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We need a new definition of success—one that harmonizes meaning and money.
Imagine diving into your workday with renewed energy, leaving behind the exhaustion or dread of a monotonous grind.
Traditional beliefs about success and the root cause of burnout are the same:
Prove yourself.
Work harder.
Take care of the business, and it will take care of you.
We’re recycling the mindset and practices that keep us stuck. Our souls need a jumpstart into The Age of Humanity.
Tune in for a new way of working that honors our nervous system and the bottom line, using knowledge of the brain, the Bible, and business. We’ll discuss timeless truths that amplify growth, ignite change, and reshape the world of work. No corporate speak or business BS. Let’s get to the heart of a rewarding career and profitable growth.
We speak human about business.
What’s in it for You?
Value, Relevance, and Impact (VRI): No, it's not a new tech gadget—it's your ticket to making your work genuinely matter to you and your company.
Human-Centric Insights: We prioritize people over profits without sacrificing the bottom line. Think less "cog in the machine" and more "humans helping humans."
I'm your host, Rebecca Fleetwood Hesson, your thrive guide leading you into the new Age of Humanity. I’ve navigated the highs and lows of business and life, from achieving over $40 million in sales, teaching thousands of people around the world about leadership, trust, execution, and productivity to facing burnout, divorce, raising a couple of great humans (one with ADHD), and navigating the uncertainty of starting a business.
I’m committed to igniting change in the world by jumpstarting business into profitable growth with the timeless truths of our humanity.
Sound crazy? It’s only crazy until it works.
Hit subscribe to never miss an episode, and leave a review to help other listeners discover our show.
Want insight and advice on your real career and business challenges? Connect with me on social media or email me at rebecca@wethrive.live. Your story could spark our next conversation.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:00:10]:
Welcome back to the Business is Human podcast. I'm your host, Rebecca Fleetwood Hession, and we're here to bring you episodes that blend meaningful work with profitable success. Here to steward what I call the age of humanity. I believe if we transform the way we work, we can transform the way that we live. As always, my friendly request. If you like what you hear, hit subscribe so you don't miss any episode and leave a review to tell the other humans that they might like it too. Always looking to help you and connect with others. All right, let's get into it, shall we? You know what I find super interesting is that my life gets much more interesting and what I'll call successful by traditional metrics of business and things.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:00:58]:
When I relinquish some control, a lot of control, and let things happen a little more organically. It's more fun, it's more successful, and that's the way that I met our next guest, Melissa Moody. Melissa has a couple of interesting points about her bio. One, she lives in Alaska. I don't think I've ever interviewed anyone that lives in Alaska, so I wouldn't have run into her at the local Kroger. I was introduced to her by a common friend, Lindsay Chepkama. But also what's really interesting about Melissa is she left a really good role at Google. And you're going to hear about her being a little more open and organic about how things happen and just looking for opportunities and then filling them.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:01:54]:
And she's got some really interesting projects that she's working on that I think you'll find to be helpful. And just the whole vibe of Melissa and the way that she runs her life in business. Okay, here we go. The way that we got introduced is you're doing this cool thing called Wednesday Women as a means to connect folks that something about it got my attention. Maybe it was because our collective friend Lindsey had posted about it. So that got my attention. I don't know. But the way that it was put in front of me got me thinking.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:02:28]:
So tell us about what that is and why it is.
Melissa Moody [00:02:32]:
Yes, once upon a time, an amazing woman named Leslie Greenwood had posted on LinkedIn, I want to see more CEO women CEOs in my feed. And she had gotten all these people to reply, and she literally collected a bunch of names in a spreadsheet. And then Leslie went around sharing it whenever anybody said, do you Know any women CEO? She went, here's my Google sheet. Well, a few months later I posted in my feed, I need more women founders in my feed. Not that I don't. I mean, I love all the male founders, I know they're incredible. But I just saw a gap and I was hoping to be inspired and share journeys. As we talked about, Leslie popped into my comments.
Melissa Moody [00:03:05]:
Here's the networking we talked about and said, here's my Google sheet. And we said, hey, let's meet for half an hour. And at the end of that half hour call, we said, listen, we're both very busy executive women. We've got things going on, but we should do something. We should do something because clearly people are going to keep posting what we posted. So we decided once a week we would take an incredible woman executive that we knew and just celebrate her. We would blast it out to our current LinkedIn followings and anybody else who cared to amplify it and say, look at this awesome woman out there kicking ass. I mean, the real threat of it here is one of the main problems in the audience on social media space is that really busy executive women often don't have the time or have the desire to get online and toot their own horns.
