#125: Career | How Chili Piper's New VP of Marketing Landed His Job (with Brandon Redlinger)

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Hey Brandon, Good to see you. Glad to have you back on the podcast. You just landed a new job. Yes, and we're going to talk specifically about that today. But for people who don't know who you are, give us your first name, last name, little backstory, little career history on who you are and what you do.

Yeah, totally. So yeah, Brandon Reddinger. And a little bit about my background. I did start my career in sales. I was an SDR way before they called it an SDR and carried a bag as a rep for a little bit, but then really made the transition over to the marketing side because I realized that marketing can be that force multiplier. That's more my skill set, my background, like what I was interested in. So made the move over to marketing was early Engage Days, got acquired by Demand Base, ran Demand Gen and Abm for demand based for a bit and then went over to the product marketing side. So I ran product marketing and content at a company called Revenue IO and then after that left to take a my first VP role at VP of marketing called at a company called Crosscheck. And then I just ended that. Well, wrapping that up as I'm sure we'll chat about. And then yeah, VP of marketing at Chili Viper.

So I want to talk about how you landed the job at Chili Piper, but I think first just a lot of people that listen to this podcast, like the kind of behind the scenes career stuff that doesn't come up often because usually we don't have a, a friend or somebody to navigate that with. And so I think sharing that you being open to sharing this is going to be super helpful. Let's talk about your transition here. You were VP of Mart like, well, you still are as you're winding down. What led to you wanting to make the decision to say, hey, it's time for me to go find a new company. I'm curious to like unpack that because a lot it's going to be relatable to a lot of people listening.

Yeah, totally. Okay. So a few things went into it. One, there is just the, the growth of the company wasn't the growth story, which I'm sure a lot of people experiencing this, what it is now versus what when they joined 16, 18 months ago. Right. Because that's when really things sort of hit hard, hit the sass tech space really hard. So we weren't quite growing as fast. And I mean I know this is something that you're big on and that you heard from dc, but just making sure that the company is growing as fast as you or you are growing as fast as the company. So I did feel like I was growing a little bit faster than the company. The company had stepped back a little bit in terms of their growth and just a lot of hesitation from marketing as in like they were marketing from their heels. They didn't want to try new and exciting things anymore. It was very much, hey, we need to stay afloat, we need to cut budget, we needed to cut headcount. And every quarter my headcount or budget was being cut instead of being given more. So it was just a story of not growing as fast as I matching my career and what I wanted to be doing.

Well, it's hard, especially you've been at high growth companies and you've been, at least from my observation, an early adopter, experimenter. Let's try New stuff, let's move fast. Let's take chances. And then it's very hard when you're at a company when all that stuff gets cut. I think sometimes I've had this happen to me once where it was really hard because you don't know the timeframe of it. And it's like, okay, if it gets cut once, and it's like, we're gonna revisit it after this quarter or half year, you can kind of like, okay, I can kind of see how this will be interesting for me. I'll have to do something different for six months. But when it keeps getting pushed out and there's no investment and there's no progress, it's really hard and challenging mentally, when it could be that they cut the budget. It could be that you're working with a product team that is just not shipping anything, or once a year. It could be another internal org, the way you work with the sales team. There's so many of these many factors that lead into, like, yeah, I'm trying to make this work, but I'm just being pulled back in all those directions. And I think when that happens, it's time to figure out, man, I gotta make a change.

Yeah, yeah, totally. And part of it, too, is. I mean, a lot of marketing leaders face this, but if Kip said it well on your recent podcast with him. But the first job of a CMO was to realize the CEO was the real cmo. That one hit me hard, and it's like, yeah, that's very true. I think the CEO and I had a different view of what marketing actually was. And the more pressure that we got from a company, from the board to hit some of these numbers, the more divergent our paths became.

How do you explain that Kip story to somebody else now that you know what that means?

