Joe Glover, Co-Founder @ The Marketing Meetup

Welcome back to another episode of The Graduate Guide. Today we're joined by Joe. Joe, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you, mate. Thank you for having me, appreciate it.

So I think a good place to start is just by explaining the Marketing Meetup, which, uh, you co-founded.

Yeah. Okay, I'll do that. So I founded the Marketing Meetup, uh, 8 years ago now. And so I was 24 years old, um, I was a solo marketing manager working in a small company. And one of the things you realize when you head out into the working world is that you want to build your network and you want to learn about the thing you're doing. And I knew I wanted to do those things, and so I started attending traditional marketing events and conferences as you would. But the thing I encountered there was folks treating one another by, you know, the totality of their humanity being judged by their job title or their budget. People stand in these circles that you had to break yourself into. And if you did eventually say hello, then they would just sell at you. And to me, it felt like there was probably something that could be a little bit more kind that could exist. For me, first and foremost, I wanted this space because I'm more of a shy person, quite quiet. And so I ran my first event in a canteen in Cambridge. And then over the past 8 years, which is a very long story short, the Marketing Meetup has grown into this community for marketers. Which we speak about being positively lovely, which is folks walking into the space, it's an inclusive place, it's a place where people feel welcome, it's a place where we look to elevate the industry, but it's also a place where we seek to be constructive. So not simply just sort of saying everything is wicked, but sort of saying, how can we make things better? So yeah, about 170 events this year from London to Tokyo. It's about 250,000 folks in the community on the socials, about 50,000 folks that we would consider members of the community, and a positively lovely experience for all. A real joy. Really, really lucky.

Amazing. And you're saying that yourself, you're more shy, you're less the conventional person that would go to a networking event, but Yeah, one thing we really like to do in this podcast is, uh, try to make everyone feel heard in the career. And I feel like a lot of people might be feeling those qualities and feel like it's handicapping them in their career. But how have you been able to turn it into a superpower and actually find people, um, that enhance that, that your natural self?

I love that. What a thoughtful question. Um, I think it, I think it starts from a place of realizing that quietness is a different quality to a lack of confidence. So I am a confident person, I believe in my abilities, I think I am good at some things, I know that I'm bad at others like any other person, but I don't walk into these situations going, gosh, I'm rubbish at everything. So that's the first thing, is that when one identifies as a more quiet or shy person, then you can allow yourself to decouple yourself from that and sort of say, you know, confidence is not the same as being quiet. Um, the second thing is, is, you know, leaning in, and, and that works in both directions. So leaning in to the quietness— this is who I am and I feel comfortable with it, you know, I don't feel like I have to pretend. And, uh, once there's an acceptance around that, you You seek out environments which make you feel more comfortable. You show up in those spaces and you are yourself, and therefore people will gravitate to you. The flip on that is that if you are a quieter person and using that phrase, leaning in, folks have to lean in. They have to listen. And I think that's a lovely quality because, um, you know, I know that I will never really command, uh, a big group conversation around a noisy pub table. But what I do know is that when I stand at the front of a room and I'm emceeing or comparing, or I'm in a one-on-one conversation, then I can be myself. I can speak as I should, and people will lean in if they want to. And it's about finding those environments that enable you to do those things, I think.

How about the perhaps misconception that in marketing you always have to be loud and clickbait and everything like that? You know, The content that you post on LinkedIn is very real and raw and you— but I imagine when you first started and you didn't have as many people bought into it, it might have been an uncomfortable thing to do where you're actually trying to grow this community and now business, but you don't want to do it— you don't want to conform to this really like loud, uh, yeah, like I said, kind of clickbait marketing.

