant and I intended to go down that path, but I was really unhappy. It was fascinating and I was surrounded by brilliant people, but I didn't feel that my work was meaningful and helping the world be a better place. After I finished my two-year program with McKinsey, I was lost and I didn't know what to do next. I was talking with a friend who was a doctor, and he wanted to write a book about supplements and I said, “I can help you write that.” I bought a book called “How to Write a Book Proposal” and I wrote up a proposal for this book that we would co-author. One of my friends knew someone at Penguin Putnam so I sent her the proposal and she wrote back about a week later and said, “I never do this, but we're going to buy your book.” That's how my career in writing got started.
What’s been one of your favorite subjects or pieces to write?
I've been blessed to have been taken down this path through my mentor in the publishing world. She got me into writing books on spirituality. When I began to work on a book with Robert Thurman, who's a professor of Buddhism at Columbia University (one of the Dalai Lama's oldest friends and also Uma Thurman's dad), I was taken with Buddhism. It's been fascinating to work on several books about Buddhism, learn more about it and find that it really resonated with everything that I believed about the world. I feel like I was almost called down that path during my career in writing. From there, I went to work on The Art of Happiness in a Troubled World with Howard Cutler, which was co-authored with the Dalai Lama.
How have you accomplished so much over the course of your career?
I expected, and wanted, to have children at a younger age, but I ended up getting divorced and spent most of my 30s being single and not getting remarried until I was almost 40 and starting to have a family then. Even though that wasn't what I wanted, I ended up with all this time. So, I just kept pursuing my interests. Everything I've done has been driven by my passion and my purpose. I don't seek out to win awards or be the wealthiest or most successful. I just go after what excites me and gets me up in the morning with a smile on my face.
What, if any, was a significant challenge you’ve had to overcome in your career?
Choosing this path is the biggest challenge. There's a great deal of instability and in the world of book editing and ghostwriting—it can be feast or famine. I get a really huge project and get a big chunk of payment upfront and then another chunk when the book is finished. Other times, it's like I'm scrambling to pay the monthly bills. You have to be really comfortable with uncertainty. The trade off has been the excitement and the freedom. I've literally spent most of my career working whenever and wherever in the world that I wanted to.
As a life coach, are there any common threads you see in what tends to limit individuals from pursuing or realizing those dreams?
I definitely think so. I have a mantra that I've developed over the years, which is “fear less, love more.” What I've seen with a lot of my coaching clients is that it's fear that's holding them back from taking a risk. I think everybody's suited to different levels of risk and different levels of stability. There are ways that you can keep working a steady job and have a reliable income while also beginning to explore some of your passions. What I often find helpful is breaking it down into smaller steps. The other big part of it is holding people accountable. It's so easy to put off our dreams and our passion projects and to procrastinate them or push them to the bottom of the pile. A big part of what I do is holding people accountable to say, “here's this small goal that you set to reach your big dream. What's the timing of that? What are you going to have done in two weeks? What are you going to have done in a month? How can we just start moving there step by step?”
Are there one or two impactful connections that shaped your journey significantly?
Amy Hurts. She's the one who was the senior editor at Penguin Putnam who bought and published the book. We became friends as we were working on that book together. At the end of that process, she said, “You know, you can do this for a living.” Even though I now had a published book, I still was in denial over the fact that one could be a professional writer. She said, “I will get you a literary agent and your first freelance editing project.” And she did. She remained at my side, guiding me through that process for a decade. I'm immensely indebted to her.
What's one piece of advice you would give to someone struggling to achieve an ambitious dream?
I think it's so important to break big audacious goals into smaller, more manageable chunks. I also think that you don't have to work with a coach. You don't have to pay anyone. It could be a partner, a parent, a best friend, but I think it's really critical to state your intentions out loud and make them known and have someone who is holding you accountable, checking up on you and seeing if you're continuing to make progress to your goals. Another thing is, a long time ago I heard one piece of advice that I really love –– “worst first.” It's the idea that you have your to-do list and in the morning you do the worst thing first.
Speed round:Coffee drinker, yes or no? Yes.
