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Conversations about marketing and business. Hosted by Dave Gerhardt (Founder of Exit Five, Former CMO). If you work in marketing check out exitfive.com
Dave [0:00:00]: You're listening to B2B marketing with me, Dave Gerhardt.
Dave [0:00:03]: Hey, my guest on this episode is Kelly Cheng.
Dave [0:00:19]: She is the Cmo at Goldcast.
Dave [0:00:22]: We had an awesome conversation just wrapped up with her.
Dave [0:00:24]: We talked about growing from growth marketer to Cmo over the last four years taking on the role of Cmo Goldcast, manages a team of thirty people.
Dave [0:00:34]: They've shifted their strategy from more product led to sales led in twenty twenty five.
Dave [0:00:39]: We talk about that, managing the Bd r team.
Dave [0:00:42]: We talk about her org, her direct reports, her marketing operating system thoughts on brand.
Dave [0:00:47]: Questions she would ask the founders if she was interviewing for a job today.
Dave [0:00:51]: And overall, just thought this was an awesome conversation with a marketer who is in the Weeds right now at an awesome company.
Dave [0:00:57]: Leading marketing, doing a bunch of things that you will find interesting if you enjoy this podcast on marketing.
Dave [0:01:02]: So here's my interview with Kelly Cheng.
Dave [0:01:05]: She's a Cmo of Goldcast.
Dave [0:01:06]: Alright.
Dave [0:01:07]: Cool.
Dave [0:01:08]: It's my favorite types of episodes.
Dave [0:01:10]: The Cmo, mom, parent life.
Kelly [0:01:15]: Just chaos.
Dave [0:01:16]: Just chaos.
Dave [0:01:16]: Yeah.
Dave [0:01:17]: Yeah.
Dave [0:01:17]: So this is Kelly Cheng.
Dave [0:01:19]: She's a Cmo at Goldcast.
Dave [0:01:20]: Kelly.
Dave [0:01:21]: Thanks for coming on this podcast.
Dave [0:01:22]: Thanks for hanging out with me Appreciate you.
Kelly [0:01:25]: Yeah.
Kelly [0:01:25]: Thanks for having me.
Dave [0:01:26]: Where are you based Are you in Boston?
Dave [0:01:28]: Yeah.
Kelly [0:01:29]: I'm just off outside of Boston.
Kelly [0:01:29]: So I lived...
Kelly [0:01:31]: I'm originally from Hong Kong was born and raised in Hong Kong, but moved to the states for school?
Dave [0:01:36]: What school How old were you?
Kelly [0:01:38]: I was in high school So I was fourteen when I moved here.
Kelly [0:01:41]: I went to a boarding school in Connecticut.
Kelly [0:01:43]: So my parents shipped in the office as soon as I became a teenager.
Kelly [0:01:46]: Which was smart.
Dave [0:01:48]: Wait alone.
Dave [0:01:49]: Did you come over here to go to school?
Kelly [0:01:51]: Yeah.
Kelly [0:01:51]: I did.
Dave [0:01:52]: Oh, my god.
Kelly [0:01:53]: And that was really fun.
Kelly [0:01:54]: It was like camp honestly.
Kelly [0:01:55]: But I ended up going to College in Boston.
Kelly [0:01:58]: Spent a couple years in San Francisco Learning tech and then move back to Boston.
Kelly [0:02:03]: I I now settle about thirty minutes north of Boston, the smallest town in Massachusetts.
Kelly [0:02:08]: It's a little beach town called Na hot.
Dave [0:02:10]: Nah hunt.
Dave [0:02:11]: I feel...
Dave [0:02:11]: I've seen Nah hunt.
Dave [0:02:12]: I'm from Worcester.
Dave [0:02:13]: I've seen...
Dave [0:02:13]: You know, you know you know some random towns.
Dave [0:02:15]: Wow, that's a may.
Dave [0:02:16]: I didn't know I didn't know all about you.
Dave [0:02:18]: And then, I feel like I saw an interesting note.
Dave [0:02:20]: You're in our you're in our Cmo group.
Dave [0:02:22]: Your husband is a Emt.
Kelly [0:02:25]: Yes.
Kelly [0:02:25]: He's a firefighter of paramedic.
Dave [0:02:26]: Two polar opposite lives, which just gives you a lot of perspective, which is amazing.
Kelly [0:02:31]: For sure.
Kelly [0:02:31]: We, it's it's actually fun to not have a lot of work things in common, so we...
Kelly [0:02:37]: After work.
Kelly [0:02:38]: I don't talk about work.
Kelly [0:02:39]: So it's definitely fit
Dave [0:02:41]: He doesn't he doesn't he doesn't wanna hear you talk about, like, Gp five and Salesforce and Hubspot and all lot of stuff.
Dave [0:02:48]: Right?
Dave [0:02:48]: Nice.
Dave [0:02:51]: And how did you...
Dave [0:02:53]: Where did you go to school in Boston?
Kelly [0:02:55]: Boston College.
Dave [0:02:56]: Oh, you're you're...
Dave [0:02:56]: There's a lot of eagles around here.
Dave [0:02:58]: Do you know you know You know, Ding from a event shark?
Kelly [0:03:01]: I don't.
Dave [0:03:02]: Okay.
Dave [0:03:02]: Dang k, the sales rapper, ding
Kelly [0:03:06]: He's part of him.
Dave [0:03:07]: I've...
Dave [0:03:07]: Yeah.
Dave [0:03:07]: Yeah.
Dave [0:03:08]: He's a b guy
Kelly [0:03:09]: to bong or something.
Kelly [0:03:10]: Yeah.
Dave [0:03:11]: Yeah.
Dave [0:03:11]: He's he but he's he's par that into this whole amazing, like, a video company.
Dave [0:03:16]: We use them for a lot of our our video production stuff, a.
Dave [0:03:19]: That's Okay.
Dave [0:03:20]: So you're you're well versed in the Cleveland circle, you know, Eagles deli, p, pizza
Kelly [0:03:26]: yeah.
Kelly [0:03:26]: Mary
Dave [0:03:28]: piece.
Dave [0:03:28]: Mary is...
Kelly [0:03:29]: I think it's now a spencer.
Dave [0:03:31]: Of of course, it is.
Dave [0:03:31]: Like, just, like everything else has become has you.
Dave [0:03:35]: It's like...
Dave [0:03:35]: Right.
Dave [0:03:35]: That's awesome.
Dave [0:03:37]: And tell me about your your journey at at Gold.
Dave [0:03:40]: You've been there for over four years, and you've joined the company not at, like, you've you've kind of...
Dave [0:03:46]: Your career has grown with the trajectory of the company.
Dave [0:03:49]: Right?
Kelly [0:03:50]: Absolutely.
Kelly [0:03:50]: So, I joined about just actually just met my four year anniversary two weeks ago.
Dave [0:03:56]: Nice.
Dave [0:03:56]: Meaningful fully vested, meaningful moment.
Dave [0:03:59]: That's a meeting.
Kelly [0:04:00]: It's crazy that four years have has flown by.
Kelly [0:04:02]: Yeah.
Kelly [0:04:03]: I my background is in growth marketing and performance marketing.
Kelly [0:04:05]: I really started my career in the advertising agency side with media planning and performance advertising.
Kelly [0:04:11]: And so when I joined Goldcast, I was actually hired to run growth, not marketing.
Kelly [0:04:17]: We had full aspirations for Goldcast to be, like, a P company.
Kelly [0:04:21]: Yeah.
Dave [0:04:22]: A every
Kelly [0:04:22]: free trial and everything, but quickly learned that events is a very complicated platform, everybody has different wants and needs for how they're...
Kelly [0:04:32]: They want their event to run and look and feel, we learned that no matter how easy or sophisticated we build the free trial, there's always gonna be a a level of user error, and we saw that when even if it's user error, the product gets blamed.
Kelly [0:04:47]: And so it started to cannibal our sales funnel.
Dave [0:04:50]: What's funny about that is, like, we're, like, post event post draw, like, post our event and we're...
Dave [0:04:54]: It doesn't matter.
Dave [0:04:55]: This there's, like a human lesson and it's like, doesn't matter how many times you communicate someone to something to someone.
Dave [0:05:00]: It's like, we we emailed you fifteen times.
Dave [0:05:02]: We send text message.
Dave [0:05:03]: We told you all the instructions, but humans are always...
Dave [0:05:06]: Like, we...
Dave [0:05:07]: And you've ever been on an airplane or in an airport, you know this.
Dave [0:05:09]: Like, we don't like to take responsibility.
Dave [0:05:11]: It's always, like, Oh, this product sucks.
Dave [0:05:13]: They're, like, you didn't tell me, you know, you I was like, no Did.
Dave [0:05:16]: We sent you the email, like, fifteen times.
