From Burned Out to Crafting Fire Content Programs with Beverly Nevalga

Content badass Beverly Nevalga joins the podcast to discuss launching new websites, content marketing strategy, originality in marketing, and the balance between creativity and AI-generated content. 

Beverly also shares her experiences as a digital nomad, the unique places where she has done creative work, as well as what led to her burnout - plus some great tips on self-care and setting boundaries.

Chapters

• 0:00 Intros
• 6:06 Navigating Originality in a Saturated Marke
• 8:53 The Role of Storytelling in Marketing
• 26:31 The Value of Collaboration and Brainstorming
• 31:49 Changing Environments and Energy Levels for Creative Work
• 38:21 Canada: A Vibe
• 42:43 Differentiating with Unique Marketing Approaches
• 45:42 Avoiding Burnout and Prioritizing Self-Care
• 58:18 Internal Marketing and Building Relationships
• 1:03:58 Content Strategy: Pillar Pieces and Cluster Content
• 1:11:11 Creating Hype and Excitement for Content

Transcript

0:36

Hi, everyone. Welcome to Go To Market After Hours. This is a safe space for marketers, AEs, CSMs, everyone on that B2B SaaS hamster wheel. So grab your comfy blanket, your emotional support animal, and your beverage of choice, and join me for another exciting Go To Market conversation. All right. I am so incredibly stoked to be joined by like a. a true content czar. Beverly and Valga is with me today. And when I say that she knows her shit related to content, you don't have to believe me. You could just listen to the rest of this episode, but I will gush over her for 30 seconds or so because we met briefly very recently and I was just incredibly impressed with her grasp of how. content integrates across all of the other functions within marketing, but even beyond like how does sales leverage that content and she actually just went through a complete rebrand and website redesign and so we're going to dig into all that and more and we actually might even touch on the time that she was a digital nomad. So stay tuned for all of that. I'm excited to dig in and. Beverly, let me pass it over to you. Love to give the listeners the 30 second, what do you do in life? Who is this person? Well, thank you, Mark. I'm Beverly Navaga. I've been in this content game for about 11 years now, but in media production and communications for almost two decades. I always talk about it's been like a zigzag journey to where I've arrived, started in film and media production in LA. Got into the agency life doing PR and social media and 2008, 2009 and 10, social media was super hot. So I was involved in that and some of like the most beloved brands and I got to learn all the ins and outs of that for almost a decade. Burned out, flamingly. Had to leave tech for a little bit. Left the country to go digital nomad, explore different. countries and appreciate different cultures while also freelance writing at the same time. And it was also around the time when I had to think about what was next for me, explored grad school, went back and got my master's in environmental conservation. But I saw a lot of parallels in storytelling between like conservation and early days of like tech startups. And then I hold right back in enterprise B2B tech. And since then have been super focused on cybersecurity. And here we are. I'm head of marketing and brand marketing for App Omni, which is in the SaaS security space. And it's really fun that we got to meet in a really unusual circumstance. And I'm just like so pumped. I'm drinking wine with you right now. No, I dig that. I'm doing the math in 20 years and environmental studies. How big of a Captain Planet fan were you? do you want me to like recite or sing the song? No, you don't want to hear me sing. just saying 20 years in your career and you went back to school for environmental studies. You have to be a Captain Planet fanatic, right? Sure! Earth power, wind, water, heart. Go planet! All these things combined, I'm Captain Planet. I should have worn my vintage t -shirt, man. It's like the hot thing now as a millennial. I am never not in some sort of fun t-shirt. I'm in Ninja Turtles right now. Most of mine are concert t -shirts because I feel like if I'm going to spend $60 at a concert, I need to wear the t -shirt. It can't just sit somewhere. You said there's a lot of parallels. You broke free of the corporate grind. went back to school for environmental studies and then you came back. Tell us about that. What did you learn and what brought you back? I think it's really interesting to see it from the perspective of academia and from people who do environmental conservation for a very long time. There's a lot of assumptions that people understand what you do and your purpose. And there's a lot of grandstanding that happens too. And I think that's where a lot of people get turned off when people... assume like the subject matter experts think that everybody understands the same problem and everyone else is as passionate as you are. And I think sometimes that's where a lot of tech companies or tech startups also fall in the wayside is like when you start changing your messaging a little bit, thinking it's all about you and not about the customer. That's where I saw a lot of parallels. And then number two, I think it's like, less about features, it's less about like the fear -mongering and it's more about like the people that they've helped, the communities that have thrived because of the work that happened versus numbers and stats and all this like fud that everyone creates around conservation and of course, you know, trying to get someone to buy your technology. That's where I saw a lot of things that were happening at the same time. It's like... I hope that I can, I wish and hope that I can like work with you, but I think there's a lot of things that they need to work on themselves in the conservation world. I think I just was not ready yet because there is a lot of misunderstanding of how to approach messaging that would actually hit, make an impact versus, you know, just. having to say something and make sure that people know that you need to do this right now or else the world will implode. It doesn't work that way. I mean, it does for every tech CEO in the history of the world. with nothing to back it up, right? Mm -hmm. Yeah, it's interesting as you're talking about that. I'm thinking about the technical aspect of writing when you're talking, you know, SEO and any type of search engine marketing and how that's influenced how content's created. And now with the advent of AI being so prevalent, pushing out articles and that, I don't know, how do you balance that with actual creativity? and storytelling and writing the things that your target personas actually want to read. Yeah. Well, I've been using a lot of chat GPT to extract the main points of like a longer form story. Things kind of like the TLDR on top of an article. I don't want to rely on it yet on creating stories that are original. we actually just went through this exercise internally at our own company. we had to kind of like train chat GPT on our brand voice and tone. I wrote the brand voice and tone guidelines and there's a lot of like different prompts that you have to write in order to just get it just right. It's kind of like GoldieBlox. Not too, you know, that's a little too much, that's a little too little. This is just right. People can see. clearly if something is written by Chad GPT. Use it to like summarize points. Use it to get the most out of like a long form piece of content. But I think heart and soul can't be translated just yet. I think the stories need to be told in the same language that your customers are talking that you as a company want to talk and talk as. you don't have to give away any industry trade secrets or anything but For for those content marketers that are listening right now the you know all 1 .5 of them If you