Ep. #39: Kara Smith-Brown - Marketing Masterclass

So it requires a lot more like parenting , if I'm honest , like I have to like , think about it more than I did before . 10 and 12 .

Like the business is , it is an ever present , omnipresent thing in my children's lives . I would like to believe that they have an MBA now , like the amount like my husband and I work together , and so I would imagine that they will probably crush business school one day . Like they , they would probably be able to read a PNL .

I can't speak from anyone else's , but as someone who grew up with a father who was an entrepreneur and was pursuing a dream , when you see people who are pursuing a passion , there's something that is just so attractive about it and you just want it , gravitates , it pulls you in , and so seeing that at a young age , like your 10 and 12 year old kids are now

seeing you running around going on podcasts to talk about a book you just wrote , like running your business , which is a whole separate thing from the book , even though they're tangentially tied . Just taking on , you know , triathlons , it's like things like that they motivate kid they're the kid of the parent to to want to do that I mean .

So , like you know , I wouldn't be surprised if the 10 and 12 year old ended up being more of like quick starts and just wanting to get out and do stuff because they've seen their mother do the same for their entire life .

But she's relatively entrepreneurial , I think , and it's really cool because they're both girls and mommy's the boss , right , mom's on the road , mom's the one who's moving and shaking . My husband is no slacker , but mom's the one that does it all . So it is kind of cool to set this example .

I didn't have this model and I certainly didn't have a model for a female entrepreneur , right , I have some really cool role models in my life , but none of them are women from the early age . That's kind of cool .

We're riding the sine cosine wave , or whatever , up and down the roller coaster where for a few weeks I'm locked in and scheduling a bunch of these and grinding , and then I just lose interest .

I mean , it's not that I lose interest in these conversations because as soon as I'm sitting here I'm excited and like jacked up about this , but like when I don't have people scheduled , it's just hard to get back into it . You know what I'm talking about .

And so , like you , you know through the audience , you'll get a probably good two months here , uh , and then we'll have a couple of weeks of If you want my experience share on this , get yourself a human to hold you accountable to getting it done every week . That's what I'm doing . I mean , this is you know .

So I posted on LinkedIn looking to hire at least one person , maybe even two , depending on kind of the role and function . Wasn't part of the thinking was having someone else who I'm accountable to , who I'm responsible for , who's you know they're expecting you know to be able to make some money every week off of this .

That would be the kind of fire I I need that kind of fire , like . I think one of the things I always not always , but like would think about from time to time during my time at Molo was all the people that you're responsible for , and it creates a really good grounding .

It's a great grounding exercise because it helps you like clear all the bullshit and say like okay , like okay , we've got a problem right now , like this isn't working the way we want it to . Who's going to figure it out ? And what happens if we don't figure it out ?

And when you look around and you don't see the people who are going to figure it out , and what happens if we don't figure it out ? And when you look around and you don't see the people who are going to figure it out and you realize it's got , it's you and it's your team together . You got to figure it out .

And then you realize if you don't figure it out , you know something way worse could happen . You know these people also and you're cutting jobs , layoffs or the gone altogether . And then you're thinking about I have 20 or 50 or 100 or 300 ? people who will be without jobs if we don't figure this out . It's that driving force .

Every morning I get up and I'm running the biggest company I've ever run . I've never run one as big as Molo . But those are individuals . That and car payments and daycare , and I have such an intimate responsibility with those people and their responsibilities for their families .

So when I do get aggressive , it's usually because someone has done something that impacts a customer . And if a customer says , hey , we're done with you , that equals jobs and I just take so seriously the fact that I am a job creator . And when you're a job creator , there's always this subliminal on the back of your mind .

I don't know if you feel this way . It's all falling apart , it's all coming down , everyone around you is going to lose their job . You're a total screw up . But it's never going to work . And every day it works . You're shocked that it's working . You're like this is amazing .

And we're to the moon and three days later it's . How is everything so broken ? Oh my God , how do we even exist ? Is yours ?

300 people , 140 people , whatever it is , doesn't matter . It's like I'm not qualified , I can't do this , or they ? How do we fix this ?

He was our president and COO and he was like , when I was triggered , we knew that was like a potential recipe for disaster , if not effectively managed , and I was more likely to cause more problems than I was to create solutions when I got triggered .

And so a lot of times it was me getting myself out of the way and getting myself out of the business for a day , out of it for two days , and just like leaving the office , going for a two hour walk .

Sometimes I take a fricking edible and go for a four hour walk and just be like I need to get so far away from this and to a place where my mind will create different situations and then I can focus on those . And then it's like , oh wait , we have this huge thing coming up for these guys . That could be a big win for us .

Let's focus our attention there and not worry about whatever this problem is . That isn't really the end of the world .

Like we need you up here , we can't have you down here . And I think you know the more I run a business and the busier I get just sheer volume of other things to do . I can't do that kind of stuff anymore .