CEOs their baby, right? And they've gotten to where they are because a lot of times they've been. They've had such big aspirations, Borderline delusional sometimes. And a lot of times they're talking with their buddies who also own a company who, mind you, in a completely different space or completely different situation, but their team did this, and they saw a lot of growth. And, hey, Brandon, why don't we go do this now, too?

Let me tell you something. The worst time for me would be.

When.

When D.C. found out about, like, another company and, like, the size of their marketing org, and he's like, they're doing this with only three people. We got 30 people. How can we not do this. It's like, oh my God.

Exactly, exactly.

But I feel that now. I feel it now. Even I'm running my own business now. And I feel that I do a lot of marketing. Obviously it's a three person company, but to your point about it being your baby, like marketing is always going to touch everything. Everything inside of a company can be marketing, like the product, the brand, the website, the language, the story. The CEO is going to be involved in all those things. And so maybe they're not the marketing executor of those things, but they're going to own the vision. And I think that's the realization is like, oh, I don't, I can help shape this, but I'm going to have to pretty much carry this order out, right?

Yeah, exactly. And you really have to know when to pick your battles. And those battles that you do pick, how are you going to win those battles? Do you need data? Is it more of a storytelling thing? Do need examples? So it is going to be different from CEO to CEO, but I think you will always naturally run into that. And I think it's healthy a lot of times. But at Some point some CEOs just have too much, too divergent or they're too delusional.

Yeah, well, I think the delusion is great. I mean, I've worked with founders that their delusion is like suspends. They used to say about like Steve Jobs or his reality field. I think they a lot. They all have that. And yeah, you don't think we can, we can't get a thousand people at our event in the first year and we did it.

Yeah, yeah.

So some of that stuff, it pulls you in the right direction. But when you don't see eye to eye on how the CEO gets marketing and sees the company and then you're getting budget cuts, it just becomes hard to stay motivated. When did you go from like, okay, I'm just gonna kind of see where this goes to riding it out. I think a lot of people I see in the community and just feedback in general, people kind of, they have these feelings but they don't know when to jump off. A lot of people are like, well, it's really meaning, you know, I need to get to a year or people I used say this all the time. I'd be in the wrong job. I'd be like, ah, we like to say this one, Brando, I've only been here for a year, so I can't leave yet. And I totally disagree with that. What was that point in your journey.

Yeah, I even thought about that sometimes, too. But at the end of the day, it's like I'm a marketer. Whatever happens, I need to be able to tell the story. I can spin the story however I want. I do think a lot of people put too much weight on that, in that, yeah, they'll see that I was only here for less than a year. That'll probably look pretty bad on my resume. Whereas honestly, I think some of the best marketers that I worked with, they have a lot of short stints and it's because it makes them even better because they've seen so many different things. They have a lens for. Their thought process is different. They've seen so many different things. Whereas people that have stayed at a company for eight years, it's almost like they only know one thing. They don't have that diversity of thought, that diversity of experiences, that can be a big advantage. The other thing too, that I really was thinking about that helped me make the decision was just my read on the market and it was a bet that I placed that I don't think this market is going to really recover in the next 18 months. 12 to 18 months. So I didn't want to stick around for that much longer. And.

And when you say. When you say market, are you talking about like in general or in this company where this company was playing?

Yeah, the space that this company was playing. Got it. Yep. And I do think the big success of marketing leaders is their ability to understand and read and react to the market. It's probably more important today than ever before, which is a big reason I chose to get back into the Martech Rev tech space.

Yeah. So we're going to talk about you taking a new job at Chili Piper, how that came about, because I saw Alina had. I feel like I remember seeing Alina had posted something crazy about how many people applied and I didn't see the conclusion of it. And then I got a message from you and I was like, oh, interesting. So I want to get there. But first you said earlier that you kind of made this weird, a mistake maybe that you wouldn't have done before, or you're kind of in this in between phase where you had the option to just give your two weeks and be out and they convince you to stay longer and you shouldn't have done that. And I think that was very brave of you to air that out. And I think it's very relevant for people because it's very easy for. It's human nature. Right.

You just quit Exactly.

You quit your job.

