Why Great Marketing Is Built on Honesty, Not Hacks with Emma Davies & Ruta Sudmantaite

Speaker A: I think quite a lot of people go for the like. Yeah, but what are the quick wins? But actually, in marketing, there aren't very many. The truth is, there aren't. We have to do, like, good foundational work. We have to build up solid metrics. We have to test what works. You know, all of those things that a lot of people, in particular a lot of founders, don't necessarily think they've got the time for. And so that is, you are pushing against that when you get into the data conversation, because naturally, what comes from that is actually, where's the business strategy? What are the goals? What are you trying to actually achieve? Have you actually thought about exit? Do you want to, you know, all those things that people are like, I can't think like that because I just need to hit my sales target for this year so I can get my next round of funding or whatever's going through their head. So, yeah, I think sometimes I feel like we're the, um, marketing doomsdayers. You know, we're like, you need to think about this. This is going to happen in the future.

Speaker B: Welcome to the spotlight of marketing, brought to you by Armstrong Lloyds, specialist headhunters in the B2B marketing space. I'm your host, Karen Lloyd, and today I've not got one guest, but I've got two guests joining me. I have to say, this is a little different from unusual episodes, but I have Emma Davis and Ruta, who are both factional CMOs. They're both founders and also prolific contributors to the B2B marketing community. They both co host one of my favorite podcasts in the space called Blame it on Marketing. I'm sure you've all probably listened to it, so I'm just excited to have them here today. We're going to talk about their entrepreneurial journey and the power of collaboration and why showing up for your community pays off in different ways you don't expect. So, hello, guys. Great to have you on the podcast. And, uh, I need to know your secret, so welcome to the show.

Speaker A: Thank you.

Speaker C: We always say there's no silver bullet, so I'm hoping we don't disappoint you with our secret answers.

Speaker B: No, it's true. I'm a great believer on there's no silver bullet. Actually, it's one of my personal mantras. So, uh, very, very true. So. So both of you have built, like, multiple things at the same time. You don't work together as your day job. You work separately in different businesses, fractional work. So when someone actually asks you what you do, what do you actually say?

Speaker C: Do you want to go first over?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And there is some overlap. So you're not completely wrong. There are times where we do work together because obviously try to. There's try to because there's a benefit working together. But generally I introduce myself as a fractional chief marketing officer that works it primarily in B2B tech and professional services. And then I do also, if we have time, I do obviously talk about host co hosting the podcast if it's relevant. And also being the founder, uh, of Thesmia AI, which is an internal comms AI tool. So yeah, I do. The introduction can go on, but I try to keep it short.

Speaker C: I actually had to do this yesterday because I went to a networking event. So I. Depending on the audience, if it's not marketers, I'll just say I'm a cmo. Yeah, keep it simple. If it is marketers, then I'll say I'm a fractional CMO and I work with B2B tech typically. And then depending on how far we get into the conversation, we'll start to talk about all of my other business venture side hustles, whatever you want to call them. So whether it's lavametrics or the podcast or. I also have a sourdough business which is very strange. So it depends how far we get into the conversation.

Speaker B: Oh wow. And the sourdough business as well, isn't it? That's the thing I picked up the most of everything you said like everyone does thinking of their bellies. It'd m. Be good to know about your SaaS offerings. Do you have, do you both of you have like a SaaS offering? That would be great if you just mention that briefly. What, what you do.

Speaker A: Yeah, so I set up, it's about a year ago now. We're about a year in semia AI. Um, and it is an internal comms platform for one person, HR team. So think chat GPT but for HR people and what it helps them do is think through like all of the different challenges that they might have in communicating the importance of the work they're doing and um, trying to really like help them think through like everything from like how to get senior leadership buy in from the programs that they want to run all the way through to how to actually communicate with employees, the importance of like, I don't know, everything from annual appraisals through to employee engagement and you know, like every startup we, we go through the motions. We don't have, we don't have enough Time. We don't have enough money. We're fighting against the current. Got a female founder, which, as anybody who's a female founder knows is a pain in the.

Speaker B: But.

Speaker A: So, uh, and I say that with love for myself, but, yes, it's. We're about a year in. We're constantly making tech improvements and we. We keep going.