And then also , the more I trust them I've got an incredible team and the more I trust that team , the less often I get into work drugs and get down there . So I'm in a really good spot right now

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The point I'm making is that's higher level thinking , sure , but the email that comes through from the customer that's pissed that . You then see a typo from your team and you see another issue .

It brings you way down and we get emotional , we get triggered and we get frustrated and it's like do you have , do you recognize , like an ability or a way to stay up here , stay at the higher level of thought and not bring yourself down to the work drug chaos , or is it just like you're hoping to get better ?

As you go , it happens you take yourself out of it and you've got to kind of apologize sometimes for like hey , I didn't mean to jump in and do this like that , because I don't know that I ever got it . Go ahead yeah .

I made a big mistake one time , like I made a huge mistake , like I was in tears and I walked in his office and I was like I made a big mistake one time , like I made a huge mistake , like I was in tears and I walked into his office and I was like I made this mistake and you could kind of tell that he wanted to like unleash on me .

And then he kind of looked at me and he was like you're going to beat yourself up more for this than I need to beat you up , so like this is never going to happen again , right . And I was like absolutely not , I'm in tears , I'm so upset . And he was like , okay , take a walk . Like you're good , we're good .

And so I think when I get really , really excited about things like that Scott Pernod was another that's very similar to that I try to emulate those two men like really solid leaders that I am absolutely sure that those two guys have wanted to rip into people , or me specifically , right at times , but if I can emulate those two , I'll be in really good shape .

I look at you and I and I see two type A's and the type A for you you self-declared in your book , so I'm not judging you .

It attracts people to us in ways when we are singularly focused on something that we are really good at or know really well , or we're trying to build whatever it is . When that emotion is misdirected through triggers , where the emotion is anger and frustration , we are a menace to society and a problem .

Because you bringing up Doug Wagner doesn't surprise me in the least least , because he does strike me as someone who just has that temperament that says , hey , whatever's coming at me , I am not going to emotionally react to .

I'm going to very deliberately respond to with what I believe is the best course of action to get us the best result we're looking for , which that's the kind of leadership that people need .

It doesn't mean that what we have with respect to how we can ignite a fire for people isn't as valuable or separately different or more valuable , but mirroring it all would be the home run solution .

And you know , I think we're young , right , Like you're 10 years younger than I am , almost Like there's so much for us to learn , there's so many more opportunities to fail , and I think every time I fail , every time I misplace my energy or I fly off the handle as someone who probably deserves it but doesn't deserve it from the CEO I think that's the other

piece of this like there's an element of you are the leader , Like what you say has so much more gravitas and impact when you're in a C-suite role than it ever had when I was in my corporate career . And so I think you were really , really young when you took on a CEO role .

Like that's a lot of responsibility for a young person , and I think it'll be interesting to see what you do next and if you're a different type of CEO as you mature .

I think , as I learned about ADHD which is a new thing for me I'm learning about some of the aspects of it , and some of it is this there's this like element of guilt and shame that I think people with ADHD have do but maybe others as well where we like carry it for a long time and we get stuck in this negative thought loop where it's like constantly

replaying old business scenarios where I was an asshole , basically where I was a bad leader .

Like you know , sitting here on the podcast , there's not any situation where I'm going to get like triggered and blow up at you or something like that .

They're based in Mexico and Guadalajara and you know we worked with them at Molo and I also worked with them at Coyote . I mean , these guys are great . Give them a shout . Danny Frisco , roberto Acasa All right , that out of the way . Roberto Ocasio All right , that out of

the way . Our guest today is Mrs Kara Smith-Brown . You've gotten 15 minutes of us talking about ourselves and our leadership skills , or lack thereof , but we're going to talk about your life . So you started your career at Echo Global Logistics as the quote marketing girl . Talk to me about being the marketing girl that struck home with me .

So what I actually want you to first talk about is the notion of the term the marketing girl , because I actually think that is a way bigger thing than people who haven't sat in my seat would understand . Because , just to give you the frame of reference , everything that I read in your book just hit home and it just felt like I was realizing .

I was replaying countless scenarios in my head of being a CEO , a sales-minded CEO who you know . Throughout Molo's tenure I owned our sales and marketing and it was really I owned sales and we just had this little thing we called marketing next to it . That seemed it should go well together .

Right , like this is probably making a lot of sense for what you hear from people like myself .

This is how long you can pursue a lead and this is the four progress you need to see to be successful . And then we said go figure it out and like bam , call these guys and get opportunities and we would jump in and try to help them and whatnot . And eventually we try to instill a little sales training , like specific customer sales training .

But when it came to marketing , I basically just would hire a marketing girl and then another marketing girl , and then I was like we should try a higher level marketing girl because I don't know what the hell I'm doing with the first two . Then let's go to a CMO and then it's like I don't really know how to work with her .

Let's go back down to marketing girl because it's cheaper and we still don't know what the fuck we're doing . So I say all that to pass the mic to you . And is that common ? Let's start there .