I want to do right by them. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, I want to do right by them. Like, I want to go over the like, okay, but at some point, you got to figure out what that line is. And I think maybe you're learning you're in the middle of that. So tell us.

Yeah, it's funny because after I did that, I talked to a few other people who did that as well at previous companies, and they all had the same thing. Yeah, I would never do that again. So, yeah, I ended up staying through the end of January, just helping them make the transition, doing two days a week. So that was six weeks instead of just your standard two weeks. And I already made my decision. And then a lot of what I got, which is, again, a shared experience, was then people at the company, the leaderships and leadership team and the executives going completely doing a 180 on their view towards you and how they end up treating you. And so it was more. I hate it when people say this, but, like, yeah, we want people who want to be here. And like, that just drives me crazy when people say that. And yeah, I think it's bs. It's like, yeah, I wish this company was the company that I thought I joined in the first place. Of course I'm not going to go say that, but just the attitude and perception of me changed. Obviously, they didn't mean to, but it was just like the more they thought about it, the more they could say, oh, I'm going to poke holes in what Brandon was doing here. And just a lot of things came out of that.

And now you have to sit there and witness it.

Yeah.

And not get defensive about it and.

Try to find a way to just move on.

Yeah, exactly. And I think for me, whenever someone's moving on, whether it's we're letting them go or whether they decide to leave, it defines their experience. Right. In psychology, it's the peak end rule. It's like your experience is defined by the peak and then the end experience. And when people. Even though most of my time there was pretty good out the door, I wasn't treated super well, most of my recollection of that experience is going to be a positive one. And now I probably won't go and say, hey, someone else. There's an open opportunity to lead marketing at Crosscheck. Why don't you go there or even refer people to the business?

I'm just taking notes and I. This is like, when to break up with your company.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

You got to know when to break up. So how did you do it? How did you break up? This is always something I am interested to find out from others. And this is another one of those questions that I wish somebody would, would have shared. So what did you do? You send an email to your boss, you hop on a zoom call, Are you in the office? How did you do?

Was it started off with a one on one and I was like, hey, is this working? And it was more just an open conversation and I think we both knew where we were, where it was going. I probably would have just been a little bit more straight up in the beginning. And then I was like, yeah, let's just think about it. Let's regroup in a few days and see how we're really feeling. And then it was more, okay, yeah, this isn't working out. Let's I'm give my two weeks and did you know.

But was that kind of your, your conclusion already and you just kind of like slow played it a little bit?

Yeah, I, I wouldn't have done that again. Exactly. It's just like, just rip the band aid off. It's always easier just to straight rip the band aid off.

Yeah, it's hard. This part sucks. And it's always people are people and it's hard. And there's, it's not personal, it's business, but it is because you're dealing with people and you're interacting with people and.

So you've been in the trenches with them for the last 18 months, you know, and you're meeting with them every.

Day and, and you know, you think about what you're telling them, you're telling them typically, and then especially if you're working for the CEO or the founder, you're saying like, hey, that thing that you bet your whole life on and your whole existence that you created that you're running, I don't want to be part of that thing anymore.

Exactly, exactly.

It's like going back to being a kid on the playground and someone's like, I don't want to play with you anymore. Okay.

Yeah. And it's never as bad.

Yeah, no, it's, it's never as bad as you think. Let's. I want to hear your take on that. But I was just going to say like, it's very hard to be robotic about it on both sides.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. But yeah, it's never as bad as you think. And you always play it, replay it in your head and you have so much anxiety leading up to the conversation. Whereas if you just Made it easy and just ripped the band aid off. I think it would be easier on everyone's end.

And if they had to lay your ass off, they would do it in a second.

And exactly 100%. Because it's a business decision. Right. That's what they'll tell you.

I've always kind of felt that way and it's tough to say that, but I think you need to. You can be loyal to a company while you're working there, but I would always be seeing what else is out there just so you can know your worth in the market. And I think the more data you have, even if you're not looking to know what you could be making, what terms you could be getting, what your life could be like, I think you have to look out for yourself and do that. Right. And so this is also part of the process is to walk away from things if it's not the right fit.

