The Six Truths of Marketing - Marguerite Yeo - Fractional C-Suite Retreat - Episode #55

Growing a business is hard, but it does not have to be.

Once a week, we take a break from the hustle and bustle in business to talk about innovations and what's new in the C-suite. This is the Fractional C-Suite Retreat, and I'm Joseph Frost. Pull up a seat at the fire, grab a drink, smoke a cigar, and just join me as we relax, learn, and get inspired. This retreat is sponsored by Your CMO, helping organizations grow with better marketing strategy.

Welcome. Today's, uh, guest is a strategic and data-driven seasoned marketing executive. She has a proven track record of 14+ years of marketing leadership experience and is adept at developing marketing strategies and integrated demand generation plans. She actually is a CMO, a fractional CMO, at our company, Your CMO, as well. Full disclosure. So we're very glad to have Margaret Yeo here to speak about marketing and all things related. Margaret, happy to have you.

Thanks for having me, Joe. Happy to be here.

Before we get into the fun stuff, tell me about the latest hockey games. How has your team done?

Well, the Kraken, the Seattle Kraken fell out of the playoffs last week. But I mean, the The good thing is that they came this far. We got into the second round, Game 7 with Dallas Stars. So it's, it's been a good run.

Yeah, well, we'll go deeper into the hockey games later. But let's kick it off as we normally do with just a simple question. If you were to share with us one thing that you think most C-level executives should be thinking about right now, or something that you're very interested in, do you want to share with C-level executives? What would that be?

So I don't have just one. I have, um, 6 things that I have personally experienced over the course of my career, I would say in the last 7 years or so. And these are questions that, um, you know, CEOs of startups have asked me, or COOs or CFOs. And so it's been in my head, um, I've just never had time to write a blog about it or a book about it like most people would do. But yeah, I think I would love to share them in this podcast.

Yeah, well, what are they? Let's go, 6 of them. We'll get 6 times the bang from you. Thank you.

So the first one is marketing is not just about advertising and generating leads. A lot of times, you know, oh, business owners, CEOs, they hire a marketing person because something's not happening well, right? The sales leaders are not getting the leads, sales teams are complaining, and, you know, the knee-jerk reaction is, oh, I need somebody to do advertising and generate leads. But it is more than that. So in my first week at any company, I always ask to see the brand book and the positioning and messaging doc, because it's impossible to do any advertising if you don't have the brand book and, you know, you don't know what the voice and the tone is like, etc. And if you don't know how to pitch the product and value proposition, there's you know, you can't really do advertising. So those are the two things that I ask for, and those are not about advertising and generating leads. Those are about branding and product marketing. So marketing really is about, you know, product marketing, communications, operations, and then there's corporate marketing, right, which includes events and social. So that's one. The second thing is there is no silver bullet magical tactic, and I've seriously been asked that many me many times, like, what is the one thing that you would do? And there is no one thing, right? That's the whole point of integrated marketing. You, you put together online and offline tactics, digital and non-digital, and you combine them with, you know, and everything from email, webinars, organic search, paid search, to events and social media. So there really isn't one magical thing, because really, if there is, everyone would be doing it. And marketing would be really easy, but it's not. It's really about understanding, you know, for your customer set, how, you know, how they buy, why they buy, where they go to do their research, who do they talk to, and that will determine the best combination of tactics to deploy.

All right, so that's 2.