We also , back in the day I mean on the sales floor of Echo in 2006 , there was no reason really to have a marketing department . We grew up exactly the same way you guys grew up , both on the floor of Coyote I mean literally you're down the street or at Molo .

You just handed the 1,200 22-year-old boys on the sales floor a list and they banged through the list and I think the rise , if you will , of the marketing girl or the marketing department is the same slope as the democratization of marketing technology tools . So this is HubSpot , salesforce , marketo . I've got a great story in the book about using names .

We changed the names of people to get truck drivers to open emails .

There was nothing for us to really do except make sell sheets , make sure that the website looked nice and that people could find us right , so that when someone did make a phone call and they went to the Echo website that it was physically there , that it was present , right . There wasn't a whole lot else for us to do .

But the democratization of these tools specifically HubSpot is allowing today , has allowed , like even SMB companies , to have a lot more connection between the marketing and sales teams .

The marketers can really get into the market and understand what's happening in the market and there's an opportunity to really use these technology tools to differentiate even the smallest SMB broker from the big guys and find your own place in the world , which I think is really the marketing team's job .

I remember when I left Echo , doug said to me are you sure you want to leave ? Like this is so fun , like this is really . You're never going to have this experience again . He also said to me don't love a company because it'll never love you back .

And I had sort of fallen in love with the Echo culture and I can say this today like I was kind of integral to how it was built and I was like number 12 on the floor or something like that . So it was really more about culture . It was really about can people find us ?

And then I was super , super fortunate that when they decided to go public , doug walked by one day and he's like do you want to write an S1 ? And I was like yeah , I will Google that and I will tell you when I'll have it done by and he was like , ok , we have bankers like they'll help you . But yeah , you should probably figure that out .

I got to write the NASDAQ website for the Echo IPO and I got to write the S and I got to write the press release . Like that was kind of what we did . That was what marketing did in 2006 . I think the second half of your question is what should you expect today ?

Right , and today , the ability of your what I like to call go-to-market team right , which is the connection of marketing into sales is all about technology . And if your team isn't asking about intent data or ABM or how to get in front of the right ideal customer profile or what does that look like ?

How to be measuring volume , velocity and value inside of the funnel , that's the future and it's what I should have been doing really in the early days , but the technology didn't support it back then . This was pre-Salesforce . I mean , I'm that old right Like . Salesforce didn't exist .

So now really strong marketers or go-to-market individuals should be technology users . They should be really strong technologists putting the best possible technology or marketing technology tech stack to use to support the sales team . I hope that I came through in the book that marketing needs to support sales and that's it . That's the whole job .

In fact , I think in your conclusion you said it twice that sales and marketing need to work hand in hand , and I want to let's talk about that for just a little bit , because I think that you and part of the challenge that companies maybe have and correct me if you think I'm wrong is certainly the relationship between sales and marketing .

You'll agree with that . But to get to the root of why , I think ego probably plays a little bit part of this . Sales naturally has ego .

I think you often see sales feel do I want to use the word superior to marketing ? I don't know if that's the right word , but there's a dynamic it feels like where it's like marketing is just kind of like throwing shit at us . We're the people who know how to land business Like they just get in our way . Can you talk about like ways which ?

How do you get a marketing and sales team to work together ? Well , because I do think , as I just was talking about , there are these natural issues that exist that create friction and reduce collaboration .

I agree , based on what I read in the book , that the answer is a cohesive sales and marketing team , but getting there feels like a challenge just because of , I don't know , maybe it's the natural order of things of how these people are in these roles , or you know , the fact that sales seems so clear and easy to measure versus marketing , which , you know ,

before this book , I would have said , was impossible to measure . Now it feels like there are tactics to do so more effectively . But can you talk about that for a second ?

What is my ARR per deal , my average annual run rate , right , my average annual run rate ? So , aarr per deal , how many do I need to hit the goal that leadership has told me that we need to hit , and how fast are they coming into the funnel and being closed ?

And I think if a marketer does not know that math , they do not belong at the table , and a sales team will not respect the marketer unless that marketer is bringing that math to the table . And so I think that's number one , and the marketers have to show genuine curiosity .

You have to actually care about what this math is and everyone needs to be aligned around the math . I talk a lot in the book about having a point of view .

It is okay if your point of view is different from the sales teams , right , like Facebook posts or just number of eyeballs on things versus things that are actually happening to prospects , to current customers and to future customers that are happening inside the sales funnel .

So I think , number one marketers really need to get their math together To get a seat at the table .

I think I also say in the book if I don't it's something I say a lot , lot to junior people is that finance is the language of the boardroom , and so if a marketer cannot put their deliverables and they can't put their value in financial terms , you're never going to get a seat at the table .

So I think the book is trying to guide marketers down that path . Do I think sales and marketing are ever going to be like kumbaya ? Absolutely not , but there are ways to do it . I think the second piece is leadership . Having really really strong leaders that understand that this is possible is also super important .

