Michael Bernzweig (00:02.326)
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I'd like to welcome everyone to this week's edition of Career Spotlight. I'm your host, Michael Bernzweig and this week we are actually being joined by Nikki Lindgren. She's with Pennock out in California. And with that, I'd like to welcome you to the podcast, Nikki.
Nikki Lindgren (00:22.84)
Michael, thanks so much for having me today.
Michael Bernzweig (00:25.27)
Yeah, very exciting. And I can tell from some of the audience questions and things like that that came in before the episode. And we'll see what comes in over the episode that tech careers are at the top of everyone's minds. And we've seen quite a bit of transition over the last year and years, I guess I should say. I think we're seeing a lot of
a lot of shifts in the marketplace and a lot of shifts in all different areas, especially the news overnight with some of these international AI search engines kind of shaken up the trajectory of a lot of US tech companies. So really interesting to say. So I guess what I was hoping, maybe we could start with a little bit of a.
peek behind the scenes and a little understanding of your personal career trajectory and then maybe a little bit about the company that you founded.
Nikki Lindgren (01:31.78)
Yeah, awesome. Well, I'll start way back at the beginning. So I'm from a really small town in rural Minnesota of about 400 or 500 people called Pennock, which is the name of the agency I now have. But I was really excited to move to a big city and kind of work the corporate ladder, ideally in a creative industry like fashion or home decor. So I ended up in San Francisco.
And there, as I was coming out of college, I had the opportunity to go work with Pottery Barn in their product development department, which would have been glamorous to most people. But me liking spreadsheets and data, it just wasn't my jam. So after a short period of time with Pottery Barn, I was able to go to Cost Plus World Market, now known as World Market. And I was part of this.
seven people who are on their founding e-commerce team. And that's where I really learned all of digital marketing and got like a front row seat to taking a brand from non-existent on the e-commerce lens to about 200K in the first month. And we were obviously so successful because we had almost 200 stores across the country at that time, but it was a really fun time to like start to experiment and dip my toes into different parts of digital and how marketing efforts could kind of move and meander performance around.
That led me to agency work where I was able to help over 45 brands in the entertainment and sports TV kind of lane. We worked with Game of Thrones, selling their merchandise, the Knicks, the Saints, a ton of sports teams. We did stuff with Grateful Dead, kind of anything major in entertainment around the Aughts. And those decades, we basically were running their e-commerce store. So did a lot of marketing stuff there.
I did some pivots in and out of being in-house and agency side and eventually realized that the expertise I had in running digital marketing and knowing what agencies need to do to be good partners and what brands need to do to be good partners for the agencies led me to kind of found Pennock in 2020. And we are a small team of females and we're helping mainly beauty and lifestyle brands build their e-commerce presence.
Nikki Lindgren (03:45.2)
And as you know, with all the changes in technology, like you were just alluding to, it's not just driving people to a Shopify store anymore. It's now integrating into social commerce, et cetera. So it's a little bit more complicated than it was even in 2020 when we started.
Michael Bernzweig (04:02.144)
Sure, sure. it sounds like quite a roster of interesting clients. Did I hear you mention some rock and roll or music in there as well?
Nikki Lindgren (04:13.494)
Yes, yes, we did work with a few artists and bands and then like every both what are like so many different TV networks we worked with both on you mainstream television and I guess I'm like losing my words today but yeah hopefully, hopefully I can solve this later and find the word that's escaping me.
Michael Bernzweig (04:38.926)
No, that's fine, that's fine. And so today, if you were to describe the trajectory of where Panoc is at in terms of the day-to-day work that the agency is doing for clients, what would be an example of some of the different types of engagements and projects that you'd see your team working on?
Nikki Lindgren (05:04.484)
Yeah, so brands come to us or we find brands when they're really ready to level up their paid media game. They've usually figured out how to get to, we're working with early stage brands. So they've usually figured out how to get pretty close to a million in ARR by the time they find us. And they've been working with some probably paid media or SEO freelancers here and there. And so they're coming to us to really kind of elevate their game to the next level.