Speaker B: And you've got paid customers yet, or

Speaker A: you still do have? We do have a couple. Yes, we do. And we do also have some. We have a free offering because, you know, it's. It's very similar to any of the AI offerings. It's free to play around with, and then past a certain point, you got to cough up the cash. So. So, yes, we do have a few.

Speaker B: Oh, uh, brilliant. What inspired that business, Emma? I.

Speaker A: Last summer, actually, Ruta and I were like, oh, my God, are we ever going to get any fractional marketing work ever again? And I was thinking about internal comms, because it is something that I really care about because it kind of. It's like marketing's like, forgotten about cousin. And I was like, oh, wouldn't it be nice if, like, HR people and people, internal comms had something that was as nice as some of the. Some of the tech that we get when you work in external marketing? And I, uh, was like, well, maybe we can. Maybe we can build something. And it was a bit like, am I going to build another consultancy or am I going to do, like, templates that people can download? And then I was like, well, actually, we've got the technology to be able to do this stuff and do it really well and quickly. Uh, so why not?

Speaker C: We've worked for.

Speaker A: Oh, yes, for a long time.

Speaker C: We. We know the audience quite well. So it was an easy. An easy, like, validation project as well.

Speaker A: Yeah, it was an easy sort of transition from working where HR are always. The audience have primarily been the audience for us in our sort of, like, day jobs to then, like, be like, oh, actually, wouldn't it be nice if people could get their hands on something that was as good and useful as some of the stuff that we get to play around with in, like, external marketing? So, yeah, there's me.

Speaker B: I was born. Wow. Well, it's incredible that. It's incredible you've done it so quickly, you know, to have it last summer and then to just have something and have paying customers and have it moving forward and. And something you're both sharing together on the back of, you know, on back of the work you've done and interesting. You haven't got A podcast, targeted HR people. But you've got it on marketing, even though that's your audience.

Speaker A: Well, I think it's just, it made sense because like our. Because obviously, you know, thesmir is like a side project for me, whereas like Router and I are still very much doing the kind of fractional we need, you know, we need to pay the bills. We're not, we're not in a situation where like I don't have funding for thesmia or anything like that at the moment, so. And we don't have enough paying customers to sort of turn it into the day job. So yeah, keep our hands in with actual marketing. Blame it on marketing came first. So that's our first baby.

Speaker B: No, exactly. And I understand what you're saying about the market. I mean there was something about last summer even I had a feeling. Was I as a recruiter who specialized master space, was I made redundant? Because it just seemed to just dissipate. My side hustle is coaching in that space and the same thing. And I again, my revenue driver isn't coaching. It's something I do for love. Um, do get paid for it. But, uh, I do it for love, you know, more than the other side, which is. Is the day job. So yeah, total get that. So what about route to your other business?

Speaker C: Yeah, so Lavametrics is on hiatus, so I wouldn't send you to lavametrics.com but it's all about essentially combining data so that marketers can make better decisions. So I'm sure you've come across this yourself. Like all of our data is in different platforms. Most platforms don't talk to each other. So how do we get them to talk to each other? That's kind of the idea. I am still working on that as like actually integrating other people's data, but the platform itself is on high to. So yeah, if you need your marketing data integrated, let us know we're here.

Speaker B: In terms of what sort of. What problem would someone come to you with the marketing data? So what sort of problems have you solved from what you've done?

Speaker C: So our primary focus when we started was on uh, basically being able to report on things that HubSpot is unable to report on. So all platforms have a data model that they work to and that means that sometimes you cannot do things that you want to do in them because that is just not how the data is modeled. So for example, one of the key like things that HubSpot is really bad at is anything like temporal. So if I wanted to know of all the people that came to my website in June, how many of them are converted, where are they, et cetera. HubSpot's really bad at that because they'll just update properties. So that's kind of the. All of those kind of. They're important bits of reporting that you can't do. I think that was the first kind of focus and then having that and being able to integrate and layer on different data so it all makes sense together. That's the, like the secondary. Not the secondary, I think that's the wrong word. But the second phase of the product. So if, if you have data everywhere, if it's, if you don't know what it means, if you can't connect it and you don't understand how Google Analytics talks to, HubSpot talks to, I don't know, a webinar platform. That's, that's the kind of issue that we solve.

Speaker B: Fantastic. And have you got an example where you've worked together on a project and a case study for a client that you can talk about?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Who should we talk about?