Walking into a company I do this all the time and seeing a sales leader who's like this has never worked , it's never going to work . Marketing's garbage right . All they do is send us stupid stuff like et cetera . Just , we just walk away . We're like no thanks . They also probably aren't going to hire us . But lastly , I think is , is , is the , is .

The leadership needs to understand that there is a portion of what sales brings in , that marketing touched Marketing is never going to take 100% attribution , and so I don't put attribution models in the book . But there are eight attribution models . Do I get 10% credit , 20% credit , 1% credit ?

Give me some amount of credit for getting our brand wherever it is right . We don't usually like to use the B word , but like marketing had something to do with you closing this deal . Am I going to take credit for , like , actually getting on the phone and closing the deal ? No , but give me like 10% of credit . And that comes from the leadership .

Leadership has to say , okay , we're going to get marketing first touch , last touch or the type of attribution model that we're going to use and that can be really hard .

You talk a lot about analyst relationships right as part of the early process and sharing good news and tracking and following up , tracking interest . Yeah , well done , and the analyst relationship piece I thought was really interesting and it all makes sense to me .

But what I was struggling with was what you were just talking about now with just how do you assign credit for a situation like gartner , for example , where it's like okay , great idea , get them in front of gartner , develop that rapport with gartner , and now you're on one of their special quadrants , whatever .

Um a year and a half from now , someone is considering a new solution for 4pl and they reached out to redwood because they see the gardener thing . You have no idea . They saw the gardener thing . Maybe I do know they saw the gardener thing . Sorry , I should rephrase and say they haven't . They didn't tell their salesperson hey , I saw you in Gartner .

They just said hey , I know about you guys . I'm looking for 4PL . So in those kind of situations , how do you get to a place where marketing can get the credit they deserve ? Because , even if it's not that specific example , I'm sure you understand the concept there that you do things and you don't know when it actually has its impact .

We're going to attribute 10% or 15% or 20% of the overall win of this to marketing , and you're right , sometimes it's kind of squishy , some Gartner relationships are kind of squishy .

The second answer to your question is intent data , which I think is the sexiest thing to happen specifically to supply chain in a really long time .

Xpo and UPS and Geodes are all . What the hell's going on ? Ceos are going to turn to their chief of commercial and be like how did we not know Apple was insourcing their supply chain ? What the heck is going on ? Are we on the list to help them insource ? Who is going to get this Apple multi-billion dollar contract to help them insource ?

That did not happen that morning . Tim Cook did not wake up that morning and think oh , I'm just going to disrupt all of my supply chain partners and tell everyone we're going to do this . That decision was made by a Tiger team in Cupertino , california , who right now , in 2024 , are currently looking for WMS , tms , oms . How do I buy a fleet ?

Where do I put a warehouse ? And they are sending buying signals or intent signals into the marketplace . It is not Tim Cook who is doing this research . It's folks four or five clicks beneath him that are creating a report that's going to go up to their leadership team . The exact same thing is happening in every enterprise shipper across the country .

When changes happen inside an enterprise , these buying signals , or these intent signals , are being sent into the marketplace . Your next question is going to be what is that ? What are you talking about ? When they download a Gartner report , we can literally see it . We can see the individual , the IP address that downloaded the modern 4PL Gartner report .

So sometimes we can see the attribution to the Gartner relationship if we have intent sort of backing us up and all of our clients that are using an intent tool . So this is Sixth Sense Rollworks or Inrich these are kind of the three tools that we like the best Anyone who's using this tool are seeing outsized ROI .

It's basically the same thing as when you go to look for a fishing pole and it follows you around the internet for the next two days . We're just doing it at a B2B level . And enterprise shippers there's about 20,000 of them , right , 19,677 shippers in the US that matter like material shippers as they make changes in their supply chain .

Those signals are in the marketplace If you can pick up on those signals , you can be the first to solve that problem .

I just need to email the guy and get him to give me freight and like so do you get what ? I'm assuming , like someone would in our , they would dumb down someone might dumb down our industry . Our sales process to the guy needs trucks . I've got , I can get trucks . I don't need the intent data . He needs trucks .

He probably doesn't even need trucks because he's got a bunch of people giving him trucks . I just need to trick him into convincing or into giving me a chance to provide trucks . You know what I'm saying . Is the industry too dumbed down for this ? Is it too simple for the straight freight brokering ?

Or this still applies just as much and the ignorance is ignorance , that's a really good question .

That is not the right vertical or it's not the right use case .

And there's a piece that we mentioned in the book just a little bit , but which I think is also really sexy .

So the other way we use intent data is we load up the list of current customers and then we load up a list of your competitors and you can see when your current customers are searching for your competitors inside your intent tool .

And so if you have I don't know , you've got 5% of the John Deere truckload market in the Midwest and you want to go get 7% or 10% of that share of wallet . You know the other competitors that are also sharing that lane with you . That's how you get in front of this . You get in front of it because you're waiting for someone to make a service failure .