Well, I'm not going to assume knowledge here, you know, so like I know that we're speaking to a graduate sort of demographic. So one of the very, very foundational principles of marketing is segmentation. This idea that you are not going to be speaking to all of the people all of the time. You are going to be speaking to some people who resonate with your message. Now, in commercial terms, you know, speaking to some people with your specific message would have a commercial outcome, you know, but In my case, in the example that we're using, I just speak as I am because that's how I know how to speak. And people have found me, you know, and have resonated with that. And I think the thing is that because I haven't had to pretend, things feel like they come quite easily. You know, the growth of the Marketing Meetup community over the course of time has been wonderful because it's just been easy to show up. Every day as ourselves, serving our community, but also showing up, you know, true to what we are, which is this positively lovely ethos, really. And so, um, so I, I would say there is that misconception that exists, um, and I wouldn't be so arrogant to say, look at me, I prove this is not true, um, but I would say that my experience is I am not one of those people And I found comfort and kinship and a community by showing up as myself.

If I take you back to your time at Durham University studying business, what did you think your career might perhaps be? Because I guess you, you probably couldn't have anticipated it'd be where it is right now.

Yeah, no, no, not at all. Um, I'll take you to my parents because I think it's quite funny. Uh, so both my parents are police officers, um, and My dad is bald. I am now bald as well for those listening in, but I wear a hat to hide my shame. But I remember as kids, and this is a funny story, this isn't a sad story anyway, but like as kids we would mock my dad for being bald and he'd go, I might be bald but I earn more than you do. It's a good line, but I think what was funny about it is because there was that line and then there was also growing up on a diet of The Apprentice, uh, and The Apprentice being this sort of cutthroat, money-driven, blah, blah, blah. And the combination of these two things sort of led me to this place, which was, I am going to judge the success of my career by how much I earn. And so I didn't know what I wanted to do. but I knew that I wanted to earn lots of money. Um, and maybe we can speak about this in a moment, but it led me down a certain path. But just to directly answer your question, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I did a business degree because it was general enough, um, to go into most things. Uh, I know that you said that you did a history degree. I would have loved to have done a history degree because I love history. Um, I made the choice to do business because I thought there was probably a career path that followed on from that more obviously. Yeah, but I don't know whether that's true, by the way, or not, you know. And so like, you know, it could be an absolute misconception.

It's one of those— I think degrees in general, they are what you make of it, right? Yeah. Um, and I think there was this narrative that I think that I got fed, uh, before going to university that, you know, if you get into a good one, you'll be fine, you'll work it all out. But I think as much as there are transferable skills within degrees and everything like that, I think you have to— if not a university, at some point you've got to confront the fact that you need to build it in the way that you want, otherwise your career is not really going to begin.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, fully, absolutely. I mean, you could extrapolate that out to life, right? You know, in general, um, university taught me how to think, but it didn't really teach me the lessons I needed to know to be successful in my job. You know, there's some foundational principles, um, that maybe I took, and like, I enjoyed the marketing module at university, so that probably had a bit of a steer. Um, but yeah, for the most part, it's more about like evaluation, analysis, and stuff like that. And then if you layer on exactly what you've been speaking on, which is accountability and direction and, and, uh, proactivity for yourself, then, then you're probably onto a bit of a winner. But, um, Yeah, so I had no idea. A very long way of saying I had no idea what I wanted to do before uni. I just wanted to earn lots of money.

And then that first step, then you graduate and then comes a decision where you've got to go, okay, got to go somewhere.

Well, not even. So this is the thing about not knowing where you want, what you want to do. So I had one phone call, you know, someone found me. I don't even know how, but they found me. They rang me.

Not creepy at all.

