Your Trusted Guide

Speaker A: Welcome to the Marketing Stir podcast by Starista, where we chat with industry leaders and get their take on the challenges facing the market. And maybe we'll have a little fun along the way. On this week's episode of the Marketing Stir, Vincent has a chat with Joy Jarrett, CMO of Guidehouse, to discuss the differences between B2B marketing in the public and private sectors, the importance of surgical performance oriented marketing strategies, and Joy's nonprofit work with Joy Kitchen.

Speaker B: Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to another episode of Starista's the Marketing Stir. I am your happy host, Vincent Petrofessa, the Vice President of B2B Products and Partnerships here at Starista. Oh, it's an exciting day for many, many reasons. Let's talk about Star real quick. I'm always excited about Strista Marketing technology company. We own our own business to business data, business to consumer data. We help companies utilize that data through our own technology email acquisition platform, demand side platform. We help companies get new customers. Isn't that great? I think so. Email me vincentarista.com Today is a bittersweet day. Why? Because my co host, AJ Gupta is not here, but he is attending Possible the show in Miami. And do you know what today is? It's his birthday, ladies and gentlemen. And I know at this very moment he's probably telling someone he's in his 20s. He is not in his 20s. So next time you see him, remind people that I mentioned that. But no, we miss him on the podcast and our listeners have been missing him, but he's very busy. You will see AJ and I a show together in June in Dallas. I'll tell you more about that. Email me if you are going to be in that area. You live in that area. You just want to meet up with AJ and myself. But we have a great one today. I am very happy with our guest today. She is the Chief Marketing Officer at Guidehouse. We're going to learn all about Guidehouse. Ladies and gentlemen, Joy Jarrett. What's going on, Joy?

Speaker C: Great to be here. Thank you so much for inviting me.

Speaker B: Talk to us about. I love when you talk about Guidehouse because if people aren't going to be watching this episode, they could sense it. Your energy, your excitement comes through. Not to put even more pressure on you.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: I know what am I doing here, but I know you have it. And Joy, tell us about the company and your role. Chief Marketing Officer, of course. But that so many hats, uh, a lot of times. So talk to us about that.

Speaker C: Thank you. Um, well, I really love my role I feel like my whole journey in my career has crafted me for this moment and in my career. Um, again, my name is Joy Jarrett. I run marketing and corporate communications at Guidehouse. We are a relatively young firm. We're professional services organization. Our origin was from the public sector. PwC that spun out was bought by a private equity company. We acquired four companies, transitioned from our original PE owner to a larger PE firm called Bain Capital who now owns us. And we have had historic growth throughout the past seven plus years. We've grown from 1500 employees to over 18,000 employees with global offices around 50 plus locations. So it's been a wild journey to definitely one that you need to have a lot of courage to go through because it's, that's a lot of change. If you like things the same way dayto day, this is probably not the place for you. It's very entrepreneurial and we really are building a different kind of business model in an industry where the legacy firms just can't keep pace with the change we think and where the market needs a more uh, integrated perspective of regulated, non regulated environments and the opportunities between. And you see a lot of that I would say with the changes in collaboration more between public and private that we see today.

Speaker B: And Joy, let's take a step back because we ask all of our guests this. How did you get started in marketing? You know, I wonder the path because it always is different when I talk to people.

Speaker C: Yeah, and mine is also different. You know like although I studied marketing in school, when I graduated I went into sales ironically. And I um, spent probably the first half of my career in sales and large project management which was fantastic foundation for anyone in marketing. I've always been extremely creative and so while I was you know, honing my skills and sales and marketing, I was also thinking about what, what do I need in the sales role to be more effective? How do I need to communicate? What kind of support would I need from my organization? Um, I had an opportunity to work in a project management role for the Olympics. Transitioned to um, the agency side after the Olympic games were over, got exposed to that component of marketing. Learned agency relationships, agency management skills, then went to work at WebMD and helped grow them um, pre and post IPO than IBM for 10 plus years. So I've had great experience to, I would say prepare me for where I am now. The understanding of sales and program management is really critical to marketing because that's foundational to helping a business grow. And um, I, I'm really thrilled with how you know, it's kind of all worked. It's never something I planned. I don't think I was in school thinking I'm going to be a CMO one day, but it just is the journey that God put me on and I'm grate.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's awesome. And you know, it's funny because you look back at school and it's never like role specific. No one's ever like, oh, you're going to learn marketing and one day you'll be a chief Marketing officer. Maybe it's different. It's been a while, uh, since I've been in, in college. But it's kind of like they don't talk about positions and roles. But yeah, no it's, that's a, that's a great journey. I want to explore something because I am in sales. Shocker, right? And the, the uh, how did being in sales first joy prepare you for the marketing side?