Right , there's no new freight . This is how we get freight in brokerage . You can see that inside the intense signals from your current customers .

Like hey , like andrew silver yesterday was searching for a you know fishing pole on the cabela site , like that's it's not going to get that detailed , um , but it's pretty creepy . Like that's . It's not going to get that detailed , um , but it's pretty creepy .

Like it's pretty , it's pretty darn close sometimes , um , and I will tell you that if you don't use these tools , you don't get anywhere close .

And if you're waiting until the leadership gets on stage and says it , or if you're waiting for the annual report , you're late . You're late to the ballgame . So this just gets you a little bit closer . John Dawes , a professor in Australia , talked about the rule of 95 . The 95% of your buying market is not in market at any given time .

So you're looking for the 5% that are buying , the 5% that are making a change , the 5% who are interested because something is changing , and it's usually senior leadership or the board being like hey , let's go solve this problem , or let's not get held over a barrel by our broker , like we were in the pandemic , or let's make sure that our carrier base is

appropriate for what's coming . We're making a change . Right , you're just trying to get in front of the problem and these tools tell you . This is the 5% of this whole list who are actively engaging in some sort of research .

Initially was a little bit like , like you know , it's just , it's still just freight and it's truckload . But when I remember when I was doing my job and I was actually selling and I'm sitting at this fricking computer and think , okay , I want to get in with Lando Lakes and this is the exact customer I'm thinking of , how do I stand out ?

Like , how do I get this guy's attention ? What's going on ? And I'm going online , I'm reading reports , I'm going on his LinkedIn , I'm looking at where he went to college , I'm looking at any post he has ever done and I'm trying to understand , like , who is this person ? What do they care about ? What do they like ? What do they want ?

Is there anything that connects their business to mine ? Is there anything that we have to offer that ties to his interest whatsoever ? And you do it over and over again and like you strike out a lot . I mean you're just because you're swinging blind a lot of the time , or , if not blind , your eyesight's pretty damn bad . We got lucky , in fact

. I saw Uber did a commercial with Lando Legs . You know it was when Uber was spending a lot of money on a lot of things . It's a weird thing to do a commercial for a freight broker ? Listen , freight brokers' commercials don't exist .

I was by myself and I just sent an email to the guy and was like I saw the commercial and I just added some color . He responded in five minutes with a contract . It's timing , but it's finding the information and leveraging it .

What you're telling me is I don't need to spend as much time blindly surfing the internet because there are tools out there that will do a little bit of that for me and throw the data at me and say , hey , here are the three things you should probably talk about , am I ? Yeah , that's exactly right .

Right , these tools tell you the top 50 or the top 20 that should be hit this week Because something is happening inside their organization that is causing what they call a surge in account-based marketing . They call it surging . That's causing a surge . I'll give you a very specific example . We have a client .

They're in the warehouse space , so they do big box spin-ups and their intent data in their tool showed that we were surging . Their potential customers were surging on a robot provider , a single robot provider . Like 15 companies were all surging and looking at and researching this single robot provider .

Well , let's just go ahead and write a partnership press release about this robot provider .

And so the other piece , andrew , is like when you plant your flag , there's a couple of things . It doesn't have to be the thing that you do , so we'll use ITS logistics as an example . They're also in the book .

So we put together a very fun and exciting Port Rail Ramp Index , which is actually really damn sexy because it gets picked up now by CNBC , wall Street Journal , new York Times and Railway Age every single month and it's turned into a real revenue generator for them . But they planted the flag on drayage .

They're not like only a drayage provider , they're full service , end-to-end supply chain . But they picked one thing , and so we've been guiding our clients towards pick a thing .

If it's steel or produce or weird stuff , if you're the best at hauling weird giant pieces of metal , plant the flag on that , and that list , that ideal customer profile list , gets smaller when you plant the flag . And so your opportunity cost goes down . The opportunity cost by trying to hit all 19,677 shippers like you did when you were trying to do it .

It's so expensive . The customer acquisition cost on that is outrageous . Let us get you a little bit closer . Cut down the opportunity cost around the funnel and get your reps a little bit closer to closing the deal . And then back to your original question you start to do this for the sales teams and they start to ask for the marketing leads right .

They're like , hey , I need some marketing . Like like , where are my leads Right ? So we just did this . We had a QBR yesterday with lean , lean solutions as a client . And we put $22 million in their bottom line . Andrew and I asked for permission . I can share it with you 22 million in their bottom line in seven months using account-based marketing .

It's insane . The other example is ODW . They're a warehouse logistics , a 3PL warehouse specifically , and they're based in Ohio . 40 million in pipeline in 60 days . 40 million in pipeline in 60 days . All of these examples are using intent data for a small group of shippers that need a very specific thing fixed . These shippers have a specific pain .

So back to your question on like hey , if you were to spin up a brokerage tomorrow , should you use this ? Yes , you should , everyone should be using this , but you do have to pick a lane . It's really hard to do it for produce and steel and CPG and like it's . If you don't pick a lane , it's kind of like an inch , an inch deep and a mile wide .