And they said, I'm recruiting for SAP consultants, so IT consultants. So SAP, really large company, they build systems and processes for FTSE companies around the world and many others. And my role was to be an SAP consultant, which was to go into FTSE companies and be part of the process of building these new systems for organisations. Did I have any interest in it? Hell no. Did it make a lot of money, you know, or was there an obvious career path to making lots of money? Hell yes. Um, in fact, the line that sold me on that was, uh, you'll be earning $100K after 5 years, which, you know, it's 12 years ago. I mean, $100K, by the way, like, there is this narrative in the world that you have to be earning 6 figures to be even close to being a success. What a joke that is. Like, um, the average salary in the UK is like nearly £30k or something like that. You know, if you're doing £30k, you're doing all right. You know, if you're doing £100k, you're in the top 5%. So, you know, we need to chill out a bit. Um, but I was sold on this line, you know, you'll be earning £100k after 5 years. And so I said, I'll go and do that. I ended up leaving that job after 6 months. Um, I was on the graduate scheme. It was great. The people were great. The company was phenomenal. But the thing I was doing I just didn't like it. I was waking up in the morning to do a 2-hour commute from Hitchin to Windsor at that point, down the M25. It was just no life. And so, uh, so I quit, which was, um, which was great. And like, I think there is a lesson there, which is that could have been seen as a mistake, could have been seen as a waste of 6 months. But actually what it did do was teach me that I was going to live my life defined by the money I made. The life I was going to live was one where I was defined by doing things that I wanted to do, surrounded by people I generally wanted to be surrounded by. And, uh, that's where I've ended up now.

You said that quitting was a good thing to do.

Yeah.

And I feel like it's actually quite a topical thing right now with, at least with our generation of skipping on from things or, you know, giving up too early. And I think there is a very fine line between really identifying what a toxic work culture is or working on the wrong thing for you and, and not giving it, you know, the right amount of time that it needs. For example, building your business, if you'd stopped after 6 months, it wouldn't be where it was. So where do you fall in this debate? What are your thoughts on that?

It's a really good question. I don't think I have an answer because there isn't an answer. I think everyone's career path is so unique to them that ultimately they can only be the one that makes those decisions. I think there are probably some principles that you could point to. So is your work making you really unhappy, you know, drastically unhappy? You know, it's probably a time to look, you know. Is— are things going to change? You know, it's probably another factor. To look at. But I do agree with the general principle of your question, which is like quitting early or quitting over a specific thing is, you know, it can be a wonderful thing, but it can be a dangerous thing. There's no right for someone to employ you. And the job market right now is a tricky place to be in. And so folks need to go into this with both eyes open. And realize that experience is experience, um, and sometimes good experiences are less, uh, growthy than bad experiences. Um, I think the only thing I can advocate for is listening to yourself and, and not making knee-jerk decisions, but also being kind to yourself. You know, as someone who will speak about anxiety, will speak about mental health, then I know how dark one can go and how your job can be a really important part of that, that particular equation. So, uh, the answer is both, mate, you know, but it's, uh, it's down to you and your own, your own, uh, principles. And maybe that's the final point to make really, is the hard work is getting to know yourself, you know, the hard work is going to realize what you value, what you care for, and, uh, you can start making decisions against those things. If you don't know those things, then you're just making a decision on the basis of almost nothing, you know, to a certain degree.

So what's, what's the great balancing act of listening to yourself versus listening to others? Because, I mean, obviously you put on these networking events where it is about listening and it's about having real conversation and discourse, But I guess is it— is the difference of your event is encouraging people to kind of be anchored in their natural self, but then listening and finding out what they resonate with and accepting that not all of it's gonna— it's not one size fits all.

It's literally that, like, that, that last sentence is also the answer. Um, I think as I get a little bit older, I realize maturity, um, being a good recipient on feedback, being a good recipient on lessons is taking some words that someone has said, applying them to your context, and then making a decision what to accept and what to reject. You know, and I think it's a both answer in the sense that there will be some things where you are happy to accept it and you go, what? Yeah, yeah, I've learned that. There'll be other things you reject and you go, no, you know what, you're wrong. And that's okay too. I think there is a trick there as well though, which is an appreciation around tone and stuff like that. So to give an example, we run a newsletter. We get sort of, I send an email to 35,000 people twice a week, you know, sort of saying thoughts in my head and sort of expose myself to that community, my brain, my thoughts to them.