Melissa Moody [00:03:56]:
Yeah, there's a whole lot to unpack in that statement, but we just don't do it as easily as we could or should. And so our mission at Wednesday Women is to amplify extraordinary women executives and get them in more social feeds, on more keynotes, on more panels, on more podcasts. We are just going to be shining a light and clapping and raising up so that the examples of great leaders are no longer, you know, the three same women CEOs in SaaS, but the.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:04:23]:
One that we also connected on. This Matcha idea. Really cool. Tell us a little bit about that.
Melissa Moody [00:04:30]:
Matcha is a company that is really founded around the idea that within the communities and the groups and the teams that we already have, Matcha is going to make it easy and fun and delightful and not awkward to get more effective one to one networking out of those existing communities and teams. Now we've actually, since I came on board in January, we've had a lot of different kind of products and a little bit of difference in where we're heading. But we're really focusing in now on if you've got an existing community, especially our leading focus has been tech paid communities where you've got a group of members, they want to connect with each other. Matcha is going to be the tech that Makes it super easy for you to make that happen and super enjoyable for your members.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:05:16]:
I can think of a million places that could be valuable and helpful, but we gotta make sure we hone it in on a place that we can be relevant and impactful and then grow it from there. And as a builder, that's. That's sometimes hard to do.
Melissa Moody [00:05:29]:
Yeah. For us, our focus right now over the next month or so is we listened and we heard that people in these communities are building with a lot of certain platforms and they want MATCHA not to be separate, but integrated. So my team is really focused on, we're gonna be starting with Slack. If you have an existing Slack community, how do we just plug that power right into what you're doing? The other thing I'm very passionate about, just from the CEO perspective, is looking actually out beyond tech. I've been talking with a lot of associations and groups that are not quite as tech savvy and thinking how do we facilitate connection for their members, for people, you know, the national association of Fill in the blank, how do we connect them in a way because we know they're already aligned. As we've talked about, how do you just make more space to meet with those other folks that you have overlap with? I'm not coming down. I never locked it on the ground.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:06:22]:
It's a quick reminder if any of the topics from the Businesses Human podcast really resonate with you when you think you know what, I'd like to dig deeper on that, well, let's have a discussion. We can do that through coaching, keynote speaking, or a variety of video based solutions that I have available. We can talk about authentic leadership, thriving women, or even nervous system foundations. There's lots of options. So if it needs to be more than a podcast, let's make it more than a podcast. Hit the show Notes. There's lots of ways to contact with me and I can't wait to hear about you.
Melissa Moody [00:06:56]:
Oh, I will start by telling you a story that somebody else told about me, which I think sounds love. I went into some conversation at some point and I said, hello, I'm Melissa, I'm a 20 year marketer. And they paused me and said, whoa, I'm going to stop you right there. You're not a 20 year marketer. You are a serial entrepreneur with a background of 20 years in marketing. And I think that was so right because as you said, you know, I always like to think about doing big things, but I'm someone who ends up finding the other builders and the other people who Want to tear something down and rebuild it better. That's very much what I'm drawn to. And it's taken me a nice long career to really understand that that is core to who I am.
Melissa Moody [00:07:41]:
I'm super. You know, I started actually my career started in education. I have my master's in education. I realized that although I love it, I have to move faster. I'm someone who needs change.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:07:50]:
That's not a place where you do big things. No.
Melissa Moody [00:07:52]:
And you do small things that change the world on a small level. But if you're someone who likes to tear down things that are broken and try new things or test something out that very well could fail, education's maybe not the easiest place to do that. It's fairly entrenched. And similarly with marketing, there are a lot of amazing marketing jobs at large companies that have a huge process and they're putting out incredible brand campaigns or massively structured performance campaigns. I spent a lot of years at a very large company and I loved when I started there. It was very scrappy. When I ended, it was really big. It was Google.
Melissa Moody [00:08:32]:
I didn't say that. By the end it was so big I felt, to put it lightly, dead inside, the spark was gone. And I realized that when I started at Google, it still felt very startupy. And by the time I left, I knew exactly why I was leaving. I couldn't manifest changes, I couldn't affect change on a programmatic level. I couldn't put something new in place or try something that would be, you know, out of left field. It was very big company by 2020 when I left. So for the last three to four years, I've been on the ground level at a couple of different startups and it's chaos and it's messy and I love it.
