Marketing & Comms Talent Goes Flexible with Lara Vandenberg

Welcome back Atlantia. Happy twenty two. Here we go. I believe this year is the year of the individual, where people use their talent in non traditional ways. And we've been talking about multifaceted identities, and now we're in the place where people can start to flex those skill sets, identities, passion points, and interests in places that are maybe not the traditional forty hour work week, full time job. I do X, I am X, meaning I am a marketer.

Therefore I join an agency or I'm on the client side. Now we have the opportunity to say I can actually flex those skill sets into places that I've never maybe gone before, into areas where my skills or my perspective, my point of view is really needed and I've never

actually applied it in those areas before. It got us thinking about some of the past conversations that we've had, one of which was Cyndy Gallup, who talks about personal agency and what personal agency means, individual agency, and that

everyone has agency. It's how you start to use it and actually apply it into your future, into your trajectory, into your daily life and decide what you're worth, where you want to go, and really start to think in nonlinear ways about how you apply your skill sets outside of maybe the traditional forty hour work week. Now, this has been a conversation that not only we've been having

for years. There was an episode I recall us talking about portfolio careers and this was a couple of years back, and really thinking about how your core competency or your core skill sets can be transferable into different industries to allow you to start to branch and build um something that's as horizontal as it is vertical. So this has

been a conversation that has been happening over time. But I think what we're seeing is now executives, founders vcs start to action on it, creating opportunities in traditional structures to allow for experimentation and exploration, but even a step further building entire new business models that support not only you know, the discovery and accessibility for employers and contractors to connect, but also and we're gonna get into it

in this episode. And I know, Alexa, you have experience and a point of view on this, supporting on the back end for things like taxes and how to set up you know, the infrastructure of your organization that you may not have experience. And what's been on the forefront of the conversation around flexible work and using your skill sets in different ways has really been in the Web three space. It's really been in the creator economy space.

What we haven't talked about as much is how more traditional tracks functional skill sets, marketers, communicators, How are they actually starting to leverage their agency, How are they starting to actually look at branching out and using their network as a verification system and starting to look for different work, applying their skill sets into a different way and looking at potentially areas that they haven't gone into that are very different from the forty hour work week and the

full time gig. And so to your point, there really hasn't been an infrastructure that's been built to do that, and so the guests we have on today. Laura Vandenberg is the founder of Publicist dot co and what Publicist does is end to end. Has created a solution for the demand side, so the client that's hiring, and the supply side, the talent that's looking, and it handles everything from the back end so that it's not just on demand talent and a talent search agency. It's not that

at all. It's actually using back end technology sas tools to help folks operationalize their skill sets, their expertise almost immediately into the workforce, from fractional to full time to advisory, etcetera. Why is this so important right now? Well, I think what I found interesting in the conversation and get into it in just a minute, is that fractionalized bit, that

advisory bit, the opportunity to have something on demand. Laura talks about the on boarding process and the traditional model. There's the application, rounds of interviews, reference checks, you know, additional back and forth around negotiation, et cetera. By the time you go from initial discussion two on boarding into an organization, it can take quite a long time. When in fact, there are some clients, brands, agencies who are looking for support, maybe for just a matter of hours

to consult on something. So that was equally interesting to me, not only the support of the contractors, but also on the employers side, the ability to expedite the process and have options that can be something that's a matter of hours or something that's a matter of months. And with Lara Vandenberg, we'll be right back and we are back on the mic with longtime friend Lara Vandenberg is in the studio hanging with us today to talk all things Publicist dot Co. Lara, I feel like we've been waiting

so long to say this. Welcome to Atlantia. Thanks both. I'm so excited. I know this is years in the making. So the first time I heard about Publicist, you and I were in an airport on an eight hour delay trying to get out of I think we were in Park City, if I recall Sundance Sundance and you said, so, I'm thinking about starting this thing. And because the delay went on and on and on, I think we did like three iterations of the pitch deck together while we

were sitting there. But I would love to hear a bit about the reason you founded this. Yeah, I'm happy too. And can I just say how thrilled I am that we don't have to do those eight hour layovers and airports and the conference travel has really um settled. It'll bounce back, then I'll come back. It'll come back. But yes, agreed, but hopefully not to the extent that we were doing it on planes three times a week. But you wouldn't

have run into Laura exactly exactly. But so, I think it was twenty beginning of so I was the s VP of Marketing at Notch, and I mean even prior to that, I had a pretty i guess, nonlinear career in comms and marketing started in Australia on the agency side, and then came over to New York with a big enterprise with Westfield, and then Beauty start up and then you know, B two, B stas so all over the place.