I get the idea that there's riches and niches and you want to have the niche and you want to be known for something , but you don't want to be too narrow . So , like I am curious , are there ways that companies could have multiple , that they're targeting at different times , right ?

Okay , for example , you know we start in Q1 , as winter's winding down , we start to plant our produce flag , knowing that by April everyone's going to be looking for produce providers , and then by August we start to plant our retail peak season surge flag . That concept can work right , where you're situationally planting flags .

There are very few brokerages that are big enough , or carriers or freight tech companies in our space that have the kind of resources that you need to really truly plant a flag on more than like two or three things okay , like its has a really big marketing team . There's like 12 or I think it was seven or eight people on their team plus us .

And there's two indexes we do . We do the Port Rail Ramp and we do the Warehouse Index . I think the Redwood also has a cross-border index we've been doing for a while . It takes a lot of energy and resources to really truly own the economics of a market and convince shippers that you're the expert and there's a little bit of a risk you run .

I think if you're smaller , right , like the CHs and the UPSs of the world , the XPOs of the world they're everything to everybody . But if you're smaller , there's a little bit of risk you run by doing too many things in a calendar year .

There's also the risk of random acts of marketing or what you feel to the marketplace like random acts of marketing , right Like your leadership team or your CEO . Posting a LinkedIn post once a quarter on your new initiative is not a strategy . That's a random act of marketing .

So there's a pretty delicate balance , I think , between executing this strategy and just kind of shooting in the dark .

So you're like I'm going to plant a flag here , but it's probably well thought out in the sense that I know we can get some customers with this , but it's not fully fleshed out where we're tracking any of the results and following up down the road . It's like this is what my ADHD brain is thinking about for two weeks .

So we're going to go say that we do this because we can and let's see what happens and it works and we get some customers , and then a month later it's let's talk about this thing , something else .

So I guess how do you find the balance Because I feel like that is true of organizations that don't have strong marketing presence is you just get the sales minded folks who love the random acts of marketing ?

So instead I'd like to do X , y , z , because I know that work to drive revenue . So instead I'd like to do XYZ , because I know that this will drive revenue . Here are the three customers that I can show you where we've driven all this revenue . So if you stick with me , I promise you that we'll have revenue .

And nine times out of 10 , we do right , unless they are the problem , which also sometimes happens but nine times out of 10 , it works . So if you have a strong marketer on your team or like blatant shout out , you can hire us , but like someone should be telling you , no , that's not going to drive revenue .

And if your marketer isn't telling you that , it's probably because they're a quote , unquote marketing girl and they're just doing what they're told . And that's probably what you had when you were coming up . You had , you know , really nice women that were happy to do what they were told . And you told them to do the thing , and so they did the thing .

When you said that when you were in the marketing girl , they tossed culture at you too , it resonated because you look at , you're like okay , I have this marketing person to do the marketing stuff , but I don't know what the actual marketing stuff is supposed to be , and they're new , they don't really know .

And so eventually you're like okay , make the sell sheets post on the LinkedIn for us . And they're like well , this isn't taking up a full day , take on culture too and make sure people are having fun .

So we should be holding our marketing teams to a different standard because now they have , you have access to all these tools where you should be able to hold your marketing teams to these KPIs .

It's managing social media and some other things , but it's not . You know , having now officially read this book , I know that that is not what marketing is supposed to be and there's a better way .

But also like thanks for finding value in like all the energy I put into this thing .

It's not like a memoir , right , like it's not like a story of my life , like there's math in this book , there's exercises to do , there's , you know , other people's contributions . We had to get a lot of folks to approve it , uh , but it's a real book . It's 250 pages , it's got source content . It feels really good .

It feels really good to have it done and to have people like you find value in it , because you're always worried , right , you do this thing and you worry like , oh my God , someone's going to think this is trash and there are people that will think it's trash and I'm okay with that . It's coming for me , um , but yeah , it's great . I'm I'm thrilled .

I'm thrilled that it's out . It's . It's available for pre-order today when we're taping this , um , and available in a couple of weeks .

Like someone is going to say this is not worthy , or I don't agree , or you know , like there's a lot of people in my wake , I guess , is the right answer Leading up to this moment that are going to say , like you know , she's full of it , or these aren't her ideas , or it's not good enough , or I expected more from her , right .

And so I think anytime , especially I tell my team all the time digital , this is good for your audience too . Anything digital can be fixed . So perfection is the enemy of progress . Good just finished is better than perfect . When it's digital , right , just get it out there . You can always change it . Printed is a whole different deal .

So it's loaded and it's ready for people to judge me Like you put this piece of thing out there and say this is the best I can do , this is the best . And if someone doesn't like it , this is the best . And if someone doesn't like it , it's kind of personal , right , you're like this is the best of my life right , it's like a baby .