Melissa Moody [00:09:09]:
So that's who I am, I suppose.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:09:11]:
And it is a blessing and a curse. Right. I left a 20 year career because I needed more creative freedom. I needed to build things, I needed to create things. And the one thing I would want our listeners to take away already from this conversation is we are who we are at various chapters of our story. And if that's who you are, forcing yourself to stay at a place because it is wildly famous to work there or it is really financially lucrative to work there, isn't going to feed your soul from that authentic space of who you actually are. And maybe it's, maybe it's different for you. It's not that you're a builder or a creator, but there's something about where you are that even though from every other perspective it might look like where you should be, if there's something in your soul that isn't matching up with, there's nothing you can do to make that feel better.
Melissa Moody [00:10:09]:
I love what you said in there, which is you said something to the effect of the point in time as well. And I think that matters because it does. When I was there and perfectly happy, I also had two young kids. Healthcare matters. Not having to use my brain a lot at work. And I did work very hard. But you know what I mean, when.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:10:24]:
You get to show up, you can't live in chaos at home and at chaos at work when you're raising little kids and running startups. And yeah, I do believe that our story is chapter by chapter and we need to reflect on what does this chapter need from me, what can I give from it and adapt accordingly.
Melissa Moody [00:10:41]:
Yes. And those change points are hard, but then to your point, when you make the change and it's the right one. I remember the day I left Google and I was so, I have so many good friends there. It was not a bad role. I love the company, but the day I left I felt a million pounds lighter and immediately I knew that all of that stress about the change was right because my gut was just telling me, screaming out yes, that was the right thing. I didn't know what I was doing next and I didn't know why I was leaving a well paying job and yet I knew that it was the right thing to do.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:11:15]:
Same, same. And it really is. You know, I like to geek out a little bit on the what was happening in our hearts and our souls and our brains at that time and really is like saying the well worn path that I took every single day, I now am going to wake up and take a different path. It's going to be harder, but it's also going to challenge me in the right ways. And that's uncomfortable. You're literally leaving something to go do like forge a new path. That's uncomfortable. But it hits you somewhere where you're like, but I'm really glad I did it.
Melissa Moody [00:11:48]:
In my brain, all I'm thinking about is the Robert Frost poem and my leaves and my woods are a yellow wood right now. So we are taking the road less traveled. And it. Sometimes you don't want to go that path, but sometimes it can be the right one. Yes. Okay, Sorry to get all poetic, but no, please do.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:12:02]:
Oh my gosh. That feeds my soul and hold on to that moment because I think we're going to end up back there with part of this conversation because as a result of making those kinds of changes, I'm just now making this connection from. Because we, we've barely known each other just a little while and had a few conversations. But it's interesting when you leave a long time career and you start something new, there's a group of friends and community and business connections that you leave behind. Now you may stay connected in some way, but it's really hard to stay connected in the same meaningful way that you did when the work held you together. Because work is such an all consuming part of our lives. And so both of us, I think maybe partly from that experience, have this passionate need and interest in gathering as communities. We're going to talk about the difference between an audience and a network.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:13:02]:
But where people gather and how they gather and why they gather and what does that all mean? Especially after 2020, community and connection became this huge conversation because it was stripped from our lives. And now I think we're all trying to figure out what it means for us now. And so I ask you to come and talk about, you know, the difference between building an audience and building a network. Because the companies that you're running now is about building, bringing people together.
Melissa Moody [00:13:36]:
Yes.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:13:36]:
What is the difference between building an audience and a network?
Melissa Moody [00:13:40]:
Well, I think before we get to difference, I think if we could just take a minute and think about network. Because as you mentioned, especially when you, you know, when you leave any job or you move into a new career, or you've gone through a reflection and a transition, not only your career changes, but your network, the people that you surround yourself with will change. I mean, number one, everybody. That's natural, right? I think sometimes we say, oh gosh, every time I meet someone new, I'm adding them to my giant bucket of people I must connect with. First of all, don't put that guilt on yourself. Second of all, let's go talk about Dunbar's number, right? There is a finite amount of relationships that we can and should maintain at any point. So your network change that concept a.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:14:20]:
Little bit because I don't think everybody.
