Authenticity Is the New Marketing Strategy – Here's Why | TFOS E13

In this high-energy and deeply insightful episode, Rick sits down with Amanda Rubin, Chief Revenue Officer at Wildfire and former EVP of Growth at Enthusiast Gaming. Together, they explore how authenticity is reshaping modern marketing, particularly through Amanda’s groundbreaking work connecting brands with communities on Discord.

Amanda explains how Wildfire is helping brands authentically integrate into Gen Z-focused communities—not through ads, but through meaningful dialogue, partnerships, and experiences. She also unpacks the difference between marketing vs. branding, why trust is the ultimate competitive advantage, and how startups should think about go-to-market strategy from day one.

In the second half of the episode, Amanda opens up about building her career as a woman in a male-dominated industry, overcoming imposter syndrome, and how she’s found purpose by blending strategic leadership with human connection. Her story is as real as her leadership style—and one that will resonate with professionals at every level.

🎧 Tune in for a masterclass in modern brand building—and how character and competence create career momentum.

Connect with Amanda Rubin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanda-j-rubin/ 
Check out Wildfire: https://www.getwildfire.gg/

Connect with Rick Smith: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-smith-094b29b/
Check out Conquer: https://conquer.io/

Creators and Guests

Host

Rick Smith

Chief Customer Officer at Conquer, Host of The Future of Selling Podcast, Eternal Student

What is The Future of Selling?

The Future of Selling is the go-to podcast for sales professionals looking to sharpen their skills and stay ahead in the competitive world of B2B sales. Each episode features expert interviews, real-world case studies, and actionable tips to help you navigate the complex B2B buyer's journey. Whether you're dealing with long sales cycles, multiple decision-makers, or rapidly changing technologies, we’ve got you covered. Tune in to discover the latest trends, best practices, and proven strategies for closing more deals and building lasting relationships in the B2B space. Perfect for sales leaders, account managers, and anyone aiming to master the art of B2B selling.

Future Of Selling (00:01.466)
Hey everybody, good to have you here today. Welcome to the Future of Selling podcast where we dive into challenges, obstacles, trends, man, anything that's impacting sales or the sales industry, that's what we want to be talking about here, right? My name is Rick Smith. I'm your host today and appreciate you being here. Our guest today is Amanda Rubin. Now, Amanda is the CRO at Wildfire. We're going to jump more into what Wildfire is. I can't wait to talk about that, but she's a CRO at Wildfire.

Prior to Wildfire, she was the EVP of growth at Enthusiast Gaming. So she's in the gaming industry, which I find interesting. Probably talk about that. She was overseeing sales and marketing and operation and strategic partnerships. So that's a bunch, right? That's a big broad thing. So a lot going on there.

She's a thought leader in a number of different areas, including building scalable and efficient revenue engines. So can't wait to talk about that topic. And then finally, you're an executive class member of She Runs It. So I'm going to talk about that too, if that's okay. So Amanda, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for your time. And we've got a lot to talk about today. So appreciate you being here. Yeah, absolutely.

Amanda Rubin (01:09.367)
Yeah.

Amanda Rubin (01:17.102)
Thank you for having me here.

Future Of Selling (01:19.844)
So let's kind of jump right into it. know, again, really excited to talk about the marketing, the branding side of things, but, know, toward the end, we did, we kind of talked about this before we jumped on, right? I like this idea of to, to, to become the people that we are and to be successful takes two things, takes competency in your area and it takes character as well. So I want to kind of the first half, let's talk about the competency piece, the business piece, but then I want to talk about you. Who, who are you? Right. And how'd you get here? So.

That's the plan, if that's all right with you. let's start by telling us about Wildfire. And I'm gonna tag a little bit more onto that. What is Wildfire and what does this mean? Connecting brands with Discord communities. I kinda get it, but I think I'm a little lost. So help me out. Tell me about Wildfire and what that means.

Amanda Rubin (02:04.546)
Yes.

Amanda Rubin (02:09.464)
Definitely. So Wildfire is a community first marketing company. Right now, kind of the core community platform that we work on is Discord. So Discord, for those that do not know, is a large social messaging platform and interaction platform. It's kind of like Slack for a lot of people in business, right? But a little bit more raw meets Reddit type vibe. It was built for gamers.

Future Of Selling (02:33.606)
Got it.

Amanda Rubin (02:35.998)
So it definitely started Discord as something for the gaming industry, for gamers to use and socialize with friends as they play video games. But Discord has since really become just a point of fandoms. It's where anybody really goes to join a large scale fan community. So you've seen Discord expand into wellness and technology and entertainment, of course, still having a very big and core makeup of gaming properties. So what Wildfire does is we actually find ways to place

brands and products and gaming studios inside of the Discord community narrative. So what I mean by that is if you think about typical social media platforms, right, you can think about there's two core ways that a brand can show up on YouTube or on TikTok. They'll show up through the media that they buy, right, through YouTube or TikTok or through the influencer, inside the influencer video or inside the content that the influencer creates.

Future Of Selling (03:17.157)
Yeah.

Amanda Rubin (03:33.206)
On Discord, these community managers are the influencers, but you wouldn't think about them as a typical influencer because they're probably not a personality that also has a YouTube or a TikTok. They're someone that built a Fortnite community and that they now have 500,000 people inside of their community that converse on a daily basis about updates and things and competitions within Fortnite. And so we've basically created

Future Of Selling (03:57.2)
Yeah. Okay.

