GTM After Hours
This is a safe space for the best GoToMarket execs, IC’s, and middle-managers in B2B SaaS. We've all failed and succeeded, so, of course we'll talk about both - and we'll spill the tea on how we coped along the way. Join host, and veteran SaaS GTM leader, Mark Bliss for some real talk about how to survive, succeed, and thrive in your GoToMarket career!
GTM After Hours
The Power of Personality in Marketing with Bronwen Hudson
In this free-flowing marketing conversation, guest Bronwen Hudson joins the show to discuss a wide array of topics including the failures of companies in social media, the importance of individual voices, and the need for authenticity and personality in branding. The discussion also touches on the balance between entertainment and education in content creation, the challenges of navigating identity in the workplace, and the dynamics of effective teams - drawing parallels with the Beatles' collaborative spirit.
Takeaways
- Brands should focus on individual voices rather than corporate personas.
- Authenticity and personality are crucial in marketing.
- Entertainment and education can coexist in content.
- Building relationships is key in social media marketing.
- Creating a safe environment for creativity is essential.
- Diversity in hiring leads to better outcomes.
- Social media should reflect human interactions.
- Creativity is a vital trait that AI cannot replicate.
- Building relationships is more important than just gaining followers.
- Being authentic and loud about who you are is key to success.
Sound Bites
- "It's about people talking to people."
- "Bring your personality and crank that shit to 11."
- "Business is now in the business of entertainment."
- "Going viral is not the goal."
- "It's about building relationships."
- "Be yourself loudly."
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Continue the conversation by connecting with Mark on Linkedin!
welcome to the GTM After Hours podcast. I am joined with my friend, former colleague and marketing all star, Bronwyn Hudson, who has a deep, deep history, not just in marketing areas like social media and brand, but all across the entire marketing funnel. She is one of the most creative marketers that I have ever had the pleasure of working with. And if we die, you if we digress at all on this call, I expect it. But I'm sure at one point we'll be talking about like word usage and things because Bronwyn has a master's of philosophy and linguistics from the University of Oxford because she's fabulous like that. without further ado, Bronwyn, do you want to give our audience the 30,000 foot view of your career to date. For sure, thank you for a beautiful intro. I always feel like hearing an intro from someone else, I'm just like, great, now I'm blushing and sweating, feeling weird. And now I have to then give my own intro, which also makes me blush and sweat. So I'm feeling really good about that. If it if it helps, I feel that same way whenever I walk into like Home Depot. Home Depot, really? That's like a safe space. it's not, I don't know any, I don't know what to buy. Like I'm not a mixed Mr. Fix-It, so I'm totally like, like flushed and like, I don't, anyway, so, so give the audience your, your 30,000 foot view of your career so far, just so they feel like they know you 10 % as much as I do. I love that. Okay, so I am from the East Coast kind of originally and then pop back and forth from the States to New Zealand. So I have some global experience and lived in Australia for a while, went to grad school in the UK, as Mark said, and my background is primarily academic. And then I got into the actual job world through technical writing. So I was being hired to write blogs and white papers and articles and also then got into social media management really because I was learning how to roller skate and I was like, I really want to document this process in some way. Started making videos of myself roller skating and then learned like the backend of Facebook and Instagram and like honestly self-taught in a lot of those social media areas. And then ended up in cyber because of the technical writing background. You know, I love to learn. I'm a big old nerd in a bunch of different directions. And I have that sort of insatiable appetite, which is satisfied in cyber because there's just like something always changing. There's something technical to understand. You'll never know it all that kind of feeling really attractive to me. And yeah, now I'm a marketer in the services sector, not the SaaS sector anymore. And I am really happy. feel like at the moment, cyber feels like a more meaningful place to be. than it used to be for me because I feel like a lot of these issues are becoming just so much more, I mean, they've been headlines for a long time and I'm starting to feel like they're desperate headlines now. Like headlines that really need addressing. And so if I can be like a positive part in any way of making folks more aware of cyber issues, that's where I wanna be. So yeah, that's me. Also I play roller derby, which feels important to say in any intro that I give myself. Hence the videos of you roller skating. Exactly. Gotta plug that early. Yeah. I love it because nothing is better as a B2B marketer than being able to leave the office and go hit people. Exactly. It's exactly right. Even better if you can leave the office proverbially and go hit your friends. Because then you have like, it's a one-two. You get all of the endorphins from seeing this giant group of friends you have and you get all the endorphins from hitting them while on wheels off of the track. Come on. That's a dream. So bonus tip for our listeners like right there bonus tip go hit people especially your friends. They love you for it. I actually have a punching bag like right right on the other side of that door and and I totally use that multiple times in a week where I'll just like get off of a call and like okay let me get this frustration out. Very wise. Very wise. I mean, you got to plus, you know, good for your health and all that, you know, which is obviously something I care so much about. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cheers with my, you know, double rum and Coke and a giant blender bottle. it's been that kind of day audience here. You know, you're, you're, joining us. a GTM after hours is legit after hours and, where we're, we're, here. We're here for the theme. I think very much so today. I want to start off with kind of a negative. I want to know what Bronwyn thinks companies are doing wrong in social today. Like what are the biggest failures that companies are doing right now? Dang. That's such a good question. Because I think it's almost everything. think companies are really not doing great at pretty much anything.