One business tool you’re geeking out over right now? Zoom
Favorite piece of technology? My smart phone
What’s one book you’d pass along to someone who may be looking for new inspiration or a change? The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
One person you’d like to make a connection with? Oprah
What’s your favorite ice breaker when introducing yourself to someone (either online or off)? My name. MeiMei is Chinese and means little sister. It was a nickname that my brother gave me when I was born, but stuck my whole life. It's a really fun topic of conversation.
How many hours of sleep do you get each night, on average? Seven to eight
How can people connect with you? All the social. You can find me on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, My Forbes Author Page. And my website is meimeifox.com.
When was the last time you paused, reflected on what was going on in your life, and took a hard look at how it was affecting your happiness, health and overall success? Has it been awhile? More than likely, the answer is “yes.”
Often we rush from one task, milestone or accomplishment to the next, in constant pursuit of what we think we need to make us happy, successful and fulfilled. In other words, we’re always looking for more and it’s exhausting.
For Karen Mangia, VP of Customer & Market Insights at Salesforce, this was her reality until a health issue forced her to press pause. But as they say, it’s often life’s most challenging situations that present the best gifts. Through this journey, Karen learned that success, happiness and fulfillment wasn’t about more. In fact, it was just the opposite –– a topic she explores in her book, “Success With Less”.
In this episode, we talk to Karen about how the idea of “pause, ponder, prioritize” came about, how to peacefully coexist with old habits, and how to identify when you’re at a crossroads and what to do about it.
What led you to write “Success With Less”?I think back to those early days when my mom would do this chore chart. It would be a list every day of the things that you were supposed to do and the behaviors you were supposed to display. If I did it, I would get one of those gold stars. I loved being able to see the stars across the board, like these little moments of achievement. I took that gold star mentality forward in life. Keep saying yes, keep performing, and keep amassing those gold stars. It was a formula that worked incredibly well early in my career. I earned several promotions and got some recognition and rewards that created more opportunities.
The challenge was that the further you go in your career and life, you have to be more thoughtful about what you're saying yes to and whether it’s serving you and moving closer to your goals. All those gold stars eventually added up to a really major setback in my life and I started discovering that “Success With Less” formula. How I defined success changed radically. Success was getting healthy enough again to be able to enjoy my life and that was a very different definition than getting gold stars, and that was okay.
Being a type-A personality, how did you teach yourself to pause more frequently?In some ways, the pause was forced on me because I was conscious that I really did have limited time and energy. What I found during that time was that having a success mindset and an outcome in mind helped me start saying “no” to things that might drain my energy and not get me closer to my goal. What I started to discover when I was saying “no” on my own terms or pausing from endless activity was the pauses that we choose feel really different than the ones that are forced on us. What I started finding was when I could choose these moments to pause because they would help me refresh or reset, it felt a little more empowering.
How do keep from returning to old habits and thought patterns that set you back?It is really difficult to change our routines and boundaries and then stick with them because that takes energy. We don't always have all the energy that we need to endlessly keep everything in perfect balance. What's important is how do you reset when you find that happening? I'll never forget what my friend once said—that it is okay to look behind you and acknowledge that that person with those habits is still there and it's always going to be there. The difference is you can see that person from a distance and peacefully coexist which means you now have permission to make a different choice. Having a little bit of saving grace that you're still human and you're gonna make mistakes will go a long way.
Are there one or two people along your journey who have really transformed the trajectory of your career?There are a couple who come to mind. I had hit a point where I was looking for a role outside of sales and I had flown to another city for a job interview in my same company. When I got to the city and in my rental car, the interviewer called me and canceled the interview. I'm like, what do I do now? I found this mentor and she said, “Drive to my office, I'll think of a plan.” When I got there, she said, “Great news. You and our Chief Operating Officer graduated from the same university. You'll call him, tell him you're in town and that you would love to meet him because he went to the same university.” I thought this sounded like a horrible plan, but I was desperate. I called, met up with him, and ultimately ended up working for him. This sent me on a completely different career path and really brought me to where I am now. Another really formative person that stands out for me is an executive coach I had named Diane. I dedicated the Success with Less book to her because it never would have happened without her coaching and encouragement.
