Speaker 1 0:27

Hey, welcome back to Marketing Qualified. I'm Mike Griffin. I'm Chris Newton. Chris, how the fuck are you?

Speaker 2 0:34

Happy Friday. Happy Friday indeed. So just for those of you who just joined us, obviously we just started the reporting, but Mike and I have been chatting for the better part of 40 minutes just talking, talking back and forth about frustrations, how our current jobs are going. You know, just catching up a little bit and Mike joins the podcast and acts like he hasn't just been talking to me for the last 40 minutes. What's up with that?

Speaker 1 0:58

It's like you're not listening. It's in one ear, out the other. Yeah, I Out the other. Yeah, that's right. I always wonder how, like, the people that are actually good at podcasting do that as well, because like there's obviously prep that goes into before getting on air and then they just have to act like it's completely organic and I guess they can kind of empathize with it now and we'll wonder for how long they chatted beforehand, but answer the question how are you?

Speaker 2 1:20

I'm doing good. I'm doing good, I'm doing good. Got a lot of work going on right now, lots of things in motion, so, yeah, it's good how have you been?

Speaker 1 1:30

Everything is going fine. Got a new couch recently. That's exciting that we didn't talk about. It's about as exciting as it gets around here, pal, I don't know.

Speaker 2 1:41

That's how you know you're in your 30s, when the most exciting thing that happened to you all week is getting a new couch well, hang on now, because we are also going to get a baby stroller tune-up this weekend. So yes, what exactly does a tune-up consist of? You have to like, rotate the tires and shit like that. You laugh.

Speaker 1 1:59

But that's exactly it, like the tires still structurally sound, the brakes still work and, if you so choose, you can do things like reupholster the stroller, get a new color for the seat and like the canopy kind of thing that comes aboard. So yeah, I mean it's going to be a smooth $200, no matter what way you splice it. But that's the, that's the other excitement.

Speaker 2 2:19

I mean it feels like for $200, you could probably just buy a brand new stroller.

Speaker 1 2:29

Why don't? What can I do to get you into this new lease? Today mike with the news, what you could do is throw in free child care for that accompanies. It is a fucking challenge anyhow. So that's the. That's the excitement going on for for me. Plenty of excitement, plenty of salt to pour into the ether today during our discussions. Uh, as per usual, you have something to prompt the discussion today. What do you?

Sauron's Missing First Name

Speaker 2 2:48

uh, yeah, so the uh. We've talked quite a bit about rings of power on the show, for better or worse, I don't know what that's, if that says more about us or more about you know, just uh, the state of the world. Uh, but, um, yeah, I figured we'd start off with an opening question, just a random thing that I just thought of in terms of you know, if you think of like famous celebrities with just to know, like, what earned them that single name, like sauron, like how, how did, how did what did he do to become just sauron? I mean, obviously adele is like a grammy award-winning artist, uh, but what, what is what is sauron done other than just like be a huge dick to a bunch of people?

Speaker 1 3:38

well, he was morgoth's bitch for a long time too. Don't forget that he was very much second in command for you know an entire first age before. It's the classic like you get promoted when someone else leaves the company. Situation for some.

Speaker 2 3:51

I always got to take it back to marketing. I love it. I love it. Um, did margaret morgoth have a first name? Was it like melcore or something like melcore morgoth or something like that that's right.

Speaker 1 4:02

You bring up an interesting point. He did not have a. Uh, he had a. He rebranded, or he was rebranded by anyone from melco to more you catch that one.

Speaker 2 4:10

I see what you did there. So what? What prompted that rebranding was uh, were sales low or something he's like? We got to find a way to artificially increase sales and the only lever we have is a complete rebrand. That costs a ton of money, does yield any results it's like you interviewed morgoth.

Speaker 1 4:32

That's exactly what happens the side hustle just speaking to made-up entities. Uh, I wonder what language you would converse in anyway. The point is so how does sauron get there? What do you do to deserve it? He's a huge dick. You're exactly right. I like to imagine that he's missing. There's like a sub. If you watch the subtitle version of the show or the movies, there's a last name that just isn't audibly mentioned, so it's like sauron schwartz, sauron smith, sauron. Something else is completely ridiculous.