% of it sucks. True, right? Because that's actually my big takeaway is that when you look at the all-stars of social media, there are some seriously standout accounts. Particular shout out to Duolingo. They crush it every time. They have hilarious tweets. They've got great content. They've got educational stuff, obviously, highly entertaining brand. similar like Wendy's. There's been a couple other brands that have had just like absolute knockout social media managers and content creators who those brands have trusted to give them the actual like wheel to the bus. And those individuals have done great things for those brands. But I think because it's so easy for me to think of like those couple of examples, overall brands are doing a completely average job. And I feel like, especially on LinkedIn, honestly, which is the social media platform that I'm on most often these days, but it's kind of, you know, how platforms tend to kind of homogenize. So LinkedIn is becoming more like X and more like Instagram, these kind of different ways. And a lot of brands these days just need to have a page so that they don't get impersonated. They need to have some kind of presence that provides like a landing page that isn't their website. It's got some hiring information. It's got some educational content. But the reason I think brands aren't really nailing it is because brand accounts are always trying to be like people. They're trying to be like the individuals, the thought leaders, the influencers that they're really often borrowing content from. They're borrowing the memes, they're trying to emulate these funny moments, which means that they flop because they aren't relying so much on user-generated content or they're not letting a social media creator actually be creative. too many parameters, too many things that go through legal, you miss the moment, you miss the vote entirely because the timing wasn't right. And those are so many critiques that I could give a lot of brand accounts, but to be real with you, I'm 100 % guilty of the same thing. And I think one of the big things that's changing about social strategy is that focusing on individuals and promoting individual accounts is gonna be much stronger avenue than promoting brand accounts. You're already killing it. Shout out to Kelsey Dempsey who works for Duolingo, that kind of thing. You've already got such a strong brand presence that you have creative control over. It's working. but it's down to people, especially with the context of like AI. It's down to how you can have a... an individual voice and brands aren't good at that. Well, and I think you touch on a really good point in that everybody's always late to the party. And it's because they don't trust their marketing team to just put something out in the moment. you know, there's so many additional processes and permissions and all of this additional review, particularly with B2B brands, because everybody thinks that You know, they have to review every post that goes out because obviously it's our brand voice and you know, we have to be professional and you're missing that it's people. And then of course, six months later, somebody will see a TikTok trend when they're on Facebook scrolling. And then you're going to get that, that proverbial message from the CEO. Can we do this? This looks really popular. Yeah. And like, gosh, it's such a tough one because in moments like that, like I've had that experience at previous companies, this kind of thing. And I want the answer so badly to be yes, because if there's something that like really tickled the CEO and they're like, hey, this would make great content. I really want to be like, yeah, you're right. It would fit well. But the idea that we missed the timing. It's really tough to go back with, right? Because you can't be like, yeah, that trend's old news. It's not going to go anywhere. It's going to flop. No one wants to hear that. I want to be able to say yes to ideas and run with them immediately. I mean, there's always a way to say yes. I mean, like if your CEO tomorrow, which hopefully your CEO will listen to this podcast and then come to you with this. But if your CEO tomorrow says like, you know what I really want to do? I really want to do the Harlem Shake. There's there's totally a way that you can do that. I mean, you just have text on the screen about, know, my CEO wanted to do this is really late. We're doing it anyway, because he makes sure that we get paid. So true. It's so true. doing the Harlem Shake. Suckers, yeah. So we'll party like it's 2013 Yeah, hell yeah. I think that you bring up a good point because it's also like, what is the point of social? What is the goal of a brand page? Is it all about the funnel? In what ways is it about entertainment so that you get views, so that you improve your funnel and viewership? So if your goal is to make a splash and do something funny, then a vintage Harlem Shake throwback video could be absolutely excellent. And yeah, I might steal that idea. If you see me, know you did it. Well, it's it's interesting because like, you're looking for that ROI on everything. And, you know, marketing above most other things is really easy to track, like there's just a lot of data and you know, probably too much data. And so I feel like companies overly track that, but not so much like sales relationships as you're moving things through the funnel. And I like in social media more to building a one on one relationship with a salesperson and the prospect that social media but at a broader level, like I'm not doing social media because I'm going to close a client today because they come in and they're like, I love that post. I click the link and I downloaded the ebook I am ready to buy right now. Like fuck No, no, nobody's doing that. But but I think that it's a really awesome opportunity. to be able to build a relationship. And you know, that's where that humor and that personal touch comes in. And the brands that you talked about on the B2C side that stood out to you. They do that they build relationships with their community. And if we could just get people to understand that that is the same thing as a salesperson building a relationship through the funnel, then maybe it's easier. Yeah, totally. And hopefully that wouldn't alienate people, right? Because there is something that happens when people move from in-person interactions to social media, where all of a sudden it's about... We have a different language that we use to talk about it. When we move to the B2B stuff, it's all of a sudden it's about other things than just human interaction. But at its core, even when you're online, you are a human being, presumably speaking to another human being. Gotta really check that these days. But that's the idea, right? Yeah, yeah. But it's like it's an ongoing interpersonal interaction, which, as I've said before, is the number one indicator of human happiness. It's the status of your interpersonal relationships. So if you can focus on creating actual connections, as you would with a person in line next to you at the bar, I don't know, like other places where you would meet people, a digital space, a platform that is social, exists to host the same kind of interactions. They can feel really different. and really disingenuous. get it because the language is often different, but the core of it remains the same. It's people talking to people. That feels important. I love that. if people are talking to people, maybe, maybe let them have a personality. Oh, oh, shit. Oh, shit. Where'd you get that? Please, please bring your personality. Are you finding that that is okay to me? That seems like the most important thing to bring into 2025 is your personality. Because all of the discourse around like, I can tell that your post is chat GPT because you use an dash and emojis or what the heck ever is happening with all of that kind of stuff. Disregard that. It's not your business. My advice, bring your personality and then crank that shit to 11. That is what's like human attention is the currency of an AI driven digital universe. You have to find a way. to be yourself and to be original and creative. Otherwise, not only will your content not go anywhere, you're gonna have a bad time because you're just making yourself boring and like everyone else. If you do the opposite and take your personality and turn it up to 11, that's like the only hope I have for original creators anymore. Well, business is now in the business of entertainment. That is just the reality. If I, if I want to convince somebody to spend an hour of their life digging through videos, reading white papers, learning about the product, I need to entertain them. Like I need that entire experience to not suck. And I get it. Look, we've got, especially in B2B and especially in high tech. you've got so much intricacy that you need to deliver on. But I feel like particularly the largest companies in the space set a very bad precedent where they create this really boring hyper professional like like something that they would teach in a classroom type of information. And that's not going to resonate. with Joe blow scrolling