Speaker C: If you think about um, a salesperson's role, there's typically a group of, of um, decision makers in a firm and they each have different pain points and different motivations around a buying moment. And understanding those is something that's critical for a marketer to be able to communicate from a product or our company service positioning perspective. And it really gave me insight into what it's like to earn a seat, seat at the table. Especially in um, industries where you're not selling off the shelf kinds of products. These are more complex sales, they take longer to sell. They're typically not an impulse buy. So it's about understanding that funnel of trust in how you build your credibility, um, and the value of that through helping to accelerate the sales process and get the deal closed. I learned early on in my IBM days about the importance of marketing's impact to the sales funnel and being accountable for that. We reported weekly up to our leadership team and um, I've always held myself to that standard. Like if I'm not bringing value to the business then I shouldn't be here. I probably am not doing the right job for you and you should hold me to that standard as your cmo, um, in the role to make sure that I'm not only raising the brand awareness but in hand driving the kind of revenue impact and that supports the sales function. Right. I want to make it easy for you or any salesperson to walk in the door, have the materials where they can speak credibly about the firm and not have to, you know, start from zero and build that trust. We'd like to start a little bit higher up uh, the value chain, um, with the work that we do and make that job easier for our salespeople.

Speaker B: I, I love that as a salesperson and those salespeople listening. I love that. That's uh, that's great Joy. You know, so you're working in the B2B marketing space and B2G, the government space. Right? Those are, you know, government officials don't exactly have the uh, you know, checking the inbox all the time. Right. So what, you know, what are some of the challenges there that you're kind of tasked with in marketing to what, what are some of the fun parts about it? You know, break some of that down for us.

Speaker C: Yeah, great question. Um, typical B2B selling has a particular defined sales journey and sales structure and it varies by vertical. So healthcare may make their deals at a different pace and rate um, than a, uh, financial services, uh, organizations. B2G is, is very different. Especially when you're dealing with agencies that have long multi year contracts. The decision making process can also be multi year and there's a lot of pre, pre shaping of the needs and the opportunity space with the agency on the front end before the RFP hits. And you go through the whole evaluation process with a, a lot of other um, contractors and primes and competitors in that, that space. So they're very different buying and very different marketing environments that we have to, to balance. You're right. They don't respond to form fills, they don' respond to QR codes, um, they don't really respond to email because of how the security systems are set up within the agencies. So we do rely on the quality of our work, the relationships that we build. Uh, we sit in their chairs. We spend time on the front end not only understanding the mission of the agency and the particular mission of that initiative, but we spend time understanding the role that they play and we bring an integrated team of people that have actually done that role in other agencies, fulfill that kind of um, business need in an agency or within a commercial environment where the skills or technical knowledge is transferable and there is a level of comfort that, that we establish within the agencies. We work in all of the um, you know, three letter agencies in the government and have had a long standing relationship with them. We don't sell the full power of the company and that's what we're looking to do next is you know, expand the base is what you would call it in sales. Um, but it's a very different buying experience than the B2B side where typically contracts are shorter they're um, at a lower dollar amount than what you have on the government side. But honestly, Doge last year changed a lot of that. Uh, uh, we're seeing restructuring of deal link periods, we're seeing restructuring of deal amounts. And so there's. This is a, a bit of year of resetting, I would say, in the government space as well.

Speaker B: Nice. And. And the marketing that you're doing is both, so that you're working B2B and B2G. That's uh, that's awesome. I want to take it back to 2019. Right. You started there and then Covid hit. What was that time like, Joy? Because you know what you built it into today, right? It's. What was that looking like in real time? How did you have to pivot? Talk to us about that?

