#76: Pipeline Slowdown, First 90 Days as CMO, Brand vs Demand & more with Kyle Lacy (CMO, Jellyfish) and Shauntle Barley (Dir. Marketing, Demandwell)

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Exit exit. It's funny because I always start these conversations and like, you start talking and I'm like, some people hate it because I get on these podcasts and I'm like, let's just record right away. That's how I am. But some people are not. They're like, no, no, no, hold on, hold on, hold on. Like, what are we going to talk about? And I usually don't know, especially now. I've done so much of this podcast. Like, I often don't prep because I know we're going to have a conversation. So we were just talking in the green room behind the stage. Shantal's here. Kyle, Lacy's here. We were just talking about Mo, who's sleeping on the couch behind me, and just how great a dog is. Anyway, good to see you both. Shantal, where are you at? New York. Kyle, where are you? In Indianapolis. Are you still there?

I am currently in San Francisco for a conference, but yes, I reside in Indianapolis, Indiana.

What's your conference attendance been like the last couple years?

This is the first one in two years, probably, give or take.

Which conference is it?

Pavilions, CMO Summit.

And how is it?

It's great. It's actually, I'm meeting a bunch of people that I've talked to for three to four years that I've never met in person. It's the conversation of, I didn't realize you were that tall or that short, which we all get.

Classic. What is it for you?

Do you know what it is for me?

What is it?

You're way nicer than you seem online.

You seem so nice online. It's like, hard to imagine.

Maybe to you. Some people don't interpret everything that way. They're like, man, you're way nicer than I thought. I'm like, okay, hey, but not to get right into marketing geek stuff, but Pavilion CMO Summit seems like a good looking event, like if you're a marketing leader. And I have no affiliation with Pavilion, but just like, I saw that and I was like, ooh, that looks like a good one. Like, what are you getting out of it?

For me, it's mostly peer relationships, meeting people that I've shared like horror stories with that we've had great conversations online, whether that's Zoom or Slack or podcasts, and it's finally meeting them, learning about the challenges that they're facing. And the speakers are great, but it's really the conversations that matter. And I think for any community, that's ultimately what is the most powerful part is your peer network.

Shanta, are you starting to build something like that?

Eds? Manuel?

No, just for, like, just like for yourself. Like, I know I'm not in the marketing leader seat anymore, but I totally can relate to what Kyle's saying. So it's like, I feel like for me, half the value in going to Saster or more than half the value every year was actually, this is not a knock on Saster at all. But it was like the lunch, like Kyle Shantal and so. And so, hey, we're all getting lunch. It's like, oh, a bunch of. At the time it was like series a director of marketing at the time. Like, I see so many questions in like my Exit 5 community about like, do you have a benchmark for this? A benchmark for this? And I realized like, oh, over time.

All my stuff from that just became.

Because, like, I don't know, Kyle told me, like he manages a team of 40 people and they do it like this. And Chantal says it like this. Like, I feel like that's the underratedly huge thing of like having that as.

You build your career.

Yeah, totally. I tried to have like a small community of people that I feel like if I ask them something, I know they'll answer right away. Like, I'm definitely more of like a build a small community of people that are like, high trust, high impact versus I feel shy about things like Pavilion because I'm not very like, I'm not a big social media person and I'm not a big, you know, Large community gal. So for me it's sort of like under the radar, like who can I just email and then hop on a quick 15 minute call with?

And I think there's the tactical element of this stuff which Dave, which Dave was talking about, which is benchmarking. What the hell do I do if a team member's freaking out or sales cycles lagging, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Everything we talk about. So there's that side which is larger community. It's beneficial because you have access to a bunch of people that are doing it. The relationship side of it, like the human element of it is more. How do you get 10 people in a dinner to talk about the shit that they're going through? Because we're all human and we're all going through these stresses and we all know we're in it. You either were in it or in it now, which is the roles that we're in. In high growth software is not easy and it's definitely not stress free. Right. So having that support system I think is what is most valuable about it.

You don't think it's stress free, Kyle?

I think Dave posts about this probably every other hour. Like, hey, I'm stress free now. Look at me.

Yeah, I am. I'm definitely stress free now. Although I am going to go hire some people. And so I already had somebody, Josh Allen, who was a CRO at Drift when I was there. He's like, oh, Mr. Solopreneur, you're going to hire people? And I'm like, I can't wait. I can't wait to hear that.

That.

But it's like, no, I changed my mind and I've, I have different facts and so I've made a different, made a different decision.