Speaker 2 4:53

It takes a lot of the malice away from him if you do that, though yeah, yeah, I mean I like to think more like what would his first name be like if his last name was sauron, like like chuck or like brad. Brad sauron doesn't really have the same, uh, the same ring to it.

Speaker 1 5:10

It's like, oh fuck, brad is is trying to dominate middle earth again yeah, you hear, brad, you think like accounting or something like that, not some evil necromancer that's gonna try to take over the world. I don't know, maybe I'm alone there, let us know. Let us know, what would sauron's first name be? I like to think it would be like something really gen z, like really awesome, like strange spelling of like a totally normal name, like, I don't know, say sofia. I don't know. Maybe sauron, maybe we've had the wrong gender for sauron the entire time.

Speaker 2 5:43

I I could be entirely wrong, or maybe you know how some millennials would name their kids Khaleesi or something, and then it turned out, she was a crazy homicidal maniac or something. Maybe his first name was something like Khaleesi or the Middle Earth equivalent of that. It kind of hit him the wrong way when it all came out that who he was named after was a fucking son of a bitch. It kind of hit in the wrong way when it all came out that who?

Speaker 2 6:06

he was named after was like a fucking son of a bitch right. Just kind of fucked with him and that turned him into sauron.

Speaker 1 6:10

Maybe sauron in dark speech means like blossoming flower or something like that. He's got you know. Then he, he tarnished the name itself. Uh man, I don't know, it's like yeah, he.

Speaker 2 6:21

I mean he ruined that last name for anyone. I feel bad for anyone that has the last name sauron, just like like hitler, like anybody who has the last name hitler. Like he ruined it for pretty much everybody.

Speaker 2 6:31

Like you got to change your last name and then like that's a ton of paperwork, like I don't even know how you do that. Like like my, when my wife took my last name after we got married, like it was a nightmare, like the amount of paper that she had to fill out and like some stuff you couldn't do over online, you had to go in person and like bring your birth certificate, your marriage certificate, like all this stuff and yeah, just the bureaucracy of changing your name. Like I mean, I would just, I would just keep it. My last name was soron chris soron. Like I would just keep it. You know, I would just try not to do anything. You know evil and I'm just trying to bring back, bring the name.

QBR Frustrations and Dirty Data

Speaker 1 7:03

Listen, your last name doesn't define you. Okay, you can walk your own path and you can attain your own leading indicators. And speaking of bureaucracy and leading indicators, this is something that I wanted to talk to you about today because I am fresh off of QBR week and I have some thoughts, some opinions about QBRs in general. Just to define I know it's a really sharp audience QBR Quarterly Business Review, Quarterly Business Report in some organizations right, it's basically a look back in a retro at the quarter that just went down. The idea is to take a look at how you performed against targets, any kind of leading indicators for success or lack thereof for the upcoming quarter. And if you happen to be at some of the organizations, I've been a part of a big fucking waste of your time.

Speaker 2 7:55

That's how I feel, Mike.

Speaker 1 7:58

It's just like in a corporate environment that is so focused on like, let's bring people back to the office to increase productivity. Let's install all these background apps to keep track that they're actually you know, not on fucking meta or actually doing their emails. Like, let's all sit together on this stupid zoom and be off camera and act like throwing the occasional, like you know, semi-interested nod to show that you're somewhat tuned in as you get an entire rundown in a level of granularity that will not actually impact your day to day, that is. I blacked out what happened.

Speaker 2 8:34

You started talking about QBRs and then all of a sudden you went on a rant about you know Republicans and like all this other stuff and yeah, it got. It got really ugly. We're going to have to edit a lot of that out, but I'm glad you're back man.

Speaker 1 8:48

Thank you it. Uh, it's good to be back, but I confess the qbr acronym gives me the fucking ick now anyhow. So here's my point about qbrs. Right, qbrs would be rendered completely and totally unnecessary if the following thing occurred, and I want your reaction to this If anyone, not just marketers, but if people in general were better at adhering to processes and accurately inputting data into the CRM be it HubSpot, salesforce, dynamics, like any CRM then that would negate the need to go through all the effort put into putting together a deck to put together graphs and things like that to show how you're doing against attainment, to show what you're struggling with.