Does that still feel daunting?

Oh, it's horrible. It's so horrible. I hate pressing send on those emails. And the reality is that sometimes you get some feedback. Feedback from some people that's pretty bruising. You know, it can be phrased in such a way which is unkind, frankly, um, and unnecessary. But sometimes the lessons which they're sharing, the feedback they're giving, you actually, you know, there's some validity there. And I think that's an example where you go, okay, I reject the tone here, you know, and stuff like that, but what I'm not going to reject is is the lesson that can be learned because actually there's some validity there. And that's maturity, that's experience. And like, that's a muscle that gets built over the course of time. The first time someone sent me a sassy email back to one of my newsletters, I thought about it for weeks. I rejected everything, you know, sort of 10 years on. I'd like to think I'm a little bit more accepting of the good, even if it comes packaged in bad stuff.

You are, whether you'd like to sort of proclaim yourself as one or not, a community builder. I think it's become one of these buzzwords, right? Like, every company likes to say that they have, which I find, because, you know, I really feel like I am trying to build what I believe to be a community, um, it can be quite frustrating to stand out amidst this and really like stamp your idea of what that means. But for you, what does community really mean? And not just that, but like, what does feeling heard within a community do for you in your career? Maybe some case studies.

I think a community, uh, is— I think, I think that the nicest way, or the most, you know, strongest image that I've got in my mind of a community in action is almost like a spider's web. And so you're pointing to some of the mistakes that people make around community in a corporate environment. And so some of the mistakes they make is saying the word community, but really they mean customer base, or they say the word community and then really they mean sales channel. And in those relationships, it's a straight line. It's a top-down communication from X down to Y. In a truly meaningful community, it's far more like a spider's web. Which is everyone is chatting with everyone. Everyone's looking to help one another. There is probably some element of shared experience. And so you look at communities in action, Harley-Davidson, a community of motorbike riders, Rapha, have a community of bike riders. I don't know why I'm gravitating to two-wheeled vehicles here, but there you go. And I would like to think that most communities have the spirit of seeking to uplift the folks that sit within that community, whether that's making them healthier, wiser, happier, um, more interesting, more fun, whatever it may be. Um, and so the case studies— what, what case study would be particularly interesting?

Somebody that wasn't really finding their feet in their marketing career before joining, and when they came in they've just flourished.

Yeah, you know, I think we see it all the time. Um, one of my favorite LinkedIn posts, and it was just a quote from someone who attended our Edinburgh event, was, I came in feeling nervous and I left feeling like I've met my people. Um, which is a feeling, and I think that's most often associated with confidence. With the Marketing Meetup community, I am not feeling confident, but I've walked out feeling confident. But I think using community in general, just walking into it and saying, 'I'm having a tough time. Is there anyone that can help?' Or, 'I don't know this. Does anyone else know this?' You know, these are places where folks can go where they know they're going to find their people who can help. We all know it and we all see it in our day-to-day lives, whether it's in the corporate world, you know, à la the Marketing Meetup, or in our personal lives, you know, your pottery club, um, or whatever it may be. You walk into your pottery club, say, I don't know how to put a handle on this teapot, you've probably got someone who's going to help you. God, these are rubbish examples, but you know what I mean?

Yeah, I do, I do.

Stuff in action.

So yeah, I think just sort of when I was listening to you speak there, it's almost like group therapy, like that. There's so many tangible benefits, but everyone seems to have to wait to hit rock bottom. But the, the idea and the concept of actually saying what you think and truly being heard, I think actually cultivating that and destigmatizing sort of having that kind of discourse before there's any kind of problem and just more of a way of life, like What's been the real challenge in implementing that within the Marketing Meetup?

I think I would slightly— I won't reject it and say you're wrong, Peter Wood. Thank you. But what I would say is like those moments where people are at rock bottom, you notice them more because they are so emotional. You know, if you were sat in a room with me and we were sat with our community together, you said, mate, I'm really struggling right now, then you're probably going to notice that a bit more than if you said, mate, do you know an SEO agency?