could give some insight, yeah. Yeah, shout out to Beverly's mom moms and dads. So what are some of those prompts that you created? Like what was some of that trial and error? yeah. So let's see. I make sure I tell it, this is the type of a paragraph that I'm looking for. Make sure to include a certain format, whether it's bullet points or include an intro summary in the beginning. You include some aspects of your voice and tone in there. It's like you're an expert, but you're not a know at all. Add a little bit of a humor. but make it sound like X type of comedian or this type of person. Maybe give it a little bit more guardrails in terms of how much characters or words you want included in it. And hit Enter. If the result is not to your liking, just copy that and actually ask it to redo it and make sure to... add more flavors, like the more that you tell chat GPT to do for you, the more precise the result will be. So there are different prompts. It's more of like formatting, voice and tone, length, but also give it a reference if there's a person or a brand voice that you really enjoy. Those are really great starters. So, chat GPT, I need you to write this as if Shaquille O 'Neal and Kevin Hart were having an argument. That's right. An argument against George Carlin, you know? Honestly, I would watch that movie like whatever that movie is yeah, I would Exactly I need I need some Kevin Hart and Shaquille O 'Neal action there Actually, it's funny. I was watching interview with Martin Lawrence and Will Smith talking about like their relationship and this evolution from you know when they were filming bad boys one to I don't know if there are bad boys, four or five is the one that just came out. But... too, bro. No, I literally, I think it's four. I think it's four. No, no, no, no, you can Google as we're talking. Like, I think it's four, I will bet you. I will bet you it's four. But yeah, it's interesting because they were talking about their evolution and finding how they work best together. And so now it's just this old habit that they're able to go back to because they did all the hard work early on. And I just love that. I think when you have great talent working together, particularly creative talent, the longer that you can keep them together, the better off you are. Yeah, it's interesting and sometimes sad, but also really fun to see when you work so well with another person. It's really hard to recreate that chemistry with someone else. So if it works, if it ain't broke, don't fix it and keep doing more. And especially if your audience is eating it up, give them more of it. And if there's another person, maybe not on a... you know, in front of the camera chemistry, it's more of like the workflow and the ideas and the creativity that flows with each other. You agree and then disagree, but then you come to a conclusion that works for both of you. If you like working with this person, keep working with them. It's really hard to find people like that, that you want to work with on a day -to-day basis. So hats off to them. I mean, Look at Fast and Furious, one of my most favorite movies of all time. I mean, they did it, what, 20 times? It works. It feels like it's been 20. I don't know. I remember going to see Too Fast, Too Furious in theaters thinking, wow, it's so cool that they got a sequel for this. And here I am a couple decades later and my kids are referencing, I don't know, Fast and Furious 19 or whatever the hell that they're on now. It is like, how the heck did that happen? Like... If I was gonna bet on a movie to have that type of longevity, it would not have been Fast and Furious. Yep, yep, they just kept spinning some off-shoot storyline that people want to see fast cars, you know? I guess there's also something to be said, whether it's bad boys for which I'm sure you Googled and you saw that I'm right. But whether it's bad boys or it's fast and furious or any of these things, I think originality is just non -existent. And it's the same thing in the SAS landscape. B2B brands are just kind of copy and pasting, like whatever the biggest player in the space is. They're just copy and pasting their playbook over and over and over again. And it's muddying things so much that when you find originality in the market, like as a consumer, you're just drawn to it and attracted to it. Like it stands out so much more than, you know, it ever would have because nothing's original anymore. I kind of think it's the same thing like the Barbie movie was so original. it stood out and you know in a sea of sequels and remakes and reboots that was different and it was unique and you know they benefited from it. It's tough to be the pioneer, honestly. You're the one who has to educate the masses and the market. You're the one spending all the marketing dollars to put out the online ads, put out the 101, 201 level kind of content. And you're basically paving the way for everybody else. And now, you know. the second, third, fourth iterations, all the ones who follow after that, they have an easy job of just like copying and pasting. I think what the hardest thing from there on out is just what is the differentiator now from the pioneer. And if you are gonna go against an incumbent, how are you gonna go against them toe to toe or? Are you serving a very specific niche? And I think it's like the niche that that's where everybody else can win. It's hard. I had to write a lot of content for our website refresh alongside our CMO, our product marketing leaders, our executive leadership team. And without becoming... a copycat of everybody else, but also standing firm and saying, you know, we are the category leaders in this space. It doesn't happen overnight. And honestly, cybersecurity has been around for such a long time, but our niche is brand new. But we also need to get a little bit of buyer buy -in from the executives to have a little bit of like, personality and a little bit of bite in our copy. And I think that's where I want to explore more personally in my own career and also with the company that I'm with right now because it's just so easy to become just like mediocre looking and sounding like everybody else. And if we can kind of like, you know, do things slightly different from everybody else. It's how we sound online and how we sound to like our customers, but still being able to back up those claims. It's hard to be a pioneer. It's easier to be like the second or third or fourth company to come along, but it's a really fun. I think it's a really fun challenge on like, how do you differentiate now? I mean, you've probably know about this Mark, like Pixar. They know about the seven main categories of storytelling. It's just picking what story arc to go after and making sure your audience can follow along that. It's like, there was a challenge. By the way, they came across this one specific thing. They can go on either trajectory A or trajectory B, and they chose trajectory B. and that they'll let them down this path. Yeah, the old like hero's journey. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. You just went through this huge website redesign and refresh, which is always done in two months less time than it should have been. I've just done it before, and it's always way sooner than it probably should have been. But the interesting thing, I don't know. I think a lot of podcasts, you take the victory lap. And I definitely want to do that. And I want to give you the ability to talk about how awesome it was. But I also want to dig into what was stressful about it. You know, like, how did you how did you handle and cope when everybody had their own ideas and 80 % of them were wrong? For sure. I think one of the biggest challenges is it looks great on Google Docs until you actually start laying it out in the template. It's missing words. The graphics don't look good. Why is it a screen? Why is it a conceptual graphic instead of an actual product screenshot? It's going from concept to reality was so tough. Number one. And I think the second biggest one was. all the taxonomy implications. Is this a parent page and all these other pages are child pages to that? What about the navigation? Is this page supposed to go from this to that? How are they supposed to connect? And then I think thirdly, I personally enjoyed really working with my teammates when we finally are getting together. I don't know if you in college or like in other. jobs that you've been where there's like 20 people working the same Google doc. It's really fun and interesting. And you get to see things happen in real time. but when. For sure. throw a joke in there somewhere and see if anybody catches it. Yeah, and then you reply in line. That's my favorite part was when we were actually building the plane together. And then it's kind of like, people, it's midnight, we got to launch. This is our baby now, and we got to be proud with it. And let's look forward to like a phase two. We can always reiterate from the from here on out. Like, you tell me like. What was like the most challenging thing that you've gone through with a website refresh? You've gone through a couple. I think the most challenging thing is always aligning the opinions of all of the C -suite because everybody has an opinion. The thing about marketing and websites in general is everybody has exposure to them. You're not talking about something that can kind of live in a vacuum. you know, ad strategy, for example, can kind of live in a vacuum. If somebody doesn't understand that, they're not going to know that. They might be like, why aren't we advertising on insert social media location here? Like they're going to say, why aren't we advertising on Facebook right now? And then like, you're going to get that. But ad strategy can kind of live in a vacuum because the C -suite doesn't have the exposure to it. Whereas when you're writing copy and design for a website, Everybody has exposure to that. They have the two competitors and things that they like on their sites that they're jealous of. They have other sites that they really like. Maybe there's a board member who's referencing other portcodes and stuff. There's just so many really strong, high-level opinions. And it's great if they're all in consensus, but I've never come across that. And so I feel like half of my job when I'm launching a new site is, playing mediator between a lot of folks with really strong opinions. And then because you have strong opinions, you have to concede somehow. But when you do a concession, it sometimes dilutes the punch that you wanted to deliver. And I think you probably had to face this. There had to be one person who decides, no, we're going with A, not B. We're going with B, not C. Or else it's like, So many different chefs in the kitchen, like the usual allegory that you can put in metaphor here. It will sound like five different people wrote the website. Well, cause they did. Yeah, yeah. My favorite tactic around that is, I'll create my version, whatever version A is, the one that I like and support and that the marketing team has consensus around. And then I'll create the B version, which references whatever a key stakeholder has a strong antithesis opinion on. And then I will say, okay, so we... We talked it over and we're going to launch with a but here are the benchmark stats we're going to monitor. And if we don't hit those, we're going to put option B out and run it as a split test. And so that that can kind of short circuit. They're like, OK, well, you did you took my opinion into consideration. And if it doesn't perform well, we're going to go to that. And so, you know, if it doesn't perform well, I'm happy to try anything at that point. Like I'll throw I'll throw stuff up against the wall. Like if it. You know, if the website redesign shits the bed, then cool. We'll go options B, C, D, all the way to Z. Like I'll try anything at that point. But I, you know, if I can get a starting point where I'm most comfortable with and that the marketing team is behind, I think that that's important. But I also think having allies in the sales org and if you can have a unified front and say, we're all agreed on option A. This is what we're going to launch with. But you see, we've actually spent the extra time. We've developed option B for you. It's ready to go if this doesn't perform. And that typically sucks all the air out of the room for any type of back and forth argument, That's actually really smart. It's You people don't understand that you need to go live with something and you have to Let it ride so that people can actually react to it Right. You can't just go live with something and then like a week later change it. No, I would rather go with something That's a little bit, you know sensational a little bit not inaccurate, right? But at least there's a point in reference where people can react to it. And if there's like really strong opinions, I actually would rather hear the strong opinions and then we can change a little bit later. But the fact that it is garnering strong reactions, that's a really nice big signal for you for like either messaging, branding, online ads, you know, what have you. Because sometimes you just get nothing. It's crickets. I would rather have like a strong reaction to something. I don't know if you come across something like that. yeah, and I love doing little focus groups with the customer advisory board because if they back it as well, now you've got sales, marketing, and the cab all in alignment on it, which allows you to move forward with that a lot easier than if you didn't have it. What was your most favorite part about launching something recently? Whether it's a website or an online ad. the end when it's launched. I mean, just, just, just to be, to be frank, I mean, there's a celebratory like breadth of, you know, big exhale that happens. The, the second that you launch something that you've been working on for a long time. but yeah, I think to me though, if we're talking like in the process and not just the joke that when it's over, I would say the collaboration, you know, that like random. 530 in the afternoon brainstorm session that somebody has a great idea, they slack you, and now you've got four different team members in collaborating on something epic. That type of magic doesn't happen all the time. We're bogged down and siloed and dealing with so much just frankly garbage on a day-to -day basis that having those moments where you get to really be Creative and collaborate and give birth to something Awesome that you're proud of is is just awesome and unbeatable and it's why we're in marketing I agree with that. It's really hard to get everyone together. It's brainstorming time. Bring your best ideas. No one does, right? I think I would rather have someone send me a message, email me, text me, call me and say, I have this brilliant idea. Would you be down? This is what I'm thinking. When the messages come rapid fire pace, that's a signal to me that they're fired up about it. and we should go live with it really soon because there's nothing worse than 10 people on a Zoom call and someone suggests, okay, we're going live with this campaign in two months. What are your ideas? And no one talks. No one says anything or people think that it'll be a bad idea. And I think I would, I really like the energy that comes from just like a one-off idea. Maybe Slack is not the best, but that's how we're all communicating now, either with Microsoft Teams or Slack. I just go with the flow. I don't know if you've ever come across that. I don't know how to recreate a real life brainstorm anymore. How I used to do it in my agency days. I think it's a different skill and I think you have to be braver than you used to be. Like you would be walking past somebody's desk and you'd be like, Hey, you got a second. And then you're in a