Melissa Moody [00:14:21]:
Will know that Dunbar's numbers, essentially, I believe it's 150, but it basically says there is a, there's a top limit to the amount of relationships that we can, you know, in our monkey brains, maintain and invest in over time. And so, you know, some people talk about networking as just meeting lots of people. And it is, there's a lot of different layers of networking. It can be going out and making a lot of new connections. But if we step away from the word networking and we think about who is in your network, I would posit that that's more interesting and fun to discuss and that network will change over time. I have so many amazing people from my years at Google that I don't have in my close network right now because where we're at doesn't serve each other, even from a personal standpoint. Now some of those people remain in my network because they are personally supporting me and they are people that I need to call on the phone to talk about a funny TV show. You know, not just work related, but Karen Wickrey, who wrote the book Taking the Work out of Networking.
Melissa Moody [00:15:24]:
Wonderful book. She talks about reflecting on the size of your network. And I really love this, which is before you think about networking, think about who is in your network now and how does it serve you. If you're in a certain role, you're going to need certain people. If you're thinking about your career development, you might need some other people, right, to coach you into where you're going. If you're making a big transition from teaching into marketing, you're going to need different folks. If you're going through something personal, you need different folks in your network. So I think there's a really cool activity for anyone to do which is just to reflect on who actually am I maintaining relationships with on a semi regular basis and is that serving me? Are they people who play a role in where I'm at right now? You've been talking a lot about reflecting on our own state of being at different times and right now is important.
Melissa Moody [00:16:15]:
I've gone a bit of, a little bit of a diatribe, but the business I run right now really has to do a lot with how do we invest in relationships that actually have meaning. So as we grow our network, do they have relevance? Is there overlap? How do we meet more of those people that could serve us right now? And to your main question, a lot of that comes through community. The groups that we have already aligned ourselves with is often where we find people that serve us in our current needs. When I was deep in CMO land, I have a community that is jam packed with talented CMOs. I spend a lot of time there now in my current role, especially with kind of taking on a slightly different title. I still love my CMO group, but I've leaned heavily into talking with other founders, people who can share the burden, share the stress, talk through some of the challenges. So I think Network, not networking, but network and community sit right side by side. The communities that we're a part of is usually where we're going to find our current network to be, you know, most strong.
Melissa Moody [00:17:17]:
It's where we can really grow that network in a way that actually makes sense for the right now. Not just meeting a lot of people. To meet a lot of people.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:17:23]:
Yeah. And I think it's hard for many to recognize that when you do make that shift and people in your network and your community change that it's not, you're not doing it wrong. Like sometimes people get left behind not because they were bad or there was something wrong with the relationship. It's just that season, that chapter is ending and you're moving into something else and you've got to create some emotional bandwidth to be able to take on some new relationships and some new information about people. And that's a part of our natural maturation process.
Melissa Moody [00:18:00]:
Absolutely. There is a little bit of the guilt of just the human guilt of well, I really like that person. I don't talk to them much. I would say there's always a reason to just send someone, a human to human. Let's chat and catch up on how are you? I think when people think about networking it has to have a, this is a whole nother deep topic, but the transactional versus non transactional nature of networking. A lot of times when we network we have a reason and I don't think that's bad. I have a business, I'm growing or I'm looking for funding or I need a new advice on a new career. But I think it's some of the best networking comes when it is non transactional, when it's asking what are you up to? What are you stuck on now that you've been really challenged with? Or something way out of left field.
Melissa Moody [00:18:40]:
What's the latest book you've read that you love? Because sometimes those very light just human touches actually lead back to something more meaningful or you catch up with a friend that now is in the same industry you're in. So sometimes I like to reach out to the far scopes of my network and just say, hey, I really liked working with you 10 years ago.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:19:00]:
How about I just did that recently with a gentleman who invited me to apply for the TEDx talk that I did 14 years ago now maybe. And we, we hadn't talked in probably five or six years. You know, we kind of popped in and out of each other's lives and I reached out to him, we had an amazing Conversation. Both of us said, oh my gosh, I'm so glad we did this. But not with any expectation that we're going to chat every week or anything. It was just like, boom. It was nice to pop back together. We exchanged some valuable information for each other and some referrals and said, gosh, so good.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:19:35]:
I missed you. Yeah, hi, see you in five years or five months or whatever it is.