And I guess the consistent thing that my pain point was, like number one was access to talent is really really hard. And I think that our industry as we know is so foundational to word of mouth. Um. And I guess the one thing that I really saw is hyper specialization in the industry is completely outpacing word of mouth. I

think marketing comms creative. It's growing both horizontally and vertically from the skill sets that exist today that didn't exist even ten years ago when you know, I started my career. So problem number one was access to talent and access to the right talent. I think for so long we've relied on, as I mentioned, word of mouth and linked in, and even the way we engaged with agencies is changing drastically.

Problem number two was once you've actually found someone, whether it's a freelancer or a full time employee or an agency, it takes so long from first conversation to on board these people. Um what that law usually looks like, and it touches OPS and HR and a hiring manager and finance is you know, we put that U r L into a Google spreadsheet and then pass it off to

an applicant tracking system. It's then, you know, we interview them, we send them contracts, we on board them, and that can take six to eight weeks and sometimes you just want to hire someone for a day. And so that essentially was my big pain point was access to talent and then managing talent. So what we ended up launching with Publicist was a platform that allowed agencies and brands

to source higher pay and manage. We launched with freelancers and contractors, and we can get into how that's changed. But essentially a platform where people can go and find pre vetted, premium talent um and then on the flip side, a community where the talent can essentially run their back office from tax stuff too, invoices and contracts. Because I think what this in the industry. You know a lot

of staffing agencies and a lot of these contractors. They've never needed to be a solo preneurs or business of one. And these people are phenomenal at doing the work, but have never necessarily needed to be their own lawyer, and be their own accountant, and be their own salesperson. And the thing is, it's like anyone who has gone out on their own to freelance or consult. This is takes eighty percent of your time to set up. And by

the way, find the right lawyer. It's not just get a lawyer, it's find the right lawyer who understands the business. Find the right like, how do you start to think about procurement, which is actually a huge gateway to your business, like all of those things totally and even like even marketing yourself is a really hard thing to do. And like, yes, we're all marketers, but we and we've all written briefs a hundred times in our life, but when have you

ever actually written a brief for yourself? And like, what is my mission? Who is my target audience? It's a really hard thing to do. You talk about pre vetting, uh and pulling in premium talent onto the platform for marketers, brands, etcetera. To connect What does that pre vetting process look like? How do you identify premium talent? Was it a call for was an immediate rush of somewhere in the middle. We'd love to kind of get into your process a bit.

With communications, marketing, and creative, there is an abundance of talent out there, but often when it comes to brand, people willing to pay a premium for anything to do with that, we're facing, you know, regard of of brand. Now, we vet all of our talent in two different ways. So there's an application process where we ask for things like portfolio and references and brands, publishers, agencies worked with skill sets industry, so we really try and get this

granular um experience and skill sets as possible. We then put them through an interview process and so we want to understand what a people's experience it's and so it's very very created, and I think to create this really premium community, we want to start with, you know, the top of the top. We've got a really robust wait list that you know, we check in on quarterly and and then let people into the platform and let them reapply and all of that. What is premium defined premium talent?

It's a really hard one. Now we have a couple of one oh one, so we really look at past works. That is the absolute indicator of uh, the output and the actual whether it's creative or press or relationships. Um, so it is. It is super subjective, and we've got a communications council that goes in and and bets everyone.

But it's hard, and it's so interesting. And when I talk about this hyper specialization of both industry and skill set, like I cannot tell you the influx and by no surprise of fintech and crypto, both clients and talent on the platform. But then even defining like what is a

ship coin and like can people's experience. I say that, Yeah, Um, we've said worse even defining the specialization within the coins, whether it's Bitcoin or a ship cooin, whether it's go to market or p R. And I think it's that hyper specialization is just something that we're really focused on. And what's interesting, we're seeing the term generalists now be

a specialization. Yeah, let's talk about that pendulum swing because as I think about approaching twenty two, as we all know, um, the Great Resignation underway and likely no signs of slowing down, as more and more people are moving into freelance capacities, changing industries, completely new and interesting paths that people are pursuing. Have you seen that felt that, what does it look like?