Yeah, fat boy.

You know, but both are examples of community in action. Um, but, but, you know, one is far more emotional. And so I don't think community in action only happens at rock bottom. And it's a— to the opposite, you think of a bike ride with the Rapha folks or something like that, or celebrating a goal with your football club, something like that. It's moments of joy, you know. That's not rock bottom, that's, that's joyfulness. And I think all exist, um, but we specifically focus on the bottom or the top because That's more emotional. Um, your question was about how we still create a place of comfort nonetheless for folks to be able to ask those stuff in, in those moments of rock bottom. And for me, the job of a community organizer is not to build a community. The job of a community organizer is to build a culture which invites other people to come in to be part of that community. And what that means is being very clear on what you stand for. Being very clear on what it is that you do. Being very clear on how someone can join. And most importantly, once people are in the community, being very clear on how they should behave, on a very values perspective. The important thing for a community leader, once all those things have been done, is realizing that it's not your job to control it from that point onwards. You've set the parameters. You've created the space, you've said, this is what we do. Now it's for the community to co-create, make it better together. And so examples of stuff with the marketing meetup, like every week we go to our webinars, someone creates a spreadsheet and says, who's here? Pop your LinkedIn profile in if you want. We don't do that. Community does that because that's something they value. We don't discourage it, we don't encourage it. It's a thing that happens. And so a community builder should be there to create culture, but they shouldn't be there to control the community. That's not a community again. That's— I don't know what that is.

That's a cult. It's becoming an actual career path, being a community manager, creating communities. But I feel like still companies don't really know what they're asking for when they do it. They just kind of want you to be this Swiss Army knife where you never actually really focus on creating that culture. And then similarly, like, students see it and they're like, what on earth does that mean? So could you try and like, if possible, just make sense of what it actually means to have a role in this space?

Yeah, all right, I'll try. So we've literally just hired a community human. So that was the job title. and I'm so excited for them to start.

Community human.

Yeah, that's okay. That's their job. Um, and how we've chosen to define that is someone who responds and proactively creates, uh, stuff for our community. So we mean this primarily via social media, which, you know, would be a social media manager. I appreciate— don't jump on me yet. Um, we've got other elements of the community which is people like our sponsors, so folks who mean that we're able to bring our stuff to the community. But I think if we're speaking about what a community person does really in a business, it acts as a mirror to the folks in the community. It's not saying, "This is where you should go." You're saying, "You like this, and I'm listening to you." 'Let me reflect that back onto you with something else that you think is interesting.' In a very commercial sense, that's quite difficult because often there's a tangible ROI associated with all these things. And I think what we have to realize here is that the context that most of us play in, in most organizations, is quite short-term. So what's the result of that after 3 months? If you looked at the results of your community after 3 months, If you've bet, if you're trying to build something of significance, there's no freaking way that you'd continue to invest in it. But if you continue to invest in it after 3 months, 6 months, 2 years, 5 years, it's at that point that you start to see the returns. Now, to directly answer your question, because I feel like I've gone around a bit, what that means is creating points for the community to come together. It's about engaging with the community, but also not controlling the community. It means, as I say, mirroring back the language. It also means feeding that back into the business. You look at examples of companies like HubSpot, for example, right now they could take the lead of every B2B company in the world, you know, and sort of have quite a dry tone of voice online and stuff like that. But actually what they're doing is they recognise with the folks that they're interacting with, they don't speak like that. And so all of their social media activity is now reflective of the folks who they interact with on a day-to-day basis. And it's like a little bit unhinged, but it's not like Duolingo, you know, but it's part of the way there.

And this Ha you mentioned, do you think these qualities were inherent within them or do you feel like they seeked experience that train them into being?