Yeah, the third one is branding is not fluff. You know, I have had a lot of C-suite say, well, we don't need to do branding either. And, you know, at large companies, some of the C-suite would say, well, we are so large and well known, we don't need to do branding. For the startups, the C-suite would say, well, it's so expensive to do branding, it's not necessary, just, you know, we don't need it. But branding is not just about putting together a brand book with, you know, logo guidelines, color, fonts, photography, or imagery. Branding is about the customer experience, and it starts from prospect. Now, how do prospect experiences you as a company? How fast you respond to somebody that says, hey, call me, or, you know, reach out to me, I'm interested to learn more. And then it also spans the whole sales experience, how, you know, how you, how you, how you listen and how you come up with a solution and a proposal. And I but it also spans the customer experience once they've become a customer. And from an HR perspective, branding also involves how you react and interact to people that sign up to interview with you. You know, they— I mean, if there's a bad experience, people go on Glassdoor and all these other forums to leave bad reviews. That's branding. So it's not just about a brand book, it's about the entire journey and customer experience. And I actually wrote a blog about chat last week. So if anybody wants to learn more, there's that added insight. And the fourth thing is, instead of asking marketing what's the cheapest way to get the most leads, the right question should be what's the most cost-effective and efficient way to achieve sales targets and retain customers. And that's a very different shift because One, you, you ask the marketer to be business-centric and, um, and focus on business goals, right? It also forces the marketer to connect with sales and work with the sales leader. Um, so that's why that, that question, the most cost-effective and efficient way to achieve sales target, it's important. Because if you say, what's the cheapest way to get the most leads, then the, the reaction would be, oh, I'm just going to do, um, um, I'm going to just launch tactics that drive the most leads. I'm not concerned about quality or fit, and I'm going to use the cheapest way to do that. And what you get is leads that are, you know, not qualified, they don't convert. And then what, what would the reaction be is marketing's not effective. So that's why we want to stay away from, you know, cheapest way to get the most leads. It really doesn't drive business results. And the fifth thing that I have is don't let glamour and fun and being busy fool you into thinking that marketing is effective. And I say that because I'm a digital marketer. I love digital marketing because I think you can see the results quickly, you can tweak, and, you know, it's, it's effective. However, it isn't glamorous. It isn't fun. It's not something that's visible to C-suite because when you do organic search well, you don't see the fun ads and stuff like that. And you don't see the online ads too. If they are targeted well, you shouldn't be seeing it, right? Because you're not the buyer. So the perception is that, oh, there's not a whole lot happening in marketing when a lot of digital work is going on in the background from email to organic and paid search. And a lot of C-suite love events. They love trade shows, they love road shows, because you get to interact and network and you see the booth and there's lots of glamour at, you know, all these shows. But in my experience, it is the one tactic that is the most cost— the most expensive and the least effective, because you get a lot of leads, but they're not qualified leads, and they are a lot of work to put together in terms of sponsorships for the events, traveling, T&E, right? And also setting up the booth, tearing it down. It's just a very expensive tactic with very low returns. And the last tip I have for the C-suite is ensure your sales and marketing leaders work well together. Nothing is more, more ineffective for either of your sales leaders if they don't work well together. And part of how you can enable that is through the hiring process. So have the marketing or the sales leader interview each other and also force them to work together through a shared goal and shared comp plans. In my last few roles, I have had a bonus structure that is tied to the sales team achieving their sales targets. Although I'm not directly involved in the sales process, I definitely impact the sales pipeline, but I don't, you know, sit in and close sales, but that forces me to work well together with sales and to also ensure that we, you know, have each other's back. So those are my 6.

Wow, no one's ever given me 6 before. I don't think anybody's ever given me 2 before. If you had to pick one of the 6, which one do you think is the most critical for the C-suite to be thinking about today?

I would say the first one. Marketing is not just about advertising and generating leads. It really— it takes a team to do marketing well. You need product marketing, and product marketing is about, you know, coming up with the positioning, messaging, the value prop. How are we differentiated, right, that compared to the competition? Knowing your competitors well, having the ability to articulate and, you know, to, to enable sales, right? It's also about sales enablement, enable enabling sales to answer the hard questions. And so that, that function is super critical. Like, marketing is not going to be successful if product marketing doesn't exist. And, you know, operations is often not taught about, but it is super critical in this day and age when you have to really monitor and track every single tactic that you do. So operations is about picking the right martech tools, is about reporting, tracking, course correcting, reporting on KPIs, all of that stuff. And it's often a, you know, it's something that is not top of mind.