brainstorm. now you have to get over this internal hurdle where you're like, they must be doing something really important right now. I don't want to bother them. Like I know they're on Slack, but they've got to be working on something. I like. I'll book time on their calendar for tomorrow sometime. And then you lose it. You lose the passion. You lose the energy in that. And I think you have to treat it very much like you were in person, like back in the day, in ancient times when you were taking a horse -drawn carriage to work. Yeah, exactly. Pre -pandemic era where... You you you actually walked up to somebody and said I but I think you can emulate that I think there's the ability of saying hey, I Just had this idea Here's what it is and frankly do this on a voice memo don't like type it out on slack like do a voice memo or a quick video or something way better people can get your vibe and your energy out of that versus if you're just typing it I don't know. I feel like Slack messages always seem to be more professional and more scary than they actually are if somebody said it. But I don't know, do a quick voice memo and say, hey, at about a half hour, I'm going to be wrapped up for the day. I'm going to grab a beer or a gummy and I'm going to try to iterate on this idea. You're welcome to join me. I'll drop the meeting link here in case you're free. And just like get over. Get over that hurdle of like they must be busy and and I should book something tomorrow or the day after Like just throw something out there and especially if you have their that vibe You know, like if you're giving a voice memo or a video Then people are more likely to want to collaborate because we all crave that you know, we we crave it and you you touch on a point earlier where you're like you're like and if you have ten people on this call and we say we're gonna brainstorm about this new project and I mean, you've already lost. Don't have 10 people on a call. Never have to unless it's like one person presenting to 10 people If you want to have collaboration, you cannot have more than five people on the call ever. And even five might be pushing it. I hate referencing this guy, but I'm gonna do it anyway. Have you heard of like, Elon Musk actually kicking people out of meetings if they don't have like an agenda or like a point of view on something? Just to cut down on the number of people in a meeting. Yeah, I hate that you reference him to. I mean, I think you could just say like, you know, he he who shall not be named. You know, like the Voldemort of Tesla. But no, I think that that's brilliant because you shouldn't have that. I also I have a deep disdain for recurring meetings. Or any meeting that doesn't have a specific agenda that points out what people are going to do in that meeting. Because I don't know, I think all of the magic that people strive for, for what was in office, you can do and replicate virtually if you do away with all these standard norms, like don't put everybody onto the same meeting, have three small work groups, and then have a representative from each one, pitch what each group came up with, and then come to a consensus. Like you can totally work through that. That's smart. I used to do one -on -ones with a colleague of mine. I would go on a walk. I'm like, no Zoom calls. I'm going to call you from my phone. Let's go for a walk. And, you know, being on camera for Zoom is like so performative. Number one, number two, you're always like, like me, I'm always adjusting my hair. and number two, I think it's obviously. push it out of my eyes, you know? And it's like such a cognitive load just to like watch yourself, number one, number two, look at your colleague and you're waiting for a reaction from them. Whereas I think without camera and just like going on a walk might be a little bit of like stream of consciousness, but at least the conversation is. candid and maybe a little bit less formal, but it makes the other person feel like they're included and, you know, there's a different energy compared to just like one zoom video call after another breaks it up a bit. I love that you said it's a different energy because that that's the thing that I focus on on on it because if you're if you're out there walking like you're doing something different, there's physical activity, you're moving. Hopefully that person's doing something different. But that's why I don't hate on somebody that's like taking a call while while getting their nails done in a meeting. Like I saw a tick tock on that. And, you know, the person got lectured for it. And, you know, they were telling the story about how how they got written up. for taking a call while they're getting their nails done. And I'm like, why would that be a problem? A, I mean, if they're getting their work done, why would you give a shit where they're getting their work done? But B, that is a different energy. And different energies unlock creativity. I mean, it's the same reason why I listen to different music during the day than I listen to if I'm plugged in and I work after hours. I also change the lighting. Like I do. I do all sorts of things where I can differentiate and I can have a different vibe and I can change that energy because that changes your mindset that that I don't know rejuvenates you in a way that you're maybe not used to. And so yeah, just the sheer fact of you going on a walk. It just changes it up, right? Exactly. And time blocking is my superpower right now. There's going to be times when I literally need to write for just two hours and I need to pause Slack notifications. And unfortunately, I won't be able to take a call or, you know, you know, a quick huddle. Darn. But man, when you change up your environment, just like the synapses are working differently up here. Like I, I know I'm a morning person. I can start work, start working at like six 30 in the morning, but man, by 2 PM, 3 PM I'm done. And if I need to switch it up, I'll go to like a different part of the house, go for a walk, et cetera. And I know that I can do different types of activities according to like my energy level, like very analytical. really deep focus early in the morning, then, you know, meanings, et cetera. And then it's kind of like the whatever, just filling out asana tasks, cleaning up boards, if you know what I mean, just like mindless things in the afternoon. I don't know. It's really tough to just like code switch all the time. I love that. Where's the coolest place you've ever done creative work? I mean, you were a digital nomad for a couple years. So where's the coolest place that you wrote some corporate branded shit? Let's see, I was in this island in the Philippines called Chargal where I basically wrote my thesis paper off the coasts, just facing the beach all the time. Everybody's doing that right now. But the thing that I loved about this island in the Philippines is everyone is a surfer. A lot of the resort owners are folks like you and me, not like big conglomerates. a lot of artists and really incredible thinkers would stop by at the cafe of these small boutique resorts. And it's just like this incredible energy and amalgamation of all different people from all parts of the world. So it's not just Filipinos and tourists, but it's like, you know, Australians who are visiting or this kind of entrepreneur who's... like an up and coming influencer. And it just gave this like extra layer into like my writing about conservation in the Philippines, which was the subject of my thesis at that time, which was like really incredible. And I think the second favorite part was probably Montreal, where I was there for like a better part of a year, six months here, six months there. But man, that place is. It still has an underground feeling, which is really cool, but sometimes will not really translate into American standards or like European standards. They have their own very like niche cultural