Dave [0:05:17]: Like, I I don't know.
Dave [0:05:18]: I don't know what has to tell you.
Dave [0:05:19]: It's you're very very true.
Kelly [0:05:21]: Exactly.
Kelly [0:05:21]: So, you know, we we sunset the trial.
Kelly [0:05:23]: The events platform trial very quickly.
Dave [0:05:26]: Okay.
Kelly [0:05:27]: And I quickly pivoted into, you know, running the marketing team and leader marketing strategy, which has been a blast to kind of see how our companies...
Kelly [0:05:34]: Our company has grown from that point solution as a webinar of virtual events platform to more of like, a Ai video content platform.
Kelly [0:05:41]: Yeah.
Kelly [0:05:43]: Last couple of years in marketing has been extremely interesting.
Kelly [0:05:45]: So it's been it's been fun to be part of the journey.
Dave [0:05:48]: I wanna unpack some of that and specifically, like, what what you all have done in a in a super crowded space to to stand out and and to grow that's super interesting.
Dave [0:05:57]: But you mentioned that your your background was in growth.
Dave [0:06:00]: Did you see...
Dave [0:06:02]: I wish I had to save but some someone woman posted this thing on Linkedin maybe two or three weeks ago by how, like, growth is just, like what boys call marketing or something like that.
Dave [0:06:12]: It's like...
Kelly [0:06:13]: Everybody wants growth.
Dave [0:06:15]: It's gonna be like, and nobody wants to be here, for some reason.
Dave [0:06:17]: It's, like, no.
Dave [0:06:18]: I'm the head of I'm the head of growth.
Dave [0:06:19]: I was like, isn't that?
Dave [0:06:20]: Isn't not like just what marketing does?
Kelly [0:06:22]: Right.
Kelly [0:06:22]: Right.
Kelly [0:06:23]: What, I love growth.
Kelly [0:06:25]: So I really got into growth when I was out in San Francisco, I worked at a company called Pager duty.
Kelly [0:06:31]: Okay.
Kelly [0:06:31]: Rocket ship when I was there.
Dave [0:06:33]: Yeah.
Kelly [0:06:33]: And really was able to work both the product led funnel and the sales led funnel.
Kelly [0:06:37]: And what's interesting about pager duty is that not one segment.
Kelly [0:06:40]: They serve all companies of all sizes, Not one segment dominates their revenue.
Kelly [0:06:45]: So their very small business was a quarter of their revenue as well as their enterprise and mid market and commercial, etcetera.
Kelly [0:06:52]: So that free trial was really important, and I got to work with engineers to run experiments, so it wasn't just limited to marketing.
Kelly [0:06:59]: So that was really, really interesting for me.
Dave [0:07:02]: What was your role at at pager duty in in growth?
Dave [0:07:05]: Were you, like, running paid, running product experiments?
Dave [0:07:09]: Like, what was kind of the purview of your your role?
Kelly [0:07:11]: So I was mostly on the marketing side running the paid side of things.
Kelly [0:07:14]: So completely own paid search, which is a big contributor to the very small business segment and people discovering the free trial, but also worked, like, the life cycle side of it, so email nurturing the step by step emails that you get once you start your free trial.
Kelly [0:07:27]: There was, like, the that fourteen day period where it's really, if you don't make it that fourteen days that doesn't convert into revenue and then working with the product Pms to really be able to run experiments on the engineering side.
Dave [0:07:40]: And then today, you've par that into a Cmo job a lot of people when they talk...
Dave [0:07:46]: I see this in our in our community, people talk about the path to Cmo.
Dave [0:07:49]: And I've done, you know, I don't know, three hundred interviews with Cmo over the last five years or something like that.
Dave [0:07:57]: And it's interesting because you talked to any Cmo and they've all come up through different paths?
Dave [0:08:02]: I know Cmos that started in P and know Cmos that started in growth?
Dave [0:08:06]: I know Cmos that started in in product marketing.
Dave [0:08:08]: But how did you expand your skills from being like.
Dave [0:08:12]: Kelly, the girl doing, you know, growth growth girl, Kelly to, like, how do you articulate that now that maybe you you didn't know how...
Dave [0:08:22]: How to articulate at the time?
Dave [0:08:23]: Like, what what changes when you become when you go from growth manager to maybe Cmo, what's different about that role.
Kelly [0:08:31]: Yeah.
Kelly [0:08:31]: That's a very a very big question to unpack.
Dave [0:08:37]: Well, good.
Dave [0:08:37]: That's why I have here.
Dave [0:08:38]: Go ahead.
Dave [0:08:38]: Let's try to unpack.
Dave [0:08:40]: Yeah.
Kelly [0:08:40]: There's so many steps in between that I kind of had to, like, lessons learned that I had to kind of go through myself, you know, when I was doing growth work, I was kind of eyes wide open trying to just, like, be a sponge and kind of learn every part of the growth journey, not just the parts where I was fully immersed in because I was just...
Kelly [0:09:01]: I was doing growth on the product side with the trial, but also running demand generation with the sales blood funnel.
Kelly [0:09:07]: So having both perspectives was was really interesting for me.
Kelly [0:09:10]: I think as I kind of went into that Cmo trajectory, I definitely leaned into more of the demand generation side of things.
Kelly [0:09:18]: I'm so taking lessons learned from the growth side, like, experiments, have having that experimental mindset, but also making sure that as Goldcast is a fully sales led organization, making sure that I had that business acumen and understanding how to work with sales led organizations, like, understanding the revenue language.
Kelly [0:09:40]: And another big part of it too was people management, going from managing programs to now being a Cmo I manage a team of thirty full time and freelance contractors and, you know, many agencies in, global, lead world, like, worldwide and remote.
Kelly [0:09:58]: That was a huge huge jump and challenge every single day.
Dave [0:10:03]: Yeah.
Dave [0:10:03]: Well especially, like, the...
Dave [0:10:04]: Probably the things that made you good as a growth person was, like, you know, your...
Dave [0:10:09]: Your your background is, like, is very traditional growth, like, in in a good way.
Dave [0:10:15]: San Francisco, growth, digital product experiments, like, what makes you good as a growth person is that creativity and, you know, almost like scientific part of marketing to figure out.
Dave [0:10:26]: Okay.
Dave [0:10:27]: We wanna try to increase this metric this way.
Dave [0:10:29]: But now you've shifted to...
Dave [0:10:32]: You're not doing...
Dave [0:10:33]: You shouldn't be at least because you have a team of thirty people.
Dave [0:10:36]: Right?
Dave [0:10:36]: Like, you're not pressing those buttons yourself, and it it becomes a completely different role.
Dave [0:10:41]: Did you have a a mentor?
Dave [0:10:43]: Did you have like, was it Ka couture and and?
Dave [0:10:45]: Like, did they help you through...
Dave [0:10:47]: How did you take that leap and I I think one thing I struggle with in in in my journey, like, becoming a Cmo was, like, I'm really good at the marketing stuff?
Dave [0:10:56]: Not as great at the time as, like, managing around the org and the people and the priorities and, you know, performance management and all those reviews like, how did how did you make that make that jump?
Dave [0:11:07]: I see this all the time people?
Dave [0:11:08]: Like, how do I get?
Dave [0:11:09]: How do I find a mentor?
Dave [0:11:10]: Like, and is that Is that the answer?
Dave [0:11:12]: Like, what what was it for you if you look back on your four years?
Kelly [0:11:15]: So a mentor of mine from from Pager duty was the general manager of growth.
Kelly [0:11:20]: Her name was Rebecca klein.
Kelly [0:11:21]: She incredible.
Kelly [0:11:21]: I learned so much under her wing when she was at Pager Duty with me.
Kelly [0:11:26]: And she continues to help me navigate through a lot of different conversations that I'm having and on the executive level.
Kelly [0:11:34]: Like, what I was promoted to Cmo understanding my compensation, whether it was the right, you know, band and and all that, like, it.
Kelly [0:11:40]: It's hard to.
Dave [0:11:41]: That's the crazy stuff.
Dave [0:11:42]: Like, nobody...
Dave [0:11:42]: Who do you talk to?
Dave [0:11:44]: Like, I had somebody messaged me at the other day, and they're like, hey, And they messaged me because they feel like, because I'm in...
Dave [0:11:49]: Because of the community they can just, like, you know, I I don't I don't know.
Dave [0:11:52]: Like that...
Dave [0:11:52]: This woman messaged me.
Dave [0:11:53]: And she's like, hey, this was my equity grant.
Dave [0:11:55]: Like, do you think to good.
Dave [0:11:56]: And I'm like I have no idea.
Dave [0:11:57]: And so, like, how do you know any of that stuff?
Dave [0:11:59]: Yeah.
Kelly [0:12:00]: Right.