Speaker C: Well, I started Day Zero. They actually brought me in before the company was formed to help with some of the branding work and to help introduce the firm internally to the 12, 1300 employees that were coming over from PwC who had, you know, gone to work for a big four, thinking that they were going to be set for life. And then all of a sudden they wake up on a Wednesday and they find they're working for a completely different company. So there were two things that we had to think about then, which was employee retention and then client retention. So we worked on some kind of warm transfer strategies to make sure the clients understood that it was just a name change, that there was nothing about the quality of the work or people or service that would change. And then within about the first year, um, right before COVID hit, we acquired a firm that was, uh, much larger, over 7,000 employees globally. That gave us a commercial, um, complement to the public markets that we were already serving. So health care, financial services, energy. So that expanded and really brought to fulfillment the original vision that our leadership team had. With that acquisition, we got a much larger marketing team. We went from three people at Guidehouse to 60 people with the Navigant acquisition. So there was a marketing restructure that had to happen. And alignment. We were much more focused on just making sure that everything we did did drive back to some kind of measurable impact in the firm. And a lot of the navigate work, not that it was right or wrong, was more focused on kind of brand building and less accountability around impact to the numbers. So there were a couple of years of just dealing with the impact of, um, the change of, uh, business flow that Covid created within the business, plus restructuring the marketing department around being more performance oriented. And impact oriented versus what I call spray and pray and just spray the market with a lot of things and not really measuring anything. And, and at the end of the year being happy around quantity numbers but not impact or quality of the work. And so we spent time, you know, making those adjustments. We had two more acquisitions with Dovel UH Technologies then where one person came over, not as much of an impact to the team. And then the, the third acquisition during those initial days was with the Grant Thornton public sector car route that we went through, which actually brought a few marketing people more focused around FS marketing. I would say, you know, getting consensus and the team starting to see the value of marketing impact in building their own rapport with the leadership team. The segment leaders was critically important during that transformation. They went from being the internal vendor of marketing creative to being a strategic partner sitting at the table with our segment leaders, our practice area leaders, our account leaders, strategizing around ways that we could target that audience with the limited resources that we had because we did not have big budgets and we still don't have big budgets. So that's why being kind of hyper, uh, surgical, I've used that word before, is so important in how we go to market and the importance of moving away from spray and prep way to leveraging those same funds to being much more effective with a targeted, uh, strategy working up front on the things that we should focus on.

Speaker B: And, and that brings me to something that, you know, I hear a lot in the B2B space. Right? Uh, ABM, the account based marketing side. Right. So is that kind of the approach, Joy, when you're, you're talking about being surgical again without revealing the secret sauce. I tell that to, uh, all my guests here. Is that the focus? Right? And how you kind of determine those 1000, 6000, you know, whatever it is, potential partners.

Speaker C: What's interesting is we're 50, 50 commercial and government. In the government side, it is mostly strictly abm. We know the departments in the agencies that have work that align to the expertise that we bring to the market and having a clear understanding of what's important to them, the events that they're out. We're able to be a lot more surgical and execute very specifically towards the B2G market and track activity on our website, track performance of um, our team at client events and um, industry events. So that's definitely an area where we're, I would say hyper surgical. The B2C or the B2B space. The commercial side of the business. We certainly have our large accounts that we work with and we continue to use that ABM model within those accounts. But we have a tremendous amount of white space. We did an analysis about two years ago at just our share of wallet within our accounts and the share of market within, let's say healthcare. And there is so much more opportunity for us to grow. Why. So we have been spending more time this the past two years building out the service portfolio to address more opportunities across that particular account and sell the full power of the firm. You're already in there, right? So that cuts your selling time, the expense of introducing the company into an account if you can sell more within an existing account that sells said we are being very, I would say, surgical and where we pick market growth opportunities, white space. And we're doing what we need to, to align those with regions in the market where we already have a foothold. We're looking at our LinkedIn relationships. We're leveraging digital and social. We, uh, did a lot last year with AI and AI search to get ahead of the game. So, you know, we're smart, just like other marketing organizations are, I hope. And how they're looking at their approach to covering their, their markets because it's not a one size fits all for sure.

Speaker B: No, but you know, to, to that point, most of your competitors only serve one side, right? It's the public or commercial, and you're, you're serving both. But you got to be careful about not getting the messages muddled and marketing, uh, differently. You know, is, is that a big approach that you're looking at?

Speaker C: Um, not so much. Because business complexity has never been more severe than now. And I think it's a combination of everything from geopolitical risk to the influence of AI changing everything about how from how you staff front and back office all the way through your tech stack and the security of that. So I, I don't think those problems that live only in commercial or only in the public sector markets, those are common business pains across verticals that we serve. And so it's less around managing those nuances and more around elevating the expertise that we do bring. The integrated team that you get access to, to your point, most of our competitors do play only on one or the other. If they have capabilities that support both, they're siloed. They don't have a unified P and L. They don't collaborate seamlessly. They're not incentivized to collaborate either. And that's what's different about our model. We bring the full force of the firm. I'VE worked on Navy projects, I've worked on healthcare projects. I'm not on the team, but I bring the perspective of um, crisis communications, marketing, um, patient communications or whatever the need is into that conversation. So the client gets not only the service that we're selling, but the value of the impact of that service across their organization from people that run it, um, within our organization. So it makes the value exchange a little bit different.