So we're going to take over all of their paid, basically manage their budget, manage their expectations around what that budget can actually do month over month over month, and then buy the media in the places that are going to make the most sense for the business goals. So when a client comes to us early in a year, they'll tell us next year our goal is $10 million and our budget is this. So how can you back into?
driving 40 % of our top line sales through ads with that budget. And those are the kind of projects we're tasked with helping our clients with. Simultaneously, we'll be looking under the hood at what's going on in their organic and owned lane of the business to see if there are opportunities to scale their SEO programs so that we don't have to spend so much in advertising because we can kind of work towards some long-term initiatives that help them in their.
overall positions and rankings on Google and other search engines.
Michael Bernzweig (06:30.592)
Neat and you know, obviously as you know, and a lot of listeners to the podcast realize, you know, SEO is, not a, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's a marathon, not a sprint. So it's, it's absolutely a, a longterm commitment and something.
Nikki Lindgren (06:47.875)
Yeah.
Well, there's so many changes right now, right? Like I'm reading articles about answer engine optimization and just like get your answers on the SERPs rather than get your just your links on the SERPs and then generative engine optimization. People going to chat bots now to find data, going to TikTok to do their searches. So there's just a little bit more, you know.
chaos to what's going on that we have to make sense of and bring to the clients in a strategic way that shows we understand their ICP and where their customer is going to be hanging out.
Michael Bernzweig (07:23.446)
Yeah, and you know, it's interesting you bring that up because AI search is becoming a very, you know, important component to the overall search marketing mix. And one of the areas of, I guess I would say, you know, research and education that we provide at Software Oasis is we do a lot of, a lot of
tech courses for different topics. And we actually just launched our AI search course, which is really helping organizations figure out how to compete, you whether it's, you know, Gemini or perplexity or chat GPT so that you're showing up at the top of the rankings or other, other newer search engines, like, you know, we have
DeepSeek, which has obviously been all over the news over the last few days. So it's really a very evolving portion of search. So there is just so much to it. And obviously, backlink development and all of that is a big portion of content strategy. And it sounds like you're working on all those different areas for your clients.
Nikki Lindgren (08:45.38)
Yeah, and it sounds like what you put together is super timely and relevant with all the changes going on in the SEO lane, so that's great.
Michael Bernzweig (08:51.978)
Yeah, no, absolutely. And I guess what I was wondering, you know, for for those who might be listening to the podcast and, you know, thinking about their, their careers and different opportunities and things that they can do to upskill in terms of developing their or honing their their technical powerness. Are there certain
things that you see that your team is doing more and more of as of late with clients that might be skills that are important to develop, you know, for anyone just jumping into the scene of media.
Nikki Lindgren (09:39.086)
Yeah, it's a great question. And we're actually interviewing right now, so, or hiring right now, I should say. So I'm in the interview process and learning about people's backgrounds and experiences right now. It just came from a call like that prior to talking to you. And so it's relevant for me because it's top of mind. There are a couple different ways to learn and get yourself up to speed. And think it's interesting because I've talked to so many people who've been the only...
paid media, SEO person in their organization, whether it be an agency that focuses on something else or in-house and they're just a teeny tiny starting brand. And I feel like that can be really good for some people who are really go-getters and want to educate themselves and find the online resources. We've seen many examples of that working out well and I'm sure there's very well-known people we could both probably name drop right here. But then I think the other side of it is
If you actually don't learn best independently, being in an environment like that might not be to your advantage. And people who learn better in group settings and through experiences might do better at an agency or somewhere where they are able to be with a bunch of their peers doing precisely what they're doing. So that's the first part of the answer. I think the second part is more precisely what you asked around. What are people trying to train up more on, at least in the areas we focus on, which is
paid ads for e-commerce brands. And I think the thing my team is focused up on a lot more as the years progress is helping understand for the clients and for ourselves how what we're doing is really impacting the business. Just right now we've got a client who is pacing under budget, meaning they're planning to spend less this month than we told them.
or we agreed on the budget being. And so now we're saying like, let's dissect their overall business. Has this slightly reduced spend decreased the size of their e-commerce revenue this month? Yes or no, right? So like, I think answering the questions and understanding the whole ecosystem of the client's business and their e-commerce presence and revenue is much more important than just like hopping on a call with them and being like.
Nikki Lindgren (11:48.964)
we have a 5X ROAS, aren't you so proud of what we did? And guess what? We didn't have to spend as much as we thought we would. So I think that whole holistic look at what's going on with clients is what's necessary now. And that comes with some new tooling. So we use a lot of attribution and incrementality tooling that just really didn't exist or wasn't used as prevalently back in the early days when I started my career, which is like the odds again, there weren't that many opportunities around.
attribution and incrementality measures.