Speaker A: We do all sorts of different things. I mean, one of the most exciting ones is actually something I think we're working on at the minute, which is for a big, it's actually a big B2C, uh, brand, which is very exciting. But they come to us because Route has got this sort of side to what she does around data. I do a lot of data work and also like, we all, we both do the sort of like data connection to strategy piece. So yeah, we've got a big project at the moment where we are literally going to be connecting up all of their marketing data across. I, uh, mean, I don't even know how many platforms yet into sort of one dashboard which is eventually going to help that company go to exit. So it's the sort of, is the information that the PE company want to know so that in five years time, when they're ready to exit, we've got kind of like a growth strategy that's built around the marketing data they've got. And it is really exciting. I think it will be. It's a ma. It's a mammoth job. Right. But it's very exciting.

Speaker C: They're like, they do like 40 million in revenue every year. Like it's wild. And they haven't got anything central at the moment. So it'll be, I think not only is it exciting for us because it's like lots of good data to get our hands on, but also I think it'll make a Big impact on how they operate and how they do marketing. So it's always a good project to like deliver when that's the case.

Speaker A: We've done lots of great stuff. We, we're lucky in the way that we do get to do a bit of a mix, don't we? If we work together, like sometimes we go in and we're like, we are the chief marketing officer and we sometimes have tag teamed doing that together where we're like managing the team, doing the day to day stuff, doing the strategy, going to the board meetings. But equally we've got other clients where we're doing things like, like running a podcast season for them. Like, you know, so we get a real variety and I think I, that's what I like about what we do.

Speaker C: Yeah, variety people. I don't think either of us could like commit to marketing specialism and just do that forever, you know, but just

Speaker B: interesting to run back on what you're saying about the data. I think one thing is everybody thinks everybody else's data is perfect, don't they? Because they literally. We're in a world of AI, we've got these tools. But it's interesting that even one of the biggest like champion of tools like HubSpot or one of those, they still have these holes in it. And I think most people, like, sometimes they don't know. You know, CMOs have said to me in the past, some of the reasons we haven't made decision is because we didn't have the data on it. So you kind of procrastinate on it and to do that. So it's a, it's an um, it's a boring subject, isn't it? Who really wants to be like going through the data and looking at it, but the data then tells the story. Well, you do.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Well look, Emma, uh, is very happy to be doing the data. So if you don't. But, but, but you know, it is one of those things. It's the nitpicking, it's the boring, the worse, less interesting part of the process of getting it.

Speaker C: Yeah, a lot of CMOs as well just don't have the bandwidth or the time or the skill or the technology or the budget to do it. Like there's a lot of limitations like to how well you can make data decisions. And of course me and Emma love it. And like, you know, we joke like if we go into a creative meeting where we have to come up with ideas, we need to check Google Analytics first. We can't just like spitball. We need Something to work off. So we kind of treat it in that way. But yeah, it's. Sometimes you have all the data, uh, in the world and it's too much data, so it's hard. Sometimes you have no data, so that's hard. And you have to know where the line is. Like, what's good enough and what are we going to make a bet on, given the data that we have. Because you'll never, you'll never like run a dashboard and it will tell you, okay, put a million pounds here, like, it just. There's always risk attached, right. But you have to kind of like have that good enough level and commit to the thing you're going to, you're going to do and if not, you'll change it later. Like, it's all good.

Speaker A: The other thing that I see a lot of is a lot of disparate data. So, like, a lot of people have got a lot of data points and like a classic one is you've got a HubSpot dashboard that's got everything in it that you think you need, but there's no journey that tells you from one end to the other. Like, what did it mean? And that's missing. So that, like, data connection point, like, okay, so it's great. People are coming. I don't know. Let's say people are converting on your Google Ads. That's great. But then what's happening to all the people that didn't convert? And do we know what then happens, you know, and, and we, we lack that, that join up, I think, in quite a lot of data and also quite a lot of marketing thinking as well. Like, you can't look at specific channel performance without looking at it in the round. And I think that's probably the application that we bring to when we're working on a data project is like, okay, that's a great, that's great. But what does that actually mean? Realistic, did you say? Or holistic? Holistic and realistic, yes.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: Makes us quite unpopular at times.

Speaker B: So when does it make you unpopular? When you've, when they've basically thought they've got. I think I was listening to one of your podcasts about vanity metrics, but, you know, but where they basically, they've found something that they've, you know, they've particularly been happy with and then it has gone. You've told them something quite different. Has that happened?