Yeah, I would agree. Operations is often not thought through well, and it's so— the results are so dependent upon good operations to be able to do what you want it to do, whether it's internal operations or your vendor and their operations. I'm curious, what are you seeing or thinking is going to happen with operations as it relates to this new AI push that's coming out there that's drastically changing how operations might look and feel?

Yeah, so with AI, I think there's a lot of opportunity and upside for those in marketing operations to think about how they can leverage AI to basically integrate and connect all the dots, right? And instead of being backward-looking, a lot of operations today is looking backwards, right? Okay, we launched this campaign 2 weeks ago, or we did this product launch a month ago. How do we do? A lot of it is backward-looking, but I think with AI, there's the opportunity to be a little bit more predictive, to look forward and to also, you know, do what-if analysis. You know, if I did this based on historical data that AI has, what, what, you know, can, can we predict will happen if I reduce my, you know, brand budget? Say that there's, you know, we are tightening our budget and we had to reduce or cut something. If I did a reduction in brand advertising by $50K, what is the impact? I think that is something that would be very interesting going forward.

Yeah, I think there's so many opportunities for operations to take advantage of AI and leverage it. The predictive piece of it's interesting. So what size companies or what type of datasets do you need to have to be able, in your opinion, to be more predictive in marketing?

I think a lot of what you've done historically and also what is happening today, like literally 5 minutes ago or 10 minutes ago, and also I think any kind of industry data, right? So benchmarking. I think a lot of what operations you know, have been dealing with is just historical data, nothing that is happening real time, and really nothing that's, you know, benchmark data. So now we have a lot of opportunity to pull in, you know, what are similar companies in our space seeing in terms of results? What are companies in the tech industry in general, say, you know, pick whatever industry is relevant, seeing today? So there's now all that amazing opportunity to pull in competitive data, industry data, you know, to do benchmarking.

What are the jobs you think AI might actually eliminate, maybe not replace, but will no longer be necessary?

I feel it won't necessarily eliminate jobs. I feel that it will eliminate the people who don't adopt AI. So, and I, so I used to be, I used to manage content at a tech company. And, you know, that was something that immediately I thought, oh, wow, what would happen if I was still leading that content team today, right? If let's say we have, you know, 14 members and, you know, 2 of them adopt AI to enable them to write content, everything from ebooks, blogs, social media posts, etc., and 2 of the other team members don't. Well, what's going to happen is the 2 members that adopt AI are going to be able to produce content way, way much, much faster, right? And be more efficient. And, you know, guess who's gonna, you know, value, you know, the more, right? It's the employees that can produce content faster, more efficiently, and more productively. I mean, I'll give you an example. Like last week, full disclosure, when I wrote my brand blog, I leveraged AI to help come up with the talking points that I wanted. I had that in my head, but if I had to write them all, you know, by myself, it would take a couple of hours, I would think. But with AI giving me those, you know, bullet points, all I had to do was edit it, refine it, and make sure that, you know, they're accurate. I added in my own introduction to personalize it, And I also added my own personal experiences with, you know, to attach to those points that AI provided. So I added value there from a personal perspective. But that took me about an hour versus 2 to 3 hours. So that in itself will enable me to, you know, if I magnify that multiple fold, and if I'm a content person, you know, I save 50% of my time and I can generate 50% more content.

And I wonder, the question that keeps going around in my mind is that mean we're going to have 50% less copywriters or content creators or 50% more content? Because it could go either way. Like, you could keep those 4 people that you referenced earlier, could all have jobs and each just be producing 50% more. Or a company could say, I only need 2 to produce the same. And I don't know what the answer's gonna be. Do you have any, any guesses?

I don't, and it depends. And, but I will tell you that when I was leading that content team, we couldn't produce content fast enough, right? We would say, okay, to do an ebook, it would take us, you know, 4 weeks. To do a blog, it would take us a week. And it would be because there's a backlog and we're doing it for different business units in the company. And we're doing it also globally. So, you know, if you, if you come to us first and you get in the queue, this is the SLA. And so there's always a backlog. And, you know, we, we get asked all the time from the field teams, from the business units, can't you do it faster? Well, I need this because I, I have a special, you know, situation. I have a launch. So I think, You know, the situation is not, oh, we, we don't need the other 2 people. I think the situation is we need all 4. They can do it faster and we can reduce our SLAs, and I think everybody would be happier.