Michael Bernzweig (12:21.666)
Yeah, and it's always sad. I ran an e-commerce retailer for many years, and it's always sad when there's a direct correlation between ad spend and sales. And obviously, if your ad spend is down, typically you see your sales going down. But on the flip side of it, if you're able to optimize.
and get more out of your ad spend, then that's not always the case. And I think that's a good example of working with an agency that's kind of been there and done that and understands how to do just that, how to get more out of every dollar that's going out in terms of what's coming in for revenue. That's interesting. Another area that I've heard more and more of as of late in terms of careers, a lot of
organizations are really hiring AI first, really looking for individuals that understand the AI portion of the whole tech stack and bring that to the career package that they're bringing to organizations, especially in the finance space. If an organization is hiring for financial roles that can be...
automated through AI, it's a very attractive footnote to your resume to kind of help differentiate yourself.
Nikki Lindgren (13:48.88)
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. would say the hard part of that, in my opinion, is like really getting proof that they know what they're doing and they're not going out to like a third party to get the work done themselves. But yeah, with 100%, I think finding someone who can figure out how to do the job of four people as opposed to just, you know, do the job they were hired to do is definitely the icing on top. And I haven't quite narrowed down how to ask the question to get the precise, realistic capability of a person.
Michael Bernzweig (14:00.835)
Sure.
Michael Bernzweig (14:15.522)
Yeah, yeah, dissect the two pieces. So, can you share maybe a little bit of a behind the scenes story that kind of highlights for our listeners some of the key differences in your opinion between an agency and an in-house environment in terms of a work environment for as an employee?
Nikki Lindgren (14:20.708)
Moreno.
Nikki Lindgren (14:39.342)
Yeah, I'd be happy to do that. think the first layer and lens I'd maybe put on it is obviously in-house jobs look very different depending on the size of the organization. So we do work with emerging brands that are making anywhere between a million and like 20 million on average ARRs. So these are pretty early stage companies.
And so I'll talk more precisely about what it would be like to be an in-house marketer at that size company versus an agency. In-house in a small emerging company, doing marketing means you're going to become a great generalist, get to wear a lot of hats. You're probably going to get to oversee strategy as well as execution for every earned own channel we know about.
So it's a good way to get a lay of the land and touch a little bit of everything, but you're probably not going to become super well expert in any one single lane unless you have a flyer in terms of a channel mix and you decide to dedicate like 50 % of your time to one particular channel. So I think there's pros and cons of that, right? Again, like if you're that self-starter and you can learn stuff through YouTube or TikTok pretty easily, then you know, you're kind of good to go and you'll set up probably a decent
marketing mix and technology stack and playbook that could succeed for the brand. Even small agencies like agencies our size, we have 10 full-time employees. We have a decent amount of knowledge, obviously, across the disciplines we work in and we're learning on a regular basis. So anyone joining the company needs to have the qualifications of the experience we're looking for, but they're going to continually learn on the job and be in a small pool of people who know
precisely what they're doing. So anytime we run into a performance issue with one client, that individual can look to her other brands and say, how do we not have that problem for my other clients? Cool, that's her own data set. But she can also talk to her colleagues to see if they've encountered similar issues. So not to say you couldn't do things like that through Slack groups and other mentorship programs.
Nikki Lindgren (16:54.266)
but it's just like within your four walls when you're at the agency. So that's what I would say is kind of like the biggest difference is the camaraderie and like the support you get at an agency when there are multiple people doing the same thing. Now, if we talk back about an in-house role where there is a big, let's call it paid media team, and maybe there's people specialized in search versus social ads, you're still gonna get a lot of that same cross play and like data sets from your teammates. It's just when you're at that smaller company and you're maybe
kind of on a marketing island by yourself where you have a little bit less exposure to that expert knowledge you need.
Michael Bernzweig (17:32.846)
Sure, and I would think some of the earlier stage startups are probably even angel investors that are investing in these companies. And as you get to the later venture-backed firms, maybe they're series A, series B, where they've had a round or two of financing and they've kind of found their product market fit, you definitely have a different type of team or a different type of environment.