Speaker C: Essentially, yeah. Uh, also a lot of people, I think when you're good at data, they kind of give you what they want to find and then they Want you to go off and find it and you're like, actually, no, like, that's not how you do data analysis, right? Like you don't match the data to the thing you want. You, you do, you look at the data and then you make conclusions. So I think in that way it can be quite unpopular. And also I think, um. So some of the key work that we do is figuring out how much money you have to spend to get to whatever revenue goals you need to get to. And that number is usually not very favorable because, you know, you in SaaS, like, if you get payback in the same year, you're doing really well. Which means that if you want to make a million pounds this year, you have to spend a million pounds. And that math usually is not the things that founders want to hear.

Speaker A: Also, I think, you know, it, it ties back to the bit where the business is and where maybe the founders heads out or the CEOs heads out and like, how much they value strategy and long term, um, thinking over short term thinking. And I think quite a lot of people go for the like. Yeah, but what are the quick wins? But actually in marketing there aren't very many. The truth is, there aren't. We have to do like, good foundational work. We have to build up solid, like solid metrics. We have to test what works, you know, all of those things that a lot of people, in particular a lot of founders don't necessarily think they've got the time for. And so that is, you are pushing against that when you get into the data conversation, because naturally what comes from that is actually, where's the business strategy? What are the goals? What are you trying to actually achieve? Have you actually thought about exit? Do you want to ipo, you know, all those things that people are like, I can't think like that because I just need to hit my sales target for this year so I can get my next round of funding or whatever's going through their head. So, yeah, I think sometimes I feel like we're the um, like marketing doomsday is, you know, we're like, you need to think about this. This is going to happen in the future.

Speaker C: So for me and Emma, like, we only take on work where we are working genuinely. So, like, we won't just sell ourselves in because we're going to say what you want to hear. We're going to do like, we never do that. So sometimes we'll go into pictures and be like, yeah, they're just going to go with an agency that tells them what they want to hear instead of what they need to hear and we lose the word. But, like, we don't work otherwise because it just doesn't align with our morals and how we want to work. And it makes us look bad.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: Like, if we don't do a good job in the end and it doesn't work, then we're the ones that are impacted by that. So we only take on work where we can do the right thing and do the right strategy and everyone's aligned.

Speaker B: Yeah, it'd be good to have a B2B example in that scenario in a second. But I'll just, I'll show you something that will probably make you smile because what you. It backs up what you said because Kate, who works with me, we were doing a lead generation report and we wanted to do something that demonstrated that if you hire a senior cyber security person within your business, the CMO level, then you're more likely to have a better exit or IPO or have a better outcome for your business. And we did this back in 2022 when the market was really strong. And when we ran the report, it showed the opposite. Yeah, so we didn't do that report and we didn't send that out. But in a way, we did foreshadow what happened in the market because a lot of things have changed and people have not invested so much in marketing, rightly or wrongly, over the last couple of years. But, you know, the data does sometimes tell the story. And at the time I was just like, I, you know, I just can't believe it. You know, you just assume. But. Yeah. So let's come back to your case study. We've got a case study of something in the B2B space where you're particularly proud of the data you found and how you turned the business around.