I mean , I listened to your solo podcast and it was so brave , and anyone who's putting themselves out there either on a podcast that can be downloaded and listened to by other people over and over and over again and picked apart right , your kids could listen to that , your grandkids could listen to that , right .

It's kind of the same way about a book that this is a piece of content that will live on forever and at some point you just have to be kind of gritty about it and put it out there and be okay with it . I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder .

There's a bunch of stats around this , but they're all around the 2% number , so less than two that's less than two women A little bit , a little bit , but it's a couple of things too . So less than 2% of female founders will break $1 million in revenue . So that's a crazy small .

It's actually 1.7% of all women who start businesses will ever break a million dollars top line . The number of women who break 10 million is statistically irrelevant . They don't even track it . Then the number of people on the planet that are an Iron man is less than 2% .

It's actually around an area of 2% , and apparently Forbes told me that we're already in the top 2% of all books on Amazon and it hasn't even come out yet . So excited about that .

So there's a little bit of a chip on my shoulder about like this kind of doing hard things because they're hard and usually it's because someone has told me that I couldn't do it and I'm like all right , watch me so I think I'm the same way .

And we do it through people who doubt us and it's like sometimes they're not even necessarily doubting us in the way that we manipulate in our minds and it's okay , it doesn't matter . It's just about creating a source of motivation that we can carry with us to get through anything .

And so I have these situations that go back I mean 10 years , and they're such meaningless situations for anyone other than me . But like I think about them and I go back to them . One , specifically , that I'll bring up is just so ludicrous . When we were moving from one office to another at Molo , we were a 40 person company .

At this point , it was mid 2018 . So we were almost a year in and we had a 2000 square foot box of an office above a bar in river North Chicago . And you know , it's a hundred . One person per a hundred square feet is the general rule , and so we can only fit 20 people in there . We found a way to probably scram 25 in there . Plus we got a little .

We work and then Matt and I would go and see new offices , and so we go find this office at 303 West Ohio . In fact , paul Loeb's company is now in this building that we were looking at Avenue Logistics and the seventh floor . I loved it . It was all water , 7,000 square feet .

It was beautiful and we were going to sign it and I thought we were getting it . The day like what I thought was the last meeting , where Matt and myself and our real estate broker went to the building to meet with the folks from the other side and there was a new guy in the room . And it's this guy I'd never seen before .

He's got a faux hawk and like he just starts grilling us with questions about our business and he's like can you tell me about this ? Can you tell me about your growth ? Can you tell me about your revenue ? Can you talk about these customers ? And I'm looking at my real estate broker , like what the hell's going on ? Aren't we signing it ?

Aren't we like , done here , like this ? And then he proceeds to say like listen , so keep in mind , we're a year old , we've got 40 people , we want a space that only fits 70 people . And he's like listen , here's the deal , like we're not sure you guys are gonna make it , and like be able to carry , like fully fit in this , this space .

And I want to show you another space that I think makes more sense . It's 3,500 square feet . It's actually R Kelly's old studio , which I'm like why the fuck would I want that ? But he's like 3,500 square feet . We think it's more in line with what you guys are doing with your business .

I got up and walked out of the fucking room .

We went and then got a new space for 8,000 square feet Within three months . We had to add the other 7,000 to get to 15,000 . I mean 600 employees four years later . It's like all right , faux hawk .

But what I'm saying is like I thought about that guy sometimes , when I was down and not feeling great , I would think about that guy and like I think there's like this . I don't know if everybody does it .

I think people should figure out a way to do it because it can be a great source of motivation to build up this kind of bank of memories of people doubting you . Does that resonate Every time ? To build up this kind of bank of memories of people doubting you Does that resonate Every ?

You are the problem and the business will fail because of you as a human being , and you will never do what you say you're going to do and you're never going to write a book . It's never going to happen . You're a failure , like every single time .

Part of me wants to send a book to every single one of these guys , and part of me is like just really wants to tag them all on a LinkedIn post and be like how do you like me now ? How do you like them , apples ? And the other part of me , andrew , is like I'm the one laughing . Right , I have a really successful company . I'm so happy .

I love what we're doing . We are really bringing new and innovative ways to do business to a $2 trillion market that , historically , just is behind when it comes to great marketing and sales tactics . Right , we're bringing new tech . Like the ROI for our clients is out of control . I'm making jobs .

I'm helping them make jobs , like the more revenue that we help our clients achieve , the more jobs they can create , and so I absolutely feel this deeply . Another really quick story is I did an Ironman in 2009 .

And the reason I did an Ironman in 2009 is because a guy that I had a crush on in high school after college told me that I was not athletic enough to do an Ironman Like to my face at a bar in Wrigleyville . Well , you couldn't do an Ironman , you're not athletic enough . And I was like , okay , let me sign up for it right now .

And I did , and so this very deeply motivates me .

You won't take us to wendy's , and I'm like no , why are you going to wendy's , right ? Um , but yeah , it's , it's a serious motivator . I actually I closed , uh , my husband and I literally said that this was a great story in the book .