on LinkedIn. It's just not like you have to be in the right mindset. Like if you're if you're in the mindset to have that doctorate level read, cool, more power to you, we will create that option. But for the most part, people aren't looking for that people are looking to be entertained. And I think B2B brands in particular forget that. And we also forget that those big guys that we want to be They have the luxury that everybody has to read their shit. It doesn't matter how bad and boring it is. The analysts will read it because they have to and then they will post about it and thus making all of us read that terrible shit. totally agree with that. I totally agree with that. And I think like you raise a really good point about entertainment because I think when people think about entertainment, especially on social media, they assume that we're talking about humor. They assume that it's this like Jokey McJokester personality that's gonna replace white papers or something like that. There's some bubbling away idea that entertainment is like. that entertainment stands in direct opposition to education, but that is absolutely not the case. also that like entertainment is, oh my God, what a great example. Oh my gosh, 100%. Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill, Okay, we do not own the rights to that song. So if you are Bill Nye or anybody who owns the rights to that song, you did not hear it. You did not hear it. Sorry. But you're right. Like that. It doesn't have to be hilarious, but it can be hilarious and still educational. What are y'all doing? Come on. It can be both. You can do both. and a little stos. Yeah. All right, if any any marketer here is resonating with this, listening and you're like, this is what I'm this is the battle I'm fighting every day. We raise a glass to you right now. Like if you if you have one handy, go raise a glass, you know, to overworked underpaid marketers who are fighting for their lives out there. Cheers to you. God, may the odds be ever in your favor. There is such a good way to do that though and I it bothers me from a near distant intrinsic level in that I think companies do themselves such a disservice by not allowing people to have a personality. I don't even care. Your brand can have no personality. But what I don't want to see is 30 people from your company sharing the same post that a marketer wrote for you to change. No, I know. That is the worst thing because here's here's the funny thing about deals and b2b sass. They're so large multiple people are involved. So the odds of you being connected to three people sharing the same shitty message are pretty high for prospects. So why are you doing that? I know, I completely agree. And that goes for social media posts for sure, but it also goes for outreach in any other capacity, right? Like marketing as a whole, email, whatever distribution methods you have for a message that's coming from your company that's likely sales related. Man, I totally agree. It's been... I think that's one of my like key beefs with AI generated content as well is that it ends up being so homogenized and kind of boring. And I feel like that's exactly my beef with marketing messaging that isn't customized. Even if you have to do some cutting and pasting, like, isn't it, maybe that's, I just feel sad about it. I feel sad about it. Don't you want to write something more interesting? And I'm not saying that everything has to be like the best all the time, but don't you want to customize it? Don't you want to get in there and like make it your own? Am I off base there? What do you think? No, no, you're you're 100 % right. And honestly, the best salespeople that I've ever worked with, you know, whether they're a brand new BDR, or a CRO, the best ones always create content about the content. So I do here's this new white paper marketing publish. These are my favorite things about it. we just did this webinar. My favorite moment is that four minutes and 44 seconds where we talk about this or and the absolute best one. I had a conversation with a prospect today and I asked this here's why that's interesting. yeah. Every time the best, the best sales reps, the best sales leaders, the best folks in customer success and everything. That's what they do. And you can't, you can't teach that from the marketing side. can't force them into doing that. It is a full mindset shift, but what you can do is you can create an environment where nobody's penalized if they get it wrong. Ooh, in terms of like the content that they make about the content, there's no, nothing's off limits there or something or like, yeah. be retribution if they phrase something off or outside of the company's messaging directive. Like you need to create a safe environment for people to create this content. Trust me, they're going to learn from it if you have to come and correct them, but you shouldn't be doing it in like an asshole way. Yeah, definitely not. No assholes. That's the rule number one. Yeah, I totally agree. I also, when you were giving examples of how people would create content of the content, all three examples that you said involved the word I, which is a pronoun, just saying. But it's really important because what that feeds back into is personality, right? When you allow people to be themselves in an authentic way, as you have just said, like bring your own opinion to it, to me, that is so much less boring immediately. Because I'm like, great, this person used their own brain and their own personality to provide me with a new perspective or a new opinion, a new something. That's what I crave, right? It's like, it's from a human brain to me. Even if I totally disagree with it, I would so much rather read someone saying like, my favorite moment was this horrible thing, whatever. I'd rather read that than like, My company has just produced a spy paper. Like, easy choice. Easy choice on which one is more interesting and more valuable. Always going to be the I statement. Ooh, so good. All right. And great minds. Great minds think alike, right? Like, and frankly, I think it's because of our beanies because we're keeping our brain warm. It's important. It's important for homeostasis and cognitive function. Yeah, from Detroit to Denver, it is cold. It actually really is. It's supposed to reach negative eight. Yeah, I know. So rough. very brutal. And I probably should have built my office inside my house. But, you know, you live you learn it's you know, options I have these great space heaters and, you know, they run almost the whole day and it's awesome. know, but anyway, that's Can we get you sponsored by a space eater? yeah hence hence the beanie though I feel like we both came to this with a beanie a hoodie and a drink we were we were prepared we were absolutely prepared but I am missing I'm missing your like your cool glasses like shout out to zeni I feel like we always we always have to shout out zeni optical because you know Brahman and I both buy our glasses in bulk from Zenny. Normally you have on much bolder glasses. It's so true. Here's the thing. I am currently balancing how I present in the workforce. And it's a really interesting kind of path to tread because I'm a queer person and I'm out in my professional life. And that's a pretty important thing for me to say in an open way. And yet, as many other queer people and allies will know, This is a really awful time to be openly queer, especially if you're trying to, and if you're a woman, trying to be someone in a very male-dominated and pretty cis industry. So, I will reveal my undercut that I'm still rocking, you know? Got this short haircut, and a lot of my sort of styles are pretty, I don't know, like... I hope they look kind of androgynous. Like I walk a fine line of like, do I look too gay, basically? And really big colorful glasses were making me feel like I looked either too much like an art teacher, which I was kind of into, or too gay, which like I also am into