Yeah, exactly. And the other thing I always think about too is I only have so many at bats, right. And I want to hit another home run. And yeah, I forget who it was, but they're like, yeah, you have, you basically have eight at bats. And if you pick the right company, it can be life changing generational money for you and your kids. And that always still is in the back of my mind.

Yeah, I'd like a lottery ticket like that for sure.

Yeah, exactly.

So you made the decision to leave. You wind down, blah, blah, blah. You shouldn't have stayed on longer, but you are. And you learn that lesson from next time. Another lesson is to just be more direct. Why delay it if you've come to that conclusion? Say it and be direct and get on with it. Right, Yep. Can we sum it up like that?

Yes, definitely. That's a perfect summary.

Let's talk about how did you get the role at Chili Piper and you decided to leave. You go and see what's out there. I'm assuming you were looking for other jobs and applied for other things too. Tell me the whole story. I have pretend I don't have any context. Pretend listeners don't have any context as to what was going on at Chili Piper.

Yeah. So Alina, co founder, co CEO over there decided to take over marketing for. I think she, her plan was let me take over marketing for a year and then we'll hire actual head of marketing again. And then I had met Alina at the CMO Pavilion event back sometime last year and had great conversations and just had been in touch. Then when she posted that she was hiring For a head of marketing. I said, oh, Chili Piper. I bought that before we use Chili Piper. We're getting great results. And they do the type of marketing that I want to go do again. They're in a space that I know really well. I reached out to Alina because, yeah, she made a post about this. They got over a thousand applicants in less than a week for this role. So I did not go to the website and apply. I went straight to Alina and I, I think, yeah, if you're applying to websites, it's probably, yeah, you're just going to get lost in the shuffle.

Did you email her? Did you DM her on LinkedIn? What did you do?

I DM'd her on LinkedIn.

And what did she say?

And she said, oh, yeah, Brandon, let's have an initial conversation.

Did you comment on the post or you just went and DM'd her about her post?

I sure DM'd her.

Yep. And you had a conversation with her and got the job?

Yeah, he's using. No, no, it was, it was just. Yeah, initial conversation. Hey, great, let's keep chatting. Had another conversation with her and then went through the whole interview panel. I did the exercise.

What was the interview panel?

It was three people from the team, from the marketing team and then the head of sales.

Okay, and then what was the time frame of that? Did it happen quickly?

No, it was all over probably like three months or so. Okay, so it was a longer process, I think again because. Well, actually, yeah, we had that initial conversation and then I sent a follow up that night and then I didn't hear back from her for a week. So I sent another follow up email, didn't hear back from her for another week. I sent her another email and then I was like, okay, I'm just going to hit her up on LinkedIn again. She's like, oh, I never got your emails. I was like, is this the right email? And she's like, yeah, that's the right email. And then she sends a screenshot of her searching for my name in her inbox and it not showing up. Had I not followed up, I probably wouldn't have gotten their job. And she's like, I thought you were not interested in us anymore.

Oh my God.

So it's like the, just having. Yeah, the power of our follow up.

Because you had, had already had a, you had a conversation initially.

Yeah, initial conversation went well. We said, yeah, let's keep talking. Sent that follow up and just didn't hear back. And of, of course I was I was sweating. I was like, what? Why did she not like me? I was making up stories in my head, but important to follow up.

That's amazing. I mean, geez. Yeah, that happens all the time. Good thing you did. And you went to LinkedIn.

Yep.

Who says LinkedIn is invaluable? Yeah, it's amazing.

Yeah.

Okay. And then what you had to do. So you do this interview panel. Did they have like a type of a framework for an interview? Was it. Did you just kind of feel like three people on the team asking you questions or was it like what kind of. You know what I'm trying to say? Like some companies have like this very rigorous, like, here's how we're going to interview process. And some are just like, yeah, me with these three people. And then let's talk about.