What are some of the best ways you intentionally make impactful connections to grow yourself?When I think about growth, I think about what I want to learn and experience next. Sometimes those things come about organically and sometimes I'll find it when I'm listening to somebody else describe a hobby or something they do in their role. I get really excited and I think I would love to try that. That's always been something that's guided my career and my life, where I've sampled different hobbies and experiences. I've found that that has led me on some really interesting paths.
What would you recommend to somebody who maybe feels like they're at a crossroads but don’t know what direction to go?I refer to that as the general malaise—that feeling that nothing is getting you super excited and you don't really feel a clear sense of where to go next. In those times, I try to think about any small thing that might be enjoyable or what is it that you did when you were five that you absolutely loved? Do just a little something that sparks that nostalgic joy. Be really observant about if anything lights you up. Sometimes we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to figure it out in an instant, but it's okay to live in that spot for a while. Another tool that has helped me is going with the people who I don't know that invite me to connect and have a conversation. I will go through a period where I just say “yes.” I don't know where I'm headed at the moment so this “yes” might be something that ignites excitement or opens up a path to a new opportunity.
Speed RoundAre you a coffee drinker? Yes
What is one business tool you're geeking out over right now? I hate to admit it, and it's so cliche, but Zoom.
What is your favorite piece of technology? My mobile phone What's one book you'd pass along to someone who may be looking for new inspiration? Lifescale by Brian Solis. He has some fantastic tools about how to shut out distractions and work in 90 minute sprints.
Who is one person you'd like to make a connection with? Brené Brown. I find what she has to say to be incredibly practical, soulful and challenging.
What is one of your favorite icebreakers? Two things that I like to ask people about are what are you excited about right now and what was their first job?
How many hours of sleep do you get each night on average? I make a concentrated effort to get eight hours of sleep every night.
How can people connect you? You can find me on Twitter @karenmangia or you can find me on LinkedIn. I would love to connect with you and hear your story and learn from you.
When most people think of marketing, they think big energy, big talkers, big ideas and even bigger results. And while this may be true, building an effective marketing strategy—and team—is about starting small and ensuring quality always overrides quantity. It’s with this mentality that Charlotte Bohnett, senior director of demand generation at WebPT, and Brooke Andrus, content marketing manager at WebPT, have helped develop an extremely effective inbound marketing engine that has led WebPT to become the third-most sought after resource for compliance and billing in the rehab therapy industry. In this episode of The SuccessLab Podcast, Charlotte and Brooke talk about how they got their start in marketing and how they’ve built a powerhouse marketing engine that has helped grow WebPT from a bootstrapped startup to a rapid-growth tech company. This dynamic duo also explains the pivotal role WebPT’s content marketing strategy plays within the team’s approach to demand generation as well as why marketing teams should own more of the funnel. Read on for a selection of questions, and listen to the entire interview by clicking the player above.
What led you to WebPT?Charlotte: I started at WebPT eight years ago. I finished graduate school in Northwestern Ohio and was working at a B2B company that was a distributor of media to public library systems in the US and Canada. They had just expanded into developing a software that libraries could use for checking out video content so I started dabbling in software as a service in the B2B space. My husband and I both wanted to spread our wings in marketing so we applied for jobs all over the country. Fortunately, WebPT reached out to me for a copywriter position. I had a really good feeling about it, so my husband and I packed up and we drove across the country. I knew it was the right fit for me. Brooke: I went to journalism school at the University of Montana and started out my career as a community newspaper reporter and photographer. The parent company that ran our newspaper was constantly reducing newsrooms across the entire organization and I always felt like my job was in jeopardy. Me and my editor were doing the work of six people so I burned out really fast and I decided that it was time to look for something else. I expanded my reach beyond journalism and dabbled in some communications and media relations roles. The company that I was at before WebPT was basically a startup that ended up failing right in the middle of my contract with them. I started looking around and saw the listing at WebPT and was immediately struck by how different and fun it was. I had no idea what an EMR was. I didn't know what SaaS was, but the style and tone of the listing spoke to me so I applied. They called me an hour later to set up an interview. I ended up taking the job, driving across the country and started a new life in Phoenix.
