Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Demand-Geniuses is the podcast for revenue-focused B2B Marketers. We bring you the latest insights and expert tips, interviewing geniuses of the B2B Marketing world to bring you actionable advice that you can implement to accelerate growth and progress you career. The role of Marketing in B2B go-to-market strategy has changed drastically. It's more important to revenue generation than ever as buyer engagement becomes more digital. We equip you with the information you need to thrive in this new, revenue-critical role.
Tom Rudnai (00:01)
Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of Demand Genius' podcast. Before we go any further, let me introduce our guest. So joined today by Sherihan Ross, whose name I'm hoping I pronounced correctly. Sherihan is the VP of Marketing at Modus Planning.
Sherehan Ross (00:15)
Tom, thanks for having me. So excited to be here today.
Tom Rudnai (00:18)
No, great to have you on. I've been seeing your kind of LinkedIn presence for a little while, so it's always quite funny when you kind of feel like you know someone almost and then you meet them for real.
Sherehan Ross (00:29)
Yeah, yeah, that's what social media does for a year. Like, I know you, but no, we've never talked, we've never met.
Tom Rudnai (00:34)
I know, it's like
this weird one-sided window. I think podcasts are the same. There's people that I listen to on a podcast every single week. And so I feel very close to them, right? Because sometimes they're very revealing and sometimes it's very personal, but they have no clue who I am. It would make for a very awkward interaction if we ever actually met, because I've been ridiculously personable and personal to them if I get away from me.
Sherehan Ross (00:37)
Okay.
Yes, I have fangirled in real life. Like I go to New York for events and I meet a lot of these big LinkedIn influencers and big LinkedIn names that I know very well, but they've never seen me. They've never heard of me I'm like, hey, you're so-and-so. I'm so excited to meet you. And they're like, but now we're friends. We're LinkedIn besties. Let's call it that way.
Tom Rudnai (01:07)
Yeah.
Nice, okay. Well look, let's get into it then. So I guess before we, I've got loads of things that I want to talk to you about before we get going. Maybe do want to just give everyone a little bit of an introduction into you and kind of your background, what brought you to this point?
Sherehan Ross (01:28)
Yeah, absolutely. So I'm Sheri-Hann Ross, and I'm a full-stack marketer. I call myself a deep generalist, meaning I have done and worn every hat within a marketing function on purpose. I grew up in corporate America, very, very traditional, and learned early on in my career that to become the amazing marketer I want to become, I needed to leave, and I needed to do my own thing. And so I started freelancing. I mean, I was a social media manager for a few years to con...
every client that ever agreed to let me work with them just so that I can learn. And slowly but surely found my niche in B2B tech startups. It's a different kind of challenge when you're working B2B. And everything about it, the cycle is a lot longer, the content is different, the nuances, the industries. And so I just learned and did my own thing. I had my own digital marketing agency called Digital Bricks Marketing.
about a decade on and off and then most recently I joined Modus Planning as their VP of Marketing. I met our CEO Ryan Moore through my network and fell in love with his passion about what he's doing. So it's a very unique company because even though it's a B2B SaaS tech startup they service CPG brands and so there's just two completely different worlds coming together.
and solving a very, very unique problem, operational fatigue, with their platform and their solution that provides one source of truth. And so, as he talked about that, I realized, you know what? I am ready to come in house, I'm ready to own this, I'm ready to help grow this and tell the story. And I've only been with them a couple of months, but it's been crazy and a lot of fun. So that's where I'm at today.
Tom Rudnai (03:06)
you kind of said initially you tried lots of different things and then found your home a little bit in B2B and B2B tech. Like why, what was it about B2B specifically that really grabbed you?
Sherehan Ross (03:17)
So the decision making process when you are doing anything in B2B is very different. So if you are out there shopping for, I don't know, the glasses that you're wearing, you're the only sole decision maker, right? You're going to the store, you're going to your eye appointment, you're going to wherever they sell glasses, maybe even online, you're trying a few on, you pick the one you like, boom, you make the purchase. In B2B, it's very, very different. There's a lot of different layers and decision makers. The end user is usually not...
the person holding the purse. And so you have to attract the end user and then get them to be your champion and get them to introduce you to the hierarchy of decision makers. And the cycle becomes a lot longer. And so then as a marketer, you have to be very creative on how to stay top of mind because there is no straight line attribution
The first time they hear about me is here, a couple of steps later, they're my client. It's not like that in B2B, right? It's all over the place. They heard about you on LinkedIn, you followed up with an email, a month or two went by, then somebody else brought something up and it reminded them. The whole cycle can take like 18 months. I remember when I was in B2B, my very first client, it took us 18 months from the very first piece of content that went out until the very first client signed on the dotted line.