I think it was somewhere in the middle. It wasn't super structured. It sounded like she was getting advice from other marketing leaders of how she should run in a new route process for a head of marketing specifically. And they. They do have a recruiter there. Yeah, yeah. It was a little interesting because I was kind of working with the recruiter, but kind of Alina, because Alina was my first point of contact there. And it was. Yeah.

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Then that's who gets credit.

Does the.

Yeah, exactly.

That's like a credit back to sales and marketing.

Who's going to get credit? Sourcing the candidate.

Yeah, yeah.

And then I did the exercise.

What was the exercise?

It was around understanding the Personas that they're selling to and then also putting together, I think they called it like an activation playbook or something like that, but basically putting together how you would approach a scenario. And I. She's funny enough that I didn't get the email from the recruiter either. So the recruiter sent the email to me with the exercise. I never got it.

And somebody didn't want you to have this job, seriously.

And I followed up on LinkedIn again and the recruiter just sent me the exercise on LinkedIn and then I was like, I feel bad because I'm making them wait. Another I already made them wait a week because I didn't get the email. So I took a sick day off of work and just like pounded through the exercise in one day.

You don't have to share exact plans, but like, how did you approach this? I think a lot of people that have to do activities like this, it can be tough to know. Like you obviously don't know that much about the company and so to deliver a perfect plan where it's like, this delicate balance of, like, actionable things, but really just trying to show them, like, how you think. So I'm curious to hear how you approached it.

Yeah. So I spent a lot of time just reading the assignment and really trying to understand what are they really getting at here? Like, what's the intention of this assignment? What are they really looking at? I probably read it a dozen, at least more than a dozen times before I actually put pen to paper and started doing the exercise itself. And then I would do the exercise, and I'd go back to the assignment and say, am I hitting the points that I think she's trying to look for in the assignment? And I think that is key is just understanding what the assignment is and more importantly, what they're trying to get out of the assignment.

So I would go to ChatGPT and I would say, pretend you're interviewing for a VP of marketing job at a 50 million, $100 million SaaS company, and blah, blah, blah. They've had three VPs of marketing before the. A married couple runs the company. It's very. There's a lot going on. It's a very crowded industry. How would you approach this interview? Boom, boom, boom. I would get my six points, I would put them in a presentation, and I would say, there. There's my pitch.

Yeah. The other thing, too, when I was doing my exercise, I want to stand out. And I. I did take a risk on one of my Personas. Probably not a traditional Persona, but I just wanted to show them that I think about the problem a little bit differently, and I probably went a little bit above and beyond. But I do think I've always said, like, the. The people most prepared for the interview are the people who are going to get the job, not necessarily always the person that is the best fit. It's the person who's most prepared. And I. I spent a lot of time on that exercise. And then also, too, I wanted to make sure that anything that I did put in that exercise, I would be able to have a good conversation around and be able to back up my assumptions. And that was actually probably one thing in the interview process, too. I made an assumption. I was wrong about the assumption, but I called it out and I said, hey, I realized that I'm taking a little bit more ABM approach. Here's why. I thought you guys actually had a little bit more ABM structures in place. I realized that maybe you don't, because your head of sales was asking these questions. You are asking me these questions about the exercise itself. And I think just being able to recognize that and call that out and say, here's why I made that assumption probably helped me.

That's great because, like, when you're interviewing at that level, the company wants to feel like they're getting smarter about marketing.

Yeah.

Right now. And I think when you're hiring a VP of marketing in that interview process, it's not just like, oh, this guy's telling us what we want to hear.

Yeah.

Oh, wow, Interesting. I'm leaving that interview, and, like, I just learned two new things from this person that I didn't know before. Okay, maybe we should try that. I think that's what you want to. Yeah, that's what you want to get because you want to feel good. I've. I've done that in hiring where, like, there's just been people that I've hired in the interview process. I'm, like, taking notes the whole time. I'm like, hold on. Tell me, how'd you do that thing? And.

Yep.