Okay, wait, this is such a common thing where it's like people feel pressure to stick with something that they said two years ago. But it's like changing your mind is fantastic and the more data you have, just like the better decision you can make. Sue me.

Thank you for that. Because, you know, I don't know if you'd know this, but I was at a company called Drift and we came up with this said thing like, no gated content. Don't do gated content. I still have people to this day that message me and be like, oh, what's up now, Mr. No gated content. And it's like, that was seven years ago and a company that I don't even work for anymore.

You know, it was 2015. Yeah, that's when we met you came and did that small group with Daniel Glickman about the note. I mean, that was forever ago. If I had the same opinions, I now have two children. Which you do as well. Like, I'm not talking about what I did in 2015 at Open View. It's fascinating that people tie into that. So I just, it's crazy. Maybe that shouldn't be as surprising to me, honestly.

But on the real side, there's actually a meta marketing lesson in that, which is, I think as I've gone on and I've seen interesting people and interesting marketers or business people or operators, the what makes them good. And Kyle, you're seeing this now at taking a new job, new company, like, and this is probably what's exciting about it is like, what makes you good is the ability to like, take any ingredients and make the dish right. And so like, I like when like a marketer, like, doesn't just have one playbook, I think the best marketing and career people are like, no, I don't just have one playbook. Maybe if you're like Vista Equity, you need one playbook and you run that playbook. But like, if you're Shantal, like the marketing leader, you're like, shoot, yeah, I could crush it at demand. Well, I could crush it at this. I could do great at this because, like, I pride myself on being able to figure it out. And each company's different and you got different ingredients. And so like, especially on marketing channels like your playbook, that the point of view you had at one company is going to change. And that's what was so fun for me about like leaving Drift, even though that company was such a part of my life, like, and going to Privy was like, oh, this is fun because I get to go and take the stuff that I learned and apply it to like a new company, new people, new market. That was like, really, it reinvigorated my.

Career for a little bit.

Yeah, it's like you have the same tools but you have different ingredients. And so you're like, okay, obviously LinkedIn advertising is an option, but, like, would that work for this? Like, new lettuce that I have? That's like my new audience, like, do they even care about that? I don't know. I also think the best people that I've worked with and that I've seen are able to like, do that, what you're describing and also jump really tactical and then come really high level. Because I think you need that too to understand what is actually working. Like, if you're not in the weeds creating this stuff. It's just like harder to understand what's working and what's clicking and like what's even getting out there into the world.

Let's talk about right now. We're entering Q2 2023 just from a business standpoint. Kyle, let's go with you and go to Chantal. Can you talk about your CMO at Jellyfish? What does Jellyfish do, Who do you sell to and what's kind of the state of your revenue function right now? Like what's happening in the business?

So jellyfish, about 200 employees, marketing team of 15. We sell to vice presidents of engineering, Chief Product Officers, CTOs and CFOs. So it's engineering management platform. So how do you show the data on how productive your engineering team is being? We've all sat in boardrooms where a product leader will show a roadmap and has none of the efficiency metrics that sales, marketing and CS have. That's what Jellyfish does is it visualizes that and it has like some cost cap tools for a cfo.

Wouldn't be so sick to have that for marketing. It's impossible because the inputs are not the same. But imagine you just have a chart and be like yeah sure, if we hire two more marketers, here's what the output can be. Cfo.

Yeah, like a headcount capacity we can get there. It just takes a bunch of different data inputs. Right. So from a revenue perspective we are not seeing a slowdown in pipeline. Like we're actually overperforming on our rev model for pipe generated. I think sales cycles are starting to slow a little bit. But our products built for this type of market. They grew massively during COVID and now with more of the focus on efficiency metrics like it's a pretty easy play for us if we do it appropriately. It's all about execution. So right now it's looking pretty good, at least across the top of funnel for sure. But it's definitely sales cycles are lagging a little bit.

It feels nice though. Even if sales is behind a little bit. When you're stuff in the pipeline, number makes a lot of the rest of the things easy.

Keep in mind that I've been here 90 days so I'm still learning more about how the sales team functions. And you know you have some sales teams that spread out revenue over a quarter and you have some that close a ton in the last couple weeks. Right. So it's also I don't have enough data yet to really figure out what's going on in the market. I just know the tool is built for the market, which is good and it's about executing.

So you're seeing pipeline strong, possibly a slowdown in sales cycles. We're going to come back to Mr. Kyle Lacy later because I want to ask about your 15 people team structure, what your first 90 days have been like. But I want to stay on this topic of like what's happening in the market right now. Shantal, talk about your role, what demand well does and just curious to hear how life has been right now.