things. What happens there that I can't really explain to you right now. It's just very Montreal, very Canada. I mean, you don't have to explain to me, you know, I live literally 10 minutes away from Windsor. So, you know, my wife and I for our anniversary, we actually saw the AJ McLean and Joey Fatone concert over at Casino Windsor because, you know, why not? But Canada is a vibe. Honestly, my favorite place in Canada is Stratford. It's a little... a little town, I don't know, maybe 40 minutes, hour plus from Toronto. And it's like a theater town. It's modeled after Stratford upon Avon in London. And so it's like an annual theater festival that from like May all the way through October, they've got like seven or eight theaters running professional shows. And it's just this really like quiet, quaint town that's filled with artists who are living there during the season. And I don't know, if you're looking for like creative energy, that's probably my favorite spot in Canada for that type of like creative vibes, because everybody there is just so energetic. They're all actors, and most of which this is the first time they're making a living acting. Yeah, I would agree. Canada's pretty supportive about their artists compared to us here in North America. I mean, like when I was in Montreal, they would drop all these kind of like old pianos all throughout the city. And it's just open for everybody to play. It's a little bit out of tune, but people just gather around people. And then there's a lot of street art, something that I truly miss, you know, growing up in New York and, you know. having lived in LA for a little bit of time and it's just like embraced and it's still like the integrity of the street art is still there. And I wish I can just like marry a lot of those things and my world into like my professional career soon enough maybe. I mean, you can, you can, you can take the energy from it. I mean, I, I once wrote an elevator pitch that I was just struggling with. I, I couldn't find the right words. I couldn't narrow it down. Everybody wanted like six things in, you know, four sentences and it just wasn't working. And I sat at the Detroit Institute of Arts, which is our, our art museum. And I was sitting across from this gorgeous day. and just writing on a pad of paper and it was the best energy. You know, that vibe was exactly what I needed and I came up with, I mean, I will dirt off my shoulder and all that, but like it was fucking epic. It was slam dunk, great job. And it wouldn't happen if I wasn't willing to go to work at two o 'clock in the afternoon, head over to the DIA museum. Yeah, I mean, something to that effect. I think I really want to start commissioning artists for event activations, booth stuff, guerrilla marketing things like outside of the venue soon enough. I'm going to convince one of my marketing leaders that we're going to do it. That is such a great idea because anything that breaks the norm, you know, like if you're giving away, you know, water bottles or t -shirts with a logo on it, you know, been there, done that, sorry. And even your creative t -shirt that you think it looks really cool. I don't know. I've been there, done that, seen it. But yeah, having an artist there painting. Not that bad. And then, you know, giving away their work. and then supporting a local artist. It's awesome. I mean, I did that with a local comic book shop is we bought all of our swag from the show from a local comic book shop, a small business owner trying to stay afloat, you know, who was shut down for a good portion of the pandemic. And it's like being able to give them business instead of, you know, buying this mass market logo stuff. I don't know. It was a win win all across the board. Prospects loved it because it was different. It was unique. It was the type of thing they actually wanted and You know it helped out a small business owner I was there, I definitely lined up for it and I was like pushing people out of the way just so I can get in the front. So good job. And number two, it's like it tracks with the culture. You know, you were in cybersecurity marketing, it totally tracks with the audience. But I think art could be cool. I mean, I love your idea with street art because you could totally do like street art, but more of like a pop art vibe. And you get like Boba Fett with, man, that would, somebody would be like. their artwork can translate into some like virtual reality thing that you can see through a lens. That'd be dope. like what Pokemon Go is? Like the augmented reality or something? Yeah, yeah. I think that's really cool too. You can have a work of art or something where if you pull up your phone, you're now seeing a waterfall over your booth. I don't know. There's some really cool engagement shit if you just work outside of the box instead of just living in it and setting up a tent. Okay, let's set this up, Mark. Maybe we'll have our own thing, our own marketing agency. Art activation live. I mean, honestly, if anybody is if anybody's listening to this and they're inspired, you know, go do it. And I think the big point for me is if we can help artists and creatives and small business owners to to thrive and get a piece of this big budget corporate spend like we all win from that. You know, like I saw a boot that was giving away tattoos and I'm like, like, that is really cool. You know, I think that your percentage of people that would get one at a booth at a show is probably not super high, but it's really cool and unique and you're paying an artist. And I think that that just translates well into just a better life and humanity. Last point on this, I really like it when filmmakers and artists and really cool vendors actually like cold pitch me by email, not just like another like random like, you know, platform or SaaS app, because it'll be interesting to kind of keep like a nice roster of people that you can go to in the future and collaborate with them on. It might not happen today, it might not happen this quarter, but I actually really like hearing from artists themselves. So, shout out to people if you want to email me. Let's do it. the the amount of designers that are going to be in your DMS. So I want to ask, you know, we talked about that that rollout, but I want to I want to play that like rewind card, like be kind, rewind the old blockbuster days. And I'm going to rewind to the beginning. And you said that before you went digital nomad, which I think made such a powerful, positive impact on your life. before that you had burned out. And I think that that's something that so many of us can relate to. And you're seeing it now through the lens of coming out of it and integrating all of those great things that you learned working as a digital nomad, creating content as a freelancer and all that. But what about in the time? Like, Like what happened if you don't mind sharing and like, how did you, how did you cope? It was hard to cope. Unless you have an advocate or a champion for you internally, it's really hard to go up the chain and ask for additional help. Maybe a clone like yourself or someone who you can outsource content to, whether it's just like another vendor. Number two, that was around... the time that I left San Francisco and I was living in a nearby city and by nearby it was 45 minutes outside of the city by train. So the commute was awful and this is when I started realizing this commute thing is not for me. This is 2012. And then number three, The burnout was real when I just kept saying yes. I didn't know how to say no because I thought my salary and my livelihood depended on it. But then if you're so stretched, you're just doing everything so mediocre and half-assed and you're not able to like really perform to your strengths. So I think just the biggest lesson out of that is number one, I was still a little bit junior at that time compared to where I am now. Make sure that you