Amanda Rubin (04:02.606)
an opportunity for these creators and communities to allow brands to enter the conversation in an authentic way and reach an audience in a totally new way. So what we basically say is that we're kind of productizing dialogue and finding a way to create ad experiences inside of community first dialogue. And I guess the last layer I'll give to that right is why does that matter? I think we see the world of advertising has obviously changed a lot over the last

decade and decades, right? We've gone from celebrities and media at large, right? We went from celebrities, Hollywood, looking at these large scale celebs and athletes to influencers and the world of digital media and influencer marketing over the last decade plus. Now we're looking at community and culture and how does culture really grow? Culture grows through community platforms, through socialization. So we're looking at a way to have a brand show up.

inside of the conversation. Instead of being an object that is spoken about to an audience, it is part of the infrastructure really and the thing that they're talking about.

Future Of Selling (05:13.254)
Okay, got it. Well, that's a lot. You just unpacked a lot. You said a lot. Let's unpack it just a little bit, just so I can understand what you're doing. So Discord is just like, it's like a Slack, but it's based on these gaming communities, probably other communities as well. That's where they got it, right? And so what you guys are doing is finding a way to bring brands in to that community, not to advertise to that community, but to become a part of the...

Amanda Rubin (05:14.83)
Yes, yes.

Amanda Rubin (05:30.092)
Yes.

Future Of Selling (05:40.208)
kind of the nature, the culture, the texture of that community. Is that accurate?

Amanda Rubin (05:48.12)
Yeah, and I mean, it is quote unquote advertising, right? But I would look at it more as like an authentic sponsorship. You we're not placing a banner ad and saying, here's an ad, click on it, right? It's how are we coming up with unique content ideas that promote the brand, but also create value for the community. So, you know, we'll do things like a scavenger hunt. Can you guess what movie is about to launch? We're gonna drop hints for the next week and we're gonna ask the community to engage with those hints.

get them excited, get them talking about the potential of the movie, unveil the movie, and then give them tickets to the movie, right? So it's how do we get the community as part of this movement?

Future Of Selling (06:26.352)
Right? Do you guys at Wildfire, do you serve any particular industry or is it just could be any, anyone who wants to get into this, this, you know, into these communities?

Amanda Rubin (06:37.388)
It can be any industry. mean, definitely gaming is going to be the low hanging fruit, right? Because it makes a lot of sense for gaming studios to promote new games inside of gaming communities. But the layers kind of go from there. We work with a lot of entertainment brands trying to reach these specific audiences. We work with, you know, QSRs. We work with clothing and apparel and shoes and luxury, right? It's really, it's more about, and I've been in gaming as you kind of noted earlier.

Future Of Selling (06:45.786)
Yeah. Yeah.

Amanda Rubin (07:05.431)
for over a decade within the media industry. it's the age old question for me, which is, should you work with us when you have a bucket to reach gamers, or should you work with any gaming company when you were just simply trying to reach Gen Z, right? Because I think it's the idea that, well, a lot of these channels are made up of gaming or tech or entertainment. If you're trying to reach a large scale audience, do you need to care what it is they're talking about, or do you just need to know that they are there?

and being able to engage with them where they are in a very natural and organic way will resonate. And so it's that.

Future Of Selling (07:42.384)
Okay, so do you have the answer to that question or is it more about balancing how you approach that?

Amanda Rubin (07:48.376)
Well, the answer to the question is yeah, it's everything, right? The answer is like, I believe, right? Like you should not be working with us when there is a bucket for gaming. You should be working with us anytime you need to reach a Gen Z, a millennial, a female focused audience with female focused channels. mean, like it's more about, to me it's about everybody should be trying to advertise inside of community because community is just such a natural way to align a brand versus.

Choosing it when you want to be inside of a fortnight community But I think that is the barrier that a lot of brands are slowly understanding and getting over when it comes to The connotation that comes around gaming and saying well, yeah, like we're not looking to run in gaming. It's like You know, it's you didn't ask the question when you were buying TV. Were you looking to buy with TV watchers? Right. It's like everyone watches TV. Everyone plays some type of game It's just how do you now get inside of the right channel for your audience?

Future Of Selling (08:38.502)
Right. Yeah.

Amanda Rubin (08:46.126)
So where I kind of look at this is that brands should be buying based on where, who is their audience and where is their audience? Where is their audience spending time? Where is their audience engaged? Where is their messaging going to resonate most with their audience? I could go deep into this, but I had a whole conversation with a coworker, an old colleague a few weeks ago where I think...

Future Of Selling (08:59.513)
Okay.

Amanda Rubin (09:08.494)
For those that really understand the media industry, it's been bucketed for a very long time by television and print and out of home and digital. in 2025, really everything's digital. So how do we really bucket anymore, right? When everything feels like everything's been kind of combined and separated and confused. And so I would make a statement that I think the new bucket should be based on audience. Like at the end of the day, we should look at who is the audience? Who do you want to reach? And where are they?

And so if you're trying to reach a Gen Z, they might be on Roblox, they might be on Fortnite, they might be on Discord, they might be watching YouTube. Like, let's put all of those together in one room and understand how do you reach Gen Z. And I could go on.

Future Of Selling (09:51.814)
So, well, no, no, it's good, it's good. I'm just trying, when you say bucket, explain that to me. What do you mean by it? Because I've heard you say that probably five or six times, a bucket, a bucket, a bucket. What do you, is a bucket like you were talking about? It's television, it's radio, it's whatever, or what is it?

Amanda Rubin (10:01.75)
Yes.