Melissa Moody [00:19:40]:
I think those are my favorite bucket of network, I might call them is the people that I just really vibed well with. You know, there's a bucket and you're like, well, we don't have a real concrete reason to work together right now. But boy, oh boy, I thought you were fantastic to work with. Or I'm curious what you're up to because you were always super interesting. Or those are a fun group. It kind of spices up the day to day. I'm having another sales call when you're like, I'm going to talk to someone random from five years ago.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:20:07]:
Yeah, absolutely. So that's intentionally building this network and thinking about how they serve. As I say, this chapter of your story is way different than building an audience.
Melissa Moody [00:20:23]:
Yes.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:20:23]:
How would you describe that?
Melissa Moody [00:20:25]:
So this comes into play when you think about the why of what you're doing. I would say that we all need to build our network, especially if you don't have a need right now. It's better to build your network when you don't have a driving need. But we all are going to need a network for personal support, business success, career growth, staying sane in an increasingly crazy world, whatever. We all need a network. So we need to invest in that. And there are ways to do that. Well, and you and I love chatting about that.
Melissa Moody [00:20:54]:
What I would posit though is we've kind of fallen into this world where everybody feels that they also need to build an audience. And by that I mean moving from a one to one network building to a one to many, shouting out, here's who I am, here's what I do. Now, some people, there is a why for that. Maybe they need more organic eyeballs on the business they're building. Maybe they are building a services or consulting business and they want people to know exactly who they are before you know, it's really a.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:21:25]:
As a keynote speaker that's.
Melissa Moody [00:21:27]:
You have to have a big presence. You have to have.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:21:29]:
People would advise a keynote speaker to go build an audience so that.
Melissa Moody [00:21:34]:
Yeah, yeah, yes. There are really legitimate and wonderful reasons to build an audience. And by that I mean have a public, individual presence. That is really a one to many. So that functionally for a lot of us is what people are doing on LinkedIn. It's, you know, the buzzwords are personal branding sometimes into like social, selling, building your brand online. And I think it's great and I love when people do it and we all have a why for that as well. I Show up on LinkedIn, I do not like doing it.
Melissa Moody [00:22:04]:
But my why is so that other female executives have more examples of what I do. I don't do it for myself. I'm not. But my why is that so it's sometimes feels like twisting my own arm to get on social, LinkedIn social and do that. But to get back to your point, building an audience is a totally legit and wonderful thing to do. But I think the why is very separate from building a network. So when you build an audience, you are looking to gain followers, you are looking to gain engagement, but still fairly one sided engagement. It's people responding to you, it's not a conversation.
Melissa Moody [00:22:39]:
Maybe some conversations start happening in the comments thread. Feel free to debate me on this listeners, but I think people often conflate building a network with building an audience. And I would really like to see more people understand the difference between the two or at least strive to do both if they're going to do both. Don't see posting on LinkedIn as building your network. Can posting on LinkedIn drive network conversations? Absolutely. But those networking conversations can also happen from in person events, from reaching out in your communities that you're a part of, from getting recommendations from your existing network, you know, oh, you should meet so and so. There's a lot of ways we can build our network without having to be a loud voice on social.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:23:23]:
And I think that's what keeps people from building an intentional network because they have confused it with building an audience and they don't want to go or have a reason to go and post. One to many that's not their authentic style and preference. And so they're missing out on a network that could be really, really beautiful for their life and career. Yeah.
Melissa Moody [00:23:49]:
And if we were to break it down tactically and say, well, where could you build a network without posting? Like let's say your why is not building an audience. You don't want to build an audience perfectly happy in your role, you've got enough sales channels, whatever, what can you do? Well, number one, yes, go to social, but just engage in comments, start having interesting conversations that then go to DMS and then turn into chats, right? Yep, definitely Events. I mean, the more and more we come back from post Covid, big events, small events, the conversations start there and then I think the number one driver right now, as you mentioned, is community. So basically what you're doing is you're taking the whole world of folks you could connect with and immediately shrinking that bucket to a group of people that I am aligned with in some specific way. Well, of course that's where you can really start effective networking, because immediately you've shrunk that bucket. Now you're always going to get some better and some worse networking chats, but you've shrunk the pool and you're able to reach out on a little bit more informal level to just say, I don't know everything about you, but I know we have something in common.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:24:52]:
Something in common. And those can be anything. So it could be working moms in Detroit, it could be, I love process improvement and I'm using technology to blah, blah, blah. I'm a founder in fundraising. The connection points are infinite.