What have you been most proud of during your time at WebPT?Charlotte: The team. I have played a hand in hiring every single person in the marketing department. It’s my top highlight because without this team we wouldn't have been able to demonstrate the overwhelming value of marketing and of intentionally crafting a very human brand. Without this team, we wouldn't see month-over-month and year-over-year success regardless of the economic or political climate. WebPT has been a juggernaut for over a decade and it is in large part due to this marketing team. Brooke: Making our “Annual State of Rehab Therapy Report” into what it is now. Originally, it was supposed to be a product marketing project to survey the industry and find the data they need to make sure what we were developing was solving our industry's needs. In the middle of the survey our product marketing manager ended up leaving and nobody was stepping in to close the loop on the project. Even though I didn't necessarily want to, I knew it needed to be done so I ended up taking the reins and seeing it through. It turned into this really awesome report and over the years it's evolved into our flagship content marketing piece. We've now done three and I've become the point person for the entire project, from distributing the survey and collecting the data to turning it into this beautiful, polished book.
What role does content marketing play in your go-to-market and demand-gen strategies?Charlotte: Content marketing is the foundation of everything we do. Roughly 60% of our leads come in through pure inbound. We wouldn't get so many leads on our website if we didn't have so much traffic coming in organically and that traffic is purely because of how stellar our content is. We wouldn't amass the email marketing leads that we have if our email marketing wasn't fueled by a fantastic monthly newsletter, weekly blog digest, and a webinar series. We also use marketing automation to drip anybody who interacts with any of our content. We have figured out how to make connections to our products with content at every stage of the funnel. Without our content marketing program, we would not see the volume of leads that we are driving. Brooke: Our enterprise sales development works a little bit differently than everything else. Our reps are working bigger accounts for multi-location practices or hospitals. Those are longer sales cycles so they have to do a lot more outreach to keep those leads warm. Everything from blog posts to the industry report has helped give those reps the tools they need to reach out and keep the conversation going.
What connections along your journeys have made the biggest impact?Charlotte: One person who has majorly impacted both me and Brooke is Heidi Jannenga. She is an example of an executive who has figured out how to be one with the people. She’s honest, transparent, tough as nails and absolutely brilliant. She trusts and respects other people and prioritizes surrounding herself with people who are going to teach her things and then she empowers them. One other person is Mike Manheimer. He's one of the people who fought to hire me at WebPT and he worked with me closely for the entire time he was at WebPT. Before he left to lead demand gen marketing at Gainsight, he fought to promote me to an official manager title and give me authority. After he left, I felt empowered to lead that team. Without Mike showing me that a boss could be somebody who can treat you as an equal, I don't know if I would have known that that's the kind of team that I could create at WebPT. Brooke: I definitely owe my start in marketing and the progression through my roles in the marketing team to Charlotte. I had zero management ambition when I started, but Charlotte recognized the potential in me and it is a huge reason why I ended up pursuing a leadership path. She believed I could do it even though I had no experience managing people and I wasn't confident in my natural leadership abilities. She helped me make that transition and she's always had my back. No matter what happens, whether I feel like I made the right or wrong decision, Charlotte's there to help me turn it into a growth experience.
What is one piece of advice you would give to marketers who might be struggling to scale or operationalize content within the organization?Charlotte: Make marketing own more of the funnel. Don't hand over prospects who download a white paper to sales. Keep those people in the marketing funnel, nurture them and get them to commit to a demo because then you're able to control more of the entire funnel and you take a load off of sales, which demonstrates the value of marketing. Marketing is proving that we can qualify the leads through marketing automation. Brooke: Start small. Our content marketing program is a multifaceted, well-oiled machine at this point, but it was not always that way. It's a process. The first step is getting in tune with your audience, understanding what they want to consume, when they want to consume it and how they want to consume it. Create a plan for a month, then try to plan for a quarter, then try to do a high level plan for a year. Keep in mind you don't have to publish something every single day. I think that's a mistake that a lot of content marketers make. Be thoughtful about the content that you're producing and focus more on quality than on quantity.