Amanda Rubin (10:07.87)
Yes, it's kind of the way that a media buyer will buy, right? So it's a buying bucket. Back in the day, and again, I think teams are getting more integrated, but when I started my career at a media agency 15 years ago, it was you're on the digital team or you're on the TV team or you're on the print team or you're on the out of home team. And so when you then went to industry events, you learned about the publishers and vendors you could buy with within those buckets, right?

this was your parameter and these were the people you needed to buy with. And I think as gaming showed up on the scene, it got bucketed as gaming instead of by digital or by mobile or by influencer. But the truth is gaming has pieces in all of it and everything is pieces everywhere right now. So it's just the, for a world that has changed so quickly exponentially in terms of how our technology has moved.

Future Of Selling (10:53.872)
Okay. Okay.

Future Of Selling (11:02.896)
Yeah.

Amanda Rubin (11:03.114)
it makes you question, we still buying the way, should we still be buying the way traditionally these teams were set up to look at the players in this space?

Future Of Selling (11:12.006)
Yeah, okay, got it, got it. No, that makes sense. So now it's more, I don't know if this is even the right word, but more transitory, right? There's not one way to get to this. You've got to be involved in multiple. let me ask you this question. What's the difference between, and this is kind of in my words, right? What's the difference between marketing and branding? mean, marketing, kind of get the, most people kind of understand what marketing is.

Amanda Rubin (11:24.074)
Exactly.

Future Of Selling (11:40.912)
But branding is more not as clear. Okay, so talk about that. What's marketing, what's branding?

Amanda Rubin (11:50.37)
Yeah, I mean, in a very simplified way, I would say marketing is short term and branding is long term strategy, right? Like marketing is how do I create a plan right now to put something in front of people, reach those eyeballs and make sure I'm resulting on the KPI, which is, know, is it clicks? Is it conversions? Is it, it's a little bit more tactical. would say marketing, while marketing can be very awareness and upper funnel, it tends to be a little bit more lower funnel with a real result.

attached to it. Branding is it's like the Genesee Quah, right? It's the long term, in depth, deep loyalty, affinity, overall understanding of a brand, what it means, why people resonate with it, right? It's building equity. You know, I don't think of brand equity in marketing, I think of it in branding. So I would say branding is

It's the bigger piece, but it's the piece that there's not necessarily a straight path to get to. Like marketing has got a plan, branding has got a spiral and a staircase and a zigzag because it's got to be flexible and change management oriented to exist at the right time for the right purpose.

Future Of Selling (13:04.164)
Right. Gotcha. I was thinking about this question when I wrote it down and was working on kind of what we talked about today. And here's what I wrote. And you tell me if I've got this correct or not. I like the way you said it. Marketing is short term. Branding is long term. And I wrote down marketing equals I know who you are. Branding means I trust who you are. You like that? OK.

Amanda Rubin (13:23.875)
like that.

Again, I would almost flip it the other way. It's trust on both sides. Branding is building trust. Branding is building association beyond a one-off. I was in a session years ago when I remember somebody was like, think of the one brand that you couldn't live without and the amount of people that were like Apple. Could you live without your iPhone?

What would you do if that brand didn't exist? Like that's branding. That's not marketing. Like Apple doesn't need to really run marketing campaigns. They run brand campaigns. Like they're and I think those are the differences, right? Like a marketing campaign is we're launching the iPhone 16. Like it's about a product. Whereas a lot of the time when I see Apple ads, I just see the Apple logo and it's just like pure subconscious resonance of like we exist. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Future Of Selling (13:56.08)
Yeah. Yeah.

Future Of Selling (14:17.018)
Yeah, get this mental coolness thing, you know. Yeah. Okay. Good deal. So, so if I'm walking into a new situation and I'm a marketing leader, right. Maybe if I'm a marketing leader, I already know what to do. Let's just assume I don't. Where do I start? Which one gets my attention first? The marketing motion or brand building and why?

Amanda Rubin (14:41.198)
It's the age-old question. I think it is like it's the same thing in branding and marketing as it is right in sales. like, you going for the big whales or are you going for the short-term plays? And like, I think the answer is you've got to be doing both at the same time. Like you kind of always have to have these holistic full funnel strategies. You need to understand how marketing is going to drive the more short-term tactical, measurable results. But if you're not building a brand,

Future Of Selling (14:43.672)
Is it? That's great!

Amanda Rubin (15:10.54)
your marketing is just going to consistently fall flat.

Future Of Selling (15:14.106)
Right, right, got it. So, I'm a believer in this, right? I think that if you, when we ask better questions, we get a lot better answers, right? So when I'm coming to a problem, I'm always, you sometimes, well, I always try to just think, okay, what are the questions I'm trying to answer here? So, if I'm working to build my company brand, what are the, mean, cause again, marketing, you can probably get a,

pretty good marketing plan somewhere and you go, we're do these things. Okay, cool. But if I'm trying to build the brand, what are the three to five questions I'm asking myself to be able to start making progress?

Amanda Rubin (15:55.374)
That's a really good question. And you know, I'm thinking about it a little bit from the lens of Wildfire, right? Because while I said it would be lovely to be doing marketing and branding at the same time, for a company like Wildfire that is a startup, right, in our infancy, I think actually we've made the choice to go more branding than marketing. Like marketing would be paying to show up at conferences, right? And, you know, doing paid kind of engagements.

Future Of Selling (16:04.08)
Right.

Amanda Rubin (16:20.31)
What we're doing is branding and I'm coming back to your questions, right? Because the question is for people to know who we are being a smaller company, how do we need to show up? And so it's, I think question one is like, who do we need to be talking to? Right? Which would come also with what rooms do we need to be in? I guess the next question that would come with that or simultaneously would be how do we want people to remember us? Right? Like what's the one thing we want someone to take away when they think about us?