Yeah. So I'm the director of marketing at Demandwell and Demandwell is an SEO solution for pretty much early stage marketers. We have a really strong emphasis on B2B marketing and currently marketing team is three people. We basically over the course of the last year like things were humming along, Q2, Q3 hit and we were still able to hit our pipeline numbers but our revenue numbers just really dropped off because a lot of marketers budgets were slashed. That was definitely a tough time. And since then we reduced our force, we reduced marketing spend. We also reduced our goals, which has been actually pretty good. And we're kind of rebuilding, solving the problems that got us to where we were last year and trying to get to cash flow positivity basically. So with smaller goals we are able to hit them. And I don't know, it feels really good to kind of take a step out of the crazy like triple, triple, double or die kind of mentality and really just try to get on. I don't even know what the saying.

Is, but like building a real business with EBITDA and profitability.

Yeah, yeah, I was going to say something similar. So Kyle said like building a real business. But yeah, I think one of the hard parts about doing marketing, I think in this era, the last four or five years or at least something that I always struggled with is like you're asked to always like almost suspend reality to figure out like the marketing goals for example. And so it's like, hey, we want to triple revenue next year. Well, marketing is part art, part in science. Like there isn't a model where you just like drag the spreadsheet and you're like, ah, here it is, here's the triple revenue model and we're going to hire these people and we're going to buy these tools. Like, you know, we love talking about strategy and planning but like I think people underrate how much of a strategy is making bets and they're called bets for a reason and they don't always pay off and you're going to miss and I've missed and you know, I'm sure you both have missed. And so I think to be able to build something from the ground up, shoot, that, that would be awesome. You know, I'm feeling it in like my business now. It's not a venture back SaaS business but it's like it's my business, it's my money. I manage the pnl. I look at things differently than I did. I'm going to be honest, I look at things differently did even when I was cmo. I'm like, we spend what for zoom. Screw that, let's use Google Meet. It's free. You know, like, and that's just one example. And I think when you then go do marketing from that level at a bigger company, you're going to make totally different decisions and have the hard conversations with the CFO and finance come around. Like the fluffier marketing stuff that's a little bit harder to quantify. And I think that stuff's probably going to go away for a little bit.

Having a lean season I think as a marketer my whole experiences have been formed at really early stage companies where like budget is just tighter. And so every so often I'll hear marketers talking about the way they think about budget and I'm like, that is just so different than the way that I think about it because like I've been in a lean mindset pretty much my whole career. But I don't know if you've seen that Kyle. Like I feel like you have a much wider kind of scope of experiences than I have.

Surprisingly, I have always operated under this idea that 70% of the budget should be used for demand and revenue generation and 30% use for brand. And at lessonly it evened out to like 72%. At seismic it was 70 30. The difference is a $5 million budget and a $40 million budget. But efficiency is in this market boards are now talking about nobody's going to look at 2023 and shame you for not growing fast. They're going to look at 2023, 2024 and say were you efficient in how you grew? Especially for venture backed software companies, that mentality is a little bit different for me because I've always been more on allocating budget to brand and revenue, not necessarily the efficiency of that 70% and how it's generating demand, which is just part of my growth trajectory as a CMO and marketing leader.

All right, so if you're listening, I know you are. One of the more common questions we get is what's a benchmark? What's a benchmark? You just got one from Kyle, which is a good one. Write it down, put in your notes app on your phone. Like I would do 70, 30 budget split. And I've seen that too. There's actually a, a good book on this data driven marketing 15 strategies. And they talk about this is like some super business schooly consultant framework. But they say exactly what Kyle said, which is 70, 30, which is great. I see a lot of people in around exit 5 who don't even have that benchmark. And so it's like, here's the budget. Spend it when, like, hold on. Whether you give me a hundred dollars or $100 million, I now have this framework from Kyle which is like, I'm going to spend 70% of that on demand and 30% on brand. And so Kyle, in that example, the 70% is going to be things that you can pretty easily measure the hard ROI on. Those are things that are going to help you hit the number this quarter.

Yeah. And that includes headcount and software, everything. So the way that we did it, and I've done it in the past, Leslie, is that you take your headcount and divide it out based off of the time they spend in certain things. So designer might be 20% of their time's revenue, 80% brand, and then that 70% of demand spend should drive 100% of the revenue creation you need to do as a company or as a marketing team. And then the 30% is stuff that you can go do creative campaigns. Because I have found that creative marketers, designers, writers, they are less creative when they're held to like an MQL and revenue goal on a specific piece of content or a campaign. So lessonly, we were driving and hitting revenue. The board does not care if you do a board game or a Golden Llama or you're gonna buy the NASDAQ sign for 12 hours if you're hitting your revenue number. So that's kind of how I just always think about it. And surprisingly, if you go through your budget today, those listening, you try to divide it out, it's gonna hit 70, 30, 80, 20.