Nikki Lindgren (18:01.88)
And probably resources too, right? Like with the VCs and even PEs, they usually have the Rolodex of experts you can lean on should you be struggling in-house.
Michael Bernzweig (18:14.52)
So, and I guess another question you teased out a little bit about some of the positions that you're looking to bring aboard in the house. Can you kind of elaborate on what some of those positions are for anybody that might be in the space looking for opportunities?
Nikki Lindgren (18:32.59)
Yeah, absolutely. So we are hiring for a marketing manager, which is really an account manager and strategist who owns the relationship with clients accounts and therefore does all of the strategic thinking and direction with that particular client. We're also hiring media specialists. So these are the media buyers, planners who are going to be
living, breathing, Google Ads, meta, TikTok ads, programmatic, all of the ad platforms pretty much during their nine to five to look for opportunities to launch new campaigns, know, optimize campaigns and then like build solutions for maybe, you know, better results in the future. So those are the two positions we have open right now.
Michael Bernzweig (19:20.768)
Interesting. Well, like I said, leave a link in the show notes and anyone that wants to reach out, it'll be there for them. From your point of view, and I feel the passion, so what would you say is a common misconception about agency work that you really passionately disagree with, you know, in terms of a misconception?
Nikki Lindgren (19:48.312)
Yeah, I huh, I mean, I think I believe with I believe in so many of the themes that people assume with agency life. So it it doesn't really shut off. So if you're looking for like a coasting job where it's just really a little bit more formulaic and, you know, maybe allows you to have a personal life that's a little bit more bubbly than, you know, agency life probably isn't that great for you because agency is
all about juggling, prioritizing, switching gears. You're probably gonna be on five to 10 accounts at a time, and so you have to touch them a little bit every single day. And so it's just a lot of gear shifting. So what is a misconception though that I would wanna speak to? I don't think that agency life, although I just made it sound very nonstop and chaotic, like,
There doesn't have to be that level of burnout that we sometimes see in agencies. So often when people go to an agency or work in the agency lane, it's for like a year and a half to grow their skillset so they can then go in-house. And we've seen many of our team members go off to do just that. And some people do need that experience to move into their real passion, which is in-house. And they find that by working with us. And we'll take them for that year and a half that's great for us and for business too.
But I think we're trying to create at our little agency a culture where we're working smarter, not harder. So leveraging the AI, leveraging this just strategic thinking and not just the busy work so that we can have more days off and breaks because it is going to be chaotic and nonstop if we don't. So our office is closed one Friday a month. I think we have 28 paid holidays where the office is closed down and unlimited time off for the reasons of just.
we've got to find a way to make this sustainable for us. whatever perk we can throw in to juxtapose the hardness we have every day we're in the office, I think is really important for us to establish as a culture.
Michael Bernzweig (21:49.687)
Yeah.
Michael Bernzweig (22:02.03)
Well, can tell you, having managed campaigns myself in the early days, it is 24-7, it's real money. And at the end of the day, a funnel that's working today could just as easily or just as quickly turn upside down and go from being incredibly profitable to unprofitable. So it's like flying a jumbo jet or a airliner. You really need to be paying attention to every last detail.
all the time.
Nikki Lindgren (22:32.91)
Yeah, couldn't agree more.
Michael Bernzweig (22:34.658)
So, yeah. So, as far as work-life balance, know, what would you say is, and if there is, is there much of a difference between agency and in-house roles in your experience in terms of work-life balance?
Nikki Lindgren (22:53.178)
That's a fair question. there my, mean, I haven't been in-house now for about six, seven years. So my in-house knowledge is a little rusty, but I do interface with clients who are in-house all the time. I think the difference, and I've been doing some like fractional work in between, the difference I see is strategies in-house and like pivots are more slow moving. Even for small emerging companies, I feel like you've got to
Michael Bernzweig (22:59.36)
Right.
Nikki Lindgren (23:23.024)
get a handful of people, in my experience, you've got to get a handful of people involved and signed off. And I think that that makes a ton of business sense, right? Like you're trying to make major changes to a company where agencies, because we're in the service of helping clients improve their businesses, we have to do that strategy work, but at a shorter pace, I think, or so the turnaround is a lot shorter. I think like,
Michael Bernzweig (23:34.296)
True.