And with that comes kind of the second question, which is how do we make it as simple as possible? Right? How do we not over complicate who we are? Because I think there are so many brands that they do all the pieces, but they show up in such a complicated way. It's hard for you to have that one thing that sticks, right? How do we make it so simple that it resonates? And then I think it's also understanding your competitive set, right? When you're branding, is there competition? If there isn't, great, right? That's rare.

If there is, what are they doing and what are we doing and how do we differentiate that? So it's being simple, differentiated and showing up in the right rooms with the right people.

Future Of Selling (17:29.36)
Okay, okay, gotcha. So, who to talk to? Yeah. How do you build the trust piece though? I mean, just like you were talking about Apple a minute ago, right? There's a certain coolness, there's a certain trust factor there. You know who they are, it's solid. Where does that fall into these three questions?

Amanda Rubin (17:50.902)
Yeah, think trust is built through transparency. Like I have in my career everywhere and personally, quite honestly, like I'm just an exceptionally transparent person. And I think that allows people to build trust pretty quickly because when you don't feel like anything's being left in the conversation, everything's being put on the table, you're being honest, you're being raw. Like even to a point where you could admit these are some of our flaws, right? These are some of our errors or these are some challenges we're having, but.

We want you to feel it because like we're here in this together, right? Like real sales, real brand building, it's partnership building. Like we both need to get something out of this relationship, right? Like this is a relationship. And so it's not about making you love us or one way or the other, right? Like we've got to do this together. so truly, like I will say, for example, at Wildfire, it was very important for us to transparently share our rate card publicly.

We have one rate card, you can access it anywhere. We are very clear about how we got to it, how we build it. And I think, you know, people are surprised sometimes to see right there in our materials, it's like, here's our pricing, here are our rates, but like, we're open and honest about it. Like ask us our questions, we'll tell you how we got there, we'll tell you how we measure it because we don't want to leave anything to question or chance. We don't want anyone to feel like somebody gets priority over someone else. Like this is the way we do it, this is why there's value to it.

And I think being able to over communicate those pieces is definitely the start to it, right? The second piece to building trust is you can't show up in a room and say, this is who we are. Like you better like it. You've got to show up into a room and understand the challenges of everyone you're talking to. What are their problems? What are their needs? Right? So trust comes from listening. comes to listening. It comes from listening to what

What are the things that the people around us need? And then how are we building trust by showing them we've paid attention and we actually can provide something that solves your problems?

Future Of Selling (19:50.234)
Yeah, yeah, gotcha. There's have you ever heard of the trust equation by chance? Okay, so the trust equation says that trust, trust is, well, it's an outcome of this equation, right? High credibility, high reliability, high intimacy and low self-orientation, right? That's, and I learned that a long time ago, I've done a couple of trainings on it, but it just never gets away from me, right? I mean, when I'm thinking about, I mean, I'm a chief customer officer at

Amanda Rubin (19:55.085)
have not.

Future Of Selling (20:19.782)
conquer, right? And so we're dealing with our clients and work with our clients all the time. And that trust layer is so, I mean, if you don't have that, you don't have anything, right? But I think about the way it shows up and as I reflect on some of the things you've talked about, reliability and credibility, right? Man, think about how that goes back to brand. And then the intimacy, getting to know your customers, getting to know, you know, or your prospects, right? Don't walk into a room and tell them what they need to know.

but rather walk into a room and find out what do they need? How can we help you? How can we serve you? How can we be a part of your success? And then that goes back to the low, I think the low self-orientation piece as well. So they're good. Anyway, I love the trust equation. I like to see how we can overlay it on things sometimes. So that's really good. It's really good.

Amanda Rubin (20:53.485)
Yes.

Amanda Rubin (21:06.435)
Yeah.

Amanda Rubin (21:12.942)
It's nice to hear I was kind of close to the equation without knowing it.

Future Of Selling (21:15.32)
You know you were very close to the equation. mean, it just, anyway, it's really, it's probably too simplistic, but it's a really, really good start as you're, know, if that's something that's important. And I think as we think about building that brand, building, you know, building the brand, well, it's got to be a part of it. That's all there is to it. So what about this? So that's a little bit about building a brand for a company.

Amanda Rubin (21:27.949)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (21:41.232)
What about building a brand as a, I mean, there a different set of questions, a different set of steps if you're building a brand as an individual?

Amanda Rubin (21:52.558)
I mean, I think it all depends, right? mean, brand building is so different based on industry, based on competency. Like it's funny, I'm part of a Discord community unrelated to gaming actually, that there are a lot of marketers in the community and they talk about a lot of different things that they do in brand building. And what they view as brand building is so different than the job I do every day in brand building because...

know, we're brand building from a sales marketing perspective, right? Like our customers are media buyers, they're brands, they're agencies. Some marketers, their customer is literally the customer, right? They're the consumer. So I think it's less about what is, are you an individual brand or are you a company brand, but it's who is your customer? So my first question would be who are you branding yourself to, right?

Like I would say when I build an individual brand, which I've been doing in my industry, it's not so different than me building Wildfire as a brand in my industry. Cause at the end of the day, the customers are the same. versus if my customer ends up becoming a consumer, my brand building is going to be very different, right? The type of platforms I use, the way that I speak to those audiences. So I would look at it a little bit more that way. I don't know if I'm fully answering the question there.

Future Of Selling (23:16.55)
Well, let me, I'll take you one more level then. So you work in gaming. I mean, perception, there's probably more male dominated than female, right? You're a CRO. And so how did you build your brand in this community where you would be accepted and you would be trusted? mean, what were the things that you did?