Speaker B: And you know, you mentioned it before as well, Joy, but you know, again, you were there on kind of the ground floor and you know, it's B2B, although I think is very uh, exciting and sexy, right? A lot of times, right? B2B, you know, professional services company. How do you know? You got to make it exciting, you got to make that brand into a brand. Touch on a few more of those elements. You know, I think people would love to hear about that, like what to focus on, what to stay away from.

Speaker C: I think what's unique about us is we hold ourselves accountable too. I uh, would say to earning that seat at the table with every opportunity. And we have a very servant mentality in how we engage with our client. I talked about how we sit down with them at the beginning. Although we have the rfp, right. We know the service that they want. We do spend time understanding the motivations behind the request for the work and the impact of that across, across the organization and what that sets up, uh, long term. And we're helping them prepare for what's next. The where to next is really important. These are very complex and complicated transformations that most of our clients are going through that require all of the departments across the organization to kind of be touched or involved in one capacity or another. So preparing them for all of their stakeholder discussions with confidence is also something that, that we lean into the brand building part. Given a name with like guidehouse, we do lean into the fact that we're here to guide you forward and to bring you to that next evolution of your own business. And you know, building a brand from zero to where we are now. We spent time early on with a, uh, small boutique firm, evalu what we call our competitive set. And we got very familiar with what we call the sea of sameness. Everything, everyone's saying the same thing, they're kind of positioning themselves the same way. And we tried to select it, I'll call it a tagline without, with complexity. That was enduring but did represent the type of work that we are best at. And this kind of regulated, non regulated platform model that we're Building. So I don't know if that answers your question, but the, the brand part of it has been so built into the identity forming for us and the service selection that we make and how we determine the market value that we're bringing within the segments. It's not like you set brand over in the corner. It, you know, it, it has to ladder up, uh, to the services and the commitments that you're making in the markets that you're serving to, or it won't work. It'll fall apart. So we're constantly kind of, I know we're saying it over here in defense and security. Does it stand up over here as well in health? And does it become a part of our, our master, um, brand architecture going forward?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, no, you definitely answered it and then some. Yeah, you know, you offered, you know, some great insights on, uh, on, uh, you know, both times we talked about. That's great. I love it. Uh, Joy, I wanted to get to know you personally. That's what we do on this podcast. Right? Um, and, but also, I have to ask a question that we ask every one of our guests, and if we miss that, boy, do they get mad. I think I missed it once and someone called me out on it at a conference. I'm like, hey, all right, man. Uh, we'll get to it. So it's the LinkedIn question. You're a CMO at a large company. People probably reaching out to you all the time. And, uh, I'd love to hear this because you seem so nice. Uh, you know, so, I mean, I'm sure you're probably, like, reaching out and talking to everyone, but, uh, you know, sometimes enough is enough. And what is a message that resonates with you right where you will? And what's one that you just never respond to? You could kind of tell it's just. Just a fake. Love to hear your thoughts on it.

Speaker C: You know, I have a big heart for people, and I am, um, I understand everyone's in a different role in their life and a journey in their career. And, um, and I, I do welcome the opportunity for even young people in college, young people who are new in their careers and, or have an interest in marketing to reach out. I, I have had a few people do that. And I think when you can talk to someone who's been in the seat for a while and understand that marketing is not a, a, ah, straight line. Right. Like, it is very much a career built of twists and turns and turbulence. And when you go through all of that, you're prepared for a position like this. And only by going through all of that, um, can you be prepared for all of the nuances that you have to deal with as a cmo. Because the CMO isn't about just picking out great ads or, you know, clever headline copy. It's so much more around, you know, ethics and brand reputation. And sometimes it's guiding the firm forward into areas that it may not be fully equipped to embrace or know the full potential of either. But it's what the market needs us to be as a company. So, um, part of it is, you know, looking at LinkedIn and where people are in careers and then looking at the solicitation part of it. There are a lot of people that, you know, we've got this great thing we'd love to come and demo. Here's my calendar invite. Go pick a time. I just don't have time. I'm sorry to pick a time on your calendar. And I'm not sure I understand the value of that and even if I need it at this point. So the cold calling part of it is, is just a little, uh, irritating. But there it is. You know, it's. It's LinkedIn. You get all of it. The good, the best.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. You get the good, the bad, the ugly. Right? It's, uh, it's there. But I, I love what you said about. Because I am involved in the marketing club of New York that is. That mentors college students. I know you do a lot of mentoring. You do a lot of work. Amazing work. We could talk about our jobs all, all we want, but it's really about what we do outside of work. Work, uh, I believe. Talk to us about that. I know you're doing a lot, uh, in that world.