And are there things that have surprised you, particularly over the last two years that you can point to and say, I didn't expect the industry to move this way, or there's an overabundance of people moving that way. I think what we're seeing is the Great reshuffle, not the Great resignation. And I think that COVID obviously accelerated the move to contract and the move to people taking a step back and figuring out what they care about and not wanting

to work for average companies anymore. And one of the things that I've seen and I think is here to stay is this is a supply market. Clients are pitching talent for the first time, rather than talent pitching clients, which is something really really interesting. I also think that

I mean, we launched our business. May of do not advise anyone to launch a company two months into one of the greatest pandemics we'll ever see, but it was just so fascinating that we gave home to first time freelancers who will never go back to full time jobs, and so this was a landing pad for them in a way. But I think it will remain as a supply market. We're working with a client right now, Free Pandemic.

They were receiving between five hundred a thousand job applicants per job post today, so less than eighteen months later, they're lucky if they get to wow too applicants. And so I think that talent has just taken a step back and figured out what they're worth is and what they value, and I think it's an amazing thing for all industries on that point. Are you helping your clients think about and figure out like why what is happening to their pipeline and why is their pipeline drying up.

One of the things that they're open to for the first time ever is these these companies that have never hired contractors and now hiring contractors for set roles. And so one of the things we do is and back to Laura, you're saying, we provide access to talent. Initially we launched a freelance and that was absolutely the imminent need that we saw, but you know, per the market and we're so young that we can iterate as well

as a result of seeing what our clients need. We're doing tempted perm, we're doing full time, we're doing one our advisory um and so I think that's probably an education that we say to clients if you're not feeling this full time started as a three month tempted perm and then see once the client has evaluated the talent and the talent has evaluated the client, if that marriage is you know worthwhile. So yeah, I think date before

marriage is a is a huge trem we're seeing. The other thing is we're probably contract on the platform right now, and historically a lot of the people that are these contractors and these solo preneurs have had careers first and have figured out that they now actually want to work

for themselves. And so that's also probably a reflection of the inbound that's actually that's coming to the platform first time solo preneurs who are stepping out of corporate structures, corporate environments where you know, some of the specifics you're alluding to earlier taxes, Alex, you're talking about lawyers, like you know, the let's just say solo preneurs starter pack. What's in the starter pack? What do people have to know as they get on the platform in terms of

like I need these things to just get up and running. So, Laura, that's a great point around you know, how do you operate your business through whether it's through a platform or off a platform. And it's one of the big pain points that we had solving for what are the workflow tools that someone actually needs, what's actually helpful and UM on the platform right now we have the ability to

send invoices, the ability to customize contracts UM. A huge thing that we haven't spoken about is payment terms when at zero, yeah, I mean the amount of agencies that a net thirty or forty five or even and it's tough. Yeah, you can't do that. You cannot do that with like talent. That is insulting talent. They have their own shops that maybe they have small teams. No way, no way, And so that that was something that was really important to me.

And so the projects, you know, again, the talent can customize. Is it a monthly retainer, is it per project, is it an annual retainer? UM, it's completely customizable. On the talent side. Now, we launched with project based engagements, and so that was up front, before work was done, in upon completion, and that's still to date. Is one of the most common preferences UM for both talent and clients.

And so I think building out workflow tools and then there are certain workflow tools that we've decided not to build for because we don't want to take away from the work. So for example, we've got to chat function on platform. UM, we didn't want to build a Slack integration or like, we don't necessarily want to take people away from Zoom or Slack or Gmail or how they're getting work done. We just want to help them on the administrative side, which exactly again it takes like eighty

percent of the time. When I first started consulting, I stayed up almost every night untill two a m. Nine to two a m. Was actually my billing, figuring out my invoicing system. What was I going to use? Was I going to use the free service? Was I going to use a paid service? Figuring it out? I mean it was like it was like, I mean truly starting over right, Yeah, which seems like an opportunity, by the way, from a tech product standpoint, to develop this solo preneurs