Speed RoundAre you a coffee drinker, yes or no? Brooke: Yes. I have one or two cups of coffee first thing in the morning and nothing after that. Charlotte: Yes. I consume all my coffee before noon, but I drink coffee all morning long. What is one marketing tool you are geeking out over right now? Charlotte: Our company is very into Drift right now. What is your favorite piece of technology? Charlotte: Roku Brooke: Garmin watch What's one book you would pass along to a fellow marketer? Charlotte: The book that I would give people is no book at all. I would tell them to be more observant of the marketing world around them. Brooke: This isn't really a marketing book, but a writing book that I recommend to people is “Eats, Shoots & Leaves.” It’s incredibly entertaining but it also teaches a lot about writing in a clear, concise manner. Who's one person you'd like to make a connection with? Charlotte: Jameela Jamil Brooke: Barbara Walters What is one of your favorite ice breakers when you're introducing yourself to someone? Charlotte: Talking to people about the food and drinks at events, which actually works out very well because people always want to critique whatever they're eating and drinking at that moment. Brooke: If you see somebody with cool swag from the trade show floor, you can ask them where they got it. How many hours of sleep on average do you guys each get each night? Charlotte: About 7 hours Brooke: 7-8 hours Connect with Charlotte, Brooke and WebPT: You can go to webpt.com. You can follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest. If you want to get in touch with me or Brooke you can email [email protected]. We're both on Twitter— @charbertos and @brookeaandrus.
“Use analytics to see what's working. Double down on those things and cancel something else.” How much time do you spend with your analytics? Seeing what’s delivering results and what’s not? Looking at what content played well across which channels –– and what content gave you the most mileage. This is where Andy Crestodina, co-founder and CMO of Orbit Media Studios, a digital agency based in Chicago, believes content marketers should start their content planning. In this episode of The SuccessLab Podcast, Andy shares how this strategy has helped him and his team create a winning (and scalable) content strategy.
What prompted you to change your role from Strategic Director to CMO now at Orbit?Amanda Gant is our in-house marketer and she is 100% deserving of the director title. Partly to keep there from being confusion, we titled up a little bit. Amanda has a title that's more fitting of her role and I am a cofounder. I just ended up being the CFO. We're only a 40 person company so the titles are not super meaningful. I actually still do a good bit of sales, but a lot of my time is spent doing content marketing and I still do tons of writing, speaking and teaching.
What are you doing at Orbit for your clients? Have things changed at all in the last month in terms of how you’re servicing clients?Our company is primarily focused on web design and development. The content we're creating is basically evergreen content for sales pages. The purpose of these projects is to improve the foundation and platform for marketing and these are things that aren't affected by the massive change in the economy. It has definitely impacted the business environment and the work life of everyone we collaborate with. It's affected the appetite for risk, the concern about cash flow, the pace of sales and pipeline and leads. It's had a big impact but not in the deliverable itself. I can't just publish another ‘how to get more Twitter followers’. What I had to do was to look at what would give comfort to an email subscriber. What kind of article would make sense, and concluded that it would be useful to people in my audience to see what is happening in the industry. I quickly got a survey out of 122 agency owners to ask, what has the impact been for you? I was able to hopefully add to the conversation by putting out a bit of original research. There's some charts in there that really show how providers of different services were affected at different levels. There's a lot of unity in what's happening. I've adapted my communication strategy with clients a bit, but that piece of content is an example of how we can all be sensitive and still create value for an audience. That is a pivot away from the classic common topics and content strategy that we used to run.
As companies are thinking about their content strategies, is it a time to be accelerating content marketing efforts or is it time to pull back?We all still have the same number of hours in a day. Some of us who now have zero travel time, have more hours in the day. Rather than doing content marketing or PR, if you're a brand, go back and revise the sales pages on your website, improve the homepage of your website, add testimonials or re-update all of those service pages and product pages. I used to wake up in the morning and spend half an hour or an hour on an article. Now I'm waking up in the morning and spending half an hour or an article rewriting a sales page. Similarly, it's a good time to polish your social media bios and do a little personal branding. You can also build content that can be released later. Let's say you'd always wanted to create a new program with a series of weekly videos. You can now go ahead and pre-record an entire series of content and when it's ready, just queue them up. Go look at all this stuff you're paying for or evaluate a tool that you've never used before. PR people and content marketers can keep strong relationships right now. It's a really powerful time to build stronger relationships and just show that you care and show that you're here.