And I'm really close to that. I didn't even do that intentionally.

So it's interesting. I mean it's 80, 20 rule, but that's kind of how I forecast budget too, is to try to keep it within that, that framing.

I like the idea of assigning those values to like headcount too, because it just gives you a sense of. Because ultimately, like this little ratio works the whole way up. Because even just. Hey, does our plan feel like it's roughly 70% focused on revenue and 30% focused on brand? Oh, no, it's too Brandy. We got to move it back, which is great. Okay. That was a good little nugget that we got out of that. Heading into Q2, things are kind of continuing to continue on. Kyle, as a new CMO coming in, tell me about your first 90 days. It's a common question that we get. What should I do in my first 30, 60, 90 days? You've had a couple turns on this merry go round.

Now.

How did you approach your first 90 days at Jellyfish?

I can't give you like a. Here's what I did in the first 30, but I can give you a range of what was accomplished in that first 90. So I'm in about a hundred days, I think, as of this recording. So there's three main components. There is an evaluation of the current team and I love the nine box methodology where. Where you can try to figure out where people sit in terms of like how effective they are at the job or culture fit, that type of stuff. The second one is customer calls. Gong calls. Spending a third of your time, like trying to understand where the customer is coming from. And the third one, if I look reviewing the past 90 days, I probably could be better at, but it's being demo certified on the product. So how do you. And I know I might be making this up, but I'm pretty sure you talked about this at some point back in the drift days. But it's. Can you pitch the product as well as the sales team or. I don't think a lot of marketers do that. I could be doing better at that at the moment, but it's understanding the products in a way that you could sit down and do a sales call. So those are kind of the three things. I don't recommend joining a company at the end of a fiscal year because then you're coming in with like you're doing budgeting, you're doing team management, you're trying to figure out what the next fiscal year is going to look like. Pipeline modeling, all of that. I joined in November.

You had to do all that.

Yeah. But you know what? It was a fast way to learn all the intricacies of the company. And this is still. We're serious.

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Can you share how you get the nine box information? Like, if you're joining a new team and you have had maybe 30 days with each of the individual members, are you polling other people that they work with? Or like, how are you assessing that?

I had a note to follow up on that one. Great question.

So I can give you the exact methodology, but I was lucky that they had done the nine boxed in September of last year.

They had the nine bucks, but you didn't have. It doesn't need to be your assessment of people.

Yeah, yeah. Now I'm doing it. So basically, it's a. You have potential and performance, and it's a grid. So one is exceptional potential, three is app potential. You know, performances. They're an okay performer, a great performer, exceptional performer. And usually what I do. And this might not be the perfect scenario, but it's a. I am asking leadership that's worked with them. I'm asking team members. And then I'm also making my own call. I'm about to do that now, but I don't think a leader can. Within the first three months, like, you got to get through a quarter or two to figure out where people sit. I was lucky that I got feedback from the past marketing leader on where the team sits, and then I make my own calls, of course.

That's great. Yeah.

We used to do this, and this is something that I wish I was better at and more disciplined with. But I think as a manager and a team leader, it's easy to avoid this because it leads to uncomfortable conversations. But, like, you have to have this. It's like, what gets measured, gets managed. And I would often be like, yeah, so and so's great. They're great. And then like, the CEO or someone else would be like, well, quantify that. And so eventually, you know, you can. I don't know, I might like, it's very, very hard. And work. You have friends at work, you become friend with work people. And so, like, I really like Kyle. Like, we actually. That's the guy I always get coffee with, but maybe he might not be that good at his job. And this is the really hard part. I'm not even trying to be a jerk and like, saying this. It's like, this is this side of management that I don't know if a lot of people think about and. And are ready for. Are you ready to have that conversation with Shantal and be like, look, you're awesome. We love you as a person, but, like, you're not cutting you're not doing this. And the, the other challenge is you can't have that conversation with somebody. You can't have the. You're not cut out for this or you're not doing this conversation unless you also have, well, what did we say you were supposed to do? And so you have to have like both this, you have to have like the. Here's this, roles and responsibilities. Here's where we expect you to be at. And then you have to have the system of like, measuring and grading the team. And I didn't spend enough time on that. And I think the great team leaders like you are, Kyle, like, obsess over this. And this is the job. You measure this, you manage this. This is the role. These are responsibilities. Here's how we're going to measure this. And because I don't know how you guys do it, but we used to have every team leader up to like 300 people when I was at Drift. Every team leader had to come to the leadership team meeting with their teams ranked and be like, Dave, you've had these six people on your team as low performers for two quarters now. What's the deal? And it's like, shoot. It forces you to manage that.