Yeah, I think it's, um, it's gonna be interesting to see how it plays out. I do feel that it's not gonna end all positions, but I also, I agree that if you you don't develop an understanding of what AI does and how it can enhance your own individual performance, you're going to be behind the curve. And it's going to be difficult to continue and move up without embracing that type of new technology that's coming down the pipe pretty fast. It's crazy.

I mean, it literally was announced in December, right? And it's only May. And, you know, we see all kinds of new generative AI tools in every discipline. It's fascinating.

Yeah, it really is. It's a great time to be in marketing, that's for sure. Yeah. All right, what's the second one of those top 6?

The second one is there is no silver magic bullet.

That's the one I was drawn to first because that's the one that gets me every time. It's the number 1 question I get.

I get it.

What should I be doing?

Yeah, and I'm surprised that you get it. I'm surprised that in this day and age I still get that question. I mean, you know, there is a reason why there's all these tactics, and there's a reason why no single company, successful or not— I mean, think all the large brands, think Apple, think, you know, Microsoft, or even startups— neither of those companies do just one thing. And that is your answer right there, right? So it's still— it's mind-boggling to me that I get asked that, like, what is the one thing that you would do if you had, you know, a choice?

Yeah, and it's very assumptive, but I get it often on these first calls with client prospects. They understand that, hey, you're a CMO, this is my business, these are my challenges, what would you recommend I do? And they expect that within minutes that you have an understanding of their audience and their message and their differentiators to tell them what to do. And it's baffling. And I know that even if I've been in the same industry and done work in that industry and know that customer very well. I don't know what's unique about the company until, you know, you dig in a little bit more. And I don't know what's meaningful to their clients and why people have selected them until you dig in a little bit. It just takes a while to figure some of those answers out before you can even make a confident recommendation, right?

Absolutely. And, you know, I'm not sure about other industries, but in tech, we all know that there is no one single person that purchases, right? It's a team of people, and there are influences as well. So for example, if you were to sell a security solution, you are not just targeting the chief information security officer or the VP of IT. You are also talking about the influences of people who will have to implement this solution, people that will have to use it day in and day out. And you also have to influence a CFO who's going to sign the check. So there are always multiple decision makers, multiple influences in the buying process. So, and they're all different, right? If you are in the C-suite, you're not going to personally do the research yourself. You have a team of people that do that for you. So you have to reach out differently to those folks that are doing the research. As a C-suite, what you want to see is the ROI. What do I get for buying this? You know, and, and so you have a very different tool. You have the ROI calculator, you know, you have a high-level asset, you know, to, to leverage. If you are, you know, targeting developers or, you know, IT implementers, you know, they have a different content piece that they're looking for or a different forum that they go to, to, to do their research, or they talk to their peers. So it's— that's why there's no one silver bullet tactic.

And even when you have the right tactic, it's going to take a series of tweaking and optimization to make it deliver what it can. A good marketer can take a tactic and really drive more results than, you know, not so good marketers. So it's not just the tactic you have to choose, it's then how do you tweak it and optimize it to get the most out of it.

For sure.

I was on a call yesterday. It was a tech startup and to me it sounded absurd, but they wanted to launch a new product in 2 weeks. They were just now building a team, a CMO, a CRO, and a product director, product manager. And they wanted to go from zero to a million in 3 months.

Oh, that's not happening.

And we were on the call and I said, this is a big, this is a big crazy ask. You know, have you really given it much, you know, thought? Like how this is gonna happen? Have you done any marketing now? And do you have a website? And the answer was no. That's why we're talking to you. I was thinking to myself, this is the mindset of many startups, that marketing can plug in and in 2 weeks can generate a plan from scratch and a website that's going to then result in 3 months in a million dollars in sales.