obviously, but needing to like rein myself in a little bit stylistically for the workforce. So I have a lot of mixed feelings about that, but I'm also just trying to like respect where I maybe like need to be and how I present. So I do miss the big chaotic glasses and have so many idols in like the frame game and will always be a loyal Zenny supporter because God, they have some good ones. But you know what? Even just saying this out loud has made me think that maybe I just need to go buy some really super gay, awesome glasses and wear them all the time. think I think honestly and I hate to do like the the standard podcast host do take it back to earlier but it's the same thing corporate brands suffocating the identity and personality of the people that are in those trenches and frankly they're the ones creating the best content most entertaining like you were talking earlier about you know have the people post and then sponsor those posts right so what Why would you not want to attract because like attracts like so why would you not want to attract folks who relate to you and your authentic self as opposed to you know, nobody relates to the broad corporate boring brand. Amen. Tell everyone you know immediately. Like they say a lot of for the people in the back, right? But I understand it's such a it's such a fine line to walk. It's like, does it does it cost you jobs and opportunity? Does it cost you promotions? Like, it's so hard when you feel like you've got to hide a portion of who you are when you're on a Zoom meeting with the same 10 people every day. Totally. And it's like, that's exactly it. Because it's like, and hiding can mean different things too, right? It's not like I'm, because the fact that I'm sort of like out in a corporate sense, like have a rainbow in my bio and like got my pronouns in there that kind of thing. It's more about like, it does feel like I'm starting to hide my personality. Cause if my personality is being expressed through like colorful clothing or like a haircut or whatever. The fact that I'm queer doesn't have actually anything to do with those things. It's just that I expect that I'll be treated differently if I look too queer. So I am holding back in these completely superficial ways. Why would they have anything to do with anything? And yet, here I am, toning myself down. no, I made myself sad. I need to go buy some rainbow stuff. I mean, you've got your martini just sitting there. Shaken, shaken, not stirred. Okay, so I actually had to this one because my partner was on a meeting and I didn't really, I really didn't wanna do the shaky shake. But normally, absolutely shaking. You can join your sorrows there, but I would also shout out anybody listening that has authority. Take this as your inspiration to do something that shows that you're weird to give your team the permission to be weird. Love that. Do that. That is such good advice. Way to be, like, can you imagine how great that would feel? Actually, I know how great it feels. I've got a great boss right now who does weird stuff and it makes me feel amazing. Because that is an inclusive action to show others who you are. And it's that Mary Oliver quote, by shining your own light, you'll unconsciously invite others to do the same. A slight misquote and the quote is longer than that. So major shout out. But yeah, it's like by being yourself, you unconsciously give others the opportunity to be themselves. That's the layman's version. Amazing. That is really good. And here I am just like, quoting, you know, Spider-Man, you know, with great power comes great responsibility. an all-time iconic excellent quote. Like, don't disregard that for sure. It is it is a classic I will say but I feel like I need to be a little more like well read, you know, people are quoting great authors and stuff and I do I do quote like Hemmingway's why use a 10 cent word when a two cent word will do just fine use that all the time and and and I can I can hear content marketers writing that down right now is they're listening to this Absolutely. I hear it and I support you write that down and then repeat it to whichever technical subject matter expert is trying to get you to include big words that people have to Google. That's really true. It's so true. It's so true. Like cut the BS. That's also my other favorite Hemingway quote that I have to share is, right drunk, edit sober. Excellent advice. It is, but I don't think he ever followed it because he was always drunk. I mean, in fairness to Hemingway, like. yeah, let's be real about Hemingway. And then also, you know, it's like a do what he said, not what he did kind of moment. Yeah. Okay. often, so I do a lot of weddings, where we're all like officiate a wedding in, for those who don't know, I'm, I'm on the city council in my small town. and, so I do a lot of weddings in, that capacity and every single wedding, I will find a way to slip in a Beatles quote. It is, it is like my own like private game where it keeps it fun for me. Yeah, nice. Yeah, love that. every every single time and it always it always comes out like as as the great philosopher john lennon once said yeah all you need is love like all that stuff Do you have a favorite or like most unexpected Beatles quote that you've managed to weave in to a wedding? Because there's so many classic ones you could do, yeah. I think they have so many hits, right? They had 27 number ones or something. And this isn't a music podcast. So if I'm wrong, don't come at me people. But I think like 27 number ones or something. So it's it's hard to quote them with out it being well known, like, yeah, there's gonna be somebody who recognizes it. But probably the one that flew the most under the radar was when I was talking about the long and winding road that led them together. And it's a little bit of a deeper cut. was their last number one. The Beatles had already broken up by the time that long and winding road came out. And so I'll flip, I'll slip that one in. But, you know, I also talk about the Beatles a lot from a collaboration standpoint. You know, when, when you talk about building a team, you know, particularly a marketing org. You want that Beatles dynamic. You want creative folks having a great time together and they create magic. The Beatles entire run is about 10 years. And you think about all the culture that was created from four dudes from Liverpool in a 10 year period. who just collaborated well. And I get it all things come to an end. But I feel like if you're building a team, you want to build the Beatles, you know, go, go, go and get your your your McCartney to your Lenin, you know, I my favorite, my favorite little tidbit about the Beatles, and then we can switch to not being a music podcast for a moment. But my favorite little tidbit about the Beatles is The song, Silly Love Songs that McCartney put out after leaving the Beatles was a direct response to Lennon's comments about how all McCartney wanted to write with Silly Love Songs. And then he creates a chorus that's just I love you like 16 times. And honestly, like that's so brilliant. Like way to lean in. Yeah, it's a great song. But but you always you need your Lenin to your McCartney you need your your over overthinking philosophical. You know, George Harrison, you need your bubbly I'm everybody's friend. Let me sing about submarines Ringo Starr like you need you need to have that balance and I feel like so many times people want to build a team. And it's the same person you've just hired them five times like Hello? Like they're all wearing the same outfits. They're all like thinking the same way. And it's like, yo. You can't have 27 number ones if you do that. If you hire yourself over and over again, you will not go anywhere new. You got to think outside of the corporate personality, like for lack of a better phrase, right? Like, okay, and let's be real. For the most part, I'm talking about cis white men who do cis white men things and hire other cis white