Amanda Rubin (23:43.694)
That's a really good question. I think there's a lot of pieces to that. So one definitely comes to people, right? So as I started to kind of build my brand in this space, it had to be managing, but also building relationships with everyone around me, managing up, managing down, managing sideways, building a team of people that really, I think, respected

my leadership, but my attention to and my care to their growth, right? So like as my career started to build at Enthusiast Gaming, I would be silly if I thought that I built it on my own. I built it alongside an incredible team of people and we did it together. And we did it together because they helped me and I helped them and...

if it was anything but a symbiotic relationship, nobody really would have grown properly, right? So I think it starts with internally just having, internally and externally having advocates and friends, right? And I think it's a funny thing in sales, the world, like the word relationship building, right? And who have you built relationships with? You know, when I started my sales career, was...

One of those typical places that was like, take clients out for dinner, you take clients to get their nails done. Like you do the events, you entertain, like this is how you build relationships. let's be real, taking people to get their nails done is not gonna make them my best friend. And like the goal here is not to make everyone my best friend. The goal is for us to truly have a raw, authentic and trusting relationship. And so it was...

Future Of Selling (25:23.216)
Yeah.

Amanda Rubin (25:25.006)
about finding ways for people to see who I am, my character, right? Like how we can relate on both a personal and a working relationship, how I can help them succeed and help them look good and they can do that in return. So I think people is like the base layer to that, right? Then what it became was, and you asked about, she runs it earlier, right? Like I credit a lot of my brand building in this industry to some of the organizations I have joined.

So getting to be part of the She Runs It executive class. She Runs It was actually the old Ani advertising women of New York and it rebranded to She Runs It, which is basically the advertising chapter for all women in the US. And so we've got this great network of women that, you know, I started going to these events and I remember at the beginning, and this is an important thing to note, I started showing up at these events and I had such imposter syndrome. I walked into the room and I was like, why am I here?

Like I shouldn't be in a room with these women. They would talk and I was just like, they don't want me here. I don't know why I'm here. I was so afraid and nervous to speak. And it's part of brand building is getting over your imposter syndrome. Like it's realizing that like you can hold your own. There's a reason why you're in the room with these people and they want to hear your opinion just as much as you want to hear theirs. And the moment I kind of like lost the imposter syndrome and started to get into this blow where I could really learn and

Future Of Selling (26:24.379)
Yeah.

Amanda Rubin (26:52.204)
grow from all these women around me, I just felt like my career naturally started to elevate because I was able to now have relationships with people that could help my company internally. Like, hey, let's set up a partnership here or let's talk to this person. And the more people I started talking to externally, the more they introduced me to someone else who introduced me to someone else. And so I find it very important on a weekly basis to maintain external relationships with people in the industry in.

parallel industries, sometimes not even in the industry at all, because you never know where one relationship and connection will lead to the next. So I'm at a place now where I got so far over the fear of being in a room and being an imposter and who to talk to, to I walk into any room I can get invited to and make relationships because every relationship leads to some other beneficial path for your current company, for your future company, and for your personal brand all at once.

Future Of Selling (27:49.092)
Yeah, yeah, no, that's great. I love that. I'm glad you talked about kind of the just the imposter syndrome, right? It's such a powerful and anybody who hasn't experienced it just hasn't tried hard enough. That's my gut, right? I mean, if you've ever, know, if you if you're like, OK, I'm I'm going to go there and I wasn't, know, even if you were invited to go there, it could still be you can still feel that thing. So, you know, that's a, you know, just a fear of failure.

Amanda Rubin (28:03.873)
No.

Future Of Selling (28:18.498)
I think is, you know, or they know something about me that, you know, that I don't want them to know or whatever it may be.

Amanda Rubin (28:24.418)
Well, it's interesting too, because you asked about, and I didn't really hint on it, being in a male-dominated industry, right? Like there's definitely a lot of men in gaming. There's a lot of men in advertising sales. So I think, the safe space of something like She Runs It. I'm also part of Chief, which is another female networking community. I think being around a lot of very strong women has helped me along the way to be like, how would I deal with...

you know, a man in this situation who I don't think is giving me respect or isn't handling a situation in a certain way to hear the stories from all of my fellow peers almost gives you this like peer advisory boost where you're like, I got this, like I got my ladies behind me. And even if they don't work in my industry, I have their support. So I think that was part of it. The other part of it was like imposter syndrome massively exists when you're around a lot of men that try to keep you down. And I've experienced that a lot in my career.

Future Of Selling (29:18.47)
Okay.

Amanda Rubin (29:18.694)
And it really, took, it's the same thing. It's getting over the fear of letting people around you make you feel like you were less than. I had to just be like, you know what? I am not less than, like I'm taking a deep breath. I know I can hold my own. I've proven I can hold my own. And it took me a little bit, but I've gotten to a place now where anybody in the gaming media industry specifically, and it's a pretty small world. I just came off of GDC and then the IAB Playfronts like.

I pretty much know every player in the space now. And if I don't know the person, I'm gonna walk right over to them and shake their hand and be like, I'm Amanda Rubin. I'm pretty sure you've heard of me. I've heard of you. Like we should have a conversation. And it's typically then when I get them to break down a little bit and be like, I know, I'm sorry. Like I've been avoiding your message, right? I actually confronted somebody at the IAB Playfronts last week. I said, you know, I've sent you a few LinkedIn messages. I think there's a lot of alignment between what we're doing. So, I mean, unless you don't think there is, I'm not sure why we're not chatting, you know? And I just.

Future Of Selling (29:56.122)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Future Of Selling (30:13.798)
Yeah.

Amanda Rubin (30:15.052)
I'm bold, like I'll put it right in front of them and say, I'm not afraid to chat with you. So we got to have this conversation and you got to do it.