starter pack like that. Everything you're just saying the amount of time time is money. Yeah, it's a ton of money. And I think talent like you. As a consultant, there are two things to figure out. One is getting new business and then secondarily is bringing people on. And so that's something that on platform we do as well. And one of my favorite examples is we've got this phenomenal fintech uh PR guy on the platform and his business

is completely changed. He's just high at his sixth person on the platform because he's getting so much work from the platform. So creating this three sixty ability to hire and get hired, what's your payment? So we take a percentageum it starts and essentially the which kind of is built in both ways, that from workflow tools on the supply side and then also the demand side. Um. But the more from a client perspective, the more people you hire,

the cheaper it gets. And then a big focus of ours is on the enterprise side and that kind of commission goes out the door and it's more of a sas license structure. Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. I mean, the amount of money that people are spending on recruitment firms and staffing agencies, it becomes really really expensive, um for access to this great talent. Just trying to

make it as accessible as possible. Right knowing that you have so much transaction happening on the platform between supply and demand inside, are there on the back end data points that you're seeing that can really hone in on the generalist moving to hyper specialists. So the two biggest categories right now that require hyper specialization is fintech and healthcare. And it's probably in the last month jobs that we've

seen which is really really fascinating. We are probably in the last two or three weeks have seen I want to say sixties of new net new clients in crypto n f T spaces and what's really interesting as well.

And I mean, I know offline we've all spoken a lot about education, and I think that so many people come to us because they're like, great, we can get awesome marketing or awesome PR but a lot of these newer companies need education that no, you actually need branding and you need a comms message messaging strategy a four yep, you need to go and engage in PAER And that I think is where it's tough with younger companies as well, because we want to help them help themselves, but you

can't come to us and say, you know, we want to spend X on performance if you don't have great creative and so I think that's that's challenging with with earlier companies that have great budgets, and are you helping companies like that evaluate what they need and then matching them in some cases versus someone going on the platform and saying I really like Laura, I really like Electa, I really like their experience, and I think they're a

fit for what I'm looking for. So we've got a great talent team that can help hold hands, but we also try to solve it through content and education and

tools on the platform. I mean, we are a product, and so things that we've created, like a budget calculator and understanding how much you should be paying for talent and what is normal and that kind of like that alleviates that conversation that we need to have, and what we're trying to do is create products and tools for a lot of these younger companies to educate them because it's it's hard to educate on a on a case

by case scenario. But yeah, we want to help where we're super passionate about people getting the best outcome possible, So where we can we do. I have seen in the last six months this massive need for brand, brand strategy and big calms brains um on the web three side, and I think that a lot of founders and CEOs are starting to really understand that they have the need, but maybe don't really understand who fits the bill right.

My least favorite thing that I see is when prospective clients come to us and they say, we were just with a branding agency for a month, Well we just had a publicist for a month, and it's like, well, these things take time, and so I think that education is is is hard if someone isn't used to this industry and a lot of founders and you know, these spaces are technical leads exactly, which again is challenging unless they've got like marketing needs to sit at the table.

And I think that that's just a it's just an educational piece that people need to understand. I think that there's so much talent kind of buried in agencies. Has that come up on the agency side, like what are conversations with agency leaders? Agencies are some of our biggest clients. I think that agencies, more than almost brands right now, have been in what we refer to as a bit

of a talent drought. Um. One of the things that we saw during the pandemic obviously was agencies completely downsized teams. And yes, to an extent, that's bounced back, UM, but I think what we will continue to see is agencies will keep leaner teams and upskill when they need to. And so you know, agencies use our platform in a way that if they know that they're about to win automotive business, you can go on and save fifty creative

directors in automotive or whatever the example is. So I think that one of the reasons that agencies like the platform is this unified transparency into understanding everyone that they

potentially could bring on or create a team. I think one of the things that's interesting with agencies as well, and this is a segue into our second product Operator, but there is this need for not necessarily like three or six or twelve month fractional work, but an hour or a day of advisory for particular industries and so um we saw a lot of agencies come to the platform and saying, you know, we're pitching on a beverage client,

we need to speak to a beverage expert. Um and that kind of is why we launched our Expert Network Operator to give access to these thought leaders that can really help and advise. We launched it with leading cmos and agency leads and heads of d I and content leaders. But the demand that we're seeing extends well beyond marketing, and it's how people think about marketing. So it's you know, it's psychologists, it's domain experts in the most interesting fields.