Speaker 1 9:33

You could look at closed lost reason reports, for example, and, just like there would be in a well-oiled machine, a QBR could be like an email or a loom, if that is even necessary, because everyone just has the wherewithal to go in and spin up the appropriate reports to see how their colleagues across the aisle are doing Right, or maybe. Maybe you don't even have to do that, maybe you can just and also it's like a matter of trusting the data to write like in here. All you have to do is is put the thing in correctly, you, you, if you want. If you want your door to open, you have to put the key in correctly and turn it in the right direction. Correct, like why are we looking at crm stuff any differently than that? Okay, I'm gonna be quiet. What do you think?

Speaker 2 10:16

uh well, first of all, I mean, my number one rule is I don't trust any of the data at all, ever like. I actually just came off a a pretty big sprint of building out a ton of new reporting and everything, and there was so much dirty data in the system. I took so much, so many man hours of just manual cleanup, because the reports can only be as good, obviously, as the underlying data. And, to your point, I think that a lot of CRMs are completely dirty and it's just everybody's moving so quickly that it's you know. Unless the proper processes are in place to get the data correct, you're just going to keep having these issues over and over and over.

Speaker 2 10:54

And that's what I've experienced in the past several months of of. You know stuff changing retroactively and people like changing the source, and then you know nothing's more. You know more of a nightmare with reporting than like when you copy data manually into a spreadsheet, for example, or you export data and then you try to reconcile that data the next month but the numbers change because somebody might have changed something, because either they have access to something they shouldn't or they don't understand the right process or whatever. And yeah, it's definitely a nightmare. I don't know what the solution is for any business other than just stop using CRMs. Just go back to the stone ages, when we're carving everything into tablet and then the data can't change.

Speaker 1 11:33

I mean that has real potential. You things you said in there that I want to double click on to, versus dirty data. I think that you should create an Instagram. First of all, change your Slack handle to dirty data. Secondly, create an Instagram handle and we could take submissions on the handle that publicly shames just terrible inputs of CRM information. You've got to spur people to take more accountability and make that cleaner.

Speaker 1 11:56

That's a throwaway idea, but or a free one. If you're listening, you're like oh, no copyright yet. Anyhow, the point is, that's thing Number one. Thing thing Number two, you said, is like so when you're looking at, you know when things change. You've done an exporting machine. What have you? If you're just comfortable, native in the CRM and guess what dynamically updates is the CRM and the reports that you're using to pull your analysis from?

Speaker 1 12:18

The other thing I want to call out, though, is that so, as marketers especially growth marketers or demand gen folks of course, our friends in ops as well like if a process has changed and so fundamentally, like the output for something like a lead status or a lifecycle stage is just, someone can enter one of those field values differently than they could in the past to understand that.

Speaker 1 12:53

Yeah, if you're looking at a chart that I pulled from Q1, and we've rolled out this massive new process that is now live, your Q4 chart is kind of an apples to oranges thing, unless you've been able to effectively go back and retroactively fit data that was basically put into the CRM earlier on in the year to reflect the new process. If not, then you just got to set real clear expectations about a new baseline being established and make sure that there's buy-in and appreciation for what the new process is and really tout the fact that it's supposed to be an improvement for the business, not meant to be a thorn in the side or a wrinkle into the ability to compare quarter to quarter, for example. Does that make sense? What do you think about that?

Speaker 2 13:32

Yeah, I think that all makes sense. I'm just trying to think of a funny pun on dirty data. That's honestly what I'm thinking about right now.

Speaker 1 13:42

I got nothing.

Speaker 2 13:46

I mean, I'm sure you've probably seen the movie Dirty Dancing. I've seen it. Yeah, of course Nobody puts Mikey in a a corner. I want you to use that next time. Next time you have a bunch of dirty data yeah, you're getting you're getting blamed for it.

Speaker 1 14:00

Nobody puts mike rippin in the corner I don't know if I have the like prerequisite swag level to make such a statement, I don't know. Also, would that land with like the younger part of the work, for is that such a timeless classic that it's just assumed that it's been seen? Or is that? Are we dating ourselves?