Versus sometimes I feel myself even just kind of going through the process, and we're never really getting past that. And I think when you meet someone like that who wants to question how you're doing things and has actionable ideas and is going to make you smarter, those are the people that you want to find yourself a way to work.

With, you know, and that's kind of my goal in my conversation with anyone is can I either teach them something new or get them to think about something in a different way? And those are usually the best conversations anyway. But those types of conversations will make you stand out more.

And then what happened from there? Did you have to make this presentation or was like, a video?

Yeah, I made the presentation and, like.

On a zoom call.

So, yeah, put the presentation together and then sent it over to them. They reviewed it. And then in my interview with Alina again, we just talked through some of the points. So we didn't. We didn't say, hey, walk me through your entire presentation. It was, hey, on page five, you said this. Let's. Like, why'd you say it that way? Or is that contradictory to what you said over here? And then I was able to say, no, no. It actually works out pretty well with exactly what I said over here, because xyz. So it's just more of a conversation about the presentation rather than me giving the presentation. Although I have had that before.

Got it. Okay. You have to present it. It was a deck somebody could walk through.

Yeah, yeah. Exactly.

Got it. And then what happened? You got the job and it's over.

Oh, no. Okay. Yeah. So, yeah, I had a few other conversations. I mean, one thing that I did want to have a conversation with her about was the metrics and the economics of the business and the health of the business. And that's something that I always want to go deep on. Like, that's one of my big things that I'm looking for when I'm joining a company. Is it a healthy company? Is it a healthy business? And I think probably a lot of individuals looking to make that next step. I mean, one, they should know these things too. But two, it also makes you sound like more of a competent, able partner. Right. If I. If I say, hey, what's your ltv? What's your cac? What's your payback period? What's your gross and net retention rate? Like, if we have a good conversation around that, they're probably. They're more confident that I have what it takes to be that marketing leader. And it's not just, hey, can you tell me these answers? It's, oh, let's have a conversation around it. I was. And for you, too. Just to make sure it's the right company. I was having a conversation with the CFO of a company. This is, like, two years ago. And he showed me the latest board deck, and I was like, great. I love the transparency. Okay, here's your ACV. Here's your sales cycle. Here's what you're doing in ARR. And I was looking at their LTV to CAC, and it's 17 to 1. And I was like, wow, that's phenomenal. Like, why aren't you guys pouring as much fuel on the fire as humanly possible? Because your payback is under six months. And I know that puts you in the top decile for, like, companies. And then I saw at the bottom the date that the metrics were pulled. I was like, oh, so this is almost six months old already. What happened since then? So I dug into that a little bit more. We hired 11 reps. Okay, interesting. What's been your growth rate since then? Oh, it's not the double that we told you it was. It's actually closer to 15% growth. So not the healthy growth that we thought. And that's like, okay, so how are you calculating cac? Is that on a gross margin, adjusted basis? Oh, it's not. Interesting. So basically, I went from being wowed by their LTV to CAC to concluding that they're probably below average.

Have you found that people have been willing to share this stuff with you? I mean, I would hope if you're coming in at VP of marketing level, but I'm just wondering how transparent founders are being with that type of information.

I would say most are. I have had a situation before where they said, happy to. Let's get you to sign in NDA first. So I was a bigger company and then they put me in touch with the cfo and we went through all that. And there have been other companies before that were like, I'll show you the deck. I really don't know the answers to how we're really calculating this. That's someone from FP&A. They kind of shrug it off a little bit, but at least know some of your metrics and have a good conversation around it. If they say, oh yeah, we really care about rule of 40 and our percentage is 40, and then you can say, okay, great. Is, are you measuring ARR or are you measuring revenue growth? Are you measuring margin or are you measuring ebitda?

Yep.

And then these days too, there's a lot of focus around. There's actually growth weighted rule of 40. So it actually matters more if you're growing faster than your margins. Hence Bessemer put out there. I think it's called rule of X, which basically is a growth adjusted rule of 40. Just have a good conversation around that and know what all that means. And that's how you really determine if the business is healthy. Know your metrics.