Future Of Selling (30:19.728)
Yeah. See.

Pick up two things from that. Hopefully I can remember both now. But one is own your zone. Own your zone. Whatever your zone is. Don't be just, hello, how are doing? This is who I am. This is what I do. But to do that, I think you've got to be comfortable, at least for me. I won't project that on you. For me, I have to be comfortable with this thought. I know a lot of things, but the one thing I know for sure is that I don't know it all. Period. Right. And so if you can be comfortable with that fact,

then it's easier to make those introduce, you you kind of let go of that fear of, gosh, are they gonna ask me a question I don't know the answer to? Probably, but that's okay, because I don't know it all. You know, I'm still learning. I'm still in progress here, right? I'm not, you know, don't give me the finish sign. I'm in progress. And you just, I think you just gotta be okay with that. So, anyway. Yeah.

Amanda Rubin (31:14.458)
I would agree with that. No, I would agree with that. I would also say like, think almost everybody knows more than they think they know. So it's like, don't short sell how much you probably do bring to a conversation and to the table. Like you'd be surprised how much value any person can add because everyone's got their own perspective.

Future Of Selling (31:20.048)
Yes.

Future Of Selling (31:25.51)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (31:31.888)
Yeah, yeah, agreed. So, when when so just going kind of back to the question I was asking about how did you build your brand in the space? Everything I heard was around really relationships, right? I mean that and and then but it was in a couple of different threads. It was being a good leader, taking care of the people who you're leading, right? And making sure you understand their needs, making sure they're successful.

But then it's also who you surround yourself with. I everybody's heard that I was saying, know, five years or 10 years from now, you'll be like the five people you surround yourself with. But man, I'm a huge believer in that. think that's absolutely true. Right. Put yourself with the people that you want to be like and who inspire you. And by the way, you know, if they don't, then you probably maybe you need to think about another room to get into, you know. So.

Amanda Rubin (32:25.838)
That is fair. will say, and I appreciate that kind of overview of kind of the way it presented it, because yes, I wholeheartedly and 100 % agree with all of this. There was a huge missing piece then, guess, to how I built my brand, right? Which is the actual thing that I'm presenting, right? Like what is the product I'm presenting, whether it's me or my company? Like, what is that message? And I think the other piece that comes into this is it's not just that I'm

Future Of Selling (32:37.318)
Okay, give it to me. Give it to me.

Amanda Rubin (32:54.776)
fearless when I walk into a room and I can have the conversations, but I've built a narrative that is both creative and needed, right? And so when I think about what I built over at Enthusiast Gaming and what I'm doing now here again at Wildfire, it's a full go-to-market strategy. It's what do we provide in the marketplace that nobody else does? How do I know how to speak about that in the most simplistic but passionate way, right? I bring a lot of passion to what I do.

because I have a lot of knowledge in what I do and a lot of creativity in how we do it different than anybody else does. And so the relationships matter the most because without any of them, none of this would get transferred. But I needed to also have the right knowledge to transfer in those relationships where people walk away and I'm not just here to build a relationship, but I'm here to change their mind or give them new perspective or give them new insights that they didn't have prior to talking to me.

Future Of Selling (33:53.668)
Yeah. I think what you just did is you took it back to that key concept of, so if I want to build my brand, there's two things I need. It's character. It's competency. I can be the nicest person in the world and I can get to know people, right? And then they can love me. But that's only going to go so far on a scale of one to 10. Maybe that gets me to a five or six or maybe even a seven. But at some point, if I don't have the competency to back that up, that's as far as I'm going to go.

Amanda Rubin (34:05.442)
Yes.

Future Of Selling (34:21.766)
You know, it's like the law of the lid, right? I hit the lid and that's as far as I can go. But if you've got both of those, but the opposite is true too, I think, right? If you've got all the competency in the world, but you can't get out there or you don't get out there and build those bridges and those relationships, care about people and all this kind of things, then you're also not going to go very far. it's that, so I'm glad you circled back to that. I think it's having both in order to build that effective brand. That's great. That's awesome. Okay.

Amanda Rubin (34:48.673)
Exactly.

Future Of Selling (34:50.342)
So I know we're getting short on time, but not too short. So we've got a few more things I want to ask you about. You talked about authenticity as a part of brand building. I've seen that in some of the things you've written. Any other commentary on that? We've kind of talked about pulling authenticity into the relationship piece, but anything else you mean there when you say authenticity, is there any specific points around that?

Amanda Rubin (35:14.03)
I mean, sure, like authenticity is literally my brand. Like if somebody asked me to, you know, define myself with some core characteristics, authenticity would be one of the core ones. Authenticity in a very interesting, somebody told me this and I really loved this, from an energetic perspective, like in the universe, authenticity is actually the highest vibration. So truly when people are speaking their truth, when they are being fully raw and transparent,

it vibrates higher and like the passion comes with it and people feel it, whether they notice it or not. And so authenticity of not just, my product's really good and I'm being transparent about it, but it's being really, having a lot of humility in my personal life and a lot of empathy for other people, right? And having, I would say, I don't wanna say no boundaries, but taking a lot of boundaries down when I have conversations. Like I am open to understanding and sharing with people.

What are my passions? What are the things that I'm into on a personal perspective? Like what makes Amanda Amanda, right? And what makes somebody else them? And how do we connect on that layer as well and not just on a business layer? Because I mean, if business is just business, then it's not really a very fun thing to be doing. But like, I love my job because I work in an industry where we can be ourselves all of the time. And so I don't show up to work as Amanda at work and then I go home and I'm a different person.