Kelly [0:12:00]: So, you know, having her gone through having experience gone through all this in the past herself personally kind of guiding me through it was extremely helpful.
Kelly [0:12:08]: So I'm forever grateful to have her in my corner, and early on in, at Goldcast, I was connected with Sydney Sloan, who's now that chief market officer at g two, and she and I have become very close.
Kelly [0:12:20]: I've actually never actually met her in person, but we've connected so much over Zoom over email everything.
Kelly [0:12:27]: She used to...
Kelly [0:12:28]: I used to meet with her, you know, once a week, she was actually the first person I ever told outside of, you know, my husband, that I was pregnant the first time, because I was shocked.
Kelly [0:12:38]: And I was like, I don't know what to do about this.
Kelly [0:12:40]: And so she helps me navigate through that, like, personally and also professionally.
Dave [0:12:44]: You're like, how do how do how do I have this?
Dave [0:12:46]: Like, how do I how do I, like, tell work?
Kelly [0:12:48]: Yeah.
Kelly [0:12:48]: Do I that?
Dave [0:12:49]: Like, is that is that a weird thing?
Dave [0:12:50]: Like, hey guys?
Dave [0:12:51]: I wanna...
Kelly [0:12:52]: So early that we didn't have a poll.
Kelly [0:12:53]: Yeah.
Kelly [0:12:53]: And so she was kind of helping me figure that whole process through.
Kelly [0:12:57]: And so, again, forever, grateful to have her in my corner as well.
Kelly [0:13:01]: And then, Yeah.
Kelly [0:13:02]: Most recently...
Dave [0:13:03]: Wait.
Dave [0:13:03]: But, before I forget.
Dave [0:13:04]: So so the the woman from Pager duty, was she your boss or someone you just kinda like, took a...
Dave [0:13:09]: Took a liking to inside of the company.
Kelly [0:13:12]: She was my...
Kelly [0:13:13]: So what's interesting in my career is that I've very rarely had someone that was, like, directly above me.
Kelly [0:13:19]: And so even though my title was growth specialist or, you know, then growth marketing manager, I reported into the Gm.
Kelly [0:13:26]: There was no, like, director in between us.
Kelly [0:13:29]: And so I did report into her directly, and that gave me a lot of visibility into some of the conversations that she was having on the executive level being able to kind of understand and and have her filter that stuff down to me.
Dave [0:13:40]: Someone asked me another other day.
Dave [0:13:41]: Like, how do I...
Dave [0:13:42]: I'm looking for a mentor.
Dave [0:13:43]: Like, how do I have a mentor?
Dave [0:13:45]: I have a budget of twenty five hundred dollars.
Dave [0:13:46]: I get a mentor.
Dave [0:13:48]: And I was like, I don't know.
Dave [0:13:49]: The two mentors I had were both people that I that I reported to and, like, I work my ass off for and became that, but Z ever asked you that?
Dave [0:13:59]: Like, how do you give that advice about how how to find a mentor?
Dave [0:14:01]: Like, you you got connected to Sydney through Goldcast, but just like, cold message someone?
Dave [0:14:06]: I don't even know what a good answer?
Dave [0:14:08]: Like, how how do how do I help someone with that?
Kelly [0:14:11]: I think lately, I've been seeing a lot of Linkedin connections of people wanting to find mentors, and, you know, I think it starts with, like, coffee chats.
Kelly [0:14:23]: You can't just, like, force some mentorship.
Kelly [0:14:25]: It has to work in terms of two people ji and and having some common ground.
Kelly [0:14:30]: So it's kind of like dating almost.
Kelly [0:14:32]: I feel like finding a mentor, and it it does take work in investment to find the right match because you really can't force it.
Kelly [0:14:39]: And I honestly was lucky enough to have warm intros to get me those mentors.
Dave [0:14:43]: Yeah.
Kelly [0:14:44]: Especially, you know, strong, you know, women in the workplace that I can kinda look up to.
Kelly [0:14:48]: I can't imagine not having, you know, these these women cheering for me.
Dave [0:14:52]: Okay.
Dave [0:14:52]: I'm sorry.
Dave [0:14:53]: I I took us off I took a took a check because I I and I feel like my answer was like hey.
Dave [0:14:59]: You just kinda got, like, cold email people.
Dave [0:15:00]: But, like, I don't know.
Dave [0:15:03]: I...
Dave [0:15:03]: I I get cold messages.
Dave [0:15:04]: I don't respond to everybody.
Dave [0:15:06]: Like, is it some level of, like, hustle and research and, you know, hopefully you get someone that I think there are a lot of kind people in the network of Cmos, like Sydney and others who are, like, okay.
Dave [0:15:17]: I see something in Kelly, Like, I'm gonna take this call and, like, you know, I think it'd be worthwhile for me to to mentor and and give back in that capacity.
Kelly [0:15:25]: Well, I also think that, you know, something that I see that you're...
Kelly [0:15:29]: You...
Kelly [0:15:29]: You're doing it with x at five is creating the Cmo counsel.
Dave [0:15:32]: Yep.
Kelly [0:15:33]: Creating spaces and networks for Cmos to come together because I...
Kelly [0:15:36]: What I've learned is that marketing leaders, it's it's often a very lonely job.
Kelly [0:15:41]: You don't have a lot of people to relate to within a company.
Kelly [0:15:44]: And so having, you know, all these networks and communities makes a lot of sense, and I think that you get that engagement because it's such a it's such a big need.
Kelly [0:15:53]: Like, there there there are many cmo communities out there that are highly engaging.
Kelly [0:15:57]: And I think it's such so important.
Kelly [0:15:59]: And so I think that's also a way to find a network of people to lean on.
Dave [0:16:04]: Yeah.
Dave [0:16:04]: And and hopefully, like, hopefully, you work for a company where, like, the leadership team like, wants to foster that.
Dave [0:16:10]: They want to see you go and build your, you know, build your network.
Dave [0:16:13]: And there are there's...
Dave [0:16:14]: You know, we're doing this in marketing, but I I first saw this with, like, the first real legitimate like, sales leader that I worked with.
Dave [0:16:21]: He was part of some...
Dave [0:16:22]: Obviously, it was like, all guys.
Dave [0:16:23]: I think this the sales guy breakfast, but it was, like, you know, you meet you meet all these people and you you learn that way and so it's like, yeah.
Dave [0:16:30]: Is your your company...
Dave [0:16:32]: You have to be able to...
Dave [0:16:33]: Your company has to be willing to support you in your professional development.
Dave [0:16:36]: And it takes a tremendous ego from a Ceo or founder to be like, no.
Dave [0:16:41]: I'm not...
Dave [0:16:41]: We...
Dave [0:16:42]: We're not gonna support this Is like, well, would you want her to talk to, like, other people around and, like, get all this information because that's that's where the goal is.
Dave [0:16:50]: Don't you feel like it...
Dave [0:16:51]: It's it's in those, like, secret messages in Slack that someone's telling you, like the truth about what's happening in their company and what they did.
Dave [0:16:57]: It's not always gonna be public in some online forum or, like, published in some in some report.
Dave [0:17:02]: And seems like you work for founders who want to foster want...
Dave [0:17:07]: Like, want you to do that and and see why it's beneficial for the company.
Dave [0:17:11]: I think a lot of founders have this, like, maybe there's a mix, but some of them just have this, like, mindset that's like, no, We can't like, what if what if she meets someone else and they hire her, Like, well, let's have a growth mindset and be like, I want her to meet as many people as possible because she's gonna learn more and be able to do a better job at this company Yeah.
Kelly [0:17:27]: I I think that, you know, I'm lucky enough to work at a company with founders that do understand that, and do invest in that.
Kelly [0:17:34]: Like, they connected me to Sydney.
Kelly [0:17:35]: They sponsored Sydney's mentorship.
Kelly [0:17:38]: You know, it wasn't a free gig.
Kelly [0:17:40]: And so they definitely, you know, invested in that And most recently, they've invested in, another meant, like, advising, kind of engagement for me and working with this, guy.
Kelly [0:17:51]: His name is Francois.
Kelly [0:17:52]: He used to be the Cmo of, twilio.
Kelly [0:17:56]: And he really helps me learn how to navigate a lot of Cmo level conversations with the board with, you know, other executives, how to lead with vulnerability on this...
Kelly [0:18:10]: On the c level side of things.
Kelly [0:18:12]: Things that I've never considered in a in the grain scheme of things.
Kelly [0:18:16]: Yeah.
Kelly [0:18:16]: And I think it's funny because I do believe that the founders I work for.
Kelly [0:18:21]: They're incredible founders.
Kelly [0:18:22]: I was really, really lucky when I first landed at Goldcast because this is my first time working at an early stage startup.