men. And I get that not every cis white man does that, but my gosh. There's definitely an aspect of like cut and paste and it just doesn't, especially in cyber, we have talked about this, like you and I have talked about this, but also I think that you've talked about this in the pod before and a lot of people that we know like in common have talked about the importance of diversity within cybersecurity, like for literally the sake of the world, for the sake of the security of the digital world. And I think you should, mean, man, I could like wax on about that one, but. Well, and you gotta you gotta check your biases at the door. Like that is that is the biggest thing you if if you're hiring. You need to let the first 10 minutes of the interview play out without judgment. And it is the hardest thing for any manager to learn like first time managers doing that first interview. It's so hard not to judge in the first 10 minutes. But That's where people are just getting acclimated. You know, it's like they're, getting used to the, used to the humidity in the room. Like, like this, they're getting the vibe there. They're, getting comfortable being themselves and answering their questions. And until you can get past that, you don't know how they're going to compliment with you, compliment you. You don't know how they're going to collaborate with you because you know, they're just not there yet. That is so true. I have never heard anyone say that before and I completely agree with it. Like I felt that way. I've struggled with those first 10 minutes and been like, why is this weird? I know it's not gonna be weird, but why is it weird? And then that usually like minute 11 or 12, something softens. That is so fricking true. Wow. So how have you fought against that? you're getting called in to, especially in interview cycles that you're not actually the hiring manager. It's 10 times more important, but also 100 times more awkward to provide feedback that you need to hire this person because they're so different than you. Ooh, gosh, that's so true. That's so true. my gosh. Like the needed new and different perspective. Yeah. that's a great question. So two things came to mind when you were saying that. Like, first of all, What I try to do and what I think might be useful advice, I don't actually know, but we'll try it. Useful advice for like making that 10 minute portion less awkward is to pretend like you already know the person, right? Like if you meet someone and you're like, my gosh, I can't believe it. Like my headphones just broke. my God, this is so crazy. And you jump right in. to like the thing that just happened, like being in the present moment, instead of being like the super buttoned up version of yourself and like showing that you're awkward and being like, hi, no, it's really nice to meet you. That difference in flavor of the, we just met as opposed to we're talking like we're old friends is hard, I'll be real. But if you can lean more towards the we're old friends, I think you get closer to an authentic version of both people faster. And it's more comfortable in general because no one likes to really do small talk. Let's be real. We do it because it's a social sort of performance and ritual that requires us to have regurgitated answers. Fine. I get it. That's anthropology. But if you can cut that out, most people will be willing to cut it out with you because no one really wants to do it and you get in faster. But then more broadly speaking, in terms of getting that like different perspective or like being part of the hiring process, trying to get new people onto your team, I think that that's an excellent opportunity for allyship. So, if you're someone who can, who's already in a position of like moderate power, so like either you have the title that's one up, or you have the skin color that's perceived as one that's maybe different, or the gender that is definitely has more power, there are a lot of situations where you can say, I am vouching for this person. And even just your opinion, because you're vouching for them, will raise them up in terms of an expectation or, you know, yeah, basically the expectation. Like what someone is expecting to see from them and like, yes, they've, they're already good. You've implanted the goodness in the person's mind. You've triangulated. Kind of beyond that though. you have the opportunity in an interview to ask the kind of questions of a person that they would not normally get asked. So if they're going to have all of the basic questions from the hiring manager directly, like, are some of your greatest strengths or whatever other cookie cutter answers that you can expect, you as the alternative hiring committee folks have the opportunity to answer questions that actually provide you insight. So whether that's into projects that someone's completed or I don't know, situations of conflict, kind of like getting into the interpersonal and getting into like the nitty gritty a little bit more effectively. That can A, make someone feel more comfortable and B, give them an opportunity to be like, actually, yes, these are my six zillion accomplishments that don't fit into whatever structure had been presented before. Would you agree though? Cause I think you've done a lot more hiring than I have. Let's be real. I would and honestly, I think well, okay, three things first. I should totally open every single interview call like that with hey, I just met you and this is crazy. Here's my number. So call me maybe immediately diffuse the whole the whole thing change changes the entire game. So first and foremost do that anything that's going to break up the monotony because typically people are doing interviews. They're doing like four in one day. Totally. You know, like you're you're you're lumping those like tasks together. You're trying to find somebody as quickly as possible. So, you know, the person that's unique is is usually going to stand out. And I think that also from the hiring manager standpoint, like how do you get the person super comfortable? And even if you're you're on the interview cycle as a as a conduit for the hiring manager, like make the person comfortable. You know, one of the things that I've done in my past is really asking them a lightning round of questions. I do that every time and it'll be like really unrelated questions like I'll ask, you know, tell me about the last book you read. If you had a theme song play every time that you joined a zoom meeting, what would it be? What, what advice would you give your best work friend at your last job? Like just random, random things like that and Any answer is a good answer because I'm really only trying to do two things there. Number one, I want I want them to be sharing information about themselves because whenever somebody's sharing information about themselves, no matter how trivial, it's going to make them feel a little bit more confident because I have an answer to that one. You know, like it's it's girls just want to have fun. That's my theme song. Whatever I join a zoom. But but like I think also what it does is it shows you how creative they are. And if you're trying to build a Beatles. Hmm you need creativity. It's the one thing that AI can't and will never be able to do. And so you got to find out is this person creative. And that's a really great way to do that because if they can think so quickly on their feet to come up with those answers in a rapid fire lightning round, it gives you some confidence that that person's going to be able to do that when they're doing the job. So two birds, one stone or whatever is. So is that a proverb or an idiom? Like two birds, one stone? I'm going to ask the masters in linguistics from Oxford. What is that? Two birds, one stone. Everybody says it. Nobody knows why. think that's an idiom. I don't think it's a proverb because there isn't really like an additional lesson behind it, something like that's moral or value related, more of