I am the same person all day long and I don't really hold back on who I am one way or another and I think that is truly being authentic.

Future Of Selling (36:49.894)
Yeah. Okay. Got it. Got it. Yeah. Because you've got, you've got one face that you're showing, not three or five or 10. And just see, talked about kind of the energy that that brings that that's the highest vibrating energy, you know, in the universe, right? But the amount of energy can be spent if you're not being authentic is incredible. And, know, even when I'm doing like podcasts and stuff like this, right? I have to, I have to think about, okay, you know, you do some research, get a list of questions and stuff like that, but it's about,

Okay, be authentic though, man. Just go where the conversation goes. You got your outline, you got your stuff, that's great. But go where the conversation goes and don't overthink this, right? Make it interesting, make it meaningful. So hopefully we're doing that, we'll see. Good, good. Well, I wanna flip it just a little bit because we only got about 10 minutes left and I wanna talk a little bit about you.

Amanda Rubin (37:30.978)
Yes.

Amanda Rubin (37:36.918)
Yes, we are.

Future Of Selling (37:47.012)
Right. Because, you know, that so we talked about the competency side of everything. Let's talk about the character side a little bit. We've talked about that already some. But what is it if we haven't already told me we haven't told us what is it that makes what is it that makes you come alive? What makes Amanda come alive? What gets her excited and like, man, let's freaking go.

Amanda Rubin (38:07.564)
Yeah, I'm a very passionate person. I'm passionate about hundreds of things. For me, it's about, I love solving puzzles, right? I always go back to this and it's so silly, because this was my essay to get into college, but I wrote my college essay on why I was left brained and right brained, and that I'm somebody that is both creative and strategic, right? And so like,

I am that person that is living the career I wanted since I was like seven years old. know, like I wanted to go into advertising because I was like, advertising is psychology. It's logic. is strategy, but it's also creativity and thoughtfulness and like these really imaginative layers. so for me, like it's just anything that I can solve with both strategy and creativity at once just as fun for me. And I like to have fun.

Future Of Selling (38:38.787)
my gosh.

Future Of Selling (39:01.828)
Okay. Yeah. that's, great. That's awesome. So you live in your, your, your best life then that's what I'm hearing. You're living your best life, right? Okay. what's who's what or who probably who has been the biggest influence on your life to help you get to where you're at now and help you live this dream and, and, and, and why were they the biggest influence for you?

Amanda Rubin (39:26.892)
I mean, I've definitely had a lot of influences over the course of my life. But like, if I've got to give one influence, I guess, to why I'm here, it would be my mom. My mother was actually a early dot com retail marketer. Yeah, she had me at 24. And she put 1-800-flowers.com on the web and then was early Amazon. She was the breadwinner in my family.

Future Of Selling (39:43.3)
Really?

Future Of Selling (39:52.379)
Yeah.

Amanda Rubin (39:55.758)
for a long time. And so I grew up with a female businesswoman role model, which I think was kind of probably rare for most of my friends. Most of my friends' mothers had very traditional roles. And my mom taught me I could be a businesswoman. And so when my friends would show up to school dressed up as firefighters and policemen, I dressed up as a businesswoman. I wanted to be like my mother. And so.

Future Of Selling (40:16.806)
That's awesome. Yeah.

Amanda Rubin (40:20.502)
I definitely think that's the longest course in my life of, know, a woman can do anything that a man can do. She can do it better. And like, here's why. And so she gave me kind of that fearlessness in business.

Future Of Selling (40:32.506)
Yeah, that's incredible. That's incredible. So thanks to mom for doing that. Right. What's your so what what's your kind of your kind of part? And maybe you don't think in these terms, but I think based on the conversation you do, what's your purpose or mission? mean, you know, what what what what kind of drive what kind of drives you? Right. What kind of gets you?

Amanda Rubin (40:38.862)
Thanks, mom.

Future Of Selling (40:57.52)
Go on, have you ever stopped and just thought, okay, here's my purpose, this is my purpose statement or anything, or maybe you haven't, and if you haven't, that's okay.

Amanda Rubin (41:06.548)
No, I definitely have. This could be a whole other podcast, like I do like honestly, like I've got a whole kind of like second career planned after this one that I think really leans into my purpose. But, you know, I am somebody that is deeply spiritual, not very religious, but spiritual. I believe a lot in kind of like the energy of the universe. I'm actually a certified yoga instructor and Reiki master like on the side.

Future Of Selling (41:11.044)
I know, we should do that.

Future Of Selling (41:24.614)
Okay. Yeah.

Future Of Selling (41:33.584)
Nice! Nice.

Amanda Rubin (41:35.466)
So I just, I am a big believer in helping people live in alignment with what is their purpose, right? And I think that as people figure out, and that's different for everyone, but I like to live every day helping my friends, my family, my coworkers around me think like, how do I live and manifest the life I want to have, right? And that's different for everyone, but how do you not fight kind of the flow of why you're here and how do you live in a way that

Future Of Selling (41:53.168)
Yes.

Amanda Rubin (42:04.994)
you know, gets you to your hopes and dreams and aligns to what feels right inside of you. And that's different for everyone, but I so love having those conversations with people. And I love leaving a conversation when both me and my friend feel lighter, which actually happened literally right before this interview. You know, I had a conversation with a friend and she left saying, wow, thank you. You made me feel better today. Like.

That's the joy I get. And when I can get that from my clients, when I can get that from everyone around me and just, you know, we can add a little bit of light to our day to day. I just, I like adding and spreading the light, I guess.

Future Of Selling (42:37.264)
Yeah.