So at Lesley, we did it twice a year. I think it's similar at Jellyfish where you have the rank aid and then your peer group, the exec team, can call you out on certain things where it's like, why is he or she a three? We really think it's a one. Dave, to your point. And Chantal, I know you agree with this as well. I don't think people fully understand that half of a man of a job, of a VP or a marketing leader or any leader is performance management. And they see they want to become a manager because they want to lead a team. They think that's the next step in the career. But it's our jobs as leaders to make sure that the future leaders fully understand what they're about to walk into. Because if you don't love the serving aspect of leadership of management, where you are helping people get to their next stage or you're moving them out so that they can go discover something else on their own, you're not ready for it and you won't love it. I love my job because it's fast moving, but you're also building people and companies at the same time, which is why I like management. But some people, they just want the title and then they get burned out within the first six months because they're doing more People management and putting out fires than tactical.

Everybody at home is taking a deep long thought of like do I really want to be a manager right now? As you should. As you should. Like I think that is totally the role. I also think that this all stuff has to be conversations that you have and so it shouldn't be a surprise that Kyle's a three. I need to be showing you that in our one on ones and managing towards that and saying like here's the job, here's the expectations, here's how I feel you're doing. So it's not like you're gossiping and like talking shit about an employee behind their back and be like oh there are two. They should know that there are two because you need to having those conversations. This all comes back to like goals. What are the goals for the company? What is marketing trying to accomplish? What are the specific roles in marketing trying to accomplish? How are we going to measure that? And like most failure at any marketing org is going to come down from like those pieces not being there.

Yeah, I feel like I really learned. I mean this has been my first like real people management position and at one time there were six people on the marketing team. You know we like have since reduced force. But the biggest takeaway for me was just like if you want someone to succeed you have to tell them exactly what that looks like or else like they can't read your mind. No one is going to be like ah yes, this strategic priority that's in Shantel's head, here's how brand can support that and I'm going to do that thing. It's like. And the more clear the plan is, like even down to the week of what everyone on the team is working on like in my opinion that's the only way because then you can go into the one on one conversation and you can say we agreed that this was going to be happening at this time in the quarter and that this was the goal and I'm not seeing that. So like what do I need to do to kind of help us all get back on track?

Yeah, yeah. And people scoff at OKRs because Google just completely destroyed the idea of an OKR. But I think that objectives and personal metrics that people need to hit on a quarterly basis are very important and should manage performance. The other thing that I think is interesting just around people management is how you structure one on ones. I have started moving into this idea that my direct reports need to manage the one on one that they have with me and my question to them every week is what's, what's one challenge that you're facing that I can help you with. Everything else is a, you know, you have the career discussions on a monthly or quarterly basis but everything else is like me making sure that I'm supporting them. And this is the first leadership role that I have taken started to take that approach of you direct report are responsible for the one on one that we have. I am not building the agenda for you. It's helped me a lot with just time management and not having anxiety about what we're going to talk about because the. And if the person doesn't have anything on a list, we cancel it. It's helping.

I do the same thing for one on ones. And actually, I mean to your point about like measuring performance, we use something called Traction, which is a entrepreneurial operating system. And that was a huge tool for me when my team was larger of like for those who were held to a number, tracking how they're performing against that number every single week is like very black or white. Are we on track or are we not? And then the struggle for me was always like for those team members who are not held to a number, like how do you do that? And I think that's where the 9 box is really helpful because that's more of like a gut feel kind of thing from multiple people's perspectives of the.

Company and it allows you to manage up. If you're not setting objectives for your team, how the hell are you going to communicate what you're doing to your CEO? I've never been in a situation where I've not had goals aligned so it's easier for me to talk about. But I do want to call out entrepreneurial operating system. Is that a thing? Is that like a category in eos?

Yeah, it sort of like combines okrs with almost like project management philosophies where like you can set up meetings where you're tracking the metrics that you're held to and those metrics can be present in multiple meetings. So the marketing team metrics can be in the leadership team meeting dashboard. The marketing team ones are also in the marketing. So it's like I'm looking at in the weeds marketing stuff but then the stuff that's piped into the leadership team meeting is high level. So and they have like a framework for how you hold meetings and things like that to be effective and yeah, nice.