Speaker A: So I worked for a performance management, uh, tech company who have exited. They exited last year. Very happy, happy days, everyone. And before, when I joined, basically, I think quite a lot of the marketing was we were just basically people doing activities and actions for the sake of it. But there wasn't really that story that lined up with, you know, like, why are we doing this? Why are we putting on webinar? Like, it was almost a bit like they were just maybe sitting down and having conversations about topics they'd like to discuss. So the marketing had no real kind of like. So they didn't have a purpose, but it wasn't really being used purposefully. You weren't, they weren't getting the most out of it. So Basically it was sort of a, A bit of a journey really, to kind of unravel the data. To unravel, like, what was actually performing, to start testing things, to start doing some like, real, even just like convert conversion rate optimization on the website. Because we discovered, you know, the website's not converting at a very high level and, you know, what impact might that then have on pipeline and revenue further down the line if you could just get your website to perform just that little bit better. So it was all those sorts of things and I worked for them for like two years and at the point of two years, obviously then we successfully exited. But a lot of that exit was based on, you know, that's what, you know, a company want to see when you're exiting. They want to see the PE company want to see the marketing data, uh, they want to see that the website conversions have improved. They want to see that, like, you're tracking well for, you know, keywords and all those sorts of things. They want to see that you've actually got a budget that aligns and that they can see the clear ROI from the marketing spend that you've got. And we kind of went from being. Everything was inbound anyway, but a lot of it was word of mouth. But we kind of went from being predominantly word of mouth. I would say it was 60% word of mouth, to sort of switching that around to becoming 60 inbound, um, inquiry. So, like, you can see that by using the data that we had, we made improvements. And it was tricky because we had disparate systems. We didn't have a HubSpot or a salesforce. We didn't have a fancy CRM. It's a very competitive, and it's a very competitive, expensive market to be in. So, yeah, we kind of, we, we. It goes to show you that even if you've just got a spreadsheet of doom, as I call them, and, um, bits of data, if you've got the right people who understand how to bring all that data together, you can turn these things around. You can go from being. And word of mouth is great, obviously, because, you know, uh, ultimately people think word of mouth is free. Not that it is, but whatever, to being able to actually justify your marketing spend and showcase like within that particular scenario that like, an exit is possible when you can pull the data together to show people that it's all kind of working as it should. So, yeah, we went on a bit of a journey. Not perfect by any means by the end, but we're definitely on a good trajectory. Otherwise we wouldn't have managed to sell the business.

Speaker C: Yeah. And also when they did sell the business, the acquirer turned everything off and things immediately stopped coming through. So it's not just that coming through because of things happening anyway.

Speaker A: It was because of the work that

Speaker C: Emma, um, put into the marketing.

Speaker A: Yeah. You can see it is the classic thing of, like you say to people, okay, but you've got to keep spending at the same rate and you've got to not turn anything off if you still want the inbound demo requests to come in. And yeah, they just literally paid spend gone. No more podcasts, no more anything. That's the proof that I've got that it is an ecosystem. And if you pull the plug on anything, brand, bottom of funnel content, whatever it might be, it all kind of dismantles it overnight. So then about space of two weeks, the inbound demo stopped.

Speaker B: Wow. But yes, this is a really good point, isn't it, with word of mouth? Because, you know, word of mouth, in other words, awareness. But people, some companies, that's what they say. They said, we just want everyone to know who we are. But if they don't know how to get to you and you can't then transact. You know, you, you could know the name of any company, but unless you're the buyer and you're the person that needs to be involved in it, it's completely irrelevant. Uh, do you often get people that say they want people to come in more. More word of mouth than just know us?

Speaker C: Oh, yeah, Marketing, right. Like, it's just not. It's not. You don't get to have word of mouth unless people are using your product and then talking about it, which is like marketing.

Speaker A: Well, it's your rep and it's your reputation.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, It's. Can you deliver? Is the product good? Like, you don't get word of mouth. Like, good marketing is a huge part of it. Which again, like I say, word of mouth is never free, regardless of what people think. But you've got to have a good product that takes investment. You've got to have a good. You've got to have good customer service or good customer success, which means you've got to have happy employees, which means you've. Then you've got to have good marketing that showcases all that stuff. You've got to have good sales people that aren't idiots and sell things that aren't really there. You know, that's investment. And you only get word of mouth when you have nailed some of that stuff. Otherwise that doesn't happen. So that is not. It's by no means a free channel.

Speaker B: In a way, word of mouth is the ultimate flattery of marketing, isn't it? But if you can't, if there isn't, if there isn't a way for it to be channeled or people can't remember, because sometimes it could be word of mouth, but I'm like, you know that company that do that thing that I can't remember their name and then you can't find them, you know, and then that's completely. That's completely wasted the money down the drain. Okay, very interesting. Great case study. Thanks. That's a cool one to share, especially with a great outcome in the end. So let's talk about podcasts, because earlier you mentioned that you have done podcasts on behalf of clients, so not just yourself. So let's talk about the use of podcasts so, you know, both yourself and other people and the community and the value of. It's not silver bullet, as we said, but, you know, what's the value of using a podcast?