Kelly [0:18:27]: Never worked with founders in my life, and they were...
Kelly [0:18:29]: Are the most humble founders, Polish K and ash ash that I I've ever come across.
Kelly [0:18:35]: And I definitely did not ask all the right questions when I was first in interviewing and would just, like, jumped right in.
Kelly [0:18:40]: So I feel very lucky and fortunate.
Kelly [0:18:43]: But I think the fact that Goldcasts Goldcast also markets to marketers and tries to get into the mind of the Cmo helps that investment in in me, connecting with other Cmos as well.
Kelly [0:18:57]: So it's kinda like two birds of one stone, and I'm I'm seeing it as, like, yes, personal investment for myself, but also helping the company grow grow as well.
Dave [0:19:04]: Nice.
Dave [0:19:04]: I wanna ask you specifically, like, people wanna know, like, what's working today.
Dave [0:19:09]: My biggest joke lately has been, like, nothing's working.
Dave [0:19:11]: I talked to everybody and they're like, nothing's working.
Dave [0:19:13]: Outbound is dead.
Dave [0:19:14]: Seo is dead.
Dave [0:19:15]: I wanna...
Dave [0:19:15]: Obviously, some things are working at Goldcast I I wanna talk about that.
Dave [0:19:19]: I wanna talk about the sales led motion, but you just mentioned something right there.
Dave [0:19:23]: You said something like I I didn't I didn't know the right questions to ask when interviewing.
Dave [0:19:27]: And and a lot of Cmos or future Cmos, marketing leaders listen to this show, let's answer that, Like, let's let's talk about that for second, what should you be asking?
Dave [0:19:36]: Like, if you're taking a new marketing leadership job today, whether it's director or marketing Vp?
Dave [0:19:41]: Cmo, whatever.
Dave [0:19:41]: What would you be asking them?
Dave [0:19:43]: What would you be interviewing the company about, where are some of the things you'd wanna know?
Kelly [0:19:47]: I would personally want to understand how I specifically wear this I need to think through a little bit more.
Kelly [0:19:53]: But I would wanna, you know, that for the appetite to invest in long term marketing that's versus just short term.
Kelly [0:20:00]: Because I think as I look at a lot of organizations right now, they're under such a pressure cooker environment to, sort of meet next quarter numbers in the next quarter numbers.
Kelly [0:20:12]: But the value of marketing is a long lasting brand.
Kelly [0:20:15]: Yeah.
Kelly [0:20:16]: That helps you get to that trajectory.
Kelly [0:20:18]: I think that answer of how what a founder perspective is in long term brand investments helps me gauge an understanding of whether or not they get marketing, the value of marketing versus just, you know, chasing a sales pipeline for supporting sales.
Dave [0:20:34]: Right.
Dave [0:20:34]: We need you to come in and do white papers to get more M q for our our team.
Dave [0:20:40]: Right.
Dave [0:20:40]: So you mentioned this long term for short term thing.
Dave [0:20:42]: I I didn't know this at the time.
Dave [0:20:44]: But when I was interviewing at Drift interview with David, who's a founder and Ceo.
Dave [0:20:48]: And the first thing he told me that he wanted to do in the interview.
Dave [0:20:51]: And actually, the reason they they even had me there was because I had started a podcast.
Dave [0:20:55]: And he really wanted to start a podcast.
Dave [0:20:58]: And so he's like, yeah, all this other stuff, like, I wanna have a podcast.
Dave [0:21:01]: And it was never, like, here's how we're gonna measure this.
Dave [0:21:04]: Here's how we're gonna justify.
Dave [0:21:05]: He believed in that channel and had a vision for like, hey, We're gonna create...
Dave [0:21:09]: I wanna create this type of show.
Dave [0:21:11]: It wasn't like, because we can create a...
Dave [0:21:13]: He just...
Dave [0:21:14]: He just got it.
Dave [0:21:14]: And that was...
Dave [0:21:15]: Looking back though was such a a tell now, which is, like, oh, yeah.
Dave [0:21:18]: Of course.
Dave [0:21:19]: I never...
Dave [0:21:20]: Everyone's like, why did you get him to justify the pockets.
Dave [0:21:22]: I'm like, justify the pockets.
Dave [0:21:23]: It was his freaking idea.
Dave [0:21:24]: Like, he wanted to do it.
Dave [0:21:26]: And and when we talk about brand, I think you mentioned, like, long term for short term.
Dave [0:21:30]: I think a lot of people get kinda spun around on the concept of brand, and it's, like, they they see every company now posting their billboards on the one zero one again, or they think about some new brand campaign or visual.
Dave [0:21:42]: I think a lot of it is about, like, how do we build the reputation for this company over time?
Dave [0:21:47]: Yeah.
Dave [0:21:48]: How do we get people to know us and like us and trust us.
Dave [0:21:51]: And I think that that's the perfect thing to figure out.
Dave [0:21:54]: Like, am I gonna come in this company and just be an order taker to, like, deliver revenue now?
Dave [0:21:58]: You still need to do that, But I think it's a a a great a great place to start.
Dave [0:22:03]: Okay.
Dave [0:22:03]: So long term for short term appetite, what else would you wanna dig into?
Kelly [0:22:08]: I would like to understand, you know, how they think about budgeting when it comes to marketing Those are questions that I never even consider bringing up in the interview, which is wild.
Kelly [0:22:18]: I think back now.
Kelly [0:22:19]: Right?
Dave [0:22:20]: Yeah.
Dave [0:22:20]: Totally you Why why would you ask that until you until you know now.
Dave [0:22:24]: Why would you like So how you think I'm about budget?
Kelly [0:22:26]: Yeah.
Kelly [0:22:26]: I also never asked about, you know, their their company culture vision.
Kelly [0:22:30]: Like, how...
Kelly [0:22:30]: You, I was so eager to jump into something new that I never even considered, you know, their communication styles and and how how that all works because everything culture wise comes from the top down.
Kelly [0:22:41]: That's why I say that I feel very fortunate to having landed at Goldcast because they are the kind of, you know, most wonderful people to work with.
Dave [0:22:50]: I wonder if like, find, like, finance.
Dave [0:22:51]: I think something I would have dug into more is it's just like, kind of the whole money money situation, Like, maybe this is in the budgeting piece, but it's, like, if it's a venture backed company, right?
Dave [0:23:00]: Or obviously, you would know that detail coming in, but, like, knowing the knowing the runway because I think not just for job security, but I think that dictates a lot of the, like, plays and bets you can make and things you can try to do, like, drift when I was there, they raised fifteen million dollars very early on before they had a lot of product and that was based on the reputation of the founders who had a bunch of successful exits before that.
Dave [0:23:24]: And so that was a super important guard.
Dave [0:23:26]: Obviously amazing to have that cash in the bank and security from that standpoint, but it dictated a lot of the marketing stuff because it was, like, we're not under super intense pressure to, like, get to some revenue number in the next sixty days.
Dave [0:23:38]: And so we would rather make plays that, like, let's build the foundation for this thing versus...
Dave [0:23:42]: Yeah.
Dave [0:23:43]: If you got hired into Exit Five and we're a bootstrap company and, like, we're hiring you to do marketing, we have certain, you know, growth goals that, like, I would like to hit in the next sixty to ninety days because we can't just spend money and not have a return on it.
Dave [0:23:57]: And I think just understanding that.
Dave [0:23:58]: It's almost like, the shift from, like, being growth person to Cmo is, like, I forget who who who shared this probably just the collection of people over the years.
Dave [0:24:06]: But your job becomes not just to manage marketing, but you're truly an executive and you have a seat at the, like, leadership table, like, as the team and so you have to understand the full picture of the company.
Dave [0:24:17]: Not just what's going on in your department and marketing.
Dave [0:24:20]: The those are your colleagues just like, your job around the marketing team, but your your colleagues are the head of product, the head of sales, you know, all all all those other roles.
Dave [0:24:27]: And that's equally as important as your job in in marketing.
Kelly [0:24:30]: Yeah.
Kelly [0:24:30]: I think the the finance piece is very key because it also...
Kelly [0:24:34]: Like, how that answer turns out is, you know, how what's the alignment between marketing and finance, how does planning work determines how risk adverse or, you know, in in terms of placing marketing bets because the thing I love about marketing is that it...
Kelly [0:24:48]: It's not a hundred percent predictable.
Kelly [0:24:49]: Like, you you don't know when something's is gonna take You don't know when something's is gonna go viral.
Kelly [0:24:53]: And you you have to make bets and sometimes you eat win and sometimes you lose, you can make smarter bets than others, but still requires investment.
Dave [0:25:04]: Okay.
Dave [0:25:04]: Let's dig into Goldcast marketing a little bit.
Dave [0:25:06]: So can you just give, like, you you got a team of thirty people full time freelancers Can you give roughly the...