The hard part is when the metrics are wrong and then somebody's like, well you said like my goal is to get 10,000 podcast downloads and we did that and you're still not hitting your goals or like that person's not performing. I think you can over metric, over metricify. However you would say that marketing, well.

That'S the art of like setting the right, you know, like you said, setting the right bets.

And just like, I feel like so much of the top performing people that I've worked with, it's not always about hitting the metrics. Like, yeah, you got to hit the metrics. But it's like, oh, this person is able to like think strategically and they work well with others and they manage up and they can just like take something and go. And they solve problems before, like, and that's the part that I struggled to quantify, which is like almost like the non marketing skills, like having those written out so you can frame it. Anyway, I got a bunch of questions before this and I want to. I did like a last minute, I posted in the community. Like I got a bunch of random questions and I wanted to ask them. But I did love the things that you focus on, which is evaluation of the team, you know, understanding the customer and getting demo certified, which is like even harder with the engineering management platform. Before we move on, one theory that I have is just like, even if you come in as the highest level person in the company in the first 90 days, I feel like you need to have and let me know if you agree or disagree with this. I believe in the philosophy of how can you do that stuff? But also, is there a way you can put points on the board quickly? Because I think a lot of times when a CMO or higher level person comes in a company, all eyes are on that person. Oh, we just hired Shantal as coo. What's she gonna do? What's she gonna do? And it's like everyone says, like, yeah.

Here'S my 90 day plan.

Every executive of every company says, I'm gonna meet the customer. I'm, I'm going to do this. I'm going to understand the team. But I know you, Kyle, and I know you probably had to come in and do something. So give me an example of how you put points on the board early on. Because it could be a wiki post you wrote, it could be something that you change, you fix. But I feel like people need to be like, oh, this guy Kyle, like might be legit and you feel like they need to feel that early and often.

Yeah, especially if you have. I'm the first to say that I have an inferiority complex. To begin with. So as you come into a new role, you're half my brain thinking, how did you get this job? You shouldn't be here. And the other half is like, hell yeah, you can do this, you're good at your job. So for me it was, I think that changing the team so reorgang the team is a good step in your first 90 days because you should be able to figure that out within the first 30 to 60 on how you would restructure to get more efficiency or productivity or whatever, however you want to do that. And then the second one is set a goal that you think you can hit in the first quarter or over perform on. It's kind of hard with the historic data is off. But for me it was pipeline. Let's hit the pipeline number, the inbound pipeline number. So it was reorg the team with a structure that I think is the way that I would have built it because I inherited a team. The second thing is pick a metric you think you can hit. So pipeline. And the third was take ownership of something that you believe is not being utilized as well. So as well as it should be. So for us it was enablement. So we moved the enablement team over to marketing in the first 30 days that I was there, number one, because they use lessonly where I was at before, but and at lessonly it was me asking for the BDR team to move over to marketing. So it's like what's low hanging fruit that you can influence so that you can get some quick wins. So for us it was enablement was like, let's dive into gong, let's set up some trackers, let's make sure that we're improving the funnel conversion at certain stages and stuff like that. So those are the three.

Is there any pushback on like team reorg stuff from the team?

Yeah, but that's why you're hired. Like you are hired to make decisions and to build what you think is best. And especially in the macro environment that we're in right now, like if efficiency is key and you have too many people, you need to make the decision as a leader. I mean, that's the second we've talked about managing being hard. That's the second thing that's really hard is that you are hired as a leader to make hard decisions and to do them quickly and not to sit on your hands and freak out about making the decision you know is the right move. That's half of it, honestly. I mean, that's the other half you have to make those decisions and it sucks and you freak out. But the reality is that's why you're hired.

I'm getting PTSD of my. When I joined Privy, that was my number one thing was on my same list as you got, which is, you know, team. And I had been in conversations with the CEO like before and within the first two weeks we had turned over basically the entire team. And that meant that a lot of people's very first interaction with me was like, hello, goodbye. That sucks. That sucks. It sucks to do that. But I think you gotta have that hat on. You're like, this is what my job is. And unfortunately that is part of it. So anyway, I'm glad we put that on air because I think a lot of people are going through stuff like that and just can relate to it. Not that there's a solution to it, but just like to hear you say it is part of the gig and that's what it is. Okay, we got to get to some of these questions. This is from Amanda. She says I'm climbing the ladder at work, which is awesome. I've got put a lot of hard work into moving up.

We're a small team.

Anyway, my exec team tells me I need to remove myself from executing day to day. And to be honest, I love strategy and big picture conversations, but I also love doing. I like writing and testing things. Any advice on how to balance both? I imagine some other people have experienced this. So it sounds like she's doing a lot of executing. She has to do a lot of executing and a lot of strategy. How do you balance both?