Obviously I was a 26-year-old girl , I was ready to get married and there was no ring at the finish line . A week later we IPO Echo . It's all the same month and so I now have done an Ironman . I teach spin class in the basement of 600 West . I have a really strong career . I've done an IPO .

I made 10 out of 10 , andrew on the Chicago dating market career . I've done an IPO . I made 10 out of 10 , andrew , like on the Chicago dating market , and I worked at a freight brokerage . Like I got like , like what , I got pick of the litter , right . Like , if I need to like go find a husband , I can .

So , hey , buddy , if it's not you , it'll be someone else . So he's like , okay , okay , stop freaking out , I will , we'll get engaged . So I did what every girl would do and I booked the church . So I booked my parents' church .

And so I took the receipt for the church the eight and a half by 11 piece of paper and I put it on my refrigerator in my house that I owned and I took all the magnets off the fridge and he came over one night and he was like hey , what is this on the fridge ? And I was like , oh , I forgot to tell you I booked the church for my wedding .

And he's like what wedding ? And I'm like my wedding in 268 days and if you're not going to be there , I will sell this to the highest bidder . But this is the next thing on my list of things to do , and if it's not you , it'll be someone else . So I had a ring two weeks later and it's like a great story .

And to this day he would tell you that he would have waited another like two or three years . He was in no hurry , but I was like I had things I wanted to get done , right . So , yeah , actually I don't usually share this part , andrew , oh yeah , but I will with you and all of your listeners , thank you .

When I first met him there the very first night , I met him and I brought him to my girlfriends . One of my girlfriends told me he is too good looking for you . So if I bring this full circle , getting my nuclear engineer fitness model husband to marry me may have been full circle to just prove her wrong . Now that I really think about it .

guess , but 90% of the decision makers in this industry are probably male , or 80 at least , and you've said a number of times on this podcast , and you've said it to me before , that you deal with that a lot , and part of what makes you you is you and your personality , your type A . You say what you mean , you go get what you want .

You don't give a shit what's in your way , you're going to go make it happen , and those are phenomenal characteristics of a leader . It's bullshit that when you tag woman to that , it then becomes a potential negative feeling for people . But and we could spend all day trying to fix that , but I can't fix that we certainly aren't going to fix that right here .

So you know , you have a voice and you have an opportunity now to speak to women who , I think , hear your story and probably it resonates and probably want to emulate it or follow that path . What advice do you have ?

If you don't know that math , you've got to have a point of view . Just being in the room isn't enough for us , I mean , and being in the room isn't really enough for men either . Like if you really think about it , like you're not , you're not going to invite someone to the table just because you want another head at the table .

Like you're going to be at the executive suite because you are contributing something and specifically you're contributing to the bottom line , and so I think it does take more work . We have to work harder . If I were a man , I would probably be three times as successful and people would have taken me seriously a long time ago .

I think it's taken seven or eight years for people to sort of be like oh , this is real and this woman is real . Ears , for people to sort of be like oh , this is real and this woman is real . And my background , my actual history . Like Echo , seiko , geotis , I have a lot of really strong legs in the space .

I know a lot about the space and I spend a lot of time here . But even now I have to back up our position all the time with data . We are constantly proving our value with data and I'm either really really smart or I'm really really fortunate , or a little bit of both .

We're just a little bit lucky that what we've been doing for these clients and for the industry as a whole is working right , and so I think for women we do have to work a little bit harder .

But if you can bring the math to the table , if you can prove that you are contributing to the bottom line or you have a plan to contribute to the bottom line , or you even just understand the bottom line and you can have a material conversation about how the business is run and the levers that the leadership is pulling to grow or scale , it's a difference

between just being in the room and listening and absorbing . So back up your point of view with math . I think We've got to work a little bit harder .

You can tell all the problems I had in running my business .

But as you do get to that word scale and like things start to get bigger than one or two or three people's gut can effectively manage to , to take you somewhere , and I , just for me at least . I know we're running up on time here , but I will say the book has certainly opened my eyes to a world that I was not I guess was was ignorant to previously .

And there's just a ton of opportunity if people are able to put their ego in check and and figure out a way to work between sales and marketing to to get to a um , really actionable future for for the business .

I really wish that I had had this in my career . Like I wish I had had this playbook at Echo or Seco or Geotis , like that I had had an opportunity to say to my boss like hey , we're going to follow this playbook . This lady wrote this playbook and I'm going to follow this and I think it's going to work . If it doesn't work , we can change it .

But at least this is where I'm going to start and have those leaders be like all right , like this seems reasonable , like this person seems like she knows what she's talking about . So feel free to follow this plan and see if we can get there .

And I think , if people do like 25% of the last third on measurement of like measuring volume , velocity and value , if you just like , touch that a little bit and find a way to measure a little bit of what's happening in the pipeline . There's a lot of value to be had just for measuring more than we do today .

We systemically do not measure enough in late and break Like we just it's just there's , a lack of measurement .