Dave [0:25:13]: People love hearing about org structure and kinda team roles in responsibilities build.
Dave [0:25:17]: You have to go through everybody, but just kind broad strokes if we were, like, through to get on a whiteboard and you would kinda draw your marketing team.
Dave [0:25:23]: Can you just kinda explain some of the the structure for us?
Kelly [0:25:27]: So I've got four direct reports.
Kelly [0:25:29]: Well, five.
Kelly [0:25:31]: I've got, senior director of product marketing on on Patel.
Kelly [0:25:34]: He's leads our product marketing, all product launches, messaging, pricing and also customer stories.
Kelly [0:25:41]: So customer marketing.
Kelly [0:25:43]: And then I've got director of content, Alex Bleak, who also he leads our brand strategy, which includes our communities.
Kelly [0:25:53]: We've got two communities under about the Event marketers Club and the Ai marketing alliance.
Kelly [0:25:56]: And also under the the brand side of things he runs our creative team, which is fully remote based in India, We've got video, design and web development under there, And then on the content side, there is you know, our traditional Seo work now with, you know, Ge and all the Ll visibility, an experimentation there.
Kelly [0:26:18]: And that's a big charter, and of investment for us.
Kelly [0:26:21]: And then we've got director of growth, which is, you know, really on the demand on side of things in Cindy.
Kelly [0:26:27]: She is fantastic, and she owns a lot of our, you know, pipeline.
Kelly [0:26:32]: She has two growth marketing managers and also manages our Bd team.
Kelly [0:26:38]: So our Bd team moved from the sales side over to marketing side about a year ago.
Kelly [0:26:42]: And then finally, just hired our director of events, Ashley News.
Kelly [0:26:47]: She started about three weeks ago.
Kelly [0:26:50]: And she's, you know, running all field ended that marketing strategy, and then I've got marketing operations.
Dave [0:26:57]: Cool.
Dave [0:26:57]: Okay.
Dave [0:26:58]: We don't have talk about every single role, but do give a rough...
Dave [0:27:01]: There's a bunch of initiatives there, and I'm curious to hear, like, what your scorecard is for marketing.
Dave [0:27:07]: Obviously, pipeline and revenue is one of them.
Dave [0:27:10]: But you have a bunch of interesting things like, you know, product marketing is is gonna be measured in a certain way.
Dave [0:27:15]: You have these communities Do you have a overall scorecard for how you how you think about the production and and measurement and marketing beyond just delivering pipeline?
Kelly [0:27:26]: We do.
Kelly [0:27:26]: So we have company level O r's, but then that trickle down from there marketing level R's and we've got three objectives.
Kelly [0:27:33]: The first one is really about building minds share, which is tied to our product, and basically dog food ourselves.
Kelly [0:27:41]: So that is across the entire team.
Kelly [0:27:44]: Like, we have to be best in class in terms of showcasing our event platform, our content platform or video capabilities, really, really being able to use our own self as a case study to build minds share for other people to be able to aspire and be inspired by.
Kelly [0:28:00]: So that's the first one.
Kelly [0:28:01]: It's it's really more brand and product marketing and content focused.
Kelly [0:28:04]: Our second O hours more pipeline driven, so really being able to tie our demand programs, event programs to revenue, whether it's sourced to attributed.
Kelly [0:28:15]: So we have, you know, key results that are tied to there.
Kelly [0:28:18]: And then the third one is is more about the efficiency side of things.
Kelly [0:28:23]: So making sure that...
Kelly [0:28:24]: Because, you know, Goldcast is a tool that combines, a lot of different tools together.
Kelly [0:28:29]: It, you know, we...
Kelly [0:28:30]: We've got this great slide in our sales deck that outlines all the different point solutions out there that Goldcast helps consolidate.
Kelly [0:28:37]: It's like eighty different logos on that slide that you you can just buy Goldcast replaces all eighty tools and really being able to showcase the whole workflow end to end, so that includes the creative process too.
Kelly [0:28:48]: So we have metrics that are tied to, like, you know, more brand initiatives, like, brand affinity, pipeline and then also, like, internal productivity efficiency.
Dave [0:28:58]: How do you think about brand affinity at at this scale?
Dave [0:29:00]: People often ask, like, how how do you think about that?
Dave [0:29:03]: How do you measure that?
Dave [0:29:04]: Do you have any lessons Or can you share how you...
Dave [0:29:07]: How you all think about it at Gold kiss?
Kelly [0:29:09]: Yeah.
Kelly [0:29:09]: So it's tough because I think that that's always the reason why pipe, like, a demand budget wins versus brand is because if you can easily attribute if any, you know?
Dave [0:29:23]: It is, but it's, like, this is the thing.
Dave [0:29:25]: It's, like, logically though, like, if more people know us.
Dave [0:29:29]: If more people know we exists if more people know Goldcast is a thing if if people are talking about us online, like, you can just feel you you feel that.
Dave [0:29:37]: I don't know.
Dave [0:29:38]: I don't have a number for it, but I just feel like when I go to linkedin or I just feel people are talking about us.
Dave [0:29:43]: That's gotta have a downstream effect in the future about people discovering us.
Dave [0:29:47]: Or even Cat like Kelly coming on this podcast today, it's like, I like her.
Dave [0:29:51]: She's smart.
Dave [0:29:51]: Like, that was interesting.
Dave [0:29:52]: Like, that's gotta account for something.
Dave [0:29:53]: But for some reason, we can't use that logical brain of, like, how we make buying decisions when it comes like measuring marketing, it has to be like, well, how do we justify, you know, the three videos that we made and did those videos instantly turn to sales and it it drives me nuts.
Dave [0:30:08]: Like, intuitively, I I know that's not how things work, but then we get into, like, a boardroom or or management situation and we have to justify, like, why do you have two video producers on your team And how do we measure the output of those people and how does it tie back the sales I'm like, I don't know.
Kelly [0:30:23]: So the the way that I...
Kelly [0:30:24]: We look at it there's no right or wrong way to look at it.
Kelly [0:30:27]: But the way that, you know, I look at it with the team is understanding the the brand reach and how it kind of brings things into the funnel.
Kelly [0:30:35]: So a lot of it is organic search and then referral traffic.
Kelly [0:30:39]: How that grows over time.
Dave [0:30:41]: I like Brand re...
Dave [0:30:42]: Like Brand reach makes makes a ton of sense?
Dave [0:30:44]: Like, I've always thought like, isn't the ultimate?
Dave [0:30:46]: When the ultimate measure of a brand, not be some like random metric, but wouldn't it be like more people know about Goldcast and so more people pungent in Goldcast in their browser and, like, find out about you.
Dave [0:30:58]: I like that.
Kelly [0:31:00]: That's the logic logical thinking in there.
Kelly [0:31:02]: So that's how we make that kinda jump from, you know, making brand investments to something that's worthwhile.
Kelly [0:31:08]: I think at Goldcast, we talk a lot about internally.
Kelly [0:31:11]: We talk a lot about minds share.
Kelly [0:31:13]: And a lot of people think minds share equals brand.
Kelly [0:31:16]: They're not because I think minds share is a much bigger thing.
Kelly [0:31:19]: Like, you when you...
Kelly [0:31:20]: When you talk about minds share, it's the fact that in B2B b today, if we're talk about Minds within B, it's such a cluttered space.
Kelly [0:31:28]: Right?
Kelly [0:31:28]: There's so many brands and software that sell the exact same solution.
Kelly [0:31:34]: And so only five percent of your target audience ever in the markets to buy.
Kelly [0:31:39]: Ninety five percent are are not even looking for a solution at at that time.
Kelly [0:31:42]: But you still have to engage with them because once they are in market to buy, and they send all these great and intense signals through all these awesome tools like six cents and whatnot, it's too late because they don't know who you are.
Kelly [0:31:53]: So you have to build that runway, and that's what mind share is.
Kelly [0:31:56]: And a lot of that is putting out content that may not convert until maybe two three, four, five years later, but you still need to bring people along the journey.
Kelly [0:32:04]: It's much harder to quantify and bring to, like, the finance team to say, like, this is important to invest in because there's not that short term reward that you get with immediate opportunity generation in Salesforce, but it helps you build that runway.
Kelly [0:32:17]: And so bring it back to, you know, those questions I would have asked our founders in terms of understanding if they understand the value of brand building, you know, that's what I'm really referring to.
Kelly [0:32:27]: Is that are they really more hiring a marketing leader for short term gains or is it really to build a long term brand?
Dave [0:32:35]: Yeah.
Dave [0:32:35]: And then and like, what what does that mean to them?
Dave [0:32:37]: Like, how do we think about things?
Dave [0:32:38]: If are we talking about things like brand reach and and minds share?