Melissa Moody [00:25:12]:
Companies are picking up on this too. So like a company like Gong, they not only have a community for people who use their product, which is interesting in itself, but then they also started a community for their customers, which are essentially revenue professionals. So not only are people making their own communities, but companies are starting to really say we can make this space not just to push out our own messaging, but to give people the chance to connect with each other, really help.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:25:41]:
Facilitate those connections and those conversations around something that is already work relevant.
Melissa Moody [00:25:46]:
Yes, beautiful.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:25:48]:
Love that.
Melissa Moody [00:25:49]:
And one of my favorite things that I've noticed is you take a group that has a thread like let's say sales professionals or even we could say women in sales. Right. You've got women who are in sales, I would venture to guess upwards of three quarters, at least 75%, 80% of the time. The conversations that happen between those two women are probably not about sales or maybe not even about being a woman in sales, but about some other thing that they both have on their mind or something that connects them.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:26:17]:
The nervous system response to that would be because we're both women in sales. I feel a level of safety with you because we share in the same challenges we have. Whatever similarities brought us into that place and that, that just by nature says to your brain must be okay, they do this thing that we do and.
Melissa Moody [00:26:42]:
Flip that on its head and we can see why. Especially you know, in Mental health awareness month and the, the importance of connection for the brain and for humans, why communities are so important, why Networking feels good in the end because you're connecting with other humans on these topics. Another wonderful CMO leader, MK Gettler, at Lupin Tie. She and I have talked a lot about kind of this idea of Project Connect and building up more and more places where people can connect authentically, not in a postured way. I mean, that's the other difference between audience and network is when you're in an audience setting, everything you do is going to have a sheen of posturing. Right. As a keynote speaker, you have to be buttoned up, it has to be sharp, it has to be polished. It's very different than hopping on a call with someone and talking about the stresses of balancing mom and parenting life.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:27:32]:
Which is why I don't get on LinkedIn and build an audience like my peers in keynote speaking would say. I might consider if I more keynote business because I love jumping on a podcast in a hoodie after a walk in the woods and just having a conversation with someone. And so it takes a bigger stretch for me to like, plan out my message and what am I going to jump on LinkedIn and put out into the world. Now I. I'm a good, great keynote speaker. And when I go to prepare a keynote for a client, oh, I've prepared a keynote. What's different about my approach is I have also prepared for my audience to have a conversation with each other, which is different than other keynote speakers. And so I, by nature, care so much about the conversation and the connection.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:28:29]:
I build it into my style as a keynote speaker because we will only remember about 20 to 30% of what someone else says to us, but we will remember 70 to 90% of what we say to each other. And so I know that. And so why wouldn't I make that environment be one where if I'm saying something that I think is really important, increase the probability that you're going to remember it by allowing you to talk to one another. And so it kind of breaks the mold a little bit on what is expected. But I think it's a more powerful experience for my audience.
Melissa Moody [00:29:10]:
And I think if you stroll into your presence on something like LinkedIn or on any social media, with that knowledge of yourself, you can actually show up in an incredibly unique way. Right. I think of Sam McKenna. Samantha McKenna does an incredible job. One of her standout qualities is she engages on LinkedIn. Yeah, she's got posts. Yeah, she posts about things, but her engagement level on LinkedIn, really responding thoughtfully, talking with people in the comments, commenting on other people's posts in A thoughtful way, immediately, I understand this is not just a sales leader. This is a sales leader who has built her entire business on knowing the customer and really human connections.
Melissa Moody [00:29:51]:
So for you, I think the same thing. This is not just a keynote speaker who's out there posting this, you know, loudly to the audience. Some bro, a tree, as we call on LinkedIn. This is a keynote speaker who is deeply invested in what people are thinking about. So I think lean into it. I mean, for anyone listening who's debating how to show up on LinkedIn, if you're getting this feeling of I should post, you can still do that, but do it in a way that really represents who you are. There's another. I'm trying to come up with who it is.
Melissa Moody [00:30:18]:
There's another marketing leader who basically has leaned into asking questions as their posts. Not saying, I did, I did, I did, but saying, here's something I saw. What do we all think about it immediately? I know that's someone who's more interested in discussion than in throwing another framework my way.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:30:36]:
Yeah. And all of that boils down to the thing you referenced earlier that I said. I think we're probably going to come back to this in some way, which is what is not right or wrong, it's just knowing why you're doing it. Oh, Simon Sinek, we always come back to the lie, which is a nervous system brain function that he released to the business world. And I'm thrilled that he did because it has started a gazillion conversations like this one because of it.