Or she wants to continue with the execution versus strategy. Yeah, but her leadership team doesn't want her to.

Yeah, interesting diagnosis. It sounds like somebody who might be getting pushed into management and that's not maybe what, what you, you not want to do, you want to execute.

It's such a hard thing to balance because like the things you like executing on the most, like if you have someone else who can do it, it's not the highest and best use of your time anymore, you know, But I personally get enough satisfaction of like still being involved in things execution wise. Like if you have a junior team member who's owning something, you can still be super in the weeds with them, but you don't have to be the person doing all of their work.

And if you have a team member where you have to help them do the work and you have to keep helping them do the work, you have the wrong team member. That's why you hire people so that they can execute what you think is best and you can help them execute. But Dave, like you said, I think that, Amanda, you need to think long and hard on whether you really want to be a manager or not. Because as you grow and as your team grows, you spend less and less and less and less and less and less and less time being tactical. You can still pick things like one thing that you want to make sure you're tactical on, like do a podcast or do something creative or whatever. But 90% of my day to day is all strategy. Or you're, you're trying to align between exec members to make sure you get an objective complete. And that's the reality. And that's another thing about management. It's like you can't be tactical. You can't, especially if you're growing a team.

I'm reading between the lines on this one and it says, my exec tells me I need to remove myself from executing. So that's saying, hey, don't do that. And then, so if you say so, why is she in there? She's in there because the people that are doing it either are doing it right, aren't getting the job done. And so it's like, if you keep double clicking on it, that might be the root cause of this. A is. And are you the one that's going to manage that? Because maybe, yes, maybe you can go fix that management. I'm reading between this and, and seeing where you said, I love strategy and big picture conversations, but I also love doing, I like writing and testing things. Like, just be sure that, you know, do you want to get into this? And sometimes you have to. Sometimes if that's what you want to do to grow your career, you might have to be like, all right. But for example, like in the early days of drift, I got to write all the emails still. And so like, I love copywriting, I love writing. And so like I manage the team. But like I was the one who wrote the email copy for a lot of stuff and that was like, that scratched my itch. I wrote all the website copy.

That was great for me.

Okay, cool. So maybe you can. And especially on a small team, it's like you have a team of three. Someone needs to be the team leader. So maybe you're asked to being on the strategy of that, but you also like 30% product marketer or something like that.

And that's going back to roles and responsibilities that we talked about before. If her exec is not clear with her on the roles and Responsibilities. And that's. That's another problem. But we don't need to get it. I know. We got more questions.

This one's from Matt. As you move up, how do you fill in knowledge gaps to effectively manage your team? How much is enough? For example, going from product marketing to head of marketing without any exposure to the nuts and bolts of demand gen, what do you do?

This is a great question.

I've been through this. I'm sure you both have too. I'm curious.

Join the Exit 5 community and watch the B2B marketing. You did like a special B2B marketing playbook, one I like devoured.

Yeah, there's lots. We'll do a demand gen session. I think that's one way. Kyle, how would you answer that?

That's how I did. It was a community of people that I could ask questions. And the reality is that you're never going to fill all the knowledge gaps. So that's having a community of peers that you can ask questions. And the second is making sure you're hiring the right people to fill those holes. If you've got the opportunity to build the team.

Yeah, I'll give you a free one. I agree with both of you. I'll give you a free one which is go to YouTube, go to podcasts and become obsessed with learning about that topic. If you don't know demand gen, guess what, it's 2023. There is knowledge about demand and I have a perfect example of this. When I was at Drift, we started to go up market, we started to enterprise. I needed to learn abm. There was no courses. I didn't join a community for ABM. I went to YouTube. Saster had this great video from Lauren Vaccarello who was head of marketing at Box at the time and she had this great video. It's a 45 minute presentation at Sasser about how do you market to SMB and enterprise. I religiously took notes of that. That and I literally copied the notes and strategy exactly. I took it back to work the next day and I said, hey, we should try this. That's how I started to learn. I think it's like I run a community for marketing. I believe in learning, but it's like find one or two resources, listen to that and go. Like most of us are going to need to learn by doing and so find a way that you can do some of that in your job. I also think this is why working at a bigger company can also be awesome for you at sometimes or maybe not taking marketing leadership role because, like, you might be head of product marketing and you're in the room of the people who report to the CMO and your peers are head of Demand Gen. I learned about Demand Gen. I've never run Demand Gen, but I worked in parallel to two great Demand gen people. And, like, through that experience, I got to, like, learn enough to be dangerous. And then you hire and then you keep learning. This question is from Dave Gerhart from Burlington, Vermont. My question is to ask Kyle about his obsession with running an Orange Theory. Did you run in San Francisco today?