I think it's both. I think it's quite inherent, i.e., a sense of wanting to help other people, wanting to elevate them, wanting to grow them. You could see in the language that they used that they cared about other people, and that's really important. But there was also a polish there, which was good grammar. And not that that's the principal thing by any way, but a tone of voice that was relatable, accessible, that felt in line with who we are and stuff like that. And I don't think you get to that place unless you are that kind of person who has been trained to write in a specific way.

I want to ask you about a brand I had on— well, I had the managing director on, fortunate enough, which is Liquid Death. Yeah, um, it's become one of these, uh, companies, everyone's like, they ask their social media team, just make us like Liquid Death. Yeah, just, just do what they did. And it's such a, yeah, well, it's an impossible task really. It's, it's that when you actually speak to people within it, you can't cultivate that just from within your company. It's just, it's you either are or you aren't. But what do you think, really, like, from the beginning of building a business, think about your brand and marketing, um, people should be looking to do so that they find actually like their own authentic voice rather than chasing others?

It's a really, really good point. And I'll answer your question directly, but just to speak to the Liquid Death example, like, I think you're right to point out that a lot of people want to copy them because they look successful and they are successful. But the thing they are doing is they are being them. Yeah. And so, you know, it's— yeah, it's— there's no point copying in that way. The other, the other point there is 'People just seem to like Liquid Death's adverts,' you know, but that's quite a different thing to having a strategy that is matched to your target audience. So if you're looking to build a brand from the start, there's two ways. There's a— there's the getting started story, and then there's probably a further on story, which is, you know, we're actually doing this process for the first time 8 years in. So let's speak about the getting started story first. So the getting started story of building a brand is, is there is probably someone who feels something. So for me, I walked into spaces and I felt unwelcome. I felt like I wanted somewhere kinder, uh, and it was a very emotional reaction. It was one of fear. It was one of wanting somewhere that was kinder. And so I started it. And intuitively, as the founder of this organization, I know the emotions, I know the problems that I'm trying to solve, I know who I'm trying to solve it for, which is probably people like me. And ultimately, you kind of just do things. You just keep on doing things until you get to the point where you're like, okay, I know who we are a little bit more. We've grown up, we've sort of met that sort of adolescent stage in our company. Now, that's how most companies start. It's probably a founder who recognizes a problem. Like when you and I sat down before today, you weren't speaking about some brand strategy that you wrote down to start the podcast. You spoke about an experience you had and a problem that you faced. And so you decided to do a thing. And now you're going through this amazing experience of growing a business. You know, that's incredible. And it shouldn't be invalidated because it's not on a framework. It isn't a spreadsheet. It isn't a strategy. You need that emotion and you need to hold on to that emotion forever. However, there's a second phase, you know, so once you've sort of established all of that, then a few years down the line, you may come to a point where you're like, you know what, I think we need to just put something around this, you know, make these feelings feel a little bit more formalised, structured, process-driven. And it's probably around the point where you start bringing in more people. And when you do that, then there's a few things you can do. And a lot of this mirrors Mark Ritson's framework. So if anyone's looking to get into marketing, look at Mark Ritson.

I'm listening intently to this part. This is what I need to hear.