Nikki Lindgren (23:52.512)
Yeah, there's pros and cons to both. I don't think we've moved so quickly that it's lacking the same level of development. And I don't know that the in-house teams move so slowly that it has lost its sizzle. But I would say that's one of the major differences.
Michael Bernzweig (24:08.79)
Yeah, and obviously every industry is competitive. And the interesting thing, think, sitting where you sit, you almost have somewhat of an unfair advantage in that you're able to see the results and the returns and the good, the bad, and the ugly of a whole range of different campaigns, different clients, different industries. And I think, you know,
working within a single organization, hard to have that 10,000 foot view of what's going on and why some changes need to happen and happen quickly in certain situations and what you can do to help all of your clients move forward. So that's interesting.
Nikki Lindgren (24:56.366)
Yeah, and I would say that's where a lot of my consultative work personally is not an agency, but as Nikki Lindgren has come from, helping brands that are about to go to market with their first product ever say, what can I expect? I'm trying to make sure my first two years get to three million, back into this with me so I know where this revenue is gonna come from, how much I need to spend on it. So a lot of those go to market forecasts.
are things I'm doing in my spare time with friends and extended acquaintances of mine to figure out if they've got a business or not. And it's a lot of fun to the point you just spoke about. Like, I'm doing this in my day job with so many businesses. Why not offer some other people just that corner of what they can project with their future and their current endeavors?
Michael Bernzweig (25:49.75)
Yeah, and obviously having a fun team dynamic is important. So I don't know if you could really isolate out, but is there much of a difference between team dynamics within an agency setting versus an in-house setting?
Nikki Lindgren (26:11.802)
Hmm, hmm. I mean, again, our team is tiny, but there's really not that much ego where we are. Everyone's rolling up their sleeves. No one's like, how do I finesse this in a way for Nikki, the big boss, to go get approval on it? It's pretty much just like, come talk. We all are pretty candid and open with each other, but we try to treat each other with kindness and respect.
And I think sometimes in-house, even in small in-house teams, there's a little bit more finessing how things are gonna be positioned to land and make sure they're not alienating themselves or people on the team. And we still look out for all those things too, but people will just come to me and say, you could have presented that a little bit different on a call. In the future, think of it that way. And it's like, cool, thank you for the feedback. I'm not upset with you for giving me feedback.
I really appreciate everything. And so it doesn't really like tarnish relationships at all.
Michael Bernzweig (27:13.388)
And after asking the question, I realized it's probably very dependent on company culture. I would think, you know, organizations are going to have different types of culture and different norms and what's accepted and not accepted and all of that. So probably plays a big role. So from where you sit, do you see some emerging trends kind of shaping the future of both agency and in-house work or what do you say?
Nikki Lindgren (27:20.591)
Yeah.
Nikki Lindgren (27:42.446)
Yeah, I mean, the obvious one we've already talked about is just like technology coming in, AI kind of simplifying some of the manual labor we've done on many different fronts, right? Like ad buying can now be systematized a lot better than it has in the past. We haven't found one single ad buyer that is an AI that works better than a human quite yet, but like that will be coming. I think creative is really moving forward with some AI features. They're not perfect either, but I think it's simplifying.
a lot of the work the agencies do. And I don't think that means there won't be agencies in the future. think agencies need to position themselves as strategic in different verticals and disciplines to continue to add value to brands. What else do I see coming forward? I think gone are the days where everyone's spending 80 % of their budget against like Meta and Google combined, right? There are so many other ways to hit your target market these days. So think there's gonna be a lot more.
differentiation and diversification, again, could be why people continue working with agencies. So I think it's a good moment of transition and possible shakeup, but I think anyone who believes that they're just going to buy a $500 a month subscription to some bot that's going to go run their campaigns or create their assets is probably not as knowledgeable about what's going on in the industry.
And that day will probably come. just think it's a ways off.
Michael Bernzweig (29:13.718)
Yeah, no, I'm right there with you. So the couple of roles that you mentioned, can you share kind of like a day in the life of somebody working within each of those roles within an agency, like what they might be doing?
Nikki Lindgren (29:25.712)
Yeah.
Yeah, sure. So the marketing manager who leads accounts and strategies is going to be logging on on a typical day to look at the overall health of her clients and what we said we would do this month versus what's actually been happening month to date. And she will be working with the client to kind of right size the situation, communicate any optimizations and changes to make and working with her internal team to be doing just that.