Speaker 2 14:19

uh, I mean it was. It came out the year I was born, so I mean I'm probably dating myself. Honestly, I thought when I was younger I thought that baby was an actual like child infant, but apparently she's the lady played by, uh, by Jennifer. I'm on the wiki page right now.

Speaker 1 14:35

Oh see, I couldn't even tell you the actress name, so I guess I'm not that invested in the story. Mom, if you're still listening this far into the podcast, I'm so sorry. I know it's your favorite, but I don't know. I'm going to tell you the actor or actresses. Okay, enough about QBRs. That feels great, great. Maybe I'll listen to the recording and, uh, try to clean up or edit out that blackout period that I had there. Uh, you had something that we briefly talked about that I have no idea what it is, what it means. I'm genuinely curious to as I often do learn from you on air what this new thing is. What is it?

The Peter and Dilbert Principles

Speaker 2 15:13

so I think we've talked about this before. Uh, you're familiar with the peter principle, right? I actually have no idea what you're talking about. Maybe we didn't talk about this or maybe you blacked out then too. So, uh, quick, uh, overview. Uh, peter principle is a principle that I think it came out back in like the 70s or something that I think it came out back in like the 70s or something Basically theorizing that people get promoted in an organization based on what they're based on.

Speaker 2 15:38

When they do good work, they get. You know they're good at their jobs, they get promoted and then they eventually get promoted into their own incompetence. So eventually they'll rise to a level where they're incompetent at their job and that's where they'll stay for the rest of their career. So think, like you know somebody classic example like a like a computer programmer. He's might be one of the better programmers at the company. You know he's really productive, gets a lot of work done, writes really good code, yada, yada, yada. Eventually he gets promoted into management. But he could be like a terrible people manager. He might not be great with, you know, managing people. He might not be ready to room, he might not be supportive of his colleagues All the traits that might make a good manager. He might not have any of those traits and then he'll never get promoted from there because he's not a good manager, but he won't go back to being an individual contributor. Most of the times they'll stay at their level of incompetence. So that's kind of just the synopsis of what the Peter principle is.

Speaker 2 16:35

I came across a new principle I think it was, last week, which I'm actually a huge fan of. I think it makes a ton of sense. I know that this guy was recently canceled. He said some pretty bad stuff a couple years ago. Scott Adams, the guy who wrote Dilbert all those comic strips got pulled from newspapers and whatnot, but he put together an idea I think it was, you know, 20 years ago at this point or something called the Dilbert Principle. So it's similar to the Peter Principle, except with the Dilbert Principle, employers who were never competent to begin with are promoted into management to limit the amount of damage that they can actually do. Wow.

Speaker 2 17:11

So if you think about that for a second, I'm sure everyone is thinking of a manager right now who fits this to a tee, where you might have reported to somebody who is way less skilled, way less intelligent way, you know, just not a very good worker who is somehow managing people. And yep, mike's not a nodding long I can. I can see the wheels turning here. But I mean, I personally think it makes a lot of sense because, if you think about it, what do managers actually do?

Speaker 2 17:39

They're not producing things, they're not producing widgets, they're not producing services. Typically, they're not doing anything of value other than telling other people what to do and then taking shit from below and funneling it up, and then taking shit from above and funneling it up, and then taking shit from above and funneling it below, but they don't actually build anything. They're not coding, they're not producing things. It's usually the individual contributors that are responsible for producing things. So in this principle, people who aren't very good at their job get promoted into management, because it'll limit the amount of damage that they could do to production.

Speaker 1 18:13

Yeah, your thoughts on this fuck man like am I a Dilbert? Like I've had direct reports since 2019, I think it is. It's like, is that? Am I limiting myself? Am I the asshole? Here I will say that that is part of like the itch and like maybe other folks that came from like an in the weeds and the trenches kind of position. Like you and I can relate to this, but like I miss being able to have that more of like a direct impact. Like dude, every once in a while I just want to like build a workflow in HubSpot you know what I mean Like get in there and crank it out without having to provide like strategic guidance and file a ticket and hand off to someone else. Or, like I, I enjoy other people having success and having them connect and, like you know, build their own careers. But you talked about the, the taking shit from as above, so below the expression that came to mind uh, have you ever seen that movie? The platform, by the way.