18 full months. So that was a different world. And I was like, my gosh, this is exhausting, but challenging, but exciting. And the more I did it, the more I realized it makes me a better marketer because I'm not always talking to the buyer. I am talking to a team of the user versus the buyer versus the economic buyer versus the decision maker.
There's just so many levels and layers to it. And if you can crack that code, if you can crack that formula, you're a much better marketer for
Tom Rudnai (05:05)
I actually think there's a lot more room for creativity because there's so many more touch points, right? b2c to me, and I'm gonna...
piss a of people off here, but it's a lot about like offer optimization. It's catching them at the right time with the right offer. B2B is so much more complex. You have lots of people, lots of stakeholders, these winding journeys, and it's so much more creative. There's still a space for creativity if we can kind of unlock it in ourselves.
Sherehan Ross (05:15)
Exactly.
Yeah. Yeah.
And you can be having these conversations for months on end. mean, everybody wants to close a shorter sales cycle, and I get that, and we all try to aim for that. But you also, you you've got to take into consideration if they're spending tens of thousands or sometimes millions of dollars, it's not going to be quick. And I think the biggest misconception about marketing is those
quick instant results. And that doesn't happen. Marketing is an investment. And just like any investment, whatever you do compounds over time. So you have to be consistent. You have to stay top of mind. As simple as it can be is write message to the right audience via the right channel at the right time. And you keep doing that and it compounds, right? You might have a conversation early on in the funnel, in the cycle, and it's a great conversation, but that doesn't mean you're closing the deal.
that deal will take many months to close, at least very specifically in the B2B space. The other complication, or not complication, but the additional layer of challenge is a lot of the other marketers, my peers that I grew up with, that I'm learning from, I are communicating with on Slack channels, we kind of bounce ideas off of each other. It's amazing, but most of those B2B marketers are
talking to other B2B either companies or marketers. They're selling into people that understand the B2B landscape, right? Modus planning is very different. I'm not talking to anybody in the B2B space. All of my ICP are in the B2C and B2C CPG brand space. Very different. They do everything very differently. It's a different industry, different nuances, different way to talk to their customers.
So I have to understand this whole additional layer of industry and nuances.
that many of my peers in the V2B space don't have to learn, right? And so that's the exciting challenge that I am embarking on right now.
Tom Rudnai (07:16)
Yeah, well, and there's a few things in that that I find really interesting, I think we often get into this myopic bubble within B2B SaaS, where we forget that there are people that exist outside of that, and we get so used to selling to other SaaS marketers and other SaaS salespeople. I often wonder, is that easier or is it harder? Because it's kind of like they see the techniques and they recognize it.
Sherehan Ross (07:36)
I think it's easier. B2B to B2B is so much easier than what I'm doing right now. Why? Because like you said, they understand. So yeah, there's a challenge of like, we know what you're doing. We know how you're trying to get our attention. But also they respect that. And what I've noticed is in that B2B SaaS, the community is tight. It's very niche and it's very tight. They all know each other.
and they're all each other's clients and customers. So I think it's a lot easier than, you know, we are a B2B SaaS company, technically speaking, but we can't speak B2B SaaS to our ICP because they don't understand what RevOps is.
even though we're a rev ops operating system, and that's kind of the message that I'm trying to get through, that means jack, you know what, to my customer. So instead of saying, hey, modus planing, you're rev ops, you know, OS, I have to say, you have operational fatigue. I have to name their problem. I actually talked about that today on my LinkedIn post, thanks to my good friend, Brendan. He mentioned content IP, so I did kind of, I have to shout him out.
You have to name the problem because the solution might make no sense to your end buyer, to your customer, to your ICP, to your audience. Yes, you're solving a problem they have, but when you're just telling them about your solution, you've already lost them. But when you speak their language and say, know day to day you have operational fatigue, or I know day to day you wake up and you're like...
goodness, why couldn't they invent a better pen? Like whatever your problem is. If I name it and I talk about the problem like I know it, I know it's, I know everything about it, I know it's zip code, and then I offer the solution of won you over, right? And so half the battle is naming and identifying the problem. And I think where a lot of brands miss the point or miss the mark is they're identifying the solution before naming and identifying the problem.
And while yes, it's very important, you can't have a product market fit if you don't have a problem to solve and a solution for that problem, but you can't lead with that when you're talking to your customers, right? You gotta lead with what is aching them, what's the issue, name that issue, identify that issue, then offer them the solution for that issue.
Tom Rudnai (09:51)
Yeah, no, I've risen over that. I always say it's a really difficult thing for a founder not to do actually because you're really proud of your solution and you love talking about it. It's what makes you good salespeople, but it's what makes you terrible marketers, generally speaking. some of what you said as well makes me think one of my best mates takes the piss out of me because he's like, basically like SaaS as an industry, he says, is a bit of a house of cards. You basically all just sell these products to one another and say that you're doing something, which I find quite
interesting, like the idea that it's almost all a bubble.
Sherehan Ross (10:19)
it really though? Isn't it a little bit all of a little and everybody is selling to each other? It's like I always made fun of early on in my LinkedIn days. when, about a couple of years ago, two and a half-ish years ago, I decided to build my personal brand on LinkedIn. I've been on LinkedIn for years, but I never really was a content, see, I don't even want to call myself a content creator. I've never been a contributor, right? And so now I am. And I remember clearly, I was like, it feels like everybody.
in this space because I was trying to break into that B2B community and I was like they all know each other, they're all selling to each other and they're all talking the same language. This is kind of awesome but also like how are they growing? You know, how are they getting new customers? But so there is truth to what your front said. There's a little bit of truth to
Tom Rudnai (11:09)
Alright, well I'm not going to tell him that. So you've mentioned a couple of times, like speaking their language, really easy for us selling within our house of cards, really difficult for you, I'd imagine, when you're having to get to grips with a new market.
Talk us through how you go about
Sherehan Ross (11:24)
Absolutely. So I believe that when you come in as the CMO, as the new head of marketing, as the VP of marketing, as whatever, the first marketing hire or the boss of all the marketing hires or whatever it is, your first thing, so my process is very simple. It's three phases. It's learn, plan, do. The learning never ends, but the first and most important thing you got to do as a marketing leader is learn.
You need to learn everything about the company, the culture, the team, the customer. So I was there in my first four days, because I started and there was a holiday. So my first two weeks were only nine days, not 10 days. And I had shipped so much because immediately I just put myself on every single phone call, sales, customer success, and anybody else was doing. So I sat in on every call that my
my CEO, Reiner, was having with current customers, partners, potential clients. I sat in on every sales call. Clay, our sales director, was on. I sat on every customer success call that Tory, our VP of customer success, and his team were on while they were onboarding. I just sat there and I listened and I took notes and I learned. it's amazing to me that a lot of people just don't talk to the customers or don't...
you know, meet everybody on the team or in the company or don't listen to all the calls because like that's how you learn. And yeah, sometimes it's overwhelming and it's like way over your head because like you are joining a conversation that's like two months in. So you're not from the very beginning. So you have no idea what happened two months ago. You're just part of this conversation right now. And there's something magical about what you can learn from that because they're already at a much deeper level than let's say the very first conversation you're having, right?
And so they're talking details and nuances and acronyms and examples and specifics. And you're like, I don't even know what's happening right now. But you're learning so much because you're like, what is this? They mentioned this. And you're taking notes. And then after you're doing your homework, like while you're onboarding and learning about the product and the services and maybe some historical stuff, you're looking at the data, you're analyzing some reporting, then the picture becomes clear, right?
Tom Rudnai (13:26)
Mm.
Sherehan Ross (13:29)
So the way I look at it is your first couple of days, it's just that you're collecting these pieces of a puzzle and you don't even have an image to say like, is what the puzzle is gonna look like when it's completed. You don't know, you just know that there's all these puzzle pieces and you're just collecting them. And then you're sitting down, you're trying to say, this could be an alien, this could be a little baby, this could be a picture of a forest. Like you have no idea, there's no starting point. And I think that's the...
best kind of challenge and the best kind of way to learn on the go. Does it work for everybody? I don't know, but this has been my experience. I like to jump in head first, you know, on mute because nobody wants to hear me talk about something I don't understand, but I am in there and I am learning and I'm taking notes and then I am taking all these puzzle pieces and like trying to put them together and create a picture.
then I go back and I put my plan together and I go, okay, This is current state. We need to be here. How do I get from A to whatever letter that is? And what does that plan look like? And I build that plan.
And then once I get buy-in and sign-off from the stakeholders, the CEO, from whoever needs, from our investors, once everybody's buy-in, so I created a six-month GTM plan, right? Because I joined in May, and so June through December, I'm like, this is what I can accomplish over the next six months, based on everything I've learned in May. Got the sign-off, and now it's full-on execution.
for modus planning, said there's three things I want to focus on for my GTM. know, content, community, campaigns. Content is king. Community is the kingdom because you got to meet your ICP in real life. You got to be there. You got to stay top of mind. Look, it is very noisy out there. It's an attention economy and we're all competing for the same ICP for the most part. you're, you putting out content to stay top of mind is no longer enough.
And you've got to meet them where they're at. And then you've got to build some campaigns around that to sort of support it. And that's what I'm executing on. So this is sort of my process. And it's been my process for over a decade now.
But yeah, it's a cyclical process with marketing because you're always doing, learning, analyzing, and then either doubling down or pivoting based on the results.
Tom Rudnai (15:36)
Yeah, I'm what I
I've got a few questions off the back of that actually. What I love about that is one of my core values that I'm trying to instil at Demand Juniors is playbook writers, not runners. I don't want people who come in, and I think there's a lot of people who this is what they do, right? There is a playbook that has worked for them their whole career and they make a career out of going in and implementing that playbook. And that might work for some people. I never want that to be a part of the culture here. We engage with the problem and we solve that in a unique and hopefully innovative and therefore better way.
Another thing I wanted to ask you, because you said two maybe slightly contradictory things at one point, and I want to kind of get into how you balance the two. So you said like initially you were able to kind of be super focused and actually shipped a lot.
But then also like being in learn mode, like I suppose particularly when you're onboarding at a startup where, okay, we want people to build their own playbook and learn first, but at the same time, I can't pay a VP salary for three months without anything being delivered. Like how did you think about that joining a startup to balance?
getting some quick wins and putting some points on the board with going through this framework that is going to set you up in the long run.
Sherehan Ross (16:36)
So I have a good story about that. My entire career, I've always said you have to have a 30, 60, 90 day plan, right? As a marketer. And then about a couple of months ago, right before I started MODIS, I read a post from Kyle, Kyle Coleman. And he said, 30, 60, 90 does not work. Yes, it's important to have that for long term. And he called that long term. He said, you need to have a three, six, nine day plan.
Because if you're coming into a startup or a new company or a new organization today in 2025, right, like this day and age of this technology, this hunger for attention, this creator economy, you do not have 90 days to ship. You do not have 90 days to prove. You have maybe nine. And that struck a chord with me
So as soon as I joined MODIS, that's what I did. I said, look, I know I've presented my 30, 60, 90, but here's my nine day plan.
So what I ship.
in the first week is who is our buyer? And it's not one persona. There was like eight different ones and we got super specific with it. And as soon as I shipped that, then I was able to focus on what is the content, who are we talking to, what are the campaigns, how are we doing that, how are we automating all this? And so yeah, but like I shipped that while I was still learning about the problems we're trying to solve while I was still learning about our...
Tom Rudnai (17:46)
Hmm.
Sherehan Ross (17:55)
actual platform. It's complex, it's robust, there's a lot of elements to it. And no, I'm not the end buyer, I'm never going to use it, but I want to be able to know how to use it so that when I talk to our audience, yeah, I'm the marketer, I'm not customer success, I'm not sales, I'm not doing demos, but wouldn't it be awesome if I'm at an event and I talk to a CFO of a CPG brand and he says, who are you? And I say, Sherri Henrass, VP of Marketing at Modus Planning, goes, well, tell me about Modus Planning.
Tom Rudnai (18:23)
Yeah.
Sherehan Ross (18:24)
And I go, I can tell you what I write, but I can't really show.
Tom Rudnai (18:28)
But
the number of times I've had that experience at an event where you ask them about their company at the booth and they're like, let me just go and get, and they go and they get a salesperson and you're like, okay, well, first of all, this is not a smooth transition into a sales process, right? Like we talk about a clumsy handoff. You've literally said, wait there, I'm gonna hand you off right now.
Sherehan Ross (18:36)
Get the sales guy.
Yeah. Yeah. Like
I'm I'm just here to be like, hi, but no, I don't know anything. I got to get you. Yeah, that is not how I do business.
like I want to be able to be the sales person or the SDR or the CEO or the customer success person or the person that onboards a new customer because that's what marketing is. We touch everything. that's why marketing is hard. I mean, it's not, it's simple, but it's so hard and so, so nuanced because you got to learn everything.
Tom Rudnai (19:14)
thing that I wanted to ask you about So you took a slightly unusual career route in a way, right? In that you went quite early to kind of agency fractional type work and working externally.
and then have shifted back to internal. What I think you normally see is people build up a career internally and then take that experience externally. How do you think that's served you in your career? I guess particularly in, because of what I think this episode increasingly is about, is of how you then onboard yourself and add value fast within the new role.
Sherehan Ross (19:43)
I left corporate America because I felt that the progression was very slow, you know, going up the corporate ladder, even though I got promoted like three times within the first couple of years I was there and became a manager, like I was one of the youngest managers and I led like a team of 16 SDRs. It was still very slow. And like this was before, you know.
digital marketing was a thing and so there was more traditional marketing and just breaking into that and learning all of that and I wanted to get into digital marketing and it felt like it was gonna take me a couple of careers to become like a CMO, right? A full-fledged, full-stack, deep generalist has touched everything in marketing, CMO. And I thought, well, how do I get there? And I figured I gotta go on my own. I gotta just freelance and learn as I go and that's just...
And I'm that type of person too. It doesn't work for everybody. I think there's a lot of marketers out there that have gone the traditional route that are career marketers that maybe have worked two, three companies their entire careers and they're in their 50s. Kudos to them. That just wasn't me. I wanted to learn all the industries and all the functions and B2B, B2C, D2C, e-commerce. I wanted everything. And so that's why I went on my own. And I thought the first best way to do that is to become a social media manager.
And I had no business being a social media manager because I've never done it before. Right. So then I had to offer my services for free. Am I telling you, you should go work for free? No, but I'm telling you, if you want to accomplish something you've never had, you have to be willing to do something you've never done. I wanted to be a full stack marketer. I wanted to start as a social media manager. So of course I had to take on a lot of pro bono and free clients because if I
go to them and they say, I've never been a social media manager, can I please manage your social media accounts? They're gonna laugh in my face. But if I say, I'm learning and I'm willing to do it for free, give me something and if you don't like it, we can end it. If you like it, we can continue and then we build in whatever, payment later, six months in, whatever. And that's how I build my business and that's how I got referrals and that's how I grew my book of, you know, client and my book of business with my clients. So that's what prepped me to be here, but.
Tom Rudnai (21:38)
Yeah.
Sherehan Ross (21:50)
A shift happened in 2020. I became a mom in early pandemic days. The world shut down and I thought I was going to have to deliver my baby in the house. Luckily, they had a bed for me in the hospital. But regardless, I became a mom. The world shut down. I lost every client that was in any type of service that had to shut down as well. Obviously, they were gone. They weren't going to be spending money on an agency when their doors are closed.
Tom Rudnai (22:19)
Mm.
Sherehan Ross (22:20)
So that pushed me to go in-house very quickly and I joined T-Cetra. And that was like the best thing that ever happened in my career because I joined T-Cetra, I was the head of marketing, so was a marketing director, but I owned the entire marketing function. I built it from the ground up and I fell in love with being in-house.
I was still freelancing and I was still because it started to become fractional so like I got fractional CML gigs
And I was doing that and then I had my second child and then all of a sudden it just felt very lonely. Like I felt like I'm working from home for clients. I'm a mom. It's just me. Like, and I keep bouncing. I just didn't enjoy it anymore. I didn't enjoy having 17 different full-time jobs because like when you have multiple clients and you have to go from unfocusing on modus planning to unfocusing on t-satra to unfocusing on demand genius to, you know,
It became just not my cup of tea and I wanted back in house, I got very specific on what I wanted and I kept searching for it until I found it. And I found my home, I found my team, I found my people at Modus Planning. You know, small, scrappy, but mighty and we keep punching above our weight and I love that.
Tom Rudnai (23:14)
Hmm.
Sherehan Ross (23:29)
but I've never been happier. And everybody around me can see it too. They're like, oh my gosh, you're doing so much more with one brand than you did with multiple clients. And it's because I can have dedicated focus. I own a piece of it, so it's mine. And I have an amazing team that I work with.
Tom Rudnai (23:44)
Mm-hmm.
another thing you said a little bit ago is you were talking about your three priorities in the new role, content, community, campaigns. I guess talk me through that. Why have you honed in on those three things? And I'm particularly interested just because by nature of what we do always in hearing about content.
Sherehan Ross (24:04)
Yeah, so where we're at today, like I said, everybody is competing for attention and there's just, it doesn't matter what solution you provide, as soon as you go to market, somebody else is gonna try to steal it and create a similar solution and maybe better or cheaper or they have, they're a Y Combinator and so they have the backing of investors and.
And so you have to stay top of mind. And content is the easiest, cheapest, quickest way to stay top of mind with your ICP. And content of any form, right? I'm not just talking about posting on LinkedIn. It could be like this webinar, this is or sorry, this podcast. This is content for me, right?
the article you wrote, the whatever interview you've been on, these are all pieces of content, the video you've created. So content in general is very important to stay top of mind as long as you are saying what's relevant to the right audience and using the right channel to distribute. So that was always going to be a priority. But then I thought about it even more and I was like, this is not enough
we have competitors too. So it's not enough. Content is not enough to stay top of mind. We need to build a community and have true advocates for our brand that are speaking on our behalf.
And to do that, we have to build those relationships in real life. Like it's not just enough to do this. Like we gotta show up where they're at. We gotta host some VIP dinners or cocktail hours or whatever. You know, we have to attend these events. We have to be part of like certain Slack communities and chat with these people. So like building that community was very, very important because it helps.
It helps the content. So you're seeing my content, I'm staying top of mind. But then now you're talking to me and you're seeing me in person in real life, I'm staying even more top of mind. And maybe you're a customer and I am getting to know you at a personal level and now you're advocating for my brand. I'm staying top of mind. So that's very important. The campaign piece is sort of the how do we support our efforts, right?
What emails are we sending? What ads are we placing? What pay to play pieces are we involved in? And it has to be very strategic. And that's part of my, that's why I decided on that because I had six months for my GTM. We have very, very specific revenue goals. We have very, very specific pipeline goals, which I've created. And I thought, what is the quickest, not easiest, but what is the quickest way to get there?
that makes sense that is going to compound over time. So quick wins now, but also it compounds. like a year and a half. So like, for example, I'll give you an example. Based on the content community campaign, I identified somebody and we had a conversation and they are amazing. And I would love for them to be our customer. You know what I found out? They are with a competitor and they have a contract in place that they can't break.
Tom Rudnai (26:39)
Yeah.
Sherehan Ross (27:00)
So all these efforts are not paying off right now, but in two years, they're gonna come in and they're gonna be one of our best customers. And in the meantime, because I've done my due diligence and I've built this rapport and they've become part of my community, yes, they're not my customer, but guess what? Anybody else who's asking about a solution like ours, they're telling them to come to us. They're not telling them to our competitor who they're currently in contract with.
You got to think about it this way. sometimes it's a quick win and sometimes it's in place for these compounding effects so that a year or two years down the road, they're coming on board. But in the meantime, they're bringing us other business, other referrals.
Tom Rudnai (27:37)
Yeah, and so it's kind of like honing in on what are the things that I can do early on that really get the flywheel spinning.
Sherehan Ross (27:43)
But you said a very
key word here, flywheel. The flywheel effect. I want everybody to always think about that, because it compounds. Not everything is going to have a direct attribution. Not everything is going to have a direct result. But if you're doing the right things, and you're talking to the right people, and you're solving their problem, even if they don't convert now, they're either going to convert later, or they're going to bring you somebody who will convert now.
Tom Rudnai (28:08)
Yeah,
well and the other reason why, I always think that the way we think about content is often wrong. We think of it as a pillar, a pillar within, stacked alongside lots of other pillars or channels within marketing. To me, it's the foundation of everything that you do across.
go to market, right? If you're running events, they're typically revolving around like a benchmark piece of content that you're doing. Paid advertising, you're not just saying, hey, buy our 100,000 pound piece of software or dollar piece of software. You're advertising a white paper or something like that. Your sales reps hopefully aren't just spamming with any update ready to buy yet. They're sending helpful content that nudges them along the buyer journey, not just the sales cycle. So when you talk about like, what are the highest leveraged things that you can do early on?
Sherehan Ross (28:42)
case study, yep.
Tom Rudnai (28:50)
that spin the flywheel faster by touching it at multiple points rather than just a single one, that's content. I think shifting the way that we look at it, to look at it as like a horizontal foundation that sits across revenue rather than a pillar is a really useful mindset shift.
Sherehan Ross (29:05)
I love it. I love what you just said. I love that you should put that out there. And I always say no random acts of content. So content for the sake of content is just noise. You gotta get strategic and you gotta make sure it makes
Tom Rudnai (29:19)
Yeah, and that's what took me a little while to figure out. But you know, do as I say, not as I do. ⁓
Sherehan Ross (29:23)
Oh yeah, we've all been there.
We've all been there. I used to random crap and I was like, okay, this is it. you gotta learn. You test and you learn.
Tom Rudnai (29:33)
Yeah, it's tough though when you're talking about content. Like I'm a weird one. So I've come around to this. We worked in the like B2B, B2C media space, sorry. And I was a sales rep and so I was like, okay, no one's talking to me anymore. I think content is a hugely more important part of going to market than it was before. So I'm like, I bring quite an interesting perspective to B2B content, but I also, no one should listen to me about how to write B2B content. I'm a terrible writer, just go on our blog.
Sherehan Ross (29:52)
Right? I know.
It's so funny because I got very strategic and very niche with my LinkedIn content, like my personal brand. But yesterday, I put out a post and it went viral and I didn't mean to. And it may or may not have pissed a lot of people off. But I'm like, my gosh, what's gonna happen next? Because it wasn't about marketing, it wasn't about working motherhood, it wasn't about startups, it wasn't about modus. It wasn't about anything that I talk about. It was...
Tom Rudnai (30:04)
Mm.
Sherehan Ross (30:17)
Simply about another post that somebody put out that infuriated me, made me so angry, and so I had to say something about it. And that's the post that goes viral.
Tom Rudnai (30:27)
Yeah, well, and that's what I find quite depressing about doing social content, to be honest. I'll produce, I'll produce sometimes really good content, or it comes off the back of this podcast. Someone, usually not me, but someone on the podcast has said something that is absolute gold, and I put it on there and I've written a thoughtful piece to go with it. And like, people see it, two of them like it, one's my mum.
But then you can do something like super click-baity or something like that. I remember I just posted once, the most viral of things ever gone that I did was I posted a bit of a response that someone gave me to some outreach and it just blew up in my world at hundreds of likes. That was tight, was awful content.
Sherehan Ross (30:57)
Yep, and you're like, ugh, this is not the content I want. And you're
like.
but it went viral and I was like, my gosh. But that also tells you something about, there's a key learning there too. And I talked about this on LinkedIn the other day. My ICP now is not my ICP over the last however many years. And so I have to shift what I say to capture the attention of this new ICP. And when I talk about that stuff, because my current followers are completely different,
they don't give a shit about what I just said, and so it tanks. But when I talk to my old ICP, like the Rance, the whatever, the contrarian hot takes, they all get super excited. Which is great for my vanity metrics, which I don't give a shit about, but it's great for vanity metrics, but I'm like, y'all are not gonna make me any more money. Like you're not my ICP, so I really have to, even now I'm thinking about it, I was like, I really have to hone in on.
what I need to say on LinkedIn as a personal brand that will still move the needle for modus planning versus what I say as a personal brand that just, you know, feeds my ego from a vanity metric perspective.
Tom Rudnai (32:04)
how do you think about that? Like you've come in, you have a personal brand and that personal brand is still yours, right? Modus Planning do not own you. But obviously now you want to try and extract some value from that personal brand for the company that you now work for. But you also don't want to lose it as something that you have access to on an ongoing basis, right? Like how do you think about splitting it between continuing to build your profile within your world and extracting value for them?
Sherehan Ross (32:27)
It's tough, it's a challenge, I'm still figuring it out, but I decided on a more structured content pillar. So like I published Monday through Friday, and occasional Saturday, Sunday, but every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, I am posting. And so I split it up. I said, the me that became Sherrihan Ross on LinkedIn will get one to two days of the week to do.
like yesterday's rant that went viral. But the rest of the week is going to be content very specific to move the needle for modus planning and to talk to our ICP at modus planning. And then the weekends is for whatever the heck strikes, like I am not ever going to plan the content in advance for the weekends. If I wake up on a Saturday and I have something to say, it'll go out. Otherwise, nothing will go out. So that's sort of the direction I'm taking right now. So I'm structuring it.
Two days a week for Sherriham, three days a week for Modus Planning. The weekends are for sort of that a la carte, know, whatever happens, happens. And we'll see. I just started it this week, so I don't know. But that's the beauty of being a marketer. You test. You're like, here's my plan based on the homework I've done, and let's take it to market and see if it works or not. And I don't know. But I can tell you that I, just in the last couple of weeks,
I have had a lot of connections and followers from our ICP, like CFOs of CPG brands, demand planning managers from CPG brands, operational leaders from CPG brands. They have never been in my connection or in my followers before, but now they are. So something's working, I hope. So we'll see.
Tom Rudnai (34:05)
Yeah, well, and hopefully you can, and I think it sounds like it's just trying to create a balance between maintaining what you have and starting to tilt it in a new direction. And it'll be interesting to see. I'd love to chat to you actually in a year or two and see like how that process went and what points in that did the algorithm decide to punish you.
Sherehan Ross (34:21)
it's punching
me now, but we'll see.
Tom Rudnai (34:23)
Yeah, okay.
And also it's good to note that if I ever hear from you on LinkedIn on a Saturday or a Sunday, then it probably means you are really pissed off about something like extra, extra angry.
Sherehan Ross (34:34)
Yeah, yeah, which was yesterday, but I don't know why it was yesterday. Like, I think I just, I was like, should have waited until Saturday, but like it pissed me off and I was like, I can't wait till Saturday to post about this. So like out it went. So yeah.
Tom Rudnai (34:46)
Cool, we're coming up on time. Before I let you go, I always like to finish off with a couple of quickfire questions. So first one, an AI use case that you love.
Sherehan Ross (34:54)
my gosh, so many. Let's go away from marketing. My favorite use case is the one that makes me an amazing mother. I built a chat GPT called Bedtime Stories and she tells us a new bedtime story every evening for my kids right before bedtime. So my children are five and three. And instead of the Ross family, we're called the Starlight family. There's still a mom and a dad and a sister and a brother.
and they go on an adventure. And there's always some key learnings. And it took me like a couple of weeks to build it up, but now we've been doing it for months. And that is the best use case I can think of because you get the story and you can have it, you you can hear it or you can read it to them. And then you get the visual, the illustration at the end about the story. And it's just been amazing. So. I don't have to keep buying new books for them.
Tom Rudnai (35:34)
Yeah, okay, that is bloody adorable. That is the best AI use case we've had.
And now we get down to it then. You always peel back a layer and you find out the real reason.
Sherehan Ross (35:46)
I mean, I just have so many books
and you can only read the same book so many times before they're like, mommy, I don't want this story. And you're like, come I gotta get your new story. So now I have a brand new story every single night.
Tom Rudnai (35:52)
Heh.
Awesome, I love that. Next question, so what skill or trait for you, and mean kind of you personally here, has been the biggest needle mover in your career?
Sherehan Ross (36:06)
The ability to learn quickly. It's something that I am proud of. I grasp concepts, complicated concepts, very quickly, just how my brain is wired. And it's served me well, because I can jump from industry to industry, from product to product, from function to function. And what might take somebody quite a bit of time to really grasp will take me a fraction of that time. And I think that's an important.
I don't know if that's a skill you can learn though, so maybe that's not a good answer. Some people just learn quicker.
Tom Rudnai (36:36)
I think
it is something you can learn though, because I think to me it's about self-awareness. If you're self-aware as to how you learn, then you can learn quickly. A lot of people don't ever build up that awareness.
Sherehan Ross (36:41)
Yeah.
Right, ⁓ yeah,
Possibly, yeah. But I think a skill that you can learn, time management, I know it's like so boring, but I swear to God, like, time management is crucial, man. Like, it is crucial, especially if you're a parent. Like, I used to make fun of people that, I didn't have time to get to it, and I'm like, what do mean you didn't have time? You didn't plan your time correctly then. You didn't manage your day and your schedule correctly.
I schedule everything. I block my calendar and I do not touch my calendar. If it says a block, that's gonna happen. Like I even have it blocked to say go touch grass. Like get up, get out the house, walk barefoot, touch grass, lay down on the grass, know, assuming it's not a blizzard outside and then come back. Like I have those blocks because, you know, that's how I manage my time and that's how I stay efficient. And I think that's something I learned very early on and it's really important.
Tom Rudnai (37:39)
And then last question before we just kind of wrap up is the flip side. What's the biggest fuck up that you've ever made in your career?
Sherehan Ross (37:45)
Hmm burned bridges Early on in my career. I regret them to this day you know, I'm young you're young you're young and dumb and Before digital media and LinkedIn and all this stuff like you burn bridges. You're like fuck it. What's what's the worst that's gonna happen You became you become famous on LinkedIn and it comes back to bite you in the ass That's gonna be the worst thing that can happen. Right? And so I think that was some huge learning is
Whatever it is, don't burn the bridge. I mean, unless like you need to blow that bridge up, that's fine. But like in general, generally speaking, nobody has wronged you so much that you need to destroy them and burn that bridge because it can come back and bite you. And I learned that the hard way, so.
Tom Rudnai (38:18)
You
Nice, I'm gonna sum that up. Don't burn bridges, but if you do, blow them sky high.
Sherehan Ross (38:33)
Yes, if you do, make sure that
nobody can ever, ever rebuild that bridge.
Tom Rudnai (38:39)
And then yeah, before I let you go, I always think it's nice to just get one recommendation out of you. So a book, a thought leader, a podcast, anything like that that you love and would recommend people go and check out.
Sherehan Ross (38:50)
well, actually, let's go to AI. Look, it's happening. It's here. If you're not learning, you're already behind. And if you don't know where to start, I would start with Lisa Adams, L-I-Z-A Adams. She's on LinkedIn. She is a thought leader, AI First. And she talks about all the things on how AI can become your collaborator.
can become your teammate, how you can build functions and departments with AI being members. And I think she would be a great resource. She's on LinkedIn. Start there.
Tom Rudnai (39:24)
finally, anything that you'd like to plug, anything you're doing at the moment.
Sherehan Ross (39:27)
I'm the VP of marketing at Modus Planning, I love connecting with new people. I'm on LinkedIn, very, very active, so come find me. And if you're in the CPG brand space, I'm going to be in New York the end of this month. Love to connect with people in real time. I am going to an event called Summer Fancy Food Show, but that's during the day. And it's New York, the city that never sleeps, so I will be out all night and happy to meet with anybody who's in or around the city.
So yeah, just hit me up.
Tom Rudnai (39:55)
Well, that sounds fun. I can't say that we probably have a big group of CPG CFOs on here But if any of you are there then then then raise your hand Yeah
Sherehan Ross (40:03)
Or brands like marketers is fine too.
Like I love to talk shop with other marketers always.
Tom Rudnai (40:09)
Look, this has been fantastic. I'm sorry I kept you too long, but I was enjoying it. well, I hope to all our listeners, hope you enjoyed it too. And yeah, thank you, Sherry-Han.
Sherehan Ross (40:13)
same.
Thank you, Tom. It was so lovely chatting with you. This has been very enjoyable. I appreciate you. Thank
Tom Rudnai (40:23)
That was awesome. Thanks everyone.
Sherehan Ross (40:26)
Bye.