I'm glad you brought that up because a lot of people don't believe me when I tell them You know, yeah, this is— these are the questions I get asked all the time when I, you know, when I join startups. Do the impossible, basically.

Do the impossible. And if you can't, you're a bad marketer.

Absolutely. Yes. Like, why can't you do that? Um, you know, I'm like, well, it's not realistic.

Yeah. How much time does it take to get to a point as a, a new marketer to, to to a new company, maybe a new product or a new market that they're marketing to, to get to where you can be confident in a strategy and tactics to use? How much time should somebody consider that reasonably would take?

I think it would take between 2 to 3 months. And 2 months if you already have a functioning website. 2 months if you already have a current program in market where, you know, you can come in, take a quick look at it, fix the low-hanging fruit, some of the problem areas, and then still have that run while you figure out the strategy. 3 months if you don't have some of that in place because then you have to start, you know, putting stuff together and actually, you know, understanding. If you historical metrics, learnings, that makes it a lot easier. If you don't, that takes way longer. And if you have, like, even like the company you brought up, if there's no website, no programs, and you're just hiring people, it would take you minimum 6 months.

Yeah, that's where my mind went. It's just strange, the questions that we get asked.

I mean, it's serious. People don't understand how long it takes to put a website together. They think, oh, you know, just slap together some content and imagery and just put it up. I mean, well, it's not just that because it, you know, putting together a website takes teamwork, right? You need to understand how to pitch your product, not in a lengthy way where you write, you know, a book, but it has to be succinct because nobody has time to, you know, read a book on your website. What they want to do is browse really quickly. You have, you know, a minute at most to really convey how you're different and why they should care. And if they don't see that, they're going to leave, right? Nothing is more frustrating than reading technical papers on a website if they're not at that stage yet. So it is incredibly difficult to come up with really, you know, succinct value proposition and differentiation, and it takes work. And once you have that, then you have to, you know, lay it out, design it. You have to pick the right animation if you want to do animation, or you need to have the right imagery and diagrams, et cetera. And you need to think about the structure, right? You know, what am I going to show on the website? Do I do lead gen there? And then all of the backend, if you do a form fill or a contact me, where does that form go? Who receives it? What is the SLA? There's a lot of backend stuff that no one thinks about. And also you have to make sure that the site is set up for organic search and, you know, set up well, all of that. So there is a lot that goes behind a website. It's not just the glamorous piece that everybody sees. It's all the backend, the nitty-gritty, the boring stuff that nobody thinks about. And to do a good website, just to do a revamp of an existing website would take minimum of 2 months.

Yeah, absolutely. It's not as simple as just buying some AdWords and all of a sudden you're in business. There's a lot of things that go into it.

Yeah.

All right, so how did you become such a hockey fan?

I went to school in Vancouver, Canada, and, you know, hockey's Canadian— is the Canadian national sport. And, you know, it's hard to not get into it, right, when the entire city and, you know, town, I guess, is into it. So I watched a few games, picked up really fast, and got hooked. So the Vancouver Canucks was my team for a long time until the Kraken came to town.

The Kraken. And they, they didn't quite pull it off against Dallas, but they had a good run, right?

They did. They did. In the second year, they came this far. So I am thrilled.

So is Dallas going to go all the way?

I don't think so. I'm personally rooting for the Panthers. They're the underdog, and they kicked out the Boston Bruins, who were, you know, the top team in the league going into the playoffs. So that was a shocking result, but I'm so happy for Panthers. And then they kicked out the Leafs And now they're playing the Hurricanes. So it's— and they are actually leading. Can you believe it? So I'm rooting for the Panthers.

All right. So my hockey is really weak. I can think of the Carolina Panthers and their football team. But who are the Panthers? Which city is that?

Florida. Florida Panthers. And they're playing the Carolina Hurricanes.

Ah, very nice.

Yeah.