Speaker 2 19:28

I haven't.

Speaker 1 19:28

No, okay, super interesting flick. It was on Netflix At least. I saw it there like a couple of years back. The whole premise is that everyone is in this like prison that has 200 floors down to the basement, uh, and at the very top there is this like french chef that makes these unbelievable gourmet meals. But this massive platform stops at every level, and so the people that are closer to the top of the prison get all the food and the wine. The people down to the bottom like don't. So it's about like a human contest.

Speaker 1 19:59

Anyhow, the, the manager, like feedback loop and the dilbert principle that applies to it. I kind of feel like they would be the people in. See, now, the platform reference isn't going to land. You're gonna have to take my word for it. It makes sense, uh, and I do think that there's uh organizations that do it deliberately. In my experience, though, even applying the deliberate method takes a certain amount of wherewithal that a lot of these fucking places just don't have. They didn't even know what the root cause of the problem is, whether it's the person or the product or whatever the case is, ringing Salty Dan to come in for the product challenge there. But yeah, that's my original, completely unstructured reaction.

Speaker 2 20:43

And it's worth noting that you know the Dilbert principle was never meant to be taken seriously, but I definitely think that it does have a couple applicable applications.

Speaker 1 20:52

Yeah, it certainly does. It certainly does. It's tough man, especially in like marketing manager, right which, by the way, is such a difficult title to discern, right? You really have to look at, like, the bullet points beneath the JD to figure out, like, what a marketing manager digital marketing manager to B2B marketing manager actually does. There's some people involvement, of course, in some organizations. A lot of times it's like managing all the programs that are being brought to market.

Retention Marketing vs. Customer Marketing

Speaker 1 21:20

Maybe you're specifically in like a performance marketing discipline and I just think that that maybe, as maybe as like an industry, maybe as like a discipline, we could do a little bit better with specificity around what that means. I don't know. I feel like that would be kind of a kind of a good motion, but I could be wrong there. I feel like that would be kind of a good motion, but I could be wrong there. Speaking of marketing field in general and things we'd benefit from, here's something that came up in the somewhat recent past. There was a place that I was made aware of who had here's the deal Every marketer is on the hook for the classic like revenue influence, mql level stuff, but then there are other organizations that may be facing a really heavy competitive infiltration and marketing is being asked to help combat churn by doing life cycle or really like retention marketing.

Speaker 1 22:13

Let's hedge against the competitor using positioning. I just want to know what you think about that. Does that fall into the realm of growth marketing or demand generation, if it's not an explicit cross and upsell opportunity? Retention marketing, chris, friend or foe?

Speaker 2 22:35

I mean, it's a great question. I don't have as much experience so I'm probably not going to be able to speak as well to this as you do. I'm usually more focused on acquisition and that kind of stuff, but I mean, it does at first glance seem like it's something that should be primarily the responsibility of the CSM team or whatever team is actually dealing with the customers after the sale. I mean, I think that there's definitely marketing that should be done to customers. Like, in my mind, it's more of like a customer marketing play, where you're marketing to your customers, not necessarily to always upsell them, but, you know, just kind of keep your company top of mind, because I think it's important.

Speaker 2 23:12

Like, even as you are a customer, you can't assume that all of your customers are created equal. Some are going to be power users, some might use you, you know, once in a while, but you still want to keep your business front and center and, you know, keep your, your brand, in their mind because you know when renewal comes up, they could always start looking elsewhere. You know. In addition, you know, you you constantly have turnover at a company. You want to, you know, keep the newer people that join the company aware that you're even using this tool A lot of the times. You know somebody might join a company and be biased towards a previous tool that they were using, so that could cause churn as well. So I think that you know it's more of like a customer marketing play. I don't really like the word retention marketing because it just feels a little dirty. I can't really put into words why it feels dirty, but Well, it's because you're dirty data, that's right, oh, that's true.

Speaker 2 24:01

Yeah, the dirty customer data. You're right. Everything comes back to dirty data. That's right.