Dave [0:32:43]: Nice.
Dave [0:32:43]: That's that's that's good.
Dave [0:32:45]: You broke down your team a little bit?
Dave [0:32:47]: We talked about, I took us on this this tangent about about mind share.
Dave [0:32:50]: How do you how do you run the team?
Dave [0:32:52]: So you got these four four direct reports?
Dave [0:32:54]: Do you meet with them on a regular cadence?
Dave [0:32:56]: Do you meet with the broader team on a regular cadence?
Dave [0:32:58]: What's your forty years in?
Dave [0:32:59]: Now you're Cmo?
Dave [0:33:00]: Like, what's your what's your operating system for for the internal stuff?
Kelly [0:33:04]: Yeah.
Kelly [0:33:04]: So I learned to structure my calendar very strategically because someone forget who it was once told me that if you don't own your calendar, your calendar owns you.
Kelly [0:33:14]: And so I've kind of given myself some guard rails and rules on, like, you know, what each day's focus is.
Kelly [0:33:20]: So Yes.
Dave [0:33:21]: This is what I want.
Dave [0:33:22]: This is the stuff we love.
Dave [0:33:23]: Okay.
Dave [0:33:23]: Tell me.
Dave [0:33:24]: Yes.
Kelly [0:33:24]: So Monday is, you know, the day to, you know get the week ready, you know, do my due diligence with working with, messaging and chatting with other cross functional leaders to understand, like, their priority is etcetera catching up over over the weekend.
Kelly [0:33:37]: Tuesday is where I have my weekly leadership call with my marketing team.
Kelly [0:33:42]: So all my direct reports.
Kelly [0:33:43]: I mean, with them, and we have an hour where we talk about how we're setting up the week, top three priorities for the week or the next two weeks, bringing up any kind of bigger picture things that we need to talk about as a group?
Dave [0:33:55]: Are there other slides for that?
Dave [0:33:56]: Like, is everyone...
Dave [0:33:57]: Are are you making a deck or is or somebody going through numbers are you putting in work?
Dave [0:34:01]: I remember that half of my week used to be, like, planning for that meeting, which I don't think was a positive thing Let me, like, give a give a format for that meeting?
Kelly [0:34:09]: It's a running notion document that has toggle for dates then...
Kelly [0:34:13]: And I I look back on that document, and it started in twenty twenty two.
Kelly [0:34:16]: So every single week we've got, like, a toggle for, like, the agenda items.
Kelly [0:34:20]: I usually start the list of topics that, you know, are top of my mind and I, you know, have the team at anything that they would like to chat about.
Kelly [0:34:28]: So it's a very free flowing conversation and agenda.
Kelly [0:34:31]: We don't look at numbers because numbers are shared very, very regularly at Goldcast every week or so, but also on Tuesdays is our weekly pipeline call that chat my director of, Demand gen runs, and that's in collaboration with, sales leadership and also Rev ops.
Kelly [0:34:48]: So we, you know, look at those numbers on a weekly basis on Tuesdays, and then we have no weekly marketing leadership call.
Dave [0:34:56]: Okay.
Dave [0:34:56]: What about one on one?
Dave [0:34:58]: Do you do one on once?
Kelly [0:34:59]: I do.
Kelly [0:34:59]: So Wednesdays is my one on one days for all the record reports.
Kelly [0:35:03]: So kind of giving them the space to manage their teams on Monday and Tuesday, and I...
Kelly [0:35:08]: I'm a big believer that one on ones are not really for me, but more for them, it's it's how I can be of service to them in terms of what blockers do you have that I can help with.
Kelly [0:35:18]: What what do you wanna spend, you know, this thirty minutes, forty five minutes talking about?
Kelly [0:35:22]: So I really like to use my direct report one on one time to help understand where the business challenges are, where where we need to focus the week, etcetera?
Dave [0:35:32]: And are those?
Dave [0:35:33]: Like, are you sitting at your desk doing video calls?
Dave [0:35:35]: Are you trying to do phone calls if you can moving around?
Dave [0:35:37]: Like, what...
Dave [0:35:38]: What's the flow?
Kelly [0:35:39]: Yeah.
Kelly [0:35:39]: I would love to be able to move around more.
Kelly [0:35:42]: I feel like I've been sitting for the last four years.
Kelly [0:35:44]: But, yeah, I...
Kelly [0:35:46]: It's it's a video call that I sit.
Kelly [0:35:47]: We we sit in front of the computer.
Dave [0:35:50]: Okay.
Dave [0:35:50]: No.
Dave [0:35:51]: I'm I'm not job...
Dave [0:35:51]: I'm charging you.
Dave [0:35:52]: You're good.
Dave [0:35:52]: You we'll figure it out.
Dave [0:35:54]: Okay.
Dave [0:35:56]: And do you do any, like, skip levels with the other people on the team at any point?
Kelly [0:36:02]: I do.
Kelly [0:36:02]: Once a month, I do skip levels with every single person that does not report into me.
Kelly [0:36:07]: And I keep those about twenty, twenty five minutes, and no agenda, and I...
Kelly [0:36:12]: Anytime anyone joins the team, I let them know that there's a skip level meeting and to use that time to help me understand how they...
Kelly [0:36:21]: I can be better or how the company can be better in terms of leadership, help any opportunities or feedback that they're seeing that we could all work on.
Kelly [0:36:29]: Yep.
Kelly [0:36:29]: Because that's really where I I feel...
Kelly [0:36:32]: Before I have those skip level meetings.
Kelly [0:36:34]: I felt a little bit out of touch with, you know, what was going on on the ground, and just being able to hear and connect directly with those that don't report into me has been extremely valuable.
Dave [0:36:44]: Yeah.
Dave [0:36:44]: It's like a way for you to triangulate.
Dave [0:36:46]: Like, okay, my...
Dave [0:36:47]: These people are saying this thing is that is that true, not that you're doubting if it's true.
Dave [0:36:52]: Or not, but, okay.
Dave [0:36:53]: That's interesting.
Dave [0:36:53]: Oh, this is coming up a lot.
Dave [0:36:54]: Like, one of the things I didn't like I mean maybe this is the job and I'm just not cut out for it anymore, but it just...
Dave [0:37:02]: It did...
Dave [0:37:03]: There was a period of time where I felt, like, my job was just to let everyone vent to me.
Dave [0:37:07]: Maybe there was, like, a culture that was, like, going sideways, and and that is, like, god god damn it.
Dave [0:37:12]: This is I wanna, like, do some marketing stuff.
Dave [0:37:14]: I just don't want everybody to vent me, but I guess that is what the job becomes.
Kelly [0:37:19]: One of my favorite...
Kelly [0:37:19]: When I think back to, like, the maybe the last couple months, my favorite skip level meetings have been with our our Bd, because our Bd are constantly...
Kelly [0:37:27]: On the phone on email and Right.
Kelly [0:37:31]: Kinda connect with prospects and they get...
Kelly [0:37:32]: They have a lot They have a lot to say, You know?
Kelly [0:37:34]: And so it's it's been a lot of fun kind of, you know, hearing what they think.
Dave [0:37:39]: Yeah.
Dave [0:37:39]: I mean, that's that's literally, like, talking to because...
Dave [0:37:41]: That...
Dave [0:37:42]: That's probably the best box of knowledge that you could pop, you know, other than, like, I guess, listening to the calls, but actually hearing what's going on is is an amazing.
Dave [0:37:50]: Like, how how are those leads?
Dave [0:37:52]: You mentioned you took on the Bd team from sales.
Dave [0:37:56]: Curious to hear about like, how that transition happened, how it's been you running a b...
Dave [0:38:01]: You know, managing a Bd team for the for the first time just because it's it's a common topic like, hey, should the Bd report into sales or marketing and just curious at how you all have navigated that at Goldcast.
Kelly [0:38:12]: Yeah.
Kelly [0:38:12]: So that first came up because pipeline was a a big north star for marketing, and, that aligns with, you know, what the Bd team was focused on.
Kelly [0:38:22]: And at that time, we lacked a little bit of the sales structure we were hiring for a sales leader.
Kelly [0:38:27]: And so what I work...
Kelly [0:38:30]: Was worth talking to our founders Ka and H ash about, you know, the Bd team.
Kelly [0:38:33]: I positioned it as, you know, I see outbound as a pipeline lever that we're really not taking full advantage of.
Kelly [0:38:40]: And I wanted to bring that onto the marketing side because a lot of what the Bd r's were working what was so relevant to the marketing activities in terms of following up the marketing campaigns following up webinar leads, all all that type of work, it felt like a missed opportunity to not make that connection stronger and make them feel like part of the marketing org that is, you know, part of that lever of building pipeline, which is a big big metric for us to hit.