All right, maybe take me to the finish line. I'll stop interrupting you. How do we get. Yeah, tell me the rest of the process.

Then I met with one of their board members after that and which. Yeah, great sign. I definitely want to talk to our board member whether they offer it or not. If they don't, if it says that's not part of the process, I kind of want to talk to the board member and most will too. But I talked to the board member and then. Yeah, after that. Yeah, I think, yeah, I was just had another check in with Alina and said, oh, by the way, Alina, I put my two weeks in that cross check, although I'm staying a little bit longer. And she said, oh, well, we're not quite ready to make that pull the trigger full time yet. Well, why don't you just come on part time, finish your time at crosscheck, halftime there, and then you'll do halftime here at Chili Piper. And that's actually the current transition is. Yeah, I'm done at Crosstech. At the end of January. And then the intention is to go full time at Chili Piper. And it was partially used as, hey. As an excuse, hey, let's just try each other out. It's just kind of that dating period too, which I think works out well too.

And you had planned to leave your job anyway, so you were probably willing to like, would you have been willing to do a part time thing for a little bit in between as you found where you were going to go or did you want to find somebody full time right out of the gate?

My intention was full time, but yeah, I mean, maybe if I had told Alina that sooner, she would have just said, hey, let's have you start full time in January. And I wouldn't have. It would have been a little bit easier for me to say, sorry, I'm not going to stay six weeks here. I'm just going to stay my two weeks and that's it.

Do you have any concerns about, do you feel like you have this job? Like, are you going in there to be like, oh, this is my trial period, I'm going to crush it so I can become their full time VP of marketing? Or do you already have that in your head?

No. Yeah, it feels like it's, yeah, it's going to work out. Yeah. There's no signs that point to, oh, maybe Brandon's not the right guy.

Yeah.

And I think a lot of it is going back to. It's a space that I know. It's a problem that I know because I face that problem. I've purchased Chili Piper before and I know the product, so I was able to really hit the ground pretty quickly.

So what have you been doing? What type of work have you been doing in the transition period?

One of the big things that we're working on right now is the strategic narrative. It's our company pov. And then working on refining that and then really landing our category. And then from there it's how do we permeate that through everything that we do, from the sales team telling the story and the pitch decks and customer success to all of the great social content that Chili Piper already puts out. And then of course, there are some tactical things too, like, hey, let's get you at this event to help drive attendance to the happy hour that we're throwing. And hopefully you're creating some conversations that turn into meetings. You're taking over the team. I have one on ones with all the team members already, that sort of thing. One on ones with the VP of sales and all the Other stakeholders that I would need to have one on ones with.

All right. I don't have anything else to ask you. I think this was interesting to find out. Hopefully useful and informative. Anything you want to add before we wrap up.

A few other things that are on my mind that I get questions about all the time. I think probably the biggest question that I get from people looking at companies is like, how do you determine the actual culture of the company? Because honestly, I think a lot of companies out there, they put their values on the website and it's a recruiting tool and that's it. And it's not the actual values that they live. And what I always tell them is it's going to be a mix between just getting the sense throughout the entire interview process. Ask them good questions about, tell me stories of. About the culture that you would find here that you wouldn't find anywhere else, or how are people recognized, how are people promoted, how are people rewarded, that sort of thing. And then just conversations on the back of that. But I think the best way to determine a company culture is talk to people who previously worked there. And I did that at Chili Piper. I reached out to previous Pipers who no longer work there. Some had great experiences, some didn't. I listened to all of those conversations. No one made the decision for me. And I was able to take all the data points and really determine, is this a place that I want to work at? And still, after even some of the people who didn't have a great experience, my answer was still absolutely, yes.

So it sounds like you put a lot of effort into this and you got something great out of it. I think if you're just going to blindly throw your resume to a bunch of places, it's going to be harder to land versus, like, yeah. Do you almost ran your own ABM process on this? Here's one company. I know them really well. Here are the reasons why I can add value. But then also you did your fair share of research on like, I gotta make sure this is right on my end. So I think that's really smart.