What steps should marketers take to make their content more discoverable? Or what are some of the things that you do?There was always this debate about bounce rate. We built a thousand websites over the years so I have access to hundreds of analytics accounts. I actually had a VA go look at all these analytics accounts and copy and paste different bounce rates from different traffic sources into a spreadsheet. We got up to 500 analytics accounts. I averaged all these and published this number. The average bounce rate on websites is 61%. Then I did it by industry and I did it by traffic source and produced this piece of research that was built to be promoted. It took maybe 30 or 40 hours to make this whole thing. Now I have a piece of content that is totally original. It is the best page on the internet for its topic. It's beginning now to rank in search and it's been picked up by other websites. It looks great in streams because of the visuals. I can reference it from other articles that I've written and as time goes on, I'm going to look for ways to incorporate this into presentations and other content.
Are there some other best practices for content distribution?One of the things that it took me a while to figure out is that when you look at a topic or a headline, it's often true that that topic or headline has a natural advantage in either search or in social. If the piece that you're working on answers a question and has long detailed answers, that is likely something that will work well in search. On the other hand, if the piece is a little bit unexpected and has visuals and it's highly collaborative, that is going to work well on social media. They're sort of opposites. In search, your job is to meet expectations but in social, your job is to be a little bit unexpected because you know nothing about what they're thinking. You can basically look at a topic or a headline and ask yourself, is someone looking for this? Does this satisfy an information need or is this kind of emotional? Does this leave curiosity or is it unexpected? That dichotomy and understanding the different psychologies of people in those channels has helped me a lot. When I even begin to think about a topic, I'm already planning how and where that might work best and then tuning it up to work in that place.
On the SuccessLab podcast, we often talk about this idea of impactful connections and how they can really transform the trajectory of your career or your business in some way. Is there one or two along your journey that made a really big impact?There is someone that I knew in the early days of our company. His name is Ed Tucker and he was the co-founder of a company called Octane Communications. He was a more mature business person at the time. He'd come from big agencies so he had that experience of pitching larger projects. He showed me how to have tough conversations with clients and that pricing things at a level where you can feed yourself is possible. Watching someone make decisions made a difference and was really useful to me.
What's one piece of advice you would give to fellow marketers who may be struggling to scale or operationalized content in their organizations?Use analytics to see what's working. Double down on those things and cancel something else. Try to get a little bit of data about what's working and then do much more of what seems to be working and stop doing some things that weren't working. I wish I had done this years earlier. What people often find is that bigger and harder thing is worth it. It might be two or three times harder to create, but it might give you 10 or 20 times the result. I have learned that it makes more sense for me to do a larger, more authoritative, longer exhaustive piece of content less often.
Speed RoundAre you a coffee drinker? Yes or no? Yes. What is one marketing tool you're geeking out over right now? Analytics What is a favorite piece of technology? Noise-canceling headphones What is one book you'd pass along to a fellow marketer? Deep Work by Cal Newport Who's one person that you would like to make a connection with? I am blown away by the vision of Elon Musk. I think that guy's brain is fascinating and it'd be fun to hang out with him for an afternoon. What is your favorite icebreaker when introducing yourself to someone, either online or in person? I like to just leave it pretty open and ask someone what they're working on. It often leads to good conversation. They may get specific about a project and you instantly move away from small talk towards something interesting that they feel passionate for. How many hours of sleep do you get each night on average? Six and a half. I have a one-year-old though. How can people connect with you or orbit? Sign up for a biweekly newsletter on our blog at orbitmedia.com/blog. I also wrote a book which is called Content Chemistry. Another great resource Andy mentioned during the interview is this blog post: https://www.orbitmedia.com/blog/whats-a-good-bounce-rate/
Want to build an effective go-to-market strategy? Get out and talk to your stakeholders.
That may not be a novel concept, but it’s one that’s often forgotten. For Cory Fetter, product marketing and go-to-market leader at Front, it’s foundational to an effective go-to-market strategy. And when we’re talking stakeholders, it’s not just customers, it’s also product, sales and customer success teams.