Yeah. Hockey is a hard sport for me to watch. Because it just moves so fast and it just— you don't— I think if you grow up with it, it's kind of— people liken it to baseball or soccer. Like, if you've grown up with it and you've played it, you can appreciate what you're watching. But if you're not, you don't understand the skill it takes to do some of the things that people are doing and the reason for the strategies that go on behind the game. You just don't see that. Them as a casual observer. And that's, that's with me and hockey. But I'm the opposite with soccer, football. I love European football, US soccer. I love watching that sport. I can watch it for hours. And some people are like, it's 0 to 1, how can you enjoy that?

I know, I grew up with soccer in Singapore. So I was born and raised in Singapore. And, you know, grew up watching soccer, European, you know, soccer, but I just never— I just, you know, it's just not my thing. I've been to live matches and stuff, but it's just not my thing. Um, I don't know, I, I, you know, baseball, I just can't deal with it.

It's so slow.

It's really— it's like you can talk for, you know, for 30 minutes and come back to the game and like nothing has changed, right? And if you talk for even 2 seconds in hockey, you might miss a goal. You might— you miss a lot of action in 2 seconds, you know, in hockey. I just, you know, for me, baseball is like watching paint dry on the wall. It's just— I can't do it.

Yeah, it's tough. They've done some nice things with trying to speed up the game with timing the how long the pitcher has to throw in between bats, and I think that's a— that's a— that's helped with game because when you start going 4, 5, 6 hour games That's just ridiculous. No one wants to do that, not even the players.

Yeah, yeah. And you know, football, American football is, you know, it's fun, but it does a lot of standing around too, you know. It's just like, what are you guys doing standing around? I don't know. And there's so many rules. Every time I watch football, there is another rule from the rule book. I'm like, who wrote these things? I mean, in hockey there aren't that many. I mean, it's easy. It's very easy to pick up hockey, right? It's not easy to pick up football.

Yeah, it's not. You have to really know the game of football to know, just understand what's going on for sure. Yeah. We went to the Philippines recently and the big sport over there is basketball. Basketball. So the Filipinos love their, their basketball over there, and, uh, they're big into the NBA and watching our basketball games. But while we were over there, we were visiting, um, some kind of indigenous town up in the mountains and delivering some toys to kids, and we brought over footballs, American football balls and frisbees, and they'd never seen a football or a frisbee before, and they had so much fun.

That's awesome.

Playing, because it's, you know, it's much different than obviously a basketball is. Um, so we think that we've just seeded the next, like, NBA— future NFL players are going to come from this little town right outside of Clark Air Force Base.

So that's awesome.

Yeah, it was fun to watch. And then watching some, uh, our partners over there, you know, some grown men throwing frisbee for the first time and having so much fun doing it. But it's hard to throw a frisbee if you've never thrown one before. It's not, it's not as easy as it looks, right?

Well, because you do it sideways, not— you don't throw it like you throw a ball.

So yeah, so it was— that was fun. So are you going to have tickets next year to the Kraken?

Yes, I actually signed up for a 7-year commitment.

You're vested. I am vested.

I am.

How many tickets did you have to commit to?

It's up to you, but I have— so I went in with a friend who also loves hockey, so I have one, she has one, and we go together.

Yeah, so, well, I'm excited to come visit you for one of those games next year, and maybe she can be her plus one.

Yeah, please do.

We can go together.

Yeah, I can also— I'll get you additional tickets too.

So yeah, what else do you like to do for fun, Marguerite?