You know, it's really interesting and here come up often the t shape skill set. Knowing a little bit about everything, but really going deep on a specific subject matter. I'm just curious to know both of you. Do you consider yourself specialist or generalists? I think when I was in a job when I was at Natural Archetypes before that or Westfield, I was a specialist. And then being a founder of an eighteen month old company where I am HR and legal and sales and marketing, I'm a generalist, Alexa,

what are you? I mean, I'm t shaped going deep in many areas, um, which is actually built up my What I would say is a very strong generalist skill set around classic marketing, right, marketing that creates value, that creates products. Right. Well, what about you, Laura, Yeah, definitely a t I find though the vertical portion of the tea having to become more splintered. Um. The media landscape is just evolving so rapidly. You can no longer just

be the best negotiator, buyer, etcetera, and so forth. You really have to, I believe, understand new business models. I'm fascinated with the thought of thinking about my first media by through crypto, like what is that going to look like? What does the infrastructure have to entail? Like all of these things, So I think the t is getting splintered. But I find um, in order to stay hyper competitive in the marketing arena, you're horizontal is being pushed to

limits that I never thought possible. So hyper specialist, generalist, generalist, hyper specialists. Depending on the day, I suppose capital capital t all. The talus is an underlined yes. So speaking of capital T let's talk about capital P How do people join and get involved with publicist and how are you also thinking about operator and vetting folks for operator. Let's start with operator, because that is that's a really highly curated group of people. It's word of mouth. We

still interview everyone. It started. We launched with two hundred and fifty of you know, the leading marketers in the US, and you know there's will be on the platform soon enough. I know, I know. And we we did actually just launch the ability to donate to charity, which is something we're really excited about. And I know that that's something

that you both wanted to be involved on. So that's awesome. Um, but so many also passed at Landia guests from like Cindy Gallup to Nancy Hill, to Andrew Essex to Kim Marie. It's just we're just going through the aad Landia episodes. That should be an automatic menas is a pipe. Have you been on Atlantia? I love that. We'll give everyone a special code. Essentially, we tried to again go vertically, so understand do we have enough people in healthcare? Do

we have enough people in consumer? Do we have enough people in fintech? Whatever it was? And so that was very much the rationale to begin with. And the way Operator works is it's you're able to go on and understand that the Atlantia team are available on Friday for at four pm and their rate is X hundred dollars an hour and they're either giving this to charity or they're not. We ask people, you know, what is this meeting about? What are you looking to get out of it?

And so it's really trying to again create access to thought leaders that have been pretty inaccessible to date. And so we will continue to keep Operator as a really high level group of these thought leaders and will expand over time. But again, if an agency says to us we need five psychologists on X, will go and find them and then on board them to the platform. With publicist publicists is much more of a network it's much

more mass Um. It's you go onto the platform, you apply, it's super super simple, and then from there, um we let people to the platform. So, Laura, what does the next year look like for you? How are you growing? Where are you going? So the big focus of two is this enterprise solution. So what we've really figured it in the last eighteen months is, you know, bigger, the bigger the company, bigger the problem, um, and so really

excited to expand our enterprise offering. UM. We're hiring some really really smart generalist specialist unicorns everything on pretty much every function of the business, which is exciting, and then um expanding into some very exciting markets as well, like geographical geographical markets. Okay, cool, very cool. Yeah, Well, we're excited to see all things publicists, operator and beyond in twenty two. But you know, before we go, we have to play our game bye bye bye. In twenty two,

what is Laura saying goodbye to b y E? What would you love to buy? Buy and what would you like to do yourself that you're not already doing? Although we know your plate is very full, b y, let's start with b y I, I'd love to do a consumer product one day. I just think it's like the ability to create something that's physical is just awesome. But that's years away because we need to figure out this

this marketplace first. Um, in terms of what would I buy? Wait, go back to that for just one second, though, what's the product? Do you know what I like? Twice a day I'll come up with something. Yesterday it was like tumor tea and then you go on Amazon and there's eight million tumeric tape by but something like just a consumer it would be amazing. All right, we'll think about this with you. Yeah, I'm in all right, yeah, Tumeric ta today. It's not vegemite has nothing to do with vegemine.