an idiom. It's still basically a metaphor for other situations where you'd be completing two tasks with one action, right? That's like what we're essentially meaning. That's the core of it. But it's idiomatic. It's an idiom. It's an idiomatic phrase because we're using it basically as a metaphor and we use it super colloquially. and someone who was like learning English as a second language would be like, hi guys, what are we talking about here? What the fuck does this have to do with anything? Right? That's usually, for me, that's a great indicator of is something an idiom? Would it make sense if you directly translated it to a different language? Would it have the same meaning? Or does it rely on some other kind of context, like a metaphorical understanding and underpinning of what that phrase is? I want to know who came up with it in the first place. Like these are these are the questions that I think of really late at night sometimes is like who came up who's like like, okay, I only have one stone, but I could kill two birds with it. And then somebody else is like, what did you just say? That's super insightful. Let me use that in my next meeting. What who did that seriously who is that person like I don't know Yeah, that's a great question. Was it you? I mean, I wasn't born then, but maybe I've got like six past lives or something. And it probably was you in a past life. Own it. Yeah, Pat Pass live Past life Mark was very murder driven when it comes to birds. Hey, hey, well, it's like that that 12 days of Christmas song. There's a lot of birds gifted in that song. He loved birds. I don't know that she did. Maybe she's the one who came up with this idiom, right? Maybe she's like, I have so many birds, I need to kill multiple birds. g'gay, stop with the birds. Yes. I don't need any more birds. So I got one stone. Let me use this. It better work. I better hit to. Okay, this is amazing. This is what's called folk etymology, which is etymologies, namely word origins or phrase origins that are basically like sort of retroactively attributed to like folk concepts. So like often we don't know the etymology of a phrase. How could we? It was never written down. Whatever. We'll never know if it was you in a past life who really said it. but we can dream and a folk etymology is very fun because you can create anything you want. Be like, that was probably the origin point of that. So we have a great situation of two characters in love, yet at odds. One loves birds. The other despises them. Brilliant. Brilliant folk etymology. I feel like that would be such a animated Christmas classic. Yes! Like like it's taking what was that? What was that show? Why women kill? It's take it do that but Christmas. and birds. Amazing! all the birds, you get a full aviary like, yeah. perhaps, feathered in love. Ornithological Christmas, bad, bad. We'll workshop it, we'll workshop it. Why are all these maids milking? nice! Direct reference, I like it. Uh-huh. How about One Golden Ring? It's a proposal movie. It's a Hallmark proposal Christmas movie. Ooh, and does she say yes after all of the birds? It's like half Hallmark movie, half Hitchcock. Half-Hitchcock. How amazing. look at that. We just we just made a film. Everybody listening. I don't know if you're still with us right now. You totally may have gone a totally there. Like we digressed in an interesting, interesting yet completely unrelated realm. But but honestly, We were talking about how you need to have some personality, you need to have some entertainment. So how could you make that a b2b post around Christmas time when everybody's just sharing their seasons greetings to our customers bullshit post wow. I mean, so many ideas. I feel like the crucial thing that you and I just demonstrated in coming, what the process is for actually coming up with entertaining content or just conversation, let's be real, because that's what this is, is yes and. It's the power of improv. It's the power to just like riff with someone. And you can do that with written content as well. Like if you thought, if you truly thought about the 12 days of Christmas whole sign, There is 100 % you could find a line in there that reminds you of some service or SaaS offering that you have some product and you could yes and it and make it about it and make it, it doesn't have to be goofy. It can be witty, you know, it can still be like cutting edge humor. doesn't have to be tongue in cheek in a way that makes you feel like you're the linguistic cluts. There's lots of opportunities for wordplay or like context play or like ways of making the content fun that's just yes, ending existing content. I love it though. Well, that's the thing though. I don't want to recommend that people take their teams to like an improv class or something that that seems entirely problematic unless you've earned the right because everybody's friends and you like shitpost on slack. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. But but outside of that, don't do it. It's gonna like somebody is going to report something to HR. I guarantee it. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. Yeah, you gotta have a tight team for that one. Yeah. You know, I can see, I can see like some really cool, creative marketing team doing that though and having an exceptional time. Like I can see how improv would be fricking fantastic too. So how do you get these big, weird and very personable ideas through the powers that be? Cause everybody's listening to this. They're like, like, I don't know what you're talking about about birds, but I love the idea that we could put creative shit into our marketing and get it passed. How do you do that? Damn, I'm gonna be real. I wish I had a better answer to this already because I have specifically sought out teammates and coworkers and bosses who A, will trust me. Cause trust is a huge part of it. That's like the sort of like the stone that you have as your foundation. And then also like, I think it's like having a creative team because when you're surrounded by other creative, funny, entertaining, whatever it is, people, they see what that value is that you're already bringing, like even just the ideas that you're bringing to the table and will value it, will help you propagate it, will take it to greater heights with you. All of that is like about the people that you've surrounded yourself with. So I think that if you're someone who really does want that, who values that, who maybe feels stifled in their role because you have parameters and legal and all that kind of stuff. There are brands, there are companies, there are people who do want you and they want your creative side. Maybe it's partially just about finding a better fit because I can totally see why, I can totally see it being a more relaxing position, a more relaxing job to not have to creative entertaining content all the time. So there's probably a fit out there for everyone, but look to leadership and look towards who you're going to be directly reporting to and working with. And I have to be real, Mark, you are such an excellent example of this. You did such an amazing job of fostering creativity within your team. And I think you're just going to do that forever because you're a creative person as well. And you did that specifically by having brainstorming meetings where they don't have to lead anywhere. their brainstorming meetings because that's what you need. You need to riff with your people and come up with shit together without like some tight deadline of six words, we have to have this at the right at the end. You also did that and really valued people and their creative work by giving them credit and by giving them credit in a way that like managed up being like, hey boss at the top, Bronwyn came up with this great idea. And even if that had like, little impact in terms of like, I get raised immediately or something. That kind of thing makes a huge difference. made a difference in terms of like how