have like an internal advocate or a champion for you who understands your day to day. Don't complain. Have like a potential answer whether it's can we hire a freelancer 25 hours a week who can help offload XYZ. And then number three is just like, instead of quitting, maybe propose an alternative way of working. This isn't working for me right now. Is it possible to offload? I was in an agency at the time. Is it possible to offload at least one account from my current workload right now? That way I'm able to like really do what I'm supposed to do and do it well. And number four, you know what? maybe it's time that you just take a break. Save the money, right? No more avocado toasts or trips to the coffee shop knowing that you need three to six months saved up so you can peace out and you are not beholden to a company. You can leave knowing that you have some financial stability to say no because you need a break. The break can be a mental break in right or right now. I'm kind of facing some like issues with my body because I'm not ergonomically set up, right? You have to listen to yourself, but like prepare, prepare, prepare, prepare. That's what I was going through at that time. And you know, I don't think I was like emotionally mature enough to understand that. I just had to like leave and quit. But it was also like the best time to do it. That was five years into agency life. I think I put in a lot of time and effort into it, but I also learned a lot from it. And I was able to just like jump ship, but a much needed jumping so I can like reset and get refreshed and like get fired up about marketing again and marketing from a freelance standpoint. That's the next entry point that I jumped into after that. And it's tough to because, you know, for, for what I know about you, you know, you are a, a high performer. You are, you know, a jump in and own something, get shit done kind of vibe. And the problem for, for that vibe. And I know this from personal experience is you tie a good portion of your self-worth into the job that you get done. And it just takes. It takes so much time to break that bad habit. And it's so much easier to burn out because you don't think that you can say no, because you think that it, you know, that shows that I can't do this or I'm, I'm not capable when in reality, it's just saying I know my limits. And if you want my best work, we need to cut some of this stuff out. Actually, it's funny not to, to quote the Olsen twins. But I was watching this this interview with Elizabeth Olsen You know who plays you know Wanda Maximoff the Scarlet Witch on you know all of the you know MCU movies and her sisters of course are you know Mary -Kate and Ashley Olsen from Full House fame and She was saying that the best advice she ever got was from her sisters that no is a full sentence Hmm. And that that is always really stuck with me. It's like, you know, at some at some point, you reach your breaking point, you know, you're not doing your best work and you need to be comfortable with saying, no, no, I'm not going to pick up that extra client. No, I can't do that other project unless you do these other things like it's a it's a no, I can't do it. And being comfortable with that and getting people accustomed to being comfortable with that, I think is is huge. and you said something about your work being tied to your self -worth, I definitely went through my own questioning at that point. It took me about two months being away from a computer, being away from that work environment to just like decompress. You get these like phantom rings, these phantom notifications, and you feel like you're still in high alert. And then number two, You're also waiting for your promotion. You're waiting for a salary raise, but is the extra 5 ,000, 10 ,000 worth some of like the setbacks that you're going to experience, whether it's mental, spiritual, or emotional? But using that time to decompress also makes you understand like, what are you really good at? What do you really love doing? And... maybe next time, just only say yes, if possible, in your next role. One that's like super zeroed in and laser focused on that one aspect of marketing or what have you. Whether it's being a creative director, whether it's being a social media director, employee advocacy, crisis communications, because you love crisis. Instead of, you know, going from agency where you... where like the catch all you did everything to being an in -house role or doing an in -house role where you're super focused at least on one aspect of marketing. That's what I learned. Well, can I also say that we as a B2B SaaS culture need more folks like you in leadership roles because you've been to that point of burnout. You've learned a lot about yourself and because of that, you can help others avoid it. And I think this like type A hustle culture vibe can create so much toxicity that you end up getting 70 % of your team burning out or at some stage of burnout. And that's terrible for productivity. So there needs to be more people like you in leadership roles that are out there saying, this is what I've been through. I'm not hiding that this is what I did. This is what I learned from it. and then recognizing the signs when other people are struggling because, you there are people coming into the workforce today that are going to do the exact same things. You know, they're going to make the mistakes that you and I did if we're not there to help them. It's really smart. I think I should start being more vocal about that. And especially on LinkedIn, even if it's just like a really short post, you know, internally at our company, when we go to a Black Cat or RSA, we make sure our team is offline the next day. You cannot communicate with us. You know, we need the weekend, maybe even the following Monday. Like this was a huge production. Please respect our time. the rest of the company that we need to decompress. And then we also need to start recognizing what those signs are when people are burning out, when they're either dismissive, they don't raise their hand for projects, when they're just going about their day and not really providing any new information or opinions on things. It's a sign, they're checked out. And just really having candid. conversations with people on their one -on-ones. I posted about this on LinkedIn a couple weeks back. I try to like cancel a lot of recurring meetings that have no agenda, but I expect my one -on -ones to go over and I would rather do that because it is tough out there, people. It is tough and I want to be there for my colleagues and I wish I can do that more instead of recurring meetings that have no agenda. or a 10 person brainstorm. no, don't bring me back. so it, it's interesting to me, like the best compliment that I think I've ever gotten, was, you know, I had an employee message me and, you know, this was so benign and honestly, I didn't, I didn't intend to make a statement by it, but I had, I had posted on Slack, you know, you have your status update and I did a status update that was, I'm going to get a massage. I will be back in two hours. After I come back from my massage, I was just letting people know like, I'm going to be, you know, AFK for a while. but I gave the detail and I got a message afterwards. It was like, thank you so much. You know, I often feel like I can't do that in the middle of the day. And, you know, you know, seeing my boss's boss put on their slack for the whole company that they're going for some self care in the middle of the day. It made them feel comfortable and honestly, it was the best compliment I've ever gotten. I literally have a screenshot of that email and I've got a little save folder that I can go back to. And that one, it meant a lot. It was a huge compliment. I wasn't even thinking about it at the time, but it makes a lot of sense. If leadership is not setting the tone and leading by example, then nobody