Well, Ritson speaks of 3 stages, so diagnosis, strategy, and tactics. And I've mirrored this in my own framework, which I call the bare minimum marketing strategy. But to speak to Ritson first, who I think is one of the most informative. Marketing people in the world. At the diagnosis stage, this is market research. So we're looking to understand what the market actually wants. And so this is agnostic to you and your company. This is just saying, hey, you know what, there's a gap in the market right now. And so to give an example, you may notice that there are bunches of people who are making their own dog clothing. Because they want to match their dog clothing to what they're wearing that day. And so you just scroll through Instagram, you're like, hey, wait, so those people are doing this thing, you know, that's weird. I noticed that, you know, it's nothing about the company you're building, but it's, uh, it's something you notice. Yeah, okay, cool. So you're doing some market research, and that can be qualitative or that can be quantitative, so surveys, or it can be interviews or whatever it may be. Ethnographic research, which is just watching people. After that point, you head into the strategic elements, which is who do you want to reach? So your target market, your segment, the message you want to build in their brain, something we call the positioning and the goals you want to achieve for your company. So with the target market, what we've identified when we've been scrolling through Instagram is there's a bunch of people who are creating dog clothing. They're making their own. And so, you know what, for your own company, it's like, you know, we'd notice that seems to be a trend. Maybe we make our own. So we're going to target people who want to match dogs, dog clothing with their own. It's a very specific example. So you're like, cool, that's the target. At the next stage is the positioning. So what's the idea that you want to build in their brain? So you probably want to choose 3, 3, 3 ideas. And this can be broken up into two different sections. So the first is how are we different from the competition? And then the second category is how can we look like ourselves? So, which is a theory by Byron Sharp as well. So credit appropriately. So differentiation. I think most people are aware of what differentiation is. It's like we are different, we are better, we are worse than X company on Y metric. The distinctiveness, the looking like yourself thing, is like your logo, your branding, your brand colors, the brand promises you make, the materials you use in that, in that clothing, and so on and so forth. And so choose 3. Choose 1 maybe way that you want to be different, and then choose 2 ways that you want to stand out as yourself. So in the case of the dog clothing company You've chosen to be distinctive, so you've chosen to look like yourself because the thing that you do is you create clothes that match to people's dogs. That's the thing. And you have a logo that is very particular. So that's the you turning up as yourself. And then the differentiation bit, you may say that our quality of clothing is way better than any competitor on the market because we only use specific kind of fibres. And then you've got a goal, you know, so we want to reach $100K in revenue by the end of the year. The final stage is the tactics. So the important thing to point out at this stage is we haven't touched TikTok at this stage, we haven't touched Instagram, we haven't touched the podcast. These are all things we call tactics, which is trying to get the message out, the positioning that we've built that we want to get out in people's brains. And so At this point you go, okay, I'm going to break this down into 5 stages: awareness, consideration, purchase, retention, advocacy. Awareness is making people aware that your product exists. Consideration is saying they know we exist, but how can we turn them into a customer? Purchase is they want to buy from us now. Retention is keeping the customers that you have. Advocacy is turning the customers you have into your biggest fans. And so you plot your tactics against them accordingly. So for example, On TikTok, you might say, we just want to make people aware that we exist. And so here we say, cool, we're going to do loads of stuff about twinning your clothing with your, with, with, with your dog. This is a silly example. You go, cool, awareness done. We're going deep on TikTok. At the consideration stage, okay, so they know about us on TikTok, but where are they going to go? Well, they're probably going to go to our website. They're going to go to website or TikTok shop. So assume that we want to send people to our website. Cool. They land on our website. What do we want them to do now? Well, we probably want them to sign up for a coupon code or a newsletter or something similar. And so you put some thought into that. How can you get people to convert there? Next is the purchase stage. Okay, cool. So they're on our newsletter now. So what do we do? We send a bunch of emails that say buy now. Cool. They're buying from us. Retention. We want them to buy again. So what do we do? We start doing a dog walk club where everyone goes out and a bit like the parkrun, they meet every Saturday, 9 o'clock, and everyone is in matching clothes with them and their dog. Cool. You create a community of people right there. Then you move on to advocacy. Every one of them takes a picture on Instagram and sends it off. What we've done holistically there is we've seen a gap in the market. We've understood the problem that we want to solve. We found a specific group of people that we need to solve it for. We've said that we've got a logo, we've got an idea, and we've got superior quality. We want to make 100 grand, and then we've plotted out the activity across the different tactics. So that's version 2 of, uh, how you start to build a brand.

So let's say that I'm a recent graduate.

Yep.

I want to be a marketer. I've made up my mind. I want to go into a career in marketing. I'm applying to every job, and you know, I've made my portfolio, I've done all this, but I just keep getting rejected, and all I'm doing is applying for jobs. I'm not actually living and breathing and doing anything marketable.