Speaker C: Yeah, um, I, I volunteer a lot when, when I'm home in Nashville and there's a particular organization it's called, ironically, uh, it's called Journey of Yourself or Joy Kitchen. And um, it's actually, it's been the life dream of, um, a man. His name is Sterling Wright, and he grew up in probably the poorest housing project in Nashville. And, um, since the time that I've known him, the past 13 years that he's been in my, in my son's life, he, like the grocery stores have closed up, the um, health care systems and banks have closed up around that neighborhood because it's so dangerous. And he, um, grew up typical expectations of what kind of lifestyle you would have think he would have. He was in a gang. He, um, was severely injured and turned his life around, uh, as a result of the Lord speaking to him. And he, he taught himself how to cook. He ended up on Chef Ramsay's show. He was one of the only chefs who Chef Ramsay let keep his jacket when he, um, exited him from the show. But they've remained very close. And Sterling always dreamed that if he could share with these children a better way, give them a skill where they could take care of themselves and not only have to make money selling drugs, they could get out of their environment. And so we've been working on this concept for a kitchen for many years, and it's finally up. Ah, he is, um, working there and teaching kids after school. He is the fill in father, he's the fill in mother. He is incredibly invested in these young men and women and providing hope and providing an income into their family which wouldn't be present. And I think that we throw people away a lot in our communities right now, and we see homeless people asking for money. And I'm not saying that they don't need that kind of support, but I love that Sterling is actually not asking for handouts. He's just asking for a better way for people that he cares for and his, and his neighbors. And so that's really important to me. When I'm home, I'm Auntie Joy. I sit on the porch in the front. I have seven and eight and nine year old kids that come over and we do puzzles. And I'm a big baker. I guess that that's why Sterling and I are big friends. And, um, you know, I, um, have lots of hobbies and things that I love working on and just being in the community and giving back. But, yeah, mentoring doesn't stop when I'm not at work. It seems to continue in the neighborhood.

Speaker B: And that. That's a lovely story, Joy. I love it. Tell everyone that organization again. Talk to us about that organization one more time.

Speaker C: It's, uh, it's Joy Kitchen J O Y, which stands for Journey of Yourself.

Speaker B: Love it. Love it. Thank you. That's amazing. And then, so those hobbies.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Did you always live in Nashville? Where did you kind of. Where did you grow up? Yeah, I would imagine you traveled quite a bit because you're at so many great different companies.

Speaker C: Yeah, I, I did not grow up in Nashville. I grew up in Georgia. I grew up in a little town called Rome, Georgia, and had an amazing childhood there and then went to the University of Georgia. My dad had gone to vet school, veterinary school there, which is where I actually was born in Athens. And, um, I just. I honestly didn't know there was another college outside of the University of Georgia because we went to all their games and it was like, of course you're going to go to college there. And, um, so I was a big fan and loved it. It was a great experience. And got my marketing degree there and worked in Atlanta for a little while. Got my MBA at Georgia Tech and then worked in Dallas, la, New York, came back to Atlanta and, um, worked here for our Atlanta for, I guess about 10 or 12 years, and then moved up to Virginia and then have been in Nashville for the past 13 years raising my son, who graduates from college in two weeks. So a lot. Yeah, a lot of. Of growth here.

Speaker B: Yeah. Did he go to the University of Georgia or.

Speaker C: No, no, he did not. He wanted to be an engineer and he got a scholarship to Arizona State University, and so he went.

Speaker B: Oh, nice.

Speaker C: He did not do an SEC school, which was killing me.

Speaker B: I. I knew it. That's why I shouldn't have brought it up. But, hey, ASU is a great football program. And hey, engineering, come on. That's, uh.

Speaker C: I couldn't be prouder, honestly.

Speaker B: Making mom proud. Uh, I. I love it. Joy, this has been great spending time with you. Uh, check out Guidehouse, ladies and gentlemen. This has, uh, been awesome to learn about, and we appreciate you spending time with us. That is Joy Jarrett, ladies and gentlemen, the chief marketing officer down in Nashville. Something about Nashville. A lot of my friends, a lot of CMOs, uh, that I know, Joy, are out there, some amazing people, amazing women that we've had on the podcast. So, um, you know, shout out to that area. This has been another episode of the Marketing Stir. That's Joy. I'm Vincent. Happy birthday, aj. Thank you so much for listening and we'll talk soon.

Speaker A: Thanks for listening to the Marketing Stir podcast by Starista. Please like and subscribe. If you are interested in being a guest on the podcast, please email us@themarketingstirsttarista.com.