She's also going to be preparing any type of data we need for client meetings that are coming up, recaps of client meetings that have closed. So lots of status stuff, lots of project management of the moving parts of working with the client. We never want to be in a place where our client's reminding us of what's going on or giving us suggestions. We want to be leading the charge there and really being the strategic person. So that's what someone in the day of the life.
the account manager is going to be doing. So someone super organized who understands priorities is going to be really good in this work. And then someone who really wants to stay on top of all the trends going on in particular verticals they're working in. Not only just like the paid ads or the SEO, but also what their competitors are doing, their clients' competitors are doing, I should say. So that's a little bit in a nutshell. This person is going to be doing the media planning. So each month we build a media plan.
client as a creative strategy plan and so that person's gonna be in charge of all of that. The specialist on the other hand is going to be starting her day doing the same thing looking at the overall health of her clients but she's going to be the one who's recommending optimizations to the manager. So she's going to say I've noticed we're seeing a little bit less efficiency in said campaign here's how I'd like to address it and so she's just waiting for buy-in from her boss.
Nikki Lindgren (31:20.944)
from her boss to move forward. So she's going to be doing a lot of the flighting, the deeper analysis than the manager, and putting together the story of what's happening, if it's a bad story, the solutions for it, and enacting that, and then tracking to make sure everything that is expected is going on. So a little bit more of the tactician, day-to-day buying and planning side.
Michael Bernzweig (31:45.742)
And having arrived where you are, is there like one or two things if you were to bullet point that you love about running your own agency?
Nikki Lindgren (31:55.407)
It depends on the day. Let's see, what day did you question me on? I mean, I think for me personally, I didn't realize how much I liked having a boss to be accountable to until I started doing this. So I'm now in masterminds that are trying to kind of fill some of those gaps. So.
That was an odd learning at the beginning. think the other odd learning, and I could just be like, how naive were you, is I didn't realize how much sales and BDI I would have to do as the agency owner. So those were kind of like the learnings, I think. The rest of it was just like I had managed teams before. It just became so much more personal when it was a business I created. So kind of dealing with the team and the relationships of the team members.
was a little bit more, it was a stop and start there. I just wasn't able to like, you know, continue on my management style from my in-house and other agency work when I started my own agency because it felt all so personal. So there were moments of, you know, not the best experiences I had and then reflecting like definitely wasn't the kind of person I wanted to be or showing up the way I wanted to be. So it's been a whole evolution for me to get to where we are.
today, but I don't think I would have traded it for anything. I think it's just been such a huge learning moment for me. And I think the things I'm still working on are eating the frog in the morning, prioritizing my own stuff and not getting caught up in the parts of work I really like. I like to spend time doing things I like. And so the parts of the business that I'm not excited about continue to fall to the wayside. So that's what I'm trying to focus on this year.
Michael Bernzweig (33:40.694)
Yeah, and I think it's so important, no matter what you're doing for a career or a business or what have you, you really need to wake up every day and enjoy what you're doing, and I think that's the case. So I'll wrap up with one final question. If you had to give any of our listeners a...
single piece of advice to someone just starting the career, what would you recommend beginning in an agency, in-house, or one or the other, or why, as they're just getting started?
Nikki Lindgren (34:13.102)
Yeah, I would probably say just stay curious, ask more questions. Don't be afraid to get no's. So if you're looking to have a mentor, if you're looking for a casual conversation with someone who might have the job you think you want in the future, just go out and take those risks. mean, worst case, someone's going to say no. So I think like just, you know, staying curious, like bringing your toddler, young child.
styles back into the work environment, I think is really, really helpful. I took my twenties way too seriously and, you know, I passed judgment on so many of my senior leadership team of just things they were doing wrong. And I didn't like take the time to think of what it must be like to be in their shoes and all the different things they were busy working on. And I think had I stayed curious and been a little bit less serious and more playful, I could have learned a little bit more than I learned.
Michael Bernzweig (35:06.638)
That's great. I really appreciate your joining us on the career spotlight this week. I think that was a great deep drive. Nikki Lindgren from PANOC. I appreciate your spending some time with us this afternoon.
Nikki Lindgren (35:20.506)
Thank you so much for having me, Michael.