Speaker C: One of the, I guess, easiest ways to sell in doing a podcast project, if we can kind of take, uh, it from that angle, is to basically understand that it's an amazing excuse to talk to your customers. And customers. People have been on a podcast, by the way. Like, if you ask someone to come on a podcast, they will come on a podcast. Like there's. It's just what it is. So it's an extremely great way to talk to customers to understand why they love you, why they don't love you, what they're working on, what's important to them, and then that. So the podcast itself is obviously just a recording of somebody talking, but from that there's basically a hundred content pieces that you can pull out. So it's a really like, valuable piece of content to start with, and then you can do with it whatever you want. So obviously you have the recording, you can do shorts, you can do articles, you can like, then do guides and et cetera, et cetera. So it's a really, it's a really amazing, like, hero piece of content to work from. And again, people love talking to their customers and it's a great excuse to talk to your customers if they don't want to usually engage with you about these things. So that's one of the, I think, easiest and most kind of powerful ways for us to, uh, think about those when it comes to being in a business and doing a podcast.

Speaker A: I'd also advocate for Them like within a business there's always subject matter experts. I think people have got to find the right angle. I think the what doesn't work is a company doing a podcast where they only ever speak to the like themselves. You know, like it's just employees to employees. Unless you're using that for employer branding in which case great. But yes, I think the, the route is absolutely correct. Like using it as a way of getting uh, customers or like thought leaders in your space to engage with you. It's kind of like to me it is the ultimate like piece of content if you want to do demand gen.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Like it's ticking all the boxes. It's like I've got my own audience, I've got a borrowed audience and I've also got like potentially like even further on from that. I've got like a new net, new audience that are uh, not anything to do with us because they found us through because they listen to podcasts or they engage with certain content on certain platforms. So for me it's just, yeah, it's that ultimate kind of like demand gen piece of content and I think it is great for brand awareness. But also it does act, it can act as like more bottom of funnel, middle of funnel content depending on the content and the depth and the type of thing you discuss on your podcast. Like obviously ours is very like haha, gossipy, jokey, you know, but we do at the, at the end of each episode we'll have like you know, real tangible advice that people could write down and take away and go and do it. Go do the thing. And if a podcast does that I think it's really beneficial to like to your business. So I uh, to me it's worth doing. And yeah, you don't have to over engineer it either. So it's like it's the kind of thing that is, is much I think lighter lift than like a webinar for

Speaker C: example or even writing like a big ebook. Yeah, interviewing someone is easier than that.

Speaker B: Exactly. And in terms of your either you know, your own podcast, I mean you. How did it come about and how many episodes? Tell us a bit about it because you've got a quite a big fan base.

Speaker C: We are on um, as of last week. Uh, is it 100, 110, 10 episodes? Three years and a bit now. Three years and a half actually. So yeah, Emma and I worked together, exited left and became consultants and we would literally just be like voice noting each other. Oh my God, can you believe what I found in this HubSpot like this is crazy. And then we did that for long enough. We were like, effort. Let's just. Let's put it on a podcast. Let's invite our friends and talk about all of these crazy things that come up, not as, like, talking about our clients, but as a way to, you know, get expertise from our. From our friends to begin with. The, uh, first season was basically friends and family, and we just spoke about those topics. And, yeah, like, the feedback was great. Everyone's like, oh, my God, I go through this all the time. Like, this is so relatable. I feel like it's a little bit of therapy, which is exactly what it was intended to do.

Speaker B: So, yeah.

Speaker C: And we've just kept going.

Speaker B: And as I said, I mistakeably said before we started to record that maybe it was more junior people, but you're saying, you know, it's fantastic. I was wrong.

Speaker C: Hands up.

Speaker B: But you've got senior people that love to be.

Speaker C: You have to feel the pain to then relate to the podcast. And that just happens when you're. When you've got more work experience. Right. Uh, so it tends to attract more senior people because they just relate to that as well. Although, like, the career topics that we cover, like, do pull it in younger people, of course. But, yeah, you. You kind of have to feel the pain before you can be into the podcast.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And also, I think some. Some of the episodes, like, as much as they are jokey and Ruth and I are very much like. Like, just speak like a human being. None of the corporate stuff that goes on, like, let's not talk about circling back and synergy, like, we're not interested in that. Just, like, if you're gonna come on the podcast, you be. Be yourself as a human. And. And I think that's why it's so popular with some senior people. I also think in terms of risk, if you see our podcast and there is a topic and you're like, oh, my God, I'm really feeling that, and you're senior. There is sort of almost like a. It's almost like, I guess, like a guilty pleasure because you can listen to it. Nobody knows you've listened to it because it's not the same as attending a webinar where everyone knows who you are. It's like, I can listen to this secretly, and I can feel that these people get me. And we do get messages quite often from people who are like, oh, my God, thank you. Like, I really enjoyed that topic. It's made me feel like I'm saying I can carry on and yeah, but it is generally more senior marketers. And then we do have like a group of people who listen, who are like CEOs, VCS, because we do. We get into those topics as well in some episodes where we do like, we don't shy away from talking about CEOs who are a pain in the, in the butt and, and that kind of stuff. Like we, we talk about it, so.