Yeah, that's incredible. That's awesome. Well, you're officially invited. I've got another podcast. You're officially invited to that one because we can get into all that stuff. That's great. Last couple of questions for you. What's your biggest lesson learned over your career? Anything stand out to you?

Amanda Rubin (42:47.456)
Okay. Great.

Amanda Rubin (43:01.548)
I would say to not be afraid of making mistakes and to give up being a perfectionist. It's taken me a very long time to give up being a perfectionist, but perfection is not the end goal. We gotta stop aiming for it.

Future Of Selling (43:04.368)
Love that. Yeah.

Future Of Selling (43:11.45)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I that. Great answer. And then the last one before we wrap up is what are you what are you reading? What are you watching? What are you listening to right now to just kind of keep you on the growth path and something that's inspiring you?

Amanda Rubin (43:29.634)
Yeah, good question. I'm actually currently reading a book advised to me by my executive coach called Meditation for Morsels. I'm really enjoying it right now. It's one chapter, Meditation for Mortals, sorry. It's one chapter every day and it's just supposed to be about a quick thing of like letting things seep in. I haven't even gotten into anything around meditation yet. It's more about just like day-to-day tactics for being your best self and not getting overwhelmed by to-do lists. So for that,

I'm loving right now. Watching, I don't think I've watched anything in weeks. I think it took my husband and I like three months to get through Zero Day, which is six episodes. That's how much free time we have between our jobs and our children. yeah, I'll ask me that one a little bit later when I don't have a three and five year old. And then what was the third one? Listening.

Future Of Selling (44:10.374)
Correct.

Future Of Selling (44:18.416)
and I'll come back to

Future Of Selling (44:23.846)
Listening, watching, or reading.

Amanda Rubin (44:27.65)
Listening, watching, and reading. So listening, there's two separate things that I'm listening to right now. One is I'm really, really inspired by, and I was talking about kind of like energy and consciousness. There's a really cool company called Jumpsuit that they, this is a very long-winded thing, but they're basically, they're a freelance advertising agency that's now experimenting with what it means for a company to become conscious. And they've been doing a lot of very interesting,

videos and kind of like podcasts around everything from like full funnel marketing to integrating like clairvoyance and intuition, like intuition into the funnel of business, which I just find so intriguing. So I've been, I'm trying to open up my mind to a lot of things like that, things that just kind of get expanded consciousness.

Future Of Selling (45:12.614)
That is interesting.

Future Of Selling (45:18.438)
Alright.

Amanda Rubin (45:22.06)
And then I guess to give you another piece of Amanda, I've been listening to a lot of Goose, the band. I just find them to be absolutely wonderful to listen to you right now.

Future Of Selling (45:26.854)
All right. I like just keeping it real right there. I like that. I like that. All right. Good deal. Well, thank you for being here. before we jump off, I always like to of wrap up with some key takeaways, right? Because I'm thinking if I'm listening to this podcast, hopefully it's been a great conversation for folks, but we've covered a lot of ground. So I always kind of like to get back to, you know, what are the three key takeaways? And here's the situation. I'm a budding sales and marketing professional, right?

Maybe I just took a role as a manager or a director or something like that. What are the three key takeaways from today's conversation that's gonna help turbocharge my path forward? What would you say? Have we talked about this? We talked about that and we talked about the other. What are the three today, you think, for someone?

Amanda Rubin (46:14.954)
Yeah, so I would say from a competence standpoint, right? Like know your product, know your product inside and out so that you don't need a deck or lean on materials to feel like you're presenting something to someone because when you know your product inside and out, there's so much flexibility and the way that you can fine tune it to your buyer needs, right? And that comes to step two, which is now that you have that competency, don't be afraid to make relationships everywhere.

Like it's very hard to do to give up that fear, but try it. Walk into a room and just put your hand out and introduce yourself to someone, right? And you will just start to see every relationship you make, how it lessens your imposter syndrome and opens more doors, right? So I would say that's the competence and character side to it. And then I would say the third piece to that would really be find what...

it is you're passionate about, right? Because if you're not enjoying what you're presenting to people in the conversation you're having, it's never gonna be fun for you. So you've got to find your niche that you resonate with, that you understand, that you enjoy being part of, right? Because you want your job to be fun. Working in sales and marketing is fun. If it's not fun to you, you've got to figure out what is.

Future Of Selling (47:32.378)
Yeah, no, that's great. here, so I'm just gonna repeat this, I thought they were great. So know your product and know it to the point where you don't need, again, materials to lean on, right? And I agree with you, the better you know it, just the synapses start clicking, you know, there's so many directions you can go with it, which is incredible. Don't be afraid, right, to make relationships everywhere you go.

And that's based on that competency piece. I know what I'm talking about. So that gives me the confidence to lean into people, right? The confidence to own my zone. And then number three, this is good. Find out what you love is the way I'm saying it, or even better said, find out what makes you come alive. Right. And I love that statement because it's the opposite of the walking dead. Right. Find out what makes you come alive and then invest number one and two.

Amanda Rubin (48:03.853)
Yeah.

Amanda Rubin (48:15.81)
Yes.

Future Of Selling (48:24.366)
knowing your product and leaning into people, invest there. Invest that, you only have so much time, so you as well do something you really enjoy doing, right? yeah, those are great. Those are awesome. Well, Amanda, thank you so much for the time today. We went a little bit longer than hopefully, you know, maybe we were supposed to, but it was great conversation. So was really fun. So thank you. I appreciate it. Have a good day. All righty. Have a good day. We'll talk to you soon.

Amanda Rubin (48:32.877)
Exactly.

Amanda Rubin (48:48.142)
Thank you for having me.

Amanda Rubin (48:52.216)
You too.