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Dave Gerhardt (Founder of Exit Five, former CMO) and guests help you grow your career in B2B marketing. Episodes include conversations with CMOs, marketing leaders, and subject matter experts across all aspects of modern B2B marketing: planning, strategy, operations, ABM, demand gen., product marketing, brand, content, social media, and more. Join 5,000+ members in our private community at exitfive.com.
Dave Gerhardt [00:00:01]:
Hey, it's me, Dave. So this is a special episode. This was a session that we recorded live at Drive, our first ever in person event, which was early September in Burlington, Vermont. It was incredible. We had 200 people there.
Dave Gerhardt [00:00:27]:
The NPS after the event was 88. We're going to do it again this year. Don't worry. I know there's a lot of FOMO out there. For those of you that didn't make it, we're going to do it again September 2025. But we have all of the recordings right here for you on the Exit Five podcast. Now, this is just the audio if you want the full video and see the slides and everything that is available exclusively in our community. Not on YouTube, not on the Internet, nowhere else except inside of Exit Five in the community.
Dave Gerhardt [00:00:55]:
Join 4400 members exitfive.com and you can see all the content. Okay, let's get into session from Drive. She's head of growth at Novotic and we thought this would be a great little session to compliment Peters because we just heard about the role of CMO. Natalie is going to talk about how to say no to your CEO and leadership team, which I have found my personal experience, I think a lot based on Peters. Like, so much of the success as a marketing leader is managing the rest of the company internally, especially working with the CEO. And now that all these damn CEOs have read the stupid Founder Mode essay, like, that's been my joke all week. Anytime I've done anything. I brought pizza for the team last night and I was like, hashtag, Founder Mode.
Dave Gerhardt [00:01:38]:
I dropped off all the boxes yesterday. I sent a picture to Dan. I said, founder Mode. So, Natalie, thank you for coming. I'm excited to have you. You're up.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:01:49]:
Play it. This is part of the joke. Okay.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:01:58]:
Thanks so much for coming out today. And I do feel a little bad because Peter just gave this great speech on how to be like a really good leader. And I'm going to talk about how to say no to your leadership team. So I'm sorry for all the CMOs and leaders out there. This whole talk is. And maybe when you're a leader, you still have to say no, but how to say no to you. Okay. Yep.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:02:16]:
How to say no to your CEO and leadership team. I'm going to give a lot of examples specifically to your CEO, because I'm at a startup. I directly report to my CEO. But a lot of this can apply to any marketing leader that you have. Okay, so starting with agenda. Mostly because I feel like this is kind of a vague talk about how to say no and I didn't want anyone thinking this was going to be a talk about prioritization. This is not how to do okrs, I promise you. I actually have frameworks and ways to say no and communication styles that go just beyond hey boss, this is what we said we're going to work on and then they have a crazy idea and ignore it anyways.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:02:51]:
I have a framework that I'm going to go in depth, kind of like a rule book for how to say no and how to align your marketing. Then I'm going to a three step process that I use all the time. You don't have to use all three steps, but super helpful. And if all that's too overwhelming, I have some really quick tips that if you implement tomorrow, I promise it will help you. Say no more. Okay, so who am I? I usually see this slide that talks about all your successes, how great you are, why you should be doing this talk. I want to talk about my failures. So all on this slide is everything that I've done wrong, all the times in my career, I've overstepped, overdone it, because I really am giving this talk because of my failures.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:03:27]:
A lot of times I'm overworking myself over promising, just doing way too much at once. I've been basically a solo marketer for about six years now at startups, so a lot of doing things on my own and a lot of learnings along the way of overdoing it. So I wanted to communicate like, okay, this is why I'm giving this, because I don't want everyone else to have to go through this if you're a solo marketer or just I feel like everyone's on our staff right now. Thanks. Thank you for that. It's like group therapy. If you get nothing out of this talk. This slide is group therapy.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:04:00]:
That's what this talk is. And I feel like this is something that I kind of reflected back at my last startup and why I felt like I had to leave it and why I wanted to do something different at Novatic. And I think that's something every marketer is probably related to. But I started my first marketing career as a senior in college. I was working part time at a startup. I then led the marketing department the next year out of college. So safe to say I knew nothing about marketing. I took Some Google Analytics classes and Google Ads, but I really didn't know much.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:04:29]:
But I knew I could work pretty hard. I was a college athlete. I put that in the last slide. I knew I could Google some stuff. I knew if I googled enough stuff and did enough things, something had to work out, right? So I did a lot of stuff. And then about a year in, I was like, okay, I'm doing a lot of stuff. I'm feeling good, but it's not fully working. So I'm doing the blogs and the newsletters and the ads, but I'm not really driving leads and pipeline.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:04:54]:
So I said, I don't know anything. I must not know what the correct things are to do. So I guess I'll just add some more stuff, but I can't take away the old stuff because you can't stop the emails and the newsletters and the ads. So then you're doing the old stuff on top of the new stuff, and then you're doing a lot of stuff. And about two years into my job, I remember when I was at a desk and back when we had desks, this was in person. And just from the moment I would get to work, from the moment I'd end, suddenly, I'd just be like, kind of on the edge of a panic attack. Anyone else been there when you're just like, all day? Yeah, yeah. On the edge of a panic attack.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:05:26]:
Pretty nervous like I was right before the speech, you know, just like kind of shaky. And it feels like just an adrenaline jump on you all day. And every time you look at the clock, you're suddenly behind. There's more to do, there's more to do. There's more to do. And I leave the day just feeling absolutely exhausted. Because as humans, we are not supposed to work in a state of fight or flight, basically for 10, 12 hours straight. And that's when the work started to slip, because you can't be creative when you're in that state.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:05:52]:
You can't think of new ideas. You're just copying what everyone else is doing. And then that's when we go back to step one of I must not be good at my job. Nothing is working, so the only thing I can rely on is working harder. And it just keeps going and going and going. So when I left my last startup and joined Novatic, I said, I'm going to do it a little differently. I'm going to stop the spiral once and for all. I will not have it again.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:06:16]:
And for the most part, I have. There are some days but what I wanted to do was develop a framework. And I don't know if I fully came up with this idea of a framework. I probably stole it from something else. But I really wanted to come up with this idea of what is a rulebook that I can always have so that when I think about what should I be working on, I can't just layer on tasks. It has to fit into this framework or else it does not get prioritized. It's not in the tasks. So before I give away what our framework is, I want to tell you why framework's important.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:06:43]:
So step number one, this is the most magical thing. It's that suddenly you are not the decision maker behind what is a good or bad marketing idea. Suddenly you don't have to make every single decision of should we do this or not? My CEO told me that he vets ideas in his head through this framework before saying them to me. Think about that. Take a moment to imagine, if only. Thank you. Half the ideas that you got got vetted already. I was shocked when he told me that I didn't even know he was doing it.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:07:13]:
So that's the first thing. Two is one thing I don't like about marketing is this idea that some people know good marketing and some people know bad marketing. And really what's good for me might be better for someone else or might not work for someone else. So I really don't like this idea that as the marketer, we're often the ones who have to decide like, is this a good idea or not? So this kind of eliminates this concept of good or bad. It's just purely, does it fit into the framework? Yes, no. And then finally, it even just helps me prioritize. I still get so tempted by like, ooh, flashy campaign idea that we could do, or software I could buy or agency I could work with, even day to day. It helps me say, this is what we do, this is what we don't.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:07:49]:
So our framework is this concept of unique and valuable. Again, I probably stole this from someone else. Feel free to steal it or come up with your own. I think the most important thing with the framework is that it should connect to your brand, mission, goal, reason, whatever you want to call it. And so it makes sure that you're always aligned with what's most important with the company. So to give our example, I promise I'm not going to do the whole pitch, but our mission is to make B2B buying easier. So when thinking about our framework, I wanted to think about, okay, why is B2B buying usually bad or not easy? And a lot of times it's a lot of the same because as I talked about in the stress spiral, when you're stressed and doing too much, you just end up copying what you see. I have been 100% guilty of that.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:08:27]:
And then two, usually you're just talking about yourself because you feel like you have to scream about yourself to get leads so people pay attention to you. So usually it's a lot of the same and just talking about your own company. So when I joined Novatic, I said, I want to make sure our marketing is unique so it stands out. It's not going to be just copying what other people do and then valuable. Let's always think about how it helps our audience versus talking about us. And I'll give some practical examples of what this means. So I'm going to start. I'm not roasting anyone who's done this because we have done this.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:08:57]:
Everyone here has probably done this at some point. Is posting on G2 when you win a G2 badge, awesome? We're posting on LinkedIn. I realized though after I did it that it really does not fit in this unique and valuable framework. One, everyone's done it, including us, so it's not unique. And then two, it's not really helping your audiences at the end of the day with their career to see that you won that badge. I know a few of you are going to argue like, okay, but if they're making a buying decision, it helps to see that we have this badge 100%. It's not helping them in their day to day career to see you have that badge. And that's kind of the cutoff versus in like one moment.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:09:30]:
Does it help? Okay. And then a good example. And I did not just put up this to brag, even though I am going to brag a little bit because I am proud of this. It took me two and a half years at Novatic to come up with a newsletter. Two and a half years, which. That's what I'm most proud of. Not the newsletter. Because there are so many good marketing newsletters out there.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:09:48]:
There's the Exit Five newsletter, for example. And I just could not think of another newsletter to add on to it. And I couldn't just add another newsletter to the world and email more people and fill their inboxes when I didn't have something new to say. So first I was trying to think about how can we make it valuable to our audience. And in the spring we put out a report with Chili Piper. It was all about the top 100 SaaS companies, are they buyer friendly or not. And we got a lot of feedback from that report saying, hey, this report's great, but I really want examples. I want tangible websites that are really good to follow.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:10:20]:
So that was step number one for my newsletter. It's like, okay, I can send people examples. Then step number two was the unique part. And so I don't know about anyone else, but I am a serial skimmer. For the life of me, I cannot read anything anymore. I just skim. So all these great long newsletters with so much value, I catch myself just skimming. So I wanted to challenge myself to make a newsletter that's totally skimmable friendly, mostly skimming, and then links out to more information.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:10:47]:
If you want to learn more. In this case, we want a dogfood on product. So I actually show someone this website example versus just them telling them through an interactive demo. So that's our framework. Now you've seen examples of it in action. I'm sure you're wondering, but does anyone actually use this at Novatic? Do people actually think about this? And so I did have to get my CEO's approval to give this talk. I'm sure a few people were wondering, like, what did Natalie's CEO think about this? He did approve it. He agrees with this whole framework idea.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:11:14]:
And so I actually made him give me a quote about the framework. And what I love about this is that one, he says, our current marketing strategies, I know they're going to be really well done because we're not doing too much at once. And then two, it's not a not never. It's just not right now. And the newsletter was such a good example of that. I could have done a newsletter when I first joined Novatic. I probably should have, but it would have been me copying what I've seen because I didn't have a unique idea. By waiting, I was able to come up with something unique.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:11:43]:
And this is my favorite thing he said, was that by having this framework, it makes sure that we don't just do all the things that he assumed we had to do. And that's the problem. When you don't have a rulebook or framework or a way you do your marketing, your CEO is going to get ideas from your competitors, from all those great SaaS, companies that they constantly send you screenshots from of their LinkedIn posts. We all know those brands that your CEOs love to follow. So if you don't give Them something. That's what they're going to think marketing is. And they're just going to keep thinking, okay, we can do this and this and this. But now you have a simple way to explain them.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:12:17]:
1. Okay, this is exactly what we're going to focus on. We're not going to get distracted by all those other things that you just assume we have to do. And just one more quick example. If you don't believe this framework works, this is an actual slack I got from another member of my leadership team. And again, I'm not roasting anything here. Honestly, this was a very fun idea and if I was a more fun marketer, I'd probably go for it. But he even said itself like, hey, this might be a bad idea.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:12:41]:
I know it's a little bit off brand. What if we did cheeky campaign or connecting our value props to spooky characters? And again, there's something there. I even said, you know, around Halloween, that could be pretty fun. But I made it pretty clear that we typically don't do that more fun, silly marketing, which, no problem, that's what you do. That's just not in our framework. And he totally understood. He was like, you're right, it's off brand. And I didn't have to insult his idea.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:13:06]:
I didn't have to say like, oh, that's horrible. Why would you think about that? I didn't have to turn someone down who took time to be creative and share an idea. I could just explain it's not in the framework. So framework, this is step number one. I'm going to be honest, the framework maybe gets you like 50% of the way they're saying no. There's still going to be times when your CEO comes with you with random ideas and maybe justifies why they're in your framework for you. So what we have next is the three step process to say no. And in this step process, I do have actual examples.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:13:34]:
You're going to see slacks, things from my notion doc with my CEO. They don't fit perfectly, but I just try to kind of show, okay, here's how you actually communicate a lot of these steps. So step number one, this is pretty obvious. I'm sure a lot of you already do this, but it can be kind of uncomfortable sometimes just to ask someone like, hey, where did that idea come from? Why did you think of it? Or like, why is this important? Why is it a priority right now? That's one of my favorites. Why is this a priority right now? A good example. I like to give is TikTok. I feel like we've all been told like, hey, we should start a TikTok. And a good example of like asking the why is like, okay, why should we start a TikTok? And they're probably going to say something like, let's go viral.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:14:13]:
I want to go viral. I want everyone to know about us. Clearly you've all had this conversation already. But if you respond, okay, you know, I agree TikTok is a great way to go viral. Like, first validate that what they're trying to accomplish will match the channel they're suggesting to make them feel good and not as, like, armed. Then you can explain. But I thought our priority for this quarter was website conversion rate and redoing the website. So I don't see how adding a TikTok will improve website conversion rate.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:14:40]:
And oftentimes if you just explain all that you are doing right now to accomplish your current goal, or if the goal that they're trying to get to, you're already accomplishing a different way. Like, for example, if their goal is to go viral, you might already be starting a podcast. Sometimes they just don't realize what you're doing to accomplish that. And a lot of it is just asking that why? And then even asking, why is it priority right now? You can see in my Slack message here, I really like to ask, like, is there a reason for the urgent timeline? And oftentimes just asking that question. I remember after we talked about this, we pushed it back like two weeks because we realized it really wasn't urgent. It was just that my CEO was really excited about something, so it felt urgent. One more quick example here. You're going to hear more about this one on one doc later.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:15:20]:
I also really like to have these conversations in person. So whenever my CEO throws a random idea at me, I almost always say, can we add this to the doc and talk about it later? But I always stress, you know, I'd love to hear where this idea came from and why is it a priority right now? I think that beyond just figuring out the idea, figuring out the why right now, because often it's not a priority right now. Okay, so let's say if it is a priority right now, then you move on to step number two, which is swap it out. And this is either swapping out the actual idea or swapping out when you're going to do it. So similar to the TikTok example, if they're gung ho about starting this TikTok, and like I said, you might also be Working on a podcast. Then you say, okay, great. I'm super excited about the TikTok idea. Obviously website right now is main priority.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:16:05]:
I can get to TikTok next quarter. But that might deprioritize the podcast. Is that still what we want? And sometimes just showing that it's not an and that's all you're trying to show is that you cannot just keep layering things on top of each other. It's an or situation. And getting that in their head helps them realize like, oh yeah, you are working on this big project right now, I probably can't ask you to do another one on top of it. Here's another example of even just a small ask. Sometimes this was updating something. We were playing around with the conversion forms on our websites.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:16:36]:
And even just something as simple as saying like hey, I can get to this done next week. I know you're really excited about it by redoing this entirely would take a lot of work. If this is top priority I can reprioritize it, but realistically it probably isn't even in just day to day tasks. I think sometimes just stating I can get this done X if you need to prioritize it, I can, but this is what will drop can really help. Just make sure that you're not just constantly saying yes, yes, yes, adding on top and then another one here. I feel like we've all randomly had our CEO being like, what do you think about helping with X and something as big as customer marketing, that's you know, a whole department. So instead of just saying, you know, I love customer marketing, I'd be happy to help adding in something as, you know, as I think through next quarter's priority. How much should this be? So you can always start planning ahead to how much you should prioritize, but making it clear it's not going to be something right now.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:17:26]:
Okay, we've all probably said this as a marketer, right? Let's experiment with it. I'm not committing to it, but I can commit to experimenting with it. And again, if you've done step number one, you should already know what your CEO is trying to validate. Trying to figure out, okay, what exactly can we test? And then rather than just doing it full fledged, you can just try a little piece of it. So again with TikTok for example, I don't know about anyone else but if my CEO was like you have to make a TikTok video once a week for your audience, I would cry, absolutely not. But what I could commit to is saying, okay, I'm going to find one micro influencer creator that we could work with that we know has a good audience, matches our audience. And let's test out with that one creator first before we spin up our own TikTok presence. And so you go, you test that out.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:18:10]:
The good news, if it works, great, you validated, it's worth putting the time into. If it does not work, then you have a real tangible example of why you don't think it's going to work versus this. You kind of like opinion fighting. All of this is trying to eliminate the concept of you just sharing opinions about what you think is more important and really get to the root of it. And so here's a good example here. You can also use this as a way to say no if you've previously tried experiments. So this again had to do with like trying to optimize the conversion page on a website. Our CEO threw out an idea of like, let's try another way to embed a form somewhere random.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:18:44]:
And I could point to, hey, we have done two experiments already for this. We have tried this already. We did not see increase of conversion rate. This is not also a big problem right now. Website conversion rate is doing fine. I don't think we need to do another. And again, he totally understood because I could point to the data from the last two experiments we run saying this did not work. And then one other big part of experimenting is outlining success criteria.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:19:06]:
So then by the time the experiment comes back, you're not just fighting over, okay, did it work, did it not work? And so this also gets used against you sometimes. Your CEO then when you say let's experiment will say let's outline success criteria. Here's an example from when we did public facing pricing, it worked. There's public facing pricing on our website now. But we wanted to make sure to get the whole company more okay with it aligned. Let's outline exactly what we're looking for with running this experiment and decide to move forward or not. Okay, just to summarize the three step process. So first, as I talked about, ask the why and not just like why should we do this again? Really ask why is this urgent right now? Why is it a priority? Often it's not.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:19:47]:
Again, it's just your CEO getting really excited about something, then you're going to swap it out. If it is really high priority, swap it out with another idea or simply just state the next time you can do it. I think there's a power in a lot of what I do is just rather than asking like, when should I get this done? Or just being like, okay, next quarter, I can work on it, because this quarter I'm working on X, Y and Z. And then finally, let's experiment with it. How can make sure if that you do have to do it. Right now your CEOs really excited that you can do it in a small way with limited budget and bandwidth. So it's not just taking over everything. Okay.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:20:20]:
If you've listened to the rest of this so far and you're thinking, Natalie, that sounds great, but it's kind of overwhelming. I don't really want to have to retalk about how I communicate with my CEO. I don't want to come up with a framework. I don't know if anyone's going to listen to it. You get nothing else out of this presentation. These next few quick tips anyone can implement, I promise they will make your life better. So first is calendar blocking. This is my actual calendar.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:20:43]:
I live and die by it. And I'm not going to tell you to calendar block because then you have this perfect time to do work that no one's going to book over because they probably will. But calendar blocking is so important because you can actually visualize how busy you are so often with a to do list. Right? It can just add up to do lists in my. When I use them, it just felt like that stacking, stacking, stacking one on top of another versus a calendar. I can see very clearly that I might not have time until next Friday to do something if someone asked me for it. So then I can go when someone requests something for me, I can go look at my calendar and see when I have availability. What I also try to do, and I'd highly encourage is at the beginning of a quarter, at the beginning of every month, even at the beginning of every week.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:21:23]:
I go through and I pre block my calendar and I set aside these big blocks like I think I have the one here for like strategic account work. I set aside these big blocks in advance that I know throughout the quarter. I have assigned myself time to get okrs and big projects done. And when someone asks me to do stuff, I keep that into account. I don't just add tasks on top of it. I will not schedule over those big block times because I know I need that time to accomplish the major priorities in this quarter. Okay, then let's say someone asks you, okay, Natalie, let's do this. The next thing you're going to say is, when do you need that buy? Seems Like a very simple statement.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:21:59]:
But I think we're really tempted sometimes when someone asks us to do something just to say, yes, I'll do that right away. Now that you have your calendar block, someone asks you now they can do this thing. You say, when do you need it? Buy? And they might say, next week. You see next Monday you have some time. In that moment. I go and schedule a task in my calendar because I won't remember to do it if I don't. But then I know I have it done. And if I didn't ask them when they need to buy, I'd maybe try to squeeze it in this week, but they said next week, so I can do it next Monday.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:22:25]:
I also find what really helps is if you do have like reoccurring things you do. So for example, blog content planning for me, I plan out all of our blogs for the month. I do in depth outlines for them and I do that at the beginning of the month every month. So if someone gives me a blog idea at my company and I encourage it, I know sometimes we get crazy blog ideas all the time, but I do encourage my company to tell me blog ideas. I have that block at the beginning of the month. So rather than just saying, yes, I'll get that blog to you right away. I just make it very clear. I do my blog content planning at the beginning of the month.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:22:55]:
So this won't be done until like mid August. I can prioritize it in the list of blogs, but I'm not going to get this right away. And people just know at this point that's the process. So they're not surprised when my answer is, I do it at the beginning of the month. You'll get it at this point. Last thing, and I've shown some screenshots of this throughout, is creating an ongoing one on one doc with your CEO. And I find this is so helpful for two reasons. One is that it really eliminates those one off slacks.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:23:22]:
I think we've all gotten those one off slacks. Emails, phone calls with random ideas that in the moment it's like the end of the day, you're just like, I'm too tired to give you a reason to say no to this. So I'm just going to say yes. So he can put all his crazy or he can put all their crazy ideas in this one on one document. And then you can prepare your no, you don't have to think in the moment of an answer to say no. You can see it in advance. You can go through the three Step process, you can compare it to the framework. And the nice thing is then you have a thing to say.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:23:52]:
You have data, you back up. It's not just in the moment, again, being caught. I think a great example for this, and we've probably all seen this before, is Google Ads. If anyone hasn't been pitched random Google Ads that we should rank for by someone on their team, good for you, because I get it all the time. And you want to say, okay, yes, I've already optimized all of our ads and tried every keyword possible and optimized our budget, but can't always say that. But when I know in advance, I can point out. We have tried this and it has historically low conversion rates or volume rates. I can come with data prepared.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:24:25]:
So I'm not just rejecting my CEO's idea. I actually have rhyme and reason for it. So my last tip that I'm going to give is going to seem really strange for a talk all about saying no to your CEO, but sometimes you have to say yes. I know that sounds crazy, but there are some times that your CEO throws things at you and you can tell he or she is very stressed about it. It's not like I'm just excited about it. It's just something that they're clearly ruminating. They are clearly having their own stress spiral on. So let's take the ads, for example.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:24:56]:
Maybe they want you to rank for a word that you do not think is important at all. But they had a meeting with their investor and their investor said, I searched this word and you didn't show up. Now the CEO's thinking, oh my God, we didn't show up for that word. So now our investor is losing face in us. So now I'm not going to invest in us anymore. Then I'm going to lose all my money. I can't play my employees. They're going through their own stress spiral.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:25:16]:
So sometimes I can tell there are a few things that my CEO comes to me like he's in his own shaky state. It's like I don't maybe agree that I should prioritize this right now, but I'm going to. I'm just going to fix this for you. I'm going to get it done. Because as long as they trust you when you say yes to them, they'll also trust you when you can say no. Okay, that's all. Let's be dee.