feels comfortable to do it. I'm not as brave as you to put that up on my away message, but I do remind my team, these are our benefits. Take the time off. You will get reimbursed for XYZ123. Submit the, I'm waiting. Give me them expense reports. Take care of yourself because if you don't do it, who else will? No, you're either going to take care of yourself to dig you out of the hole or somebody is going to be digging your grave. You know, there's no in between. There's no in between. You got to take care of yourself. So I want to talk about the different types of content and pillar pieces with you I kind of want to get your like 30 ,000 foot view on content strategy and then just dig in from there. Yeah, anything specific? Well, how do you go about building your content plan at the start of the year? How about we start there? Like, what do you take into account? for sure, I learned a great deal from my previous mentors on the hub and spoke model, especially when you're just like really new to the space and by you meaning the company, you have to create a lot of this like pillar pieces that will kind of do at a 101 and 102 level explain. what you are solving, sometimes even writing definitions about things within your own industry. What is SaaS security? And then creating cluster content out of that or spokes. So let's just take mountain biking, for example. If that's your main topic, your pillar pieces can be about gear and equipment, techniques and skills. trails and destinations, events and competitions, and health and wellness. And then each of those pillars, you can start creating a lot of cluster content. But at least you know where to focus your writing is within those pillar content. So when you're first entering into a company, it's really, really important to understand. what your audience is looking for. So maybe look in the search console, look at Google Analytics and see what people are looking for or searching for in your own domain. Maybe use something like Sumrush or Buzz, is it Buzzsumo to see what the rest of the world is searching for in relation to your own industry and then start mapping it out. to like what the priorities are. I would prioritize number one, what people are clicking the most on your website and what people are searching for. And then little by little, if you can hire, you know, freelance writers who are very niche in your topic, in your industry, or perhaps there is an SEO agency in there who has experience in doing this to do it at scale, that would be the best. But you know how it is, Mark, like for content to be successful, it needs at least three to six, sometimes nine months of runway to see if like they're going to show up on page one of Google results, page two. But so long as you continue to publish and you're very disciplined about the type of content that you publish, keep it narrow. You don't have to write about everything. But just make sure that you stick to either your top three pillars in the beginning and then start expanding from there on out. And then number two, listen to your customers. If your sales are recording these conversations, you know, Zoom and Gong are spitting out the transcripts. Use the words that they're using and they're, you know, verbatim. You might as well be a mirror. to what your customers and prospects are talking about and want to know about. At least that's like my high level thinking about content creation just to keep it simple. I love it. And, you know, you could even go one step further. You know, you're talking about using like BuzzSumo and those insights from the beginning when you're building out, you know, what are, what are those three topics that you're going to talk about? You could also use intent data, you know, from like a six cents or demand base on the backend and see which topics are resonating. with in -market buyers in your ICP right now and start scoring against that. And that is, you know, it's super badass when you do it and you're like, hey, you know, this one blog only has 22 clicks, but the 22 clicks all seem to be from these three companies who are all in our ICP and they all seem to be in market right now. And then two additional aspects to that. If you are, you don't have a big team and there's only one or two writers, spend more time writing those three content pillar pieces. Make them 5 ,000 words instead of writing 20 different pieces that are just 500 words, right? Because you can do a lot with that long form piece that was, you know. three to 5 ,000 words. You can chop it up. You can repurpose them. You can take one section and verticalize it for your different industries that you're going after. And then I don't know if this is still around. Have you used answerthepublic .com? Not in a long time. in a long time. That was like during my B2C days. I wanted to see what are the connective tissues across like one specific topic and answer the public would spit out these like connect nodes, connection nodes. If you're talking about this one topic, these are the other subtopics from there that people are actually searching on Google or Bing. Rand Fisken, the guy who founded Moz, a big SEO thought leader back in the day, he founded a company that pulls up the influencers in your space. And I found that that tool, and I can't remember the name of it offhand right now, but I find that that tool is really valuable because if I'm looking for what is resonating, I can go and find the influencers in that space. see what they're writing about and which, you know, which of their posts are generating a lot of reactions and use that to inspire the types of things that I need to be writing about if it's the same audience. Yeah, they already did the homework for you. They're getting the reactions in the comments, right? So that means that it's working well for them. And then number two, I mean, using influencers to help spread the word if it lines up with what they're talking about, if it lines up with their own gospel. Yeah, pay them, pay them, bring them in. And we didn't even talk about this, but like video is so much better than text right now because you can turn any video into your text. You can write based off of what the SME said in the video. And so why not hire that influencer, bring them on for a webinar or a podcast, record that thing. And now you got, not only do you have a pillar piece on that, but you could spin off a... white paper based off of it. You can have 17 blogs, like 30 social media clips. Like, it's incredible. Like, you know, if you go big to go small, it's super helpful. And it's well worth the money bringing in a third party influencer, if you're able to leverage content like that. Yeah, I would agree. So long as they are respected in their field, number one. Number two, they line up with, you know, not necessarily what they're talking about, but more of like the philosophy of your topic. So our philosophies and SaaS security lining up. And I think number three too, it should be back and forth. It shouldn't just be us relying on them. to spread the news, spread the word about this, but how can they also give us any kind of like opinions or feedback on things that we can be doing better? I wanna hear it from them, because they're coming from like an outside view. Well, and frankly, that's how people misuse analyst relations is they they use it as like a mouthpiece where it's like, I'm going to just run all these show and tell sessions and try to sell and convince the analysts. Whereas why not listen? You know, I feel it's the same thing with your customer advisory board. Like they're there to listen, not to hear you sell them on your new features and roadmap. It's like. how do we learn from them and then have that influence our roadmap is a much better way of going about it. Yeah, they have the eyes and ears of other customers and clients and your prospects. We're not just talking in an echo chamber all the time. my