Um, in the summer I paddleboard. I live close to Lake Washington, so I, um, I walk down with with my paddleboard and I just spend time on the lake. It's good to just chill out and just be on a body of water and enjoy the sea life. I do occasionally have some, I see eagles, I see all kinds of birds. So that's how I survived COVID actually, paddleboarding on the lake. And then in the winter, I like snowshoeing. I have been crazy enough to go snowshoeing in Cypress Mountain in Vancouver by myself, much to, you know, my dad's concern. He's like, why did something happen to you? I'm like, it's busy. I mean, it's, you know, it's not like I'm by myself. But I love snowshoeing, and Cypress is amazing. It's close. Close to downtown Vancouver and it's easy to get to. I also like walking, especially when the weather's nice and it's not raining here in Seattle. I walk around my neighborhood, I go exploring, and I try to get so many thousand steps a week, just, you know, for fitness and to move around. I also took up baking during COVID and I have baked ever since then. So I just this week I did a chocolate mousse and a marble cake this weekend. Um, what else do I do? Hockey takes up a lot of my time when hockey's in season between October and May-ish, June. Um, and I love traveling. I make it a point to visit a new place every year until COVID stopped, you know, stopped me in my tracks. But, um, I went to Scotland last year, and I'm Planning to go to Morocco this year.

Terrific. Well, you know, I love to travel as well. It's so much fun seeing a new culture and new people and just the whole act of traveling. I even enjoy sitting on a plane for hours. That doesn't bother me at all. I think I love all of that experience.

Yeah. Yeah.

I will say I'm not going to Oh, go ahead. I was just saying, but I'm not a baker.

I mean, you never know. I actually never— my kitchen was spotless, you know. I, I don't like cooking. I still don't like cooking today. And I only baked very basic things like a pound cake or cookies, right? Um, but I was just bored to death, and, and COVID just, you know, it's like, what do you do? And so you pick up new things. I— well, it started with me watching The Great British Baking Show on Netflix, and then I was like, oh, that's kind of fun, oh, that's interesting. And I thought, you know what, let me do it. I mean, they actually show, you know, the bakers going through the steps. I mean, when you see a recipe, it can be quite intimidating, but when you watch a show and you see people do it, it's like, oh, I can do that. So that's how I started, and I said, well, I can do that too, so let me try. And, you know, after a few successful bakes you build up your confidence and you go, yeah, I can do it, almost anything now. And that's how I got into it. But you never know. I mean, before COVID and before baking, I would have never said that I could do this.

Yeah. Well, that sounds like a nice hobby because it smells nice when you bake too.

It does. And you can, you know, there's so many good use, you know, that really that comes out of it. You can bring it over as a snack when you get invited to someone's house. You can bring it for dessert, um, you know, instead of always bringing wine. Now I bring a cake, um, or, you know, you can, you can bake it and auction it off at, um, at an event. So there's just so many things you can do with it. You can just bake and share it with friends in general. Um, so that's, that's So that's good stuff that comes out of it.

That's great.

Yeah.

Well, baking and hockey, one of these days we'll, we'll be able to do the, do both together. Maybe I'll eat the baking, not actually bake.

Yes. Good. Yes. I, I will, if I ever go to Omaha again, I will bring some portable baked goods over.

Oh yeah, for sure. We'll get you back here one way or another.

Yeah.

Well, thank you so much for your time today, Marguerite. It was fun. And I'm excited to take a transcript of your 6 steps, 6 questions or ideas that you brought up and create a blog from it, from this session using AI. That's the goal, right?

Yeah.

Transcript it. We'll send it to ChatGPT and tell it to spit out a blog. Blog for us, and we'll have another one for your repertoire of blogs. So it was very informative. Thank you very much.

Well, awesome. Thank you for having me. And this has been a great channel for me to communicate what's been in my head for the last few years without me having to write a lot of stuff about it.

Yeah, well, great. And thank you to our audience. Thank you for listening. And if you get a chance, please please press subscribe on the podcast. That's what my producers tell me to tell you to do. That gets us more, more notice and it gets you more podcasts in the future. So thank you as well. All right, Marguerite, it's been great. We will talk soon. And to the audience, look forward to seeing you next week.

And that's a wrap. There's another successful episode of the Fractional C-Suite Retreat. See our show notes and more episodes at fractionalcsuitretreat.com. This podcast is sponsored by YorCMO, helping organizations grow, save time and money with better marketing strategy and fractional execution. Visit them at YorCMO.com. YorCMO.com, spelled wrong on purpose.