Kelly [0:39:10]: Definitely a lot of learned lessons throughout the journey of bringing the Bd team over to marketing.
Kelly [0:39:16]: It is hard.
Kelly [0:39:17]: Outbound is really difficult.
Kelly [0:39:18]: It's one of those things where I have so much so much respect for people that do outbound day in and day out, because it's extremely challenging.
Kelly [0:39:26]: But it has been, you know, one of my personal goals to learn more about outbound, learn more about how to scale it, because it it does work.
Kelly [0:39:34]: When you we were talking about, you know, what's working and what's not working at Goldcast.
Kelly [0:39:38]: Outbound is one thing that actually does work when it's done right and well, it takes a lot of structure, tender loving and care and, you know, training and data, like, accuracy and hygiene, but, it does work.
Dave [0:39:52]: Yeah, Tender loving and care.
Dave [0:39:54]: Okay.
Dave [0:39:54]: So that's interesting.
Dave [0:39:55]: So so it works really well for you.
Dave [0:39:57]: But it's also hard.
Dave [0:39:58]: Maybe you don't have to share, like, all your your secrets?
Dave [0:40:01]: But, like, how how have you how have you made it work?
Dave [0:40:03]: Like, what are what are...
Dave [0:40:04]: What are some of the things that you need to be successful?
Dave [0:40:07]: Is it is it a data provider?
Dave [0:40:09]: Is it a...
Dave [0:40:09]: Phone, like, what, you know, are you sending candy to peep?
Dave [0:40:12]: Like, how...
Dave [0:40:13]: How what are what are some of the things you've learned that make outbound work?
Kelly [0:40:16]: Part of what makes outbound work is bringing outbound together with the brand.
Kelly [0:40:20]: True true true cold calling is extremely challenging when someone doesn't already know who you are?
Kelly [0:40:25]: And so that's why it made sense to bring, you know, outbound over to to the marketing team is because, you know, as we're building minds share building this runway, making sure that, you know, the Bd understand, like, the reach and activities that we're working, So it's definitely tooling, really making sure that, you know, we're using the same set of tools.
Kelly [0:40:42]: So we recently, brought on qualified, which is one of the best decisions that we did as an organization.
Kelly [0:40:48]: And, you know, having the marketing team and the Bd team using the same tool like that to really understand, you know, visibility across campaigns and then also intense signals on the website helps us be more targeted and have stronger conversion rates when it comes to converting outbound.
Kelly [0:41:04]: We are also experimenting with...
Kelly [0:41:06]: We're always...
Kelly [0:41:07]: I think there's a a ton of new outbound types of tools out there, especially with Ai.
Kelly [0:41:11]: So we're always experimenting.
Kelly [0:41:13]: A new one that we've been trying out a lot of vector, you know, getting, how have a d optimizing website visitors and trying to understand how we can pounce on them through qualified, something that we struggle with is data hygiene.
Kelly [0:41:26]: And then...
Kelly [0:41:27]: And so right now, we're in a process of learning more about how we can maximize enrichment with clay, so we can use different types of, data sources to find the right recipe for getting the most hit rates for phone numbers because phone calls still work really well I know this because we started working with an outsourced Sdr team about a month ago, and they purely do phone calls, and they've booked so many meetings through the phones.
Kelly [0:41:57]: And so it's...
Kelly [0:41:59]: My mission to figure out how we can get our phone numbers right.
Dave [0:42:03]: Yeah.
Dave [0:42:03]: Hey.
Dave [0:42:03]: I love...
Dave [0:42:04]: I love that.
Dave [0:42:04]: Perfect example of, like, something nobody picks up the phone.
Dave [0:42:07]: Here you're, like, actually, no phone phone calls are working really really well for us.
Dave [0:42:11]: What what does someone say?
Dave [0:42:13]: What do what do you even say?
Dave [0:42:14]: Like, hello?
Dave [0:42:15]: Hi.
Dave [0:42:15]: This is Dave calling from Goldcast.
Dave [0:42:17]: How's your Ai video strategy?
Dave [0:42:20]: Like, what what what's the what's the phone?
Dave [0:42:22]: Who comes And how do you come up with that?
Dave [0:42:24]: Like,
Kelly [0:42:25]: there's a script and a recipe for it?
Kelly [0:42:26]: Yeah.
Kelly [0:42:26]: The goal is to get the person on the phone for as long as possible.
Kelly [0:42:30]: It's not you know, just rambling off, but, like, getting them to, like, respond.
Kelly [0:42:35]: So it's asking an, an opening question that gets them to bite and then engage in the conversation.
Dave [0:42:41]: Yeah.
Dave [0:42:41]: My kids have just we live out in the woods and so we have to have a landline.
Dave [0:42:46]: I guess it's probably good to have one anyway.
Dave [0:42:48]: They're eight and six and so they don't know anything.
Dave [0:42:50]: They they started using the landline, and they we wrote down all of our family's phone numbers, and they just prank call them.
Dave [0:42:56]: And so they lose like, Who's was like, call my mom and be like, hello?
Dave [0:43:00]: Is your refrigerator running?
Dave [0:43:01]: And then they'll hang up, and they don't even know the whole
Kelly [0:43:04]: joke.
Kelly [0:43:04]: Funny.
Dave [0:43:07]: How would you approach outbound as a...
Dave [0:43:09]: If someone's like, yeah.
Dave [0:43:10]: We we need to be doing outbound.
Dave [0:43:11]: It's not working.
Dave [0:43:12]: Obviously, there's a lot of things you you would need to know, but where where would you start?
Dave [0:43:15]: If someone's listening to?
Dave [0:43:16]: And they're like, I think we need to be doing more outbound?
Dave [0:43:19]: Like, what how do you how do you start that?
Dave [0:43:21]: Where do you diagnose like, what to go and do?
Kelly [0:43:24]: You first have to really understand?
Kelly [0:43:25]: Your target audience, like, your purse Ic?
Kelly [0:43:28]: Like, who who are you trying to get on the phone, and then really make sure that you have the right messaging for that person, like, the right pain points.
Kelly [0:43:35]: So that when you do get them on the phone that you can, you know, immediately hit those pain points and ask them questions about whether or not this is a current challenge they have.
Kelly [0:43:44]: And I think that that's really the first level.
Kelly [0:43:46]: Before you go on hire, you know, someone to actually pick up the phones, it's really doing that homework and research because I think that that's the part where no matter how many activities you do, if you don't have a solid message or story that relates to people who care, it's not gonna convert.
Dave [0:44:05]: Yeah.
Dave [0:44:05]: So the the the the offer matters, The messaging matters.
Dave [0:44:08]: Right?
Dave [0:44:09]: Like,
Kelly [0:44:10]: Yeah.
Dave [0:44:10]: Yeah.
Dave [0:44:10]: I wanna wrap up on with two things.
Dave [0:44:12]: So one of them is, like, what role does content play, you Goldcast has, you know, shifted to be enter enterprise...
Dave [0:44:18]: You know, more enterprise, more sales led.
Dave [0:44:19]: You got these signals qualified vector, Clay, you're using the website you're doing calls.
Dave [0:44:23]: You're doing outbound.
Dave [0:44:24]: How does content, like, play a role in you building this brand and closing deals and how do you how do you tell that story in your in your marketing?
Dave [0:44:33]: Like, hey, you know, content plays a big role?
Dave [0:44:35]: And I'm asking it because you you clearly invest a lot in content you you use your own product, but then you also have these two great communities that you mentioned.
Dave [0:44:42]: How do those get credit in, like, the marketing picture.
Kelly [0:44:46]: Yeah.
Kelly [0:44:46]: Content is the thing that brings it all together.
Kelly [0:44:48]: So it's it's making sure that we're not just...
Kelly [0:44:50]: Putting out random content and campaigns and messaging out in the market because that that confuses everybody, making sure that we're being efficient with our time.
Kelly [0:45:00]: We're building campaign structures that...
Kelly [0:45:02]: And then using content also as a way to distribute.
Kelly [0:45:04]: And so outbound all that, the website you know, our webinars, social that's all all way to distribute that same source content.
Kelly [0:45:12]: So our model is to really start with live content, live video content, so we run a lot of webinars, bringing subject matter experts, within the B2B marking space to talk about marketing trends, what's what's working, what's not working, and then repurposing content from there because once you have really, really great source content with subject matter experts, what better way to, you know, build on that with repurposing So being able to use our own product to slice and dice into short clips, playlists on Youtube, blog posts, you know, be putting together larger, like, downloadable assets, all from that sourced webinar, virtual event content, and then strip bursting that through our communities too.
Kelly [0:45:54]: And so a lot of our communities will ask polls and gating questions that are all relevant to sort of, like, the content themes that we're we're pushing out.