Yeah.

What do I— how— what do I do? How do I recalibrate, um, and, and get, you know, fall back in love with, uh, the thing that I wanted to do as a career?

Yeah, uh, we'll start doing that thing. So I love the word recalibrate, by the way. That's really nice because I think there is such a a confidence-sapping moment where you have sent off 100 applications and you haven't heard anything back. People haven't treated you with respect, they haven't valued you for your humanity, etc., etc. Um, when we hired this community person— so I can only speak from experience— we had 1,000 applications, and so we had to put some criteria next to that role so we could fairly judge whether this person would be a good fit for TMM or not. Um, and it's not that they would be bad people, it's just they wouldn't be right fit for this job. And one of those was, can this person evidence, not necessarily in a professional capacity, because we're aware that this is like a sort of entry-level role, sort of mid-entry-level role, but maybe in a personal capacity, that they have done the things that we want them to be able to do? And so with a lot of the applications we progressed, people either had no experience or they had 1 year experience or something like that. But what they might have done is lent into their passion as a side project in something in their spare time. They may have proactively tried to do something a little bit different with the application. I think that second piece is probably less valuable than actually the first, which is you just need to start doing the thing that you want to be doing, whether that's in a job already. And you say, hey, look, I think I want to be a manager, but I've never been a manager before. Approaching your current manager and saying, look, can I take some tasks, you know, from you? You know, I'm not expecting much here, but I just want to get that exposure. That learning opportunity. But if you're not employed, then sort of, you know, starting a business and showing and learning and building that experience. And who knows, you may not actually need to get a job because by the time that's a real success, maybe you're making enough money as is. But fundamentally, you have to be able to prove that you have that productivity and you are trying to do the thing that you want to do, I think.

Yeah. It's a drum that we're really trying to bang at the moment, which is that in this job market where you do need to stand out— and I think, you know, this is because AI has taken away more traditional graduate jobs, the, you know, the economy isn't what it was— and I think if we're being brutally honest, like, everyone has to look at their degree and go like, okay, but what does this actually mean for making me employable? And, and I mean You know, some people have drawn the short straw. I definitely was part of that generation, I think, that did. But I think it's almost like a refreshing when you realize that actually doing what you love will get you closer to doing a job. And it's one of those things you hate to hear when you're not doing it, but it's the only answer. So you have to, you know, speak to people that can inspire that kind of feeling within you. And my final question to you, which I ask every single one of my guests, is that when you first started off on this career journey of yours, you might have had a certain idea of what success might go on to look like. But fast forward everything you've learned and achieved along the way, what is your definition of success and how has it changed?

Um, I'm going to caveat my answer, uh, which is, uh, I think it's lovely to be inspired by other people's definition of success, but I spent so much of my career living by someone else's definition of success, and it was only when I found my own did I actually start to flourish. And so, um, I think it's a lovely question, but I also think it's a question where I don't want people walking away from here and going, Joe thinks success is that, and that I'm— therefore I'm going to do that.

That's good thing there's 200 other episodes.

Yeah, exactly. But for me, you know, it's options, I think, options and, and priorities. So I'm 32 now, uh, I look 42, uh, but I have 2 kids, uh, I like to be able to do exercise, I like to have a bit of a life as well as work. And so for me, the choice The definition for me is in options. I can choose, you know, I can choose whether I would like to work. I can choose to be able to put down my work so I can focus on my kids because they are the priority. I can choose to be able to exercise, and I think there's a lot of privilege that comes in choice. An example is that if you don't have a lot of money, for example, which a lot of people don't, there isn't a lot of choice there. And so you are making choices based on money. But eventually, you know, if you can start making choices on other things, then I think that's a wonderful thing. So choice, options, balance, those things.

Jay, thanks so much for coming on.

Nice one.

Pleasure.

Thanks, mate. Appreciate it.