Dave Gerhardt [00:25:44]:
Great job.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:25:45]:
Thank you.
Dave Gerhardt [00:25:46]:
Isn't that the worst part about this job? Sometimes a CEO just gets to be like, we should rank for this keyword.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:25:50]:
Yeah.
Dave Gerhardt [00:25:51]:
Like, if only you knew how this worked. Like, I thought they were great. Where's Dan? Is Dan in here still? If you want to also learn how to say no, he's excellent at it. Oh, we've worked together long enough now where he'll just now just be like.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:26:05]:
No, you can just say it straight. That's when you know you've really mastered it.
Dave Gerhardt [00:26:08]:
Yeah. No, but this is great, and I think it's great to see how you work. Also, I love your little tasks. Like, that's how I put mine. It's like slides just. It says, do it with, like, 15 exclamation points. Because, you know, you needed to do it, like, four days ago.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:26:21]:
When I want to do something or know need to, it's all caps. It's like, do it.
Dave Gerhardt [00:26:25]:
All right, Anybody have questions? You want to talk? Yeah. All right, cool.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:26:28]:
Thanks.
Dave Gerhardt [00:26:29]:
Amazing presentation. I just wanted to ask you what was the craziest, weirdest ask that you've ever had that you've been pitched that you had to say no to?
Natalie Marcotullio [00:26:37]:
Okay, this isn't that crazy, but, like, it's really top of mind right now, so I'm just going to use it. And I don't. Again, I don't even think this is a bad idea. Like, if I could think of a cool way to do this, I think this would be really fun. But one of my ies pitched that we do celebrity impersonators for a conference, and they wear, like, Novatic shirts. But in my mind, I'm just like, oh, my God, what celebrity doesn't have some bad background? Like, how can we find a celebrity that's, like, perfectly, like, everyone likes and no one be offended by? So I had to politely tell her. I'm like, this is a really fun idea, but I have two other conferences going on right now. I can't prioritize this right now.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:27:12]:
That's a great question. Okay, so I should have done it. I should have said yes.
Audience Member [00:27:17]:
Martha Stewart impersonator at an HR conference.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:27:20]:
And everybody loved it. That's a good one. See, sometimes you should say yes.
Audience Member [00:27:27]:
I was a fan of yours before this. I'm a raving fan now. That was fantastic.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:27:31]:
Thank you.
Audience Member [00:27:31]:
I'm curious, at what point in your career did you kind of have a realization, like, I have to get better at saying no. Like, I imagine you might have been, like, kind of tired of saying yes all the time. Like, what clicked for you? So, like, other folks in the room can, like, you know, start to adopt.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:27:43]:
This as Well, I think two things I talked about that two year mark at my first startup, there was an actual moment that I can remember why I almost had a panic attack at my desk. And I just remember feeling like going to work every day was so hard. And honestly, part of it was we had a pretty toxic leader at one point and he left. And after he left I was like, oh my God, suddenly I don't feel this constant stress to do a million things like, I can breathe again. So I think part of it was I would really want him to like me because he was toxic. I constantly prioritize his stuff and he wasn't even like my boss, but I prioritize his stuff over others. I think him leaving made me realize how much I just was saying yes to his stuff. And that's a moment where I was like, okay, I need to have my own.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:28:23]:
I almost just need to have my own, like, guidelines and my own rules so that I can't just do what he says. Yeah.
Audience Member [00:28:29]:
Charlie Riley. Great job. Natalie. The last slide about saying yes, do you give context to why you understand? Like, that's a yes. Or do you just, like you said, over time you're building trust. But do you give the rationale of what you understand? Like, you see what they see or do you just sort of, yeah, we're going to do that and then you just do what you need to do.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:28:49]:
Yeah, sometimes I do try to communicate that. Especially like how big of a thing it is or saying like, okay, like, I understand that this was not on our priority list this quarter. Like, I want to make sure that they know that this is not something that they can pull all the time, but it seems like something that's really important to you. And I probably will ask them, like, why is this so important? And then if we have hopefully a good conversation about it, I'll say, yes, I can get that done and prioritize that to relieve that off your mind. But I do try to make it clear that, like, I'm not going to say yes to everything. This is a special thing because you feel very stressed about it. For X reason.