I did not. I did do Orange Theory yesterday and I'm doing Orange Theory again tomorrow. Orange Theory has replaced my obsession of running. I run during Orange Theory, so you get about. So I'm not quite Dave Gerhardt level now in terms of mileage, but Orange Theory I love because it's a combination of weights, rowing and tread and you burn 800 to 1,000 calories in an hour. I don't have to think that's why I enjoyed running, because all you do is run straight sometimes.

Okay, you're giving me too much credit. Orange Theory is hard as shit. Orange Series and Barry's like, you're running three miles over the course of that hour and, like, there's no rest and you got to lift weights. Is it dark in there? Like, I mean, you just gotta show up. Like, once you're in that door, you're good, you know, like, once you got out of bed and you're in there, it's over. You did. You already worked out. You won.

This is the first exercise routine other than running that I have stuck with. Like, I do four or five a week since September. And the reality is that I'm getting old and I need weights, I need weight training. Like, I can't just run and it'd be okay when I turn, you know, as I get older. So I'll do Orange Theory. I mean, I'm doing it tomorrow if anybody wants to come. 6am San Francisco Financial District. We're going to be listening to EDM and running.

Let's be real. You think this podcast is going to be out tomorrow morning? Get out of here. We're fast, but, like, that's ridiculous. Classic CMO expectations. Let's put this out tomorrow. Team Shantal, you answer this one first, then we'll go to Kyle. What does efficiency in marketing actually mean? Just doing more with less. Everybody probably has their ideas, but most seem to think it's just doing more with less resources. There doesn't have to be a Right answer. But what does efficiency mean to you?

To me, it's really about, like, making sure that sort of. To your point earlier, Dave, like, the tactics that you have set up to hit the goal are, like, the right ones. It's about strategy. So it's like you're not wasting any marketing dollars because you're not spending time on things that don't ultimately impact your goals. And obviously, like, you know, I said earlier, we do spend money on brand, of course, but, like, strategically, I'm really just trying to make sure all the time that everything is becoming pipeline or revenue at some point.

Mr. Lacy, efficiency means you pick a metric and measure yourself by it. So whether that's cac, ltv, or the three to one or the magic number or whatever, I think that it's making sure that you understand what the dollars you're spending and how they're returning it, and it's a positive return. That's efficiency. I don't care what you're spending or how much you're spending, as long as you know for every dollar you spend, you're getting more than a dollar in revenue, especially hopefully over $3 in revenue or more.

All right, this was great.

This is like a news segment with no news, a roundtable. Chantal from Demand. Well, Kyle from Jellyfish, I'm going to put, as usual, have your LinkedIn in the. In the podcast notes. And my favorite thing, my call to action. I don't want reviews. I don't want Exit 5 subscribers. I don't want anything else other than go to LinkedIn and send Kyle Lacy a message and connection and go to LinkedIn and send Chantal a message. My favorite message is from a guest after, and they're like, whoa, People actually listen to your podcast? I got a bunch of LinkedIn requests and, like, I'll take that to the bank. But I gotta hang up because Mo, this guy's gonna pee on my leg. So we're gonna take Mo out. Goodbye. Thank you both. Hey, thanks for listening to this episode of the Exit 5 podcast. If you're in B2B marketing and you want to grow your career, you should also go and check out everything that we have over@exit5.com. We've got articles, we've got videos, we've got templates, plus we have a community, a community of over 4000 B2B marketing pros. Whether you're deep in your career and want to connect with your peers or just starting up and you want a place to go where you can see what people are talking about get smarter about B2B marketing in your own time to grow your career and help grow your company. Go and check it out. It's exit5.com you can get on the email list there. You can join the community. There's 4,000 marketers in the community. We have a job, job board. We're always adding new stuff. It's really becoming the number one place you can go if you want to grow your career and learn more about B2B marketing outside of what you're doing inside of your company every day. So check it out. Exit5.com and I also want to make sure I give a shout out to my friends at Hatch. That's Hatch fm. They produce this podcast. It sounds amazing because of the work that they do and they work with B2B companies just like yours. They offer unlimited podcast editing and strategy for businesses. You can get unlimited podcast editing and.

On demand strategy for a low monthly cost.

All you got to do is just upload your episode and they take care of the rest. Go and check them out. It's Hatch fm.

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