I'm sorry x oh you Aussies. Um, I can't handle it, I know. But do you want to know an amazing thing about vegemite that bonn And actually told me years ago? And bow is who I think you're talking? Yeah, exactly. Guess how many jars of vegemite they sell every year? Like millions, millions it I think for the last like a few decades. It's exactly correlated with the population of Australia.

So I think it's like there's there's this graph and five years there were twenty million people in Today they're twenty five million people. It is the exact amount of humans there are in the country at the one time, which I just think it's so interesting. Okay, So what are you think goodbye to or what are you buying? I mean, in terms of saying goodbye to, there are so many things on social media that I'd love to say goodbye to, from the vanity metrics to filters. I mean,

I'm to talk to you about filters for beauty filters. Yeah, I think so. I think it would be I just think on adolescents and you know, younger generations. It's just I'd love to see them go really dangerous. I totally agree with that. This is what you would look like if your face was perfect filter. Have you seen this? I haven't, but that scares me. It's everywhere. It's everywhere. Everyone's doing it is great. I did it to my dog.

Look the same. But um, but I mean, like the Instagram filters, I put them on and I'm like, I do not look like that. I It's just it's it's really scary, and I think in it's like generationally people that are growing up with that, right now, it's it terrifies me. Okay, And what would you buy? Be you why I wish I bought crypto five years ago and bitcoin, but you and us both sugar, I'd probably buy an education company. Um. I think that there's it's such an

interesting space. We've got a bunch of clients in education right now. But I think it'll be interesting to see the necessity of university degrees in ten and twenty years time. And I think that in our industry specifically, there's a slower education curve to kind of get up to speed in terms of, like you know, writing briefs and to become that practitioner. So yeah, something to do with education. I think. I love that. I'm passionate about that spief too, Laura.

If people want to follow you, get in touch with you, how do they do it? Yeah, my socials at Laura Vandenberg and then my email is lv at publicist dot com. And there will be no filters on zero filters, so zero filters in two Yeah, Laura, thanks for coming by Atlanta. Agree to see you. Thanks so much. Fun. I think Laura has really hit on a need in the market that has been totally overlooked and underserved. At the end of the day, here's what's really exciting to me about

Laura's model. It actually allows more people to start exploring fractional advisory types of work, and it takes away that massive overhead of time and cost around business development as well. That takes time, that takes money, that takes energy. So taking that out of the equation gives folks the ability to get their talent, get their expertise in use in

the market almost immediately. So one of the things that Laura didn't say in this episode that I think is really critical is that the time to actual job signing and starting to work, she's cut down significantly. So if you compare that to even working with a recruiter, are working with like a job's placement company, all of those things, she's cut that time down so significantly that you can get on the platform and pretty much start working almost immediately.

You know, Like, as you're talking, I'm thinking about the trending of the side hustle and the gig economy over the last few years. But what this is implying or suggesting is that it will just be the hustle, it will just be the economy. There will be more openness in what may be formerly known as corporate structures too, fractionalized ways of working, and an entire marketplace out there that continues to push on how that is shaped, how

that is governed. If we look at the valuations for companies in this space, if we look at the number of startups entering it, as we look at more tech enabling it, executives in the advertising marketing media space are likely going to have to consider how they address and evolved. And I think it's really interesting when you start to think about the role of the CEO organizational structure. I mean the ORG chart. What does an org chart look like? Two?

We are going to see so much of new learning models, new education companies at tech et cetera, and platforms and tools around how to start to apply that talent across lots of different industries. And so this kind of like T shaped person that we talk about will become more and more realized. And there may be specialist parts of it and generalist expertise across many many areas. And that to me isn't one of the most exciting things that

I think we're going to see this year. Two. Here we go, Laura hit it with a list of all of our friends and family at I Heart who have been so good to us and helped us get back on air. Big thank you to Bob Coronell, Carter, Andy, Eric, Gail, Val Michael Genn. We appreciate you. Thank you so much for this opportunity. We'll see you in two weeks.