I was valued in terms of how I valued myself. Like I was like, yeah, that was a good idea. Like, wow, amazing. Now I can feel like this is going to get, it made me valuable amongst the team and it made me valued to leadership. And that was just, it wasn't even like the execution. You valued ideas that your team brought and you put such an emphasis on being like, This is the idea that was good and this is the person who came up with it. Like that is amazing. You're doing good. Mark, you're a great manager. you're going to make me all emotional, but for for those in positions of power, though, I hope you're hearing what Bronwyn saying is like creating that environment where people feel safe, people feel respected. And then I think you touched on something that is under under appreciated in that I think you need to have conversations across the or. Mmm, well true. something and then you push it up to the powers that be, you've probably already lost it. Think more in terms of like if you're if you're a politician or something in DC, how do you get enough people to sponsor the bill that you know that it'll pass? Yes! Great analogy. Totally. Especially with your friends and sales Because if your friends and sales are on board no matter how crazy the idea is You're probably going to get it to go live Such a good point. And I'll sneak in one more piece of advice, which is I would say that don't be afraid to solicit ideas from your friends in sales too. Right? Like, cause there's some fabulous people in sales with creative ideas that are probably being stifled in other different categories. They have restrictions on what they can say. That type of messaging is released and all that kind of stuff too. It's not just marketing. So if the more you can work together, the more you can find those creative people, bounce ideas off of each other, see who would have buy-in, see what would really work with someone. That's such, I mean, you were talking about collaboration earlier. That's just extending the collaboration to other good people in other departments. That's like the same thing. Yeah. two sides of the same damn coin and we need to stop talking about it in terms of this like civil war. You create a civil war between marketing and sales when you don't respect what each person needs to do. So sales needs to have a creative idea every single day that drives an individual deal forward. Marketing needs to have a creative idea every quarter that changes the company. Yo, that's a sound bite. just just figure that shit out, like let let salespeople be creative and then learn from their creativity on a daily basis to then come up with your big marketing idea. That's like, that your creative idea on messaging in this email really worked to bring this customer in. How do we turn that into a big campaign? Yes. And then change, change the company. The best marketers change the company. You can look at the time before that marketer joined and the time after, and it's a completely different company. Shit marketers, or at least those who haven't developed the confidence yet to be themselves, which, know, please, if you're listening to this, have ideas, share them, share them with sales, push them out there into the ether, but you can always tell the difference. in marketing hires based off of like just even the external view of the company. Like what is the website? What is the social like? my gosh, I'm sure you you see that with somebody gets hired as a social media leader and immediately now their social is a fire. mean, you've done that. I mean, I know in your past you took you took a company that had no social media following and you 10x the following in a year. Hell yeah, hell yeah. I do think some of it is luck. And I'm not saying that to downplay my success. I genuinely think that you have to factor in luck into the algorithm sometimes. No, no, no, no. Let me me let me do the Zach Morris timeout from like the 90s. Yes, I'm that old. It's fine. I have I have learned to appreciate my elderly stature. But it's not luck. If you've set up the potential for luck to impact you. You know, it's the same thing like like a basketball player shooting a half court shot to win the game. If they haven't practiced that shot their entire career, they don't make it. Luck doesn't come into play. And so, you even just the confidence to take that shot as the clock's running out. Only comes down to the preparation you put in before. So, yes, there's luck, but you've set up the opportunity for luck to do its thing. Love it. Is this also a time for us to Michael Scott quoting Wayne Gretzky saying you missed 100 % of the shots you don't take? Yeah, no, no, we totally should. I mean, obviously, that is the best documentary about corporate work ever done. my God, it truly is. It truly is. The accuracy. Yeah. You just had me thinking about something though. the luck thing. I mean, I think the half court shot example is actually excellent. You're so right because, okay, so social media managers and other marketers will know this beef that when your boss or whatever is like, hey, I want to go viral. That's their goal. They think their goal is, yeah, exactly. Quote unquote, hashtag virality. Whatever they think that is. Whether it's like viral for you, viral for the company, viral, viral, whatever that means, whatever. COVID viral, just saying. I think there's this... Anyone can go viral, but you are more likely to go viral if you're creating content on a regular basis that is practicing for what it would be like to go viral. Not for, I want to go viral because it's not really the goal. That's a flash in the pan. You want an even cook. You want a beautiful medium rare. You don't want one burnt side. I don't even know anything about steak, and that's apparently the analogy I'm using. mean you you went right to that analogy like I I have been watching basketball because my Detroit Pistons are finally good again and they like actually know how to play basketball weird like it took a decade but anyway that's why I went there I don't know why you directly went to a stake analogy like we might have to unpack that offline I actually, we can unpack it really briefly online because about a month and a half ago, I had a steak that was so excellent that I was like, oh, I think I like steak now. But before that, I wasn't a steak person. And also I understand, guess fundamentally that it would be bad if you burned a steak, just like it would be bad if you burned anything else. So it feels like it's a pretty accessible analogy. Love it. Well, let's get back to the you burnt one side of the steak. The rest of it's great, but you've ruined the steak. You have ruined the stake. Probably because going viral comes with a lot of bad press. It's so rare that you go viral and everything is awesome. And there's no fallout whatsoever. And all the comments are super nice. And it funnels directly into your pipeline and you get 700 leads for it overnight. That is not the experience of what it means to go viral in pretty much any industry. at all. Often going viral is a bad thing because you embarrassed yourself or you posted something that was like weird and people had a lot of opinions about it. And you can find the good in all situations. It's kind of that notion of like all presses, good press, even if it's a slanderous article or something, there's lots of good things about reaching lots of people. But a content strategy, as lots of marketers will know, is never built around going viral. It's never built around trying to have a top of funnel that's millions of people. That's not what we're trying to achieve in any situation. So what it would mean to not burn your steak and to just go for that medium rare cook, which is the cook that I knew I should go for. Apparently I have really strong opinions about steak now. So just bear with me that building out a strategy that means it's like consistently good, consistently on brand, whatever that means to