Dave [0:46:04]: And is there a way to, like, have you solved how to measure that, like, and and and give credit to some of those things not that it has to be a battle of credit, but, like, at some point, somebody's gonna wanna say, like, okay, here's this deal that we close?
Dave [0:46:16]: Like, what are the touch points along the way.
Dave [0:46:17]: Have you found a way to tell that story internally?
Kelly [0:46:20]: Sort halfway.
Kelly [0:46:20]: Half...
Kelly [0:46:21]: It's half baked.
Kelly [0:46:21]: I feel like it...
Kelly [0:46:22]: Any marketer that tells you they figured it out is lying to you?
Dave [0:46:25]: Do you feel like though, like, I feel I feel like you're you're...
Dave [0:46:28]: Because it...
Dave [0:46:28]: Because you've been at the company, your founders who believe in marketing.
Dave [0:46:32]: Does that...
Dave [0:46:32]: Does that solve a lot of those questions?
Dave [0:46:34]: Like to to people.
Dave [0:46:35]: It seems like you you've always been very, like content and community and brand first.
Dave [0:46:39]: Does does that get solved by a lot of it.
Dave [0:46:41]: They're not breathing down your neck to be like, why why do we have this community?
Dave [0:46:45]: What's the value of this?
Kelly [0:46:46]: Yes.
Kelly [0:46:46]: I don't think that having that solved learning because I don't think you'll ever get to a point where you have a hundred percent attribution and a hundred percent visibility into what attributed to ever...
Kelly [0:46:57]: Your entire revenue.
Kelly [0:46:58]: You can use attribution tools and different signals to help you directional understand whether or not you're in the right direction.
Kelly [0:47:05]: And and they think for that, having founders to understand marketing that are bought to the whole strategy, it's good enough.
Kelly [0:47:13]: Like, they they don't need more than that.
Kelly [0:47:14]: They don't need a whole spreadsheet to say, like, every single dollar that we set spend is gonna yield what whatever in return.
Kelly [0:47:21]: That's good enough, and that's good enough for me to also just continuing forward as as long as it's directional going in the right way.
Dave [0:47:27]: Yeah.
Dave [0:47:27]: Okay.
Dave [0:47:29]: Last two questions.
Dave [0:47:29]: One of them is if you could solve one thing in Goldcast marketing, funnel marketing strategy you're just marketing in general right now.
Dave [0:47:38]: Like, if I gave you if I gave you a magic marketing Genie, and you could wish for anything and it would be solved?
Dave [0:47:45]: What would what would the marketing Genie give you?
Kelly [0:47:48]: Good question.
Kelly [0:47:48]: So we are in the midst of repositioning ourselves from a point solution to a platform.
Kelly [0:47:54]: And when you do that even though we target B marketers, you and I know that there are lots of different types of B marketers that care about different things.
Kelly [0:48:03]: And different metrics and different tool sets and everything.
Kelly [0:48:06]: A thing I'm looking to software is how to bring all those people together so that we can help them consolidate tools.
Kelly [0:48:12]: Oftentimes in especially in large enterprises, the person creating the content is so different does doesn't even work with the person running the event.
Kelly [0:48:20]: Oftentimes are even using different project management tools.
Kelly [0:48:23]: So they don't talk to each other in terms of work or even just purse...
Kelly [0:48:28]: Like, there's just such a silo.
Kelly [0:48:30]: So trying to figure out how we bridge that together to be able to position the platform and the whole workflow of content into a single package is something that I'm looking to solve for.
Kelly [0:48:40]: I think it's gonna take a lot of work to really figure out because I think we're also in this transformation with, you know, Ai, productivity and that that's that's the whole point is to bring teams together using single over tools to be more productive.
Kelly [0:48:52]: And, yeah.
Kelly [0:48:53]: That's my big challenge right now is how to how to connect all these marketing personas together.
Dave [0:48:58]: Yeah.
Dave [0:48:58]: Right.
Dave [0:48:58]: Because it's it it's somehow...
Dave [0:48:59]: It's almost be easier if you're, like, this is the...
Dave [0:49:02]: We sell to this one person, but...
Dave [0:49:04]: And then when you talk about events and video, those things span so many different roles and responsibilities in in in the company.
Dave [0:49:10]: Okay.
Dave [0:49:11]: Last thing is you're about to have another child and go out on and go out for a while on on leave and grow your family.
Dave [0:49:19]: Like, where's your mind at just as a mom as a human.
Dave [0:49:23]: How do you do your job?
Dave [0:49:24]: And then you're just gonna go have a kid and and and kinda unplug and then the the do the real work of, you know, the hard work at at home and the team is gonna run.
Dave [0:49:32]: Maybe Gold asses is in a great spot now.
Dave [0:49:34]: You got a team.
Dave [0:49:35]: You have strong leaders.
Dave [0:49:36]: Is it relying on them?
Dave [0:49:37]: I don't even just you just on a on a personal level.
Dave [0:49:40]: I think something that we doesn't always come up on our on our podcast.
Dave [0:49:43]: Is like, man, that's that's a lot to think about.
Kelly [0:49:46]: I've personally grown so much in the last two years, my my son is too.
Kelly [0:49:50]: That year coming back from maternity leave after having my my son was the single most challenging year of my life, because of just, you know, all the change personally, I was going through, but also just not being able to control everything.
Kelly [0:50:05]: I'm...
Kelly [0:50:06]: I'm your typical type a individual where I just need to scenario plan everything and know exactly what's gonna happen.
Kelly [0:50:13]: And so I had to kind of be really vulnerable and give a lot of that up and really, I think for a long time, as I was leading the marketing team at Goldcast, I felt like I had to have all the answers and just, you know, have this face that I show up at work.
Kelly [0:50:27]: And over the last two years, I've really kind of let that go a that that that expectation for myself.
Kelly [0:50:34]: And so I think that's how I'm approaching and how I'm how I'm I'm I'm currently feeling is that I've done everything humanly possible to prepare my team, the organization for the next three months as I...
Kelly [0:50:47]: I'm on leave, and everyone is feels very good and and prepared for, you know, what's to come in the next three months, but there's only so much I can control.
Kelly [0:50:56]: And just it's...
Kelly [0:50:56]: It's really recognizing that and finding boundaries for myself.
Kelly [0:51:00]: I've always blended personal and professional because I I care so deeply about my reputation network and what I what I do for work and how I spend my time at work, but it's really trying to find those boundaries out where I can.
Dave [0:51:14]: Awesome.
Dave [0:51:14]: Thank you for answering that.
Dave [0:51:15]: You're a great role model for other future moms, moms to be parents in general, And I...
Dave [0:51:20]: It's a topic that's near and dear to to my heart beyond the marketing stuff, so I appreciate you sharing some of that.
Dave [0:51:25]: So, okay.
Dave [0:51:26]: This is Kelly Cheng.
Dave [0:51:27]: She's a Cmo, Goldcast.
Dave [0:51:29]: I had a great conversation with you, Kelly.
Dave [0:51:30]: Good to hang out.
Dave [0:51:31]: You gotta get back to work now.
Dave [0:51:33]: But, look, Kelly's almost near this big milestone on on Linkedin.
Dave [0:51:36]: I'm not trying to embarrass her or put on this spot, but she needs a hundred and fifty followers to get to ten thousand followers on Linkedin.
Dave [0:51:42]: I I think we need to do that.
Dave [0:51:44]: We need to, like, rally.
Dave [0:51:45]: So you're you're listening.
Dave [0:51:46]: I know more than a hundred and fifty people are gonna list this.
Dave [0:51:48]: Go to Linkedin.
Dave [0:51:48]: Find Kelly follow her, send her message.
Dave [0:51:51]: Tell her that she's awesome.
Dave [0:51:52]: You're rooting for a follower there, and then we'll get her to ten k.
Dave [0:51:55]: That'll get Goldcast at least one new deal, so there's not pressure for Kelly like, have to return work, you know, and she's gonna have a great It's Kelly.
Dave [0:52:02]: You're awesome.
Dave [0:52:03]: I appreciate getting to to see you and know you and rooting for you.
Dave [0:52:06]: Thanks for coming on our podcast, and we'll see you around.
Kelly [0:52:09]: Thanks, sam.
Kelly [0:52:09]: K.
Dave [0:52:14]: Hey.
Dave [0:52:14]: Thanks for listening to this podcast.
Dave [0:52:16]: If you like this episode.
Dave [0:52:17]: You know what?
Dave [0:52:18]: I'm not even gonna ask you to subscribe and leave a review because I don't really care about that.
Dave [0:52:22]: I have something better for you.
Dave [0:52:23]: So we've built the number one private community for B b marketers at Exit Five, and you can go and check that out.
Dave [0:52:29]: And instead of leaving a rating or review, go check it out right now on our website, Exit Five dot com.
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