Melissa Moody [00:31:11]:
I mean, it's amazing how no matter how many buzzwords and theories we have that it all comes back to so many just foundation. Simon Sinek stuff is all rooted in deeper philosophical, concrete. I mean, even physiological understanding. You've got the understanding of all that component of why we do these things. But yeah, the other one I love is Seth Godin. His most recent book is called Song of Significance. Same idea. It's just like, know your why.
Melissa Moody [00:31:38]:
That's really what it comes down to.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:31:39]:
Which is the human side of business, which this podcast is called Business is Human. And speaking of frameworks, that's been mine, is that the human needs and the business needs are different. And we gotta know that humans love personal, emotional, social. We gotta feel something in this deal in order for it to be felt as valuable. And the more we know how to connect with that human spirit to accomplish business results, that you can then control, measure, optimize all the things. Great.
Melissa Moody [00:32:15]:
Yes.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:32:15]:
But another strategy is not as impactful as knowing how your current strategy connects with the human spirit of the people that are trying to orchestrate it.
Melissa Moody [00:32:27]:
And I'm really pleased to see, at least from the B2B side. I know with my current company we're shifting back to kind of a really B2B focus. But I've been really pleased to see, Trend wise, the B2B SaaS industry is starting to get that. We're starting to tell the stories that have always been told in B2C products. Right?
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:32:46]:
Yeah.
Melissa Moody [00:32:47]:
Starting to connect with the emotional component. It was funny, I was telling the story, the story of not our company, but kind of a lot of the branding around it to someone the other day and she goes, you need to have that in your product. That story needs to be the first thing people see. I went, well, it's B2B. You know, we're selling to, you know, it's software. And she goes, no, humans, doesn't matter.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:33:09]:
So, yeah, still humans that are making the decisions. We buy on emotion, we validate on facts. Whether you're buying for a company or buying from the Target on a Saturday in the candle aisle.
Melissa Moody [00:33:23]:
Oh, and boy, do we buy a lot of candles. I will also say that as a marketer, every company that I've ever enjoyed marketing at and that I've seen real success at, build with the end customer at the same. I mean, that's a good marketing principle, you build with the end customer, but I mean actually build your strategies around it. Take the words they say and share those out. Social proof in everything you do, Referral programs, word of mouth, like everything needs to be built around that end customer. And so similarly, the brand you build, the marketing you run, ideally the product you build. That's why I've enjoyed my current roles, because I actually can do that for the product as well. It should all focus on the human.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:34:04]:
That's when I'm coaching. I say, who's it for? Why does it matter to them first? And then why does it matter to you? And in the intersection of those very simple three questions are most of the right answers.
Melissa Moody [00:34:19]:
Do you wanna know a little tragic story about my first company that I mentioned?
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:34:23]:
Bring the tragedy. That's emotion. We'll all connect around it. Yes, I do, I have.
Melissa Moody [00:34:28]:
It's not like full tragedy, folks. Sorry, I didn't mean to click bait there, but I have always said that that is really the thread with what I choose to work on is the projects, the marketing efforts, the products that have an impact on the end human. Right. That they're helping someone and it doesn't need to be changing the world. We don't all need to be out there, you know, saving lives every day. There's a lot we can do that really helps humans on a less sexy level, let's say. But all of that, I think, started with being brainwashed at Google. So when I joined, one of the key phrases that we had all the time in everything we does was focus on the user and all else will follow.
Melissa Moody [00:35:07]:
It was like a phrase. I mean, it was right there in the valley in Google's top 10 values. Focus on the user and all else will follow. I think it was number one. And I will say, by the time I left, I didn't hear that as much anymore. I think that’s somewhat indicative of where multinational, giant global corporations do change.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:35:23]:
Well, because you, you eventually from the startup phase move into, not all do, but the big Walmart do. You move into a money first versus a human story first need, you've got, shareholders, you've got. All of these are just like pounding on the door saying, where's my money? Where's my money? And it skews your thinking and usually not in a great way for the user. Yeah.
Melissa Moody [00:35:52]:
And so often that's how you get success at the beginning. Right. That's how Google got success at the beginning. They solve for the needs. And I still talk about SEO, I get really dorky about SEO. But it's the same thing now with all the changes we're seeing in organic search. It all comes back down to one thing, which is, can the person who's using Google find what they want? Because the more that they do that, the more Google gets used, the more ads get clicked and the more good. So SEO, even with AI, does come.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:36:19]:
Back down to user.
Melissa