In this interview, Cory shares how he approaches building strategies, how he thinks about and uses content to better enable the sales team, increase funnel velocity, and build a loyal customer base, and why he believes effective marketing starts with caring.
Tell us about your journey? How did you get into leading go-to-market strategies for SaaS companies?When I started my career, I didn't envision this. I originally was on the corporate communications side and I joined a global technology distributor in Phoenix called Avnet. I loved the value that was put into effective communication, especially around different cultures and geographies and the rigorous review processes they had. Thereafter, I joined Infusionsoft, which is now rebranded as Keep. I eventually led the PR team and focused a lot of my time on messaging and positioning around the product. I eventually transitioned into product marketing and more formally go-to-market strategy. Then I joined a company called Gainsight. Originally, I focused on growing their SMB segment of business and I leveraged a lot of what I learned at Infusionsoft [Keap] in that role. We eventually acquired a company and then I led the go-to-market strategy for that product line. Most recently, I've joined Front where I'm focused on building and leading the go to market across key industries and in different use cases.
You recently landed at Front, what were some of the first steps you took to set yourself (and the company) up for success?I'm still very much in the process of this. I view my first 30 days as primarily to understand the landscape. I've been talking with a lot of people in sales within the product team, the success team, support team and marketing. I am focusing on key questions like, what is our primary target market today? Who do we believe to be the ideal customer profile and trying to learn more about our competitors, their strengths and how are they positioning their product? What types of content are they pushing out into the market? Are there gaps or resources the team needs to help accelerate the pipeline? What has worked within our target audience and what marketing channels are we leveraging? Answering those questions within the first 30 days will allow me to effectively craft the go-to-market strategies.
How do you determine what niches to focus on and then how do you dig in and learn about them?When you talk to enough people or listen to enough sales conversations, you're going to start finding a pattern. That's usually where I start. I get directional guidance, but then I also look at the data and the usage behind our existing customer base. At Front, I'm fortunate we have some tools that make it easier for me to go in and explore among our customer base and what industries they fall in. Going through that process of narrowing it down with that anecdotal or directional insight from the conversations you've had upfront to more of the analytical data-driven approach, you can layer those on top of each other to get a really good understanding of where you should focus.
What role does content marketing play in your GTM strategies?I can have sales enablement sessions with our sales team and make sure that they understand who our target audience is and what key messages should they hit on, but if the team and company doesn't have any content to generate the interest, we're not going to have anyone to talk to. If the sales team doesn't have the content to help facilitate those conversations, you don’t have all of the tools in your toolbox to close that deal as effectively as you can. Content is at the core of all of my go-to-market campaigns that I focus on.
Are there one or two impactful connections along your journey that made a big impact?I've had several mentors in my career that really did change the trajectory. Rhett Wilson. He is not even in the marketing industry but has provided so much guidance. He works for the White House Historical Association and his advice on how to interact with others in business helped me so much early in my career and still helps me to this day. Others that are in marketing, like Greg Head who was the CMO at Infusionsoft or Terry Hicks, who was the COO, modeled by example and the one-off conversations that you may not think of as being very formative ended up being very formative. Some of the greatest advice that I got from everyone collectively is be intentional with your career and ask yourself every year, every quarter or every month, are you getting what you need within your current role to achieve the goals that you've set out for yourself? If you're not, that's when you have to ask the questions around what can I re-architect or change within my current role? Or, is it time to go look for that next challenge?
What's one piece of advice you would give to fellow marketers who may be struggling to scale or operationalize content in their organizations?I'm going to pull from one of my favorite quotes by Theodore Roosevelt, “No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” Have the conversation around why you're doing this and why should they care about your content goals and your go-to-market goals and help them see the value of pushing through a new process or scaling content in a certain way.
Speed round:
Connect with Cory on LinkedIn. For Front, check out frontapp.com. (P.S. You can try the software for free!)
Steven Kiger got the entrepreneurial itch in high school, creating odd jobs for himself that would fund weekend excursions with his friend. Today, Steven has founded several ventures, and is currently a partner and CPO at RocketSource, a company specializing in transforming the customer experience, and the co-founder of Platstack, a platform that allows you to save, organize and share topics you care most about.