you, whether it's your personal brand or your one that you're working for. And also that's like high quality. I think that's what my like takeaway is. Medium rare feels like high quality. providing useful and educational information feels so important on social media in the same way that providing entertainment does. Cause if I was providing like fake news and made up stories and clickbait articles, I would not be feeling good. It's not where I want to be. I want to provide useful things and helpful things and educational things as well as entertaining. It's a great point that not every follower and not all engagement is created equal. Yes, totally. Have you tried scoring that? Cause that, that's something I think a lot of, a lot of marketers miss is weighting your, your brand scores as it relates to your ICP. Seth Godin has this whole thing about like minimum viable audience. Like if I have to hit my number, I want to target the least amount of companies as possible. And so if you're doing that and your account based, It makes it very easy to score a social media post based on engagement from folks in your ICP in the same way that I think, you know, share a voice is one of the shittiest metrics out there in, all of marketing. but if you wait publications and mentions in your own scorecard, Mm-hmm. that really helps to be able to share up top. It's like, Hey, this mention is in X publication. That's really, you know, well read with our ICP. These three pipeline customers all had really positive reactions to it when the sales team shared. And so all of these things can add into your, your scorecard and you create this kind of manual scorecard, right? And. enable you to tell the story of what's actually working to drive revenue, not what's driving a shit ton of clicks and followers that may buy down the road, but it's not going to impact your number this year. so well said. wish I could, I mean, make sure you clip that clip because I'm going to use that. Like, I feel like it's such an important part of the conversation when it comes to ROI on social media, because how we track anything about the pipeline via social can be a very convoluted and to kind of meaningless, right? There's it's maybe it's all vanity metrics. I have I have beef ironically with my stake obsession apparently with with like the what it means to have vanity metrics, whether like followers or vanity metrics or engagement is or whatever I could get into that for sure. I think what what's the zoomed out importance for me is one being able to track whatever you can track. If you can get the data, get the data. Have the tools in place so that you know where people are coming from and what they're doing. Sure, absolutely. Get it all. But more importantly, think about what your actual goals are with social. Like what is the core intention when you put the perfect post up there? It's funny and educational. What are you trying to get? Is it a click to a white paper? I kind of doubt it. Is it a follow on the page immediately? Maybe. Is it a reshare to someone who would also think that would be funny? Is it a comment from a random person who's like, hey, Bob, check this out. I thought this meme was funny. Maybe. Because you can see the value in expanding your community, expanding your reach, those moments of interpersonal relationships that can expand your funnel and that can actually drive ROI. in a kind of unconventional way, because that's not what people expect, right? They expect, like you said before, I posted this thing and then someone clicked a white paper and then they downloaded it and now they want to buy immediately, which is what never happens. That's no longer the model that you should be emulating, right? Like that's not what a pipeline has to look like, especially not if you're the person who's mostly at the top doing social media. You think much more about like ongoing community expansion, ongoing, I guess like reach, but in a context that's beyond the numbers on social media, like impressions. Like how far is your content going and why and to where? I could get really into the weeds on this one. So rein me in. not love it first and foremost. It's kind of like what you were saying. It's not about the data. It's about the story. And I feel like social media professionals in general, and we've all been guilty of it. We share the data, but we don't share the story. And so when you have that post that this prospect who's in mid funnel right now likes Why are we not sharing that in slack? Like why are we not telling the story that this prospect who's perfect in our ICP who's midway through the funnel? They're an SQL right now They just commented on this post We need to share that story more often because I think that will then highlight more of what the actual value of social media is like it's in that relationship building. It's about building relationships with the right people building community. Share those stories, not just we had an extra 200 followers this Yes, totally. And one of the things that we can also mention here is it's not just about the brand account doing that. Right. So if like a, if you, if your ICP, your target customer or whatever comes in and likes your brand white paper, but you've just posted. Great. Definitely worth mentioning important, important feedback for sure. But if that same person liked your BDRs stupid meme they just posted also very important. really important, in fact, possibly more important. They liked that person. They liked that reference. They liked that humor. have it's like providing you immediate insight into how to interact with this person and if they're interested at all in what you're doing. Right. That's that's. like a well cooked steak, you know. Oh no, it's true! Oh no! Come on! team. Like how many marketers are not posting in their sales channel on Slack? Like if that's you, this is, this is your, this is your sign, right? These are called actions, bro. Post something in there when like when you have that story that success and it might even be about content like it might be somebody shared it in email. Maybe it's not social. But if a prospect or a customer is reacting to things you created tell the story in the sales channel. And gets lost in the data. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Because you don't want to get lost in the data. And the only piece I'll add to that is invite your sales people team to do the same, right? To like tell you that story as well. What are the insights? What are they seeing? Who liked their posts? Just as important. Yeah. it doesn't matter how many steaks were sold that day. It matters if your prospect like the one that they got That's exactly right. Then they like the steak. It's all it's all stakes and birds on this podcast. That's it. Completely unrelated, by the way. Not surf and turf, turf and I guess surfing the air we could go with. It's like a poultry. okay poultry in motion mm-hmm I don't know why that came to mind cuz of poetry in motion stupid my god I'll think about that later Well, I probably need to wrap it up. We're definitely getting getting a little bit a little bit late on time. This was so fun. I've had a ball. We're we're definitely going to have have you back. We got to do a LinkedIn live on this. Like, that'll be so fun. But I end every one of these episodes the same way. And I will give you the last word, literally the last word. It shuts off at the end. But the last word. And I want you to use that time to give advice to younger Bronwyn Bronwyn who is entering the corporate America for the first time with all these dreams of, you know, linguistics and writing the best content that everybody will read and going viral. What would you, what would you tell that Bronwyn? What would your advice be? And that'll end our episode today. Be yourself loudly. and then keep doing that. Do it as fast as you can. Be yourself as soon as you can and then do it loudly as fast as you can. For as long as you can.