In this concise interview, Professor Pete Alexander hosts digital strategist Rae (Ray) Goforth, who brings 15 years of experience shaping digital strategy for SMBs and enterprises. Goforth highlights the excitement of continual innovation and a customer‑first approach, emphasizing the need to stay ahead of digital trends to deepen engagement. He stresses that partnership and empathy—understanding stakeholder objectives and collaborating across divisions—are essential for solving complex challenges. Goforth advises leaders to ground decisions in data and direct customer conversations, advocating for lifecycle marketing that builds long‑term trust rather than one‑off transactions. He recommends fellow digital leader Lisa Andrade as a future podcast guest and shares his first post‑college role in a mental‑health center, noting how that experience cultivated his empathy and partnership mindset. Listeners are directed to connect with Goforth on LinkedIn.
Chapters
This is Professor Pete Alexander with the Winning at Business and Life podcast, where business leaders share their insights. It is 6 questions in 7 minutes because successful business leaders are busy and rarely have more time to spare. So let's get to it. Question number 1: In a few sentences, please tell me who you are and what you do.
Hi Pete, my name is Rae Goforth, and I am a digital strategist with 15 years experience in SMB and enterprise, leading global digital strategy strategy.
Ray, it's great to have you on the show. Question number 2: What's the best thing about working in your industry?
There are so many good things about being in digital, and I would say innovation, uh, at the forefront of everything that I do. So always kind of striving to understand what's new, how can we go deeper to drive customer engagement and really think customer first through new ways to engage with people across the digital landscape.
That's fun. Question number 3. I have a book that has all the answers for business. What chapter would you think most companies should read?
Well, first of all, they should read the entire book, The Journey. But I would say most important for me is the chapter on partnership. If you understand how to be a good partner, you will be very successful. That means working with various stakeholders across different divisions with different titles, different organizations. And when you identify what people's objective is, then you really can work together to solve something that you can never solve on your own. So partnership, driving empathy, it is a— it is something that I have found successful no matter what the challenge or what the project is that we're trying to solve.
Oh, I love that. Great answer. Question number 4: other than the generic work harder, have a great attitude, and care for customers, what advice or insight would you give to other business leaders?
Customer first. I think so many times we sit at our desks and we think about a product or positioning, but we don't always think about the customer. So if we are providing the insight and based on the customer need and what they're looking for, then we will be successful no matter if it's a product launch, a campaign, any type of new strategy. Think customer first.
Mm-hmm. And would you agree that talking with the customers even before doing a particular campaign is, is advisable?
Absolutely. I think you have to have data to support decisions. So whether you are getting great data insights from Forrester or other great organizations, that should help you identify what path you should lead with, where you should go in that journey, meaning what digital landscape is this audience on? What are they talking about? We want to start talking like they are talking and have a relationship that we build with them, not just a sales opportunity that we're trying to drive to, but more of an ongoing relationship with the consumer.
I love that, the ongoing relationship. It's not just a one-hit-and-done. It's, you know, there's a real lifecycle here.
Absolutely. And lifecycle marketing, it's become a really big thing. And understanding what that looks like over time and building that customer trust, customer loyalty is something that is very important from a marketing perspective.
Great. Very insightful. Question number 5: What other business leader like yourself would you like me to acknowledge and invite to be on my podcast?
Oh, that's a great question. One person comes to mind immediately. Her name is Lisa Andrade. She's one of the smartest people I know, and she's been a mentor to me, and I think she'd have a lot of great guidance to share on your podcast, Pete.
Oh, that's great. I'll reach out to Lisa. Thank you for that suggestion. And question number 6, please tell me about your first job.
Oh my goodness. Well, it was a very long time ago. I am a psychology major, and my first job out of college, I worked at a center where people were having some emotional problems. It wasn't always easy and it wasn't always fun, but it was so rewarding to see people evolve. Um, I think there are, I think 1 in 5 people in the United States can suffer from a mental illness at some point through their lives. So knowing that everybody goes through challenges and seeing people grow and go back into working society or whatever normal is for me, you, or that person was an amazing thing to experience from afar and help to nurture those people to ongoing success.
Oh wow, and I suspect that the experience that you had there first thing out of college and stuff, you probably are relating back to that now with the situation, and it's— you really had some great experience to start right out of college with that.
Yeah, it was a lot of fun, and it also taught me to understand that there are people going through things, and I think that goes back to my chapter on partnership and really trying to empathize with what somebody else is bringing to the table, because you really never know.
Mm-hmm. I agree with you 100%. Thank you so much there. And Ray, thank you so much for being on the show. How can people find you?
You can find me on LinkedIn, Ray Goforth, and I'm always happy to connect with digital marketers or anybody else. And, and I really appreciate your time today, Pete. Thank you so much for thinking of me.
Sure. This is Professor Pete Alexander with the Winning at Business and Life podcast. For more insights and ideas, please go to LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, or iTunes and search for the Winning at Business and Life podcast. Thanks for listening.