Audience Member [00:29:19]:
Joe Ray and fellow solo marketer and one of the biggest things I struggle with is getting my team to think in a marketing mindset actively. Whether they're meeting with a customer, whether they're just scrolling their LinkedIn feed and seeing something that might be a good idea and get them thinking, hey, this might be a good thing. I should run through a marketing framework of, hey, is this an idea we could use? Is there Anything you've done creatively with your team to kind of get them in the mindset. Thinking of, hey, this is an idea I should bring to Natalie.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:29:43]:
I think just constantly reiterating the framework. And you can talk to my team member Raman. He's here, so he can tell you, I do this a lot. But just anytime an idea comes, just like practice out loud with them, say, okay, and again, compliment it first for the thing it's trying to do. Because pitching creative ideas is so scary. So first compliment it and say like, yes, that would be good at that thing. For that reason, I don't think it's unique for X reason. And honestly, I think a lot of times new team members just might not know.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:30:08]:
I've been in the industry at this point for a while. I've looked at LinkedIn so many times that like, I can just tell when something's a little more different or not. So just explaining that to them I think really helps. And you do it enough times and they'll just start doing it on their own. But it took like a year or two into working with my CEO that he can self fit, so it doesn't happen right away. Hey, Dan. Hi.
Dave Gerhardt [00:30:27]:
So I'd imagine you teach this to people that are going to be reporting into you. How does that play out as you built it? So you know the kind of tricks as they're trying to give you, oh, here's the yes, no framework. Do you like fall into that trap or is that just like, oh, I'm the best.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:30:45]:
I honestly get really proud. And again, you can ask Raman. I've probably done this before when he's like, explain to me like, hey, I'm really working on this. Like, can we reprioritize this? I get proud when people do it to me and I'm happy to see because I also want them, like, I don't want them burnt out either. I've seen what happens. It's going to be bad. So. And even my CEO will sometimes pitch me things and being like, it's unique and valuable.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:31:08]:
I'm like, oh gosh, he's caught on. So I try to just kind of re encourage that behavior and promote it versus getting like, being like, oh, you tricked me with my own thing. Even. So, a fun tidbit. Brendan, I'm going to call you out. I shared these slides with some people beforehand. No, this is good, this is good. And originally I didn't have the unique examples, the screenshots, and so I shared it and Brendan very kindly was like, These slides are really valuable.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:31:34]:
They're really good. But anyone could have given this presentation. It's not unique because you don't really have specific examples. No, it was great. It was really helpful. No, it wasn't.
Audience Member [00:31:44]:
Natalie.
Audience Member [00:31:44]:
Anybody can give this talk, but I.
Natalie Marcotullio [00:31:47]:
Would so much rather have heard that beforehand. And I was just like, oh my God. He used my framework against me and it was for the best. That turned out better. So I appreciate it. If I'm going to preach this, I have to kind of own it too.
Dave Gerhardt [00:31:59]:
I also feel like it can be like it's a slippery slope because I think oftentimes the CEO and founder like, has lots of good ideas and they started this company because they are a fountain of knowledge about an area. And I've seen it go the other way where like I've worked with people that's like, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. We can't do anything. And oftentimes like the hard part is filtering through like the 50 annoying requests you get. The one really good one that you didn't think about. And so I like just like taking them all down. I think your idea of like not talking about it in Slack, but like, cool. Noted.
Dave Gerhardt [00:32:31]:
Then you go to your list and the next time you have a one on one, you're talking about some big issue on the team, it's like, hey, remember that small website? And they're like, forget about it. It just needs different context for. For later. That was really great, really helpful. Thank you, Natalie.