God, the echo chamber, rising bananas. Well, I feel like we're going to have to wrap this up at some point. Let me do a drink check. How's the wine glass right now? It's a still a little full, but I also don't want to embarrass myself when I'm getting a little bit red in the cheeks here. The last years. Cheers indeed. What I want to kind of end with is how do you get the buy -in cross -functionally for all those big pillar pieces, for the website launches, all this great content that you're pumping out. It doesn't mean anything if nobody cares about it. So how do you get their buy -in so that way it gets distributed? And frankly, the sales team's hyped about it when you release a new white paper. Number one, hype them up early. This is coming in a couple of weeks. Give them a heads up. Number two, make sure that it's a damn good white paper. It's a damn good piece of content. Prepare a lot of the derivative content out of it. Meaning it's not just the PDF. What can... What can be used for employee advocacy? What are the exact verbiage that they can use for their own email scripts? Can we give you an example of one or two sentences that you can include in your email outreach? Just prepare your enablement kit early. And number three, volunteer your time like I do or a lot of my colleagues do in a lot of our sales huddles or maybe a town hall. Just carve out two minutes out of the agenda. This is what's coming down the pike. This is how you can use this content. If you need a different flavor, a version B of it, happy to work things out, but this is what we've created for you. But they also need to feel confident. The company needs to feel confident that they can take a lot of the content that's there and use their own words to communicate it that's comfortable. with them. And the thing that I always say is connect the dots for your followers and for your readers. You don't need to regurgitate everything that we put in the sales enablement deck, but connect it with the questions that you're always getting asked. Connect it with the things that people are inquiring about and use your own language. So thankfully, I'm in a place where ELT, and our team and marketing were pretty aligned a majority of the time. It's more of like the waterfall effect, how it comes down and across to everybody so that it feels natural when they communicate it with, in HR, in customer success, across sales. That's just from my perspective and my own experience. No, I love it. And it reminds me it's like as marketers, we have to market as much internally as we do externally. And I think everything that you're saying really relies on that. I want to know, though, have you ever done like a like a hype reel or a trailer for any content or campaigns that you're running? Not for the content, but for appearances at big marquee events for sure. But that's a great idea. I may steal it. do it internally. I did one one time that was like I had lose yourself by Eminem because Detroit guy and obsessed. But I had lose yourself playing and it was it was hyping up this campaign that we were running and it had a bunch of different assets and everything. And and it was just a lot of fun. And it ended with a a contest at the end. So. more. So it was a hell of a lot of fun. And honestly, I had somebody on Fiverr do it. It cost me like $50. That's dope. I have created, co -created a hype reel for our sales kickoff. Obviously no one else can see it internally, externally, but maybe we need to do that for campaigns. That's brilliant. I tell you, it's a game changer. Everybody's so enthusiastic about it. And it can hit all the key points of your sales enablement deck that you were mentioning. But it can be fun and exciting. And it's like 90 seconds in length. And you get to put some cool music behind it and not have to worry about licensing or royalties because it's all just internal. This isn't for sharing. So. You know, that gets a lot of buy -in. And I've even had like a, I don't know, like 15 seconds of it was different sales leaders talking about how excited that they were about it. And so, you know, you do your like zoom and you record, you know, 15 seconds or I had the SVP actually record him talking on his phone. Like he was, he was on a walk and literally recording on his phone, you know, how excited he was about this campaign. And then I put that clip into the hype reel. Well, I didn't do it. Again, I had somebody on Fiverr do it. You know, it's awesome. no, please, please steal it. And everybody listening, steal it, because the only thing that the only thing that you have is momentum. You know, if you release something and there's no momentum, then sales isn't going to share it. Nobody's behind it. And that's going to be a problem. So. we used to do that really well when I was in the PR agency. We hyped up all the articles that we've garnered for our clients. We should do that for our own internal efforts and campaigns. Well, it sounds like you're doing that on the relationship building side, right? And I think that that's probably the most important piece is if you can get people caring about you as a human, then they're actually going to tell you when something's wrong. And that feedback loop is so critical. Like you need a salesperson to tell you, this is bullshit. My prospects won't give, you know, give a fuck about this white paper. Like your concept is terrible. The thought leader that you brought in on it isn't anybody my folks care about. You need to have that honest and open feedback before you push something live. And if they don't have a relationship with you, they're not going to say it. Yeah, they don't want to hurt your feelings or it's like, this is going to fall on deaf ears. That's a good note. I know. professional until until you actually know each other is like real authentic humans. So I think anybody listening to this podcast knows you as an authentic human now, though I will I will say that like I appreciate. bar. What are you talking about? You This is my AI self. You trained your avatar well. really well looks flawless doesn't it? the force is with you. Yeah, it's like you got that force ghost at the end of Star Wars right there. But no, I think this has been a surprisingly and I don't say surprisingly in the sense that like I thought we were going to dig so deep into content and I feel like we did that. But honestly, my takeaways from it and I hope our listeners takeaways from it are are more about your journey. you know, burning out and, you know, trying new things in your life and coming back to the corporate world so much better and stronger and just frankly, you know, a total content badass out of all of that. Thank you, Mark. I wish I had something better to say about that, because I can't do any better than that. Mark, I've learned so much from you just because I have only a surface level understanding right now of ABM marketing or a lot of like the demand generation and growth marketing stuff. And even just like conversations before this recording, I already started taking so many notes down and It's always nice to hear from you and I hope that you keep posting online and we continue. I want to continue listening to this podcast too, not just beyond me, you know? Well, that's the point of this podcast. We need to, you know, all of us in this community, frankly, we need to bond together to survive. But I think that having these one on one conversations where you can get real and you can share your struggles and share any of your hacks and growth ideas and all that, I think it just makes all of us better. And what is it? Rising tide lifts all boats to to throw some cliche out there. Ding ding. Exactly that well, I will give you the last word What is the one piece of advice? That you would give to brand new Marketer Beverly, you know 20 years ago Don't be afraid about what others think too much. Be bold and provocative and make people hear you.