Speaker 1 24:07

It's what anchors us together as professionals. So what's your?

Speaker 2 24:11

take on retention marketing. Is it? Is this, first of all? Is it separate from customer marketing in your mind, and or is it just one more way to kind of put more shit on marketers plates, because people just, you know, companies just want to, you know blame everything on marketing, and this is just one more thing they could blame on marketing.

Speaker 1 24:29

I mean I I mean this sincerely. I do think it's a combination of all the above right. Marketing is an easy scapegoat, to put something on, did we have enough touch points when they were in an active contract to keep them engaged with us beyond whatever CS level support or even support team level support they may have engaged with us via during their tenure as a customer? I think that marketing could be looked at as a team that maybe fell short there, when there's need to point fingers. That's unfortunate and I don't agree with that. I think that's pretty unfair. But I do to be looked at as a team that maybe, like, fell short there and when there's need to point fingers. That's unfortunate and I don't agree with that. I think that's pretty unfair, but I do think that it's an important like reality that you just touched upon, that marketing would probably be thrown under the bus for something like that if it was perceived that there wasn't enough effort made. That's thing. One thing. Two is I really like what you said about the title, right? So just like, just like fucking Melkor got a rebrand to Morgoth, right? I think that in general, retention marketing can and should get a rebrand into customer marketing, because I think it's semantics right.

Speaker 1 25:26

You asked if there are two different things. I actually don't think so. Like if you're doing good customer marketing, then by default you're going to be doing good retention marketing. I think there's this tendency to totally separate a. You think about a webinar, for example.

Speaker 1 25:42

Let's orient this one towards prospects and maybe we do something totally different if we're thinking about customers at all for them, when really, if you're a good company, if you're a true subject matter experts, if you're real thought leaders and you're producing something that's helpful for the people that you claim to be solving for, you should have content ready to go that is truly applicable, regardless of where you are in your customer lifecycle.

Speaker 1 26:06

So, if you're doing a good job with customer marketing, getting folks helpful resources, then by default I think you're doing good retention marketing. The way that I often see this kind of packaged up internally is you as a sometimes a demand gen person, sometimes as a retention marketing manager, are responsible for driving cross and upsells, and here again I wonder just like the level of efficacy for that and also what the expectation is. Anyone can enroll someone to like an email drip campaign, right, but is the expectation that you're putting variable dollars behind ad campaigns targeted at existing customers, like I would argue that's an ineffective use of variable and that should instead be put towards getting someone into your customer realm in the first place. And rely on these other subject matter experts is more like handholding white glove type of touch points for customers once you've actually secured them reactions to that. What do you think?

Speaker 2 27:02

No, I think that all makes sense and I mean I think it's also important to note too that you know retention should be everyone's job at the company. Like, obviously, like CSMs touch on this the most. But like I mean, if I was a CEO looking at retention, I would look at, you know, sales, like did sales sell a bad deal? Like were they not a fit and they just kind of forced the deal through and they're going to churn the second that they can because they realized that the product's not going to suit them. Like retention's a sales play.

Speaker 2 27:30

Retention's a marketing play. Did marketing source a bunch of bad leads that somehow got through and became customers and then end up churning? And you know, obviously if they turn before you, you know, make the make the CAC payback on them, then that's a loss as well, so you don't want to be spending money there. I mean product that's a huge attention play. Like is you know the product up to snuff? Like is the product and engineering team where they're building new features that customers actually need? Is there something that they're falling behind on, where they're turning to go to other competitors and stuff. It is kind of a whole company play and it shouldn't be just on any specific team, but it should be something that's kind of looked at cohesively.

Speaker 1 28:12

I could not agree with that more. And can't the same rationale be applied to prospect marketing, like classic demand? It's not just a marketing thing, it's an entire company and a lot of again. The nerds I follow on LinkedIn say this all the time A good, effective go-to-market machine is not synonymous with demand capture and demand generation. It is an entire org level thing.

Speaker 1 28:35

That's why you have LinkedIn, creating something like thought leadership, ads right and giving algorithmic preference to something like that. A CSM can weigh in, a CEO, a C-suite person, can go on and like do media interviews and things like that. It's an entire machine that can and should be put toward, just like solving for your whatever your pipeline or revenue targets are. I think that same mentality could be put towards and, by the way, I bet that goes some distance in terms of solving for KPIs that actually matter, paying attention to shit that actually drives stuff forward for the business, and breaking down some of these if you'll forgive the super cliche here which is like breaking down some of these more traditional silos. That mentality shift would go a long way towards combating that.

Speaker 2 29:21

Agreed.

Speaker 1 29:23

Nice, Okay, Enough of that. So, friend or foe, jury's still out. Let us know what you think. Email us, Let us know. We have this thing here. Chris, and I came across this and I thought about you immediately and I want you to. For folks that are on the audio format. I want you to open the link that I have sent your way, Chris. Do you have? Did you have the post in front of you?

Speaker 2 29:47

I do, I'm opening it right now, okay.

LinkedIn Posturing and Growth Claims

Speaker 1 29:50

As you're opening it, I'm going to do a voiceover for the people on audio. So this is from some head of marketing who will remain anonymous, and here is here's the post. I have a 99% chance of making a marketer mad with this post. Ooh, juicy, I keep saying. I keep seeing marketers say things like I scaled XYZ company from 5 million to 50 million. First off, you didn't scale the company alone. The whole team helped make that happen. Second, let's be real. Did you actually grow the company or did you join a company that was already on a fast growth trajectory? Look, I get it. We all need strong case studies to show our impact, but there's often more to the story. As tempting as it's been for me in the past to jump into a Series B company, I found more satisfaction working with bootstrap businesses where the challenges were real Lower budgets, fewer resources, more autonomy. I'm not knocking either path. Both have their merits. But let's be honest about what's really driving growth. Sometimes marketers are joining fast-growing companies and that context matters. Your reaction?

Speaker 2 31:11

I mean, I agree 100% with this. Is that bad?

Speaker 1 31:16

No, it's your reaction. It can be whatever the fuck it is. What do you agree with? What do you bring it down?

Speaker 2 31:22

I mean it's. I think that there's so much just like self overly self promotion on LinkedIn and just like people touting their own egos and like I agree that like nobody can steal a company from 5 million to 50 million, it is a team thing, so like I do agree with that. Um, yeah, I mean, I think that there is. To his point, there is a really big, you know, difference between joining a series B and a series C company that's already been on on fast growth trajectories. I mean, like I I feel like a lot of people like because they do work for a high growth company, they think that they're somehow hot shit and that's not necessarily the case. And a lot of cases I've seen people have fast growth companies that have a chip on their shoulder, that are actually probably some of the stupider people I've ever worked with. But that's neither here nor there, I mean that's part of the thing.

Speaker 2 32:13

One of the reasons that I'm drawn to early or stage startups is you do have a little bit more autonomy. A lot of the things that I'm good at doing you don't necessarily need a ton of resources and budget for SEO and stuff is a great thing to do when you don't have a ton of resources and budget for, like, seo and stuff is a great thing to uh to do when you don't have a ton of, you know, budget and whatnot. Um, you know, when done well, I think it can provide more value than a lot of other channels as well. But, um, yeah, I guess what were your takes? Were you were you mad about that post? Were you? Were you personally offended that in any way?

Speaker 1 32:45

I did. I did not take personal offense to the post. No, I actually really agreed with the sentiment. I think this saying shit like scaling blah, blah, blah to blah, blah, blah is pretty stupid for the reason. I saw another. I saw something related to this, or maybe it was even in the comment section of this post, where it's like someone was running alongside a train departing the station and acting like they were pushing it and saying that's basically what.

Speaker 1 33:10

Saying that you scaled a fast-growing company to whatever 50 million is doing. That's the visual equivalent of what you're saying there. It just feels disingenuous. Right? You said it's not just like a one-person thing that's coming in and one-person show one person's impact that's driving the company forward, especially if they're at a certain round of funding already. Like it kind of inadvertently ties back to everything that we've talked about today, doesn't it when it's like it's an entire go-to-market team effort. It's not just a marketing person that's solely responsible and should get all the credit for having a well-oiled machine. When it comes to like the the, the dilbert principle, right like wouldn't someone in a managerial position be able to theoretically like claim that credit when in fact it's the people below them that are actually in the trenches doing the work, executing well against targets and what have you that should be getting some of that, some of that glory right and like, if it's going, if it's going that well, then there's, there's praise to be passed around is what I'm trying to say, and it feels disingenuous to take credit for it. Like I actually think that's indicative of how we as growth marketers demand gen, people, marketing in general.

Speaker 1 34:19

The pendulum somewhere along the way just shifted way too much towards like metrics and output driven, because we were trying to get like CEO, c-suite, cfo, buy-in dollars in dollars out type of models bringing the company from a certain percentage of revenue up to even more and like that all makes a difference. Right, of course you have to justify, like your value to the company, but also like you should be truthful about what the actual size of your impact was. I think the story of how it came together. I'd rather say, if I'm a hiring manager, I'd rather understand how someone built a team that was able to execute against a certain thing or what other type of stuff mattered, because you and I talk about this all the time. At a certain point sales has to sell, right Marketing can get them in the door. So it's disingenuous to say that you brought the company from a certain amount of revenue into another. That just paints like an incomplete picture and I don't like how that feels. I don't like how it feels. Anything else you want to add to?

Speaker 2 35:16

that. Yeah, I don't like how it feels either. It feels a little dirty, not going to lie, just like all the data Mike, almost just spit up his coffee.

Work Performativity and Meeting Culture

Speaker 2 35:30

I mean, I know we just have a couple minutes left here, but a couple of the comments on this post are actually pretty good too. One thing I think we talked about this a little bit earlier, mike is like I just feel like so much of work these days is performative, like you're supposed to be talking about what you're doing and that's more what you're talking about what you're doing is more important than the actual outcomes of what you're doing, and I just I've seen this in several roles of just how, how performative everything is. You're supposed to be talking about what you're working on, and like you spend more time talking about what you're working on and reporting on what you're working on that there's precious little time to actually work on something. So that's kind of a continuous thing throughout my career is, I'm more focused on doing the work than talking about doing the work. But one of the comments here one of the guys said that I'm a quote. I'm a lifelong marketer and I agree with this post 100%.

Speaker 2 36:23

Marketers are the prima donnas of the organization and most have no clue what to do with themselves if they don't have meetings to attend. I agree with some of that. I want to say that all marketers are prima donnas but a lot of roles. I feel like if they don't have meetings to attend, then they're not doing work, and a lot of managers might feel like you're not doing work if you're not in meetings, but no work actually gets done in meetings. We could have an entire episode on this if we haven't already. We've probably already granted about meetings, but that's neither here nor there.

Speaker 2 36:52

And then one of his follow-up comments said yeah, we're seeing calm, sorry. Yeah, we're seeing that the RTO returned to office discussions. Right now People still want to see busy bodies because they can't measure or even define outcomes, and I actually agree with that as well. Like a lot of it, I mean, the return to office is essentially a combination of two things a lack of trust and a lack of ability to define outcomes. That's the two biggest reasons in my book is, if you can't define outcomes, then you don't really know what people are working towards, so you just want to see them working.

Speaker 1 37:23

You know that's your thought yeah, just the perception of it. You're exactly right, and that's so much of what I think this post is talking about. It's like a battle for perception, not a battle for like actuality, and the more that you solve for some of this performative, like looking busy type of thing, the harder it is to actually find the time to get stuff done. What did you say it was? It was lack of there were two that you had. Lack of what?

Speaker 2 37:44

Lack of trust and lack of ability to define outcomes, that's it Lack of trust, lack of ability to define outcomes.

Speaker 1 37:51

Unfortunately, my man, we have a lack of remaining time on this free Zoom, so we are going to wrap it up for here. Many more rants, many more fun stuff coming your way. Always a pleasure, guys, whenever you're listening. Thank you for doing so. Drop us a line. We'll put the email address in the show notes and please come back. We love doing this. We'll talk to you soon. Have a good weekend, bud. Thanks y'all. Bye, thanks, guys. Bye, thank you.