Yeah. And was in a fortunate position where I didn't have to take whatever offer that I got from anyone because I was desperate for a job. And that obviously is helpful. I know a lot of people are not in that situation, but that certainly helped me. And if Chili Piper February says, you know what, this is not working out, Brandon, I would go to my network and I would even reach out to recruiters. I think recruiters are great work with recruiters. Just know that. Are they contingent or are they a retained search? Because that matters. And then just know that. Yeah, recruiters are incentivized on certain things for themselves. But I think recruiters are great. I have a list, I have a label on in my inbox. Any recruiter that's ever reached out to me so that now I can just look at that label and see, all right, if I need to find a job again, who am I going to reach out to? And I always try to be helpful too. Especially if their title is like executive recruiter. I'll reply and be hey, I'm not looking right now. But hey, I know you're looking for someone who is really great at storytelling and brand. Let me introduce you to Dave. I think he might be a good person for this role, just like build that relationship. So anyway, I'm a fan of recruiters.

What about the process of negotiating your comp? Did you have to do that alone?

Ooh, that's a good one.

Did you have any data? How did you approach that?

Okay, so yes, that's where I think always knowing what is out there is really good. Know what your worth is, know what the market is saying. And then I did do a lot of research. I pulled all the different reports from, I mean Bets has some good data out there. Pavilion has their tell people where to look.

Where can you find this?

Yeah, so Bets Visage Pavilion had some good ones. I think I even saw a good article from Carta and it was just I think executive comp or something like that. And yeah, so I got a good range for what I think I could be making at similar companies. You have to find similar companies, right? It can't be, hey, I found this job opening for a CMO at a billion dollar company. They're willing to pay $500,000. I think I should be paid $500,000. You have to find similar companies. And then the other thing too is you have to look at the entire package. It's not just title, it's not just your actual compensation. There are other things that you can negotiate too, like extended post termination exercise period or you can pre negotiate compensation increases on milestones, you can negotiate signing bonuses, you can pre negotiate like leave or pto. And if you're an executive, you probably can even at least have a conversation around single trigger acceleration or double trigger acceleration or the right to.

Everybody says that and then I've tried it every time and everyone's like no.

I have gotten no more than anything else. But I think it is more Common for bigger companies.

Yeah. Everyone's like, no. And I'm like, okay, I'll sign anyway.

I don't sign anyway. Or even if it's like right to sell secondary or something, like at least know your options out there.

Yeah. But it. There's just so much you don't. You don't know any of this until you do it. I have no idea.

Exactly, exactly. You don't know until you probably made a mistake. And that's honestly a lot of my own learnings. I. I know it because I fucked up in the past.

Yep. And you pay a lot of taxes before you have made any money.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

That's happened to me. All right, this is great. So you did a bunch of research that's like across all the layers. You're very measured and research guy and you put more effort in. I think having some data on salary is in comp is a big thing. But to your point, you had a good point about there are many non direct compensation things that you can try to negotiate in your favor. Right?

Yeah, exactly. And these days too, with people who want more work, life balance and realizing the importance of that, or even if it's like a health and wellness stipend where they're going to pay your gym membership and they're going to let you work out in the middle of the day, three days or whatever that is, that's really important. So it's not all salary and title these days, or equity even.

Yep. All right, Brandon, thank you for hanging out with me. I gotta go. You gotta go. Go to LinkedIn, find Brandon, follow Chili Piper and we will continue to see them on this journey.

That's right.

Expect lots of abm.

Yeah.

From now on. No, I'm just kidding. Because Brandon has a very popular episode. If you go into the Exit 5 podcast and search ABM with Brandon Redlinger, you can listen to that episode, one of the more popular things. And he also gave us a bunch of these great ABM templates that we have in the 5 community. So Brandon, always good to hang out. I'm excited to see what you do. Have fun at a new company. It's like you get a new brand, a new company in a space that you're passionate about. So I wish you the best and I'll. I'll see you soon.

All right, talk to you soon. Exit.

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