On this episode of The SuccessLab Podcast, Steven shares why getting uncomfortable has been key to his success, the value of surrounding yourself with people who have experienced both great successes and great failures, and how he was able to push through multiple startup failures.
Read on for a selection of questions, and listen to the entire interview by clicking the player above.
You have a storied career in entrepreneurship. What was your first venture and how did you start?My very first entrepreneurial venture was back in high school. During the summer, my friends and I would knock door to door to see if people would want us to spray paint address numbers on their curbs. We would strategize around how many doors we had to knock to afford our night out. These entrepreneurial moments continued throughout college and then into my first job, which was at a Fortune 500 company in the dental space. I noticed there was a huge demand for dental marketing and there weren't a lot of companies doing it. I decided to actually quit my full-time job and start a dental marketing company.
What were the early days of your entrepreneurial journey like?I was lucky to start at an early age. I was 24 years old. I was single. I had no dependents and I just had to make sure I paid my rent every month. It wasn't a huge amount of stress because I knew there wasn't a lot of risk in doing it. It was exciting. I would say the biggest thing is just getting uncomfortable and doing something you've never done before.
What were some of the biggest challenges you encountered as you grew the business?It was just myself for a long time, so for me, the hardest thing was hiring that first person. It took me many, many years to get to the courage to do that. But it was one of the best decisions I made –– and he's still with me.
What was one of your darkest hours and how did you pull yourself out of it?I started an app six or seven years ago called Mover, which was like an Uber for renting trucks. We spent a lot of money on it and built it out. Unfortunately, we never found product-market fit in Utah because everyone has a truck or knows someone that has a truck. Any sort of failure like that, where you spend years of your time, energy, excitement and money only to shut it down, hurts. With those failures, I've learned a lot and to continue pushing forward.
What led you to RocketSource and ultimately to sell your other marketing company?It was a tough decision to sell the company but I got to the point where I wanted to build my own products. I had a lot of conversations with my wife and luckily she has been super supportive. I was also lucky enough to get connected my now co-founder, Buckley Barlow. We joined forces and then I brought in the third partner who I worked with in the past. He ran his own digital technology coding shop. And so we needed that dev partner as well. So we had a creative, a growth guy and a dev guy needed to create RocketSource. The ultimate goal with RocketSource was to create a service-based company that can generate some good revenue and ultimately build really cool products we can grow.
What has been one of the most important lessons you’ve learned along your entrepreneurial journey?My mantra is to never burn a bridge. I've had really crappy clients in the 20 years I've been doing this and I always suck it up and do the job to make sure they’re happy. Interestingly, some of my best clients have come as referrals from some of my worst clients. It has served me very well.
Has there been a connection you’ve made along your journey that made a big impact?My partner in crime, Buckley Barlow. He's a genius in a lot of ways. He's mentored me over the last seven years to become someone who I wasn't before.
What’s one of the best ways you make impactful connections to grow yourself and your business?It's amazing what now is available versus when I started 20 years ago. I would say to challenge yourself. Go find entrepreneurial clubs, look on Meetup, find lunches, join a local Slack group, get super uncomfortable. Ultimately, most people want to help each other and one of the best ways to do that is to just get out there.
Speed round:One business tool you’re geeking out over right now? Slack
Favorite piece of technology? Anything that can save time through a mobile device. What’s one book you’d pass along to a fellow entrepreneur? Don't Make Me Think
One person you’d like to make a connection with? Barack Obama
What’s your favorite ice breaker when introducing yourself to someone (either online or off)? Normally I like to talk about travel, anything along the lines of finding out where they've been, what they've done.
What is your favorite way you rejuvenate and refresh? Snowboarding. Just getting outdoors and turning off the devices.
How many hours of sleep do you get each night, on average? Eight
How can people connect with you or RocketSource? We'd love to have anyone try out Platstack. We haven't fully launched yet so there might be some bugs but we're looking for people to try it out and give us some feedback. You can connect with me on LinkedIn and RocketSource.com is our website.
The podcast currently has 114 episodes available.