Speaker B: Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. And that's inspirational. And, and, and so in terms of like, what. Let's go back to our cliche that I seem to be going on about a silver bullet here. But you know, has this been a silver bullet for your business? Has you have it? Have you? No. Exactly. And people say that for me. For me, because I do this podcast. I do it for love too. You do it because of the community. That's what I do it for anyway. But, you know, it's not about me, it's about you today. So tell us what about what do you think? Why do you do it? And what do you think comes as a wider reward from this? Not just maybe revenue.

Speaker C: When we get asked this question, we always say, I think we've put off more people than we've attracted to us. Because how we are on the podcast is how we work with you. Again, the same thing that we kind of covered at the beginning. We're not going to say things that you want to hear. We will tell you, you what you need to hear because we want your business to do well. So it's very much the same thing. So sometimes we do events and we'll go up to people and be like, oh, we have this podcast called Blame it on Marketing. Could we do a little voice pop about, like, you know, what's your like, funniest marketing confession? And people like recoil into themselves. This is marketers because they are just not willing to share anything that could be negative or bad or like self deprecating or anything like that. And then we're like, oh, okay, cool, cool, cool. This is not for you. And then the opposite happens where people are like, oh my God. Let me tell you about a time I spent like an extra zero on my ad budget than I should have so very Mama. Depending on where you are as a person and in your career. And then the reason why we do it. So absolutely. Community. Uh, we have met so many like actual real life friends from doing the podcast. But for me, I don't know if Emma, if you would agree. For me it's a bit of therapy, but it's also as a consultant, an insane, like, learning engine. So, like, I have learned more from the 110 podcasts that we did up to date from the speakers on those podcasts than I could have, like, learned by myself ever in the last three years. And because we've been consultants, like, you know, you kind of are a bit shut off from the world in that sense, and you don't have, like, a traditional learning budget and, like, you know, all of those things. So it's been like, just the most insane learning engine, which is, if you're thinking about doing a podcast about something that you do and want to learn about, it's like, the greatest hack ever to learn from the learning.

Speaker A: And then also, like Ruth says, we've had so many good conversations. We do not. I don't think I would say it's a very small number of clients we've actually had as a result of doing the podcast. We've had a lot more negative backlash from people generally in person, which is really weird. Mainly from men who are a bit, you know, what are you doing?

Speaker C: And I'm like, whoa, dude, like, we're at an event.

Speaker A: Yeah, calm down.

Speaker C: It's okay.

Speaker A: Um, yes, we got a bit weird backlash, but also, I just think, you know, like, one of the biggest problems for marketers in general is the struggle for people to understand what we do. So if we can help with any of that, if we have helped with any of that and we've helped people stay sane through what has been maybe a terrible time in their working life, then that's. To me, that's all I care about, because I've been through that, and I've been through times where I've had not had a router to be like, oh, my God, it's awful. So I'm like, I like to be Emma and rooter for everybody. You know, like, if you're having a terrible time, you can come talk to us. And we do. We get dms from people. Yeah, all the time. And we will, and I will always. We will always make time to reply to people. Always, always, always.

Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah, I do. Funny enough, I do the same on LinkedIn. I post quite a lot about things that people tell me that have happened to them that obviously they can't tell. But I sell it to them in anonymous way so people can say, actually, yeah, I completely get that it happens. It's not just me. And I get messages, the same thing. But no, I think. I think what you said is. Is really commendable. I completely understand what you're saying about sometimes people don't want to talk about the negative side and, uh, the more senior people are, the better to do that. I think one of my most senior guests was very senior and she was really open about things that went wrong and things that have happened. And I suppose people that are more junior in their career, they don't want to admit that something could go wrong because they just don't want that to be reflected in them. So I think it's a really good point. But yeah, it is cathartic. And you do learn so much from being a podcast host from other people and talking to people. And it's funny what you said actually, because once you've been in the podcast with someone, you feel like you've been on a bit of a journey, haven't you? You've kind of been on this like emotional journey that you do feel like you know them m. Even though it's like recorded and it's done in the way. So I think that's a really good point. Excellent stuff. Now look, uh, we're, we're really running out of time and I know I'm going to come on your podcast at some point, so there's going to be a reboot on this. But 10, was anything else that you want to mention today that we haven't covered on this topic or any things that people could take home maybe from this podcast?

Speaker C: If you want to work for yourself and you want to build a business, just be mindful that you're going to get treated as a second class citizen as soon as you drop your company name that you work for. And yeah, just all of the people on LinkedIn that are like gushing about how well they're doing, they're probably not doing well. And we're all, we're all working through this. We're all having a low highs and lows and it's a roller coaster. It's, it's not a smooth ride. So yeah, just be very conscious about that and what support systems you're going to need and how you're going to kind of look after yourself and kind of get through all of that in terms of like the entrepreneurship, working for yourself side of things.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: The resilience that you need to do it is real.

Speaker C: And I know immediately, yeah, I think

Speaker A: people, I think people think that Ruth and I, because like, we have all the, we have these multiple businesses and blah, blah, and you know, all of that. I think, yeah, it's very easy to just look at that and think that we're doing great all the time. And it's not. It's not that at all. I think we're very candid. If you actually, like, read anything we write or listen to anything we say, we're like, oh, my God, that was awful. But Ruta and I have a support network. We have each other as well. Like, we are actual friends. And when we start stuff and we work on stuff together, we have that. And when we work fractionally, we also have a group of people who we rely on, who come and work with us, who are amazing. So it's not just Ruta and I. Like, we have collected the best people around us to help us do the best marketing possible. And maybe that comes with a load of bias. Probably does, but we've done that. That very deliberately, because we need this. When you need that support network around you, you need to know that you've got people that you work with that you can trust who are going to get the job done, who have the same sort of attitude as you. So, yeah, we've. We've worked very hard at that. And that has taken about five years.

Speaker B: So.

Speaker A: So, yeah, it's not an overnight thing. So, yeah, don't. I don't. The other thing that I would say very, very quickly, sorry, Karen. Is don't see other people in the same space as you as competition, because that's a killer. Because once you start convincing yourself that that person's a fractional cmo, or like me and Ruta could compete with each other for fractional work, but we don't want to, because actually, sometimes one or the other of us, or both of us are the best person for the job, and that goes a long way. So, yeah, that's what I would say.

Speaker B: I think it's a really good point. And the bit I want to take and just hammer home from that is basically, you have to make yourself feel uncomfortable. Comfortable. You know, matter who you are. You know, you might be the most senior person in the world and look and think their life is easy, they're running this business and everything's happy. But, you know, I talk to people all the time that actually they're. They might be smiling on LinkedIn, but they're struggling with a CMO or a political issue or something that can't get over the line. It's often human beings, to be fair, that have an impact, that make a. They make a final thing. And also, it's also our own selves. You know, we are always, you know, if you're driven and you're successful, you know. You know, I. I have this saying I call anxious achievers. And usually to keep going in what you're doing, you probably have a bit of a voice in your head going, I'm not good enough half the time. Which is basically the thing that kind of drives you. But also it's kind of like if you get that voice too loud, it can also really shoot you down. So I think absolutely detrimental. So, yeah, so, but what. What we were saying is, is at the end of the day, you know, this is all about commerciality and, you know, generally, you. Everyone's got to make a living. And if you push through these boundaries, there is a reward. You can make some money, but it might not be with everybody. Um, and that's what the community is about. Absolutely Great stuff. Well, thanks so much. It's been an absolute pleasure. I've learned so much, actually, from this today. I'm also lucky to be a podcast host and speak to brilliant marketeers like Emma Rooter. But I'm also a passionate headhunter and managing director of Armstrong Lloyd. We're a sales and marketing search firm. So if you're looking to grow your team and you'd like a conversation about what the current market looks like, please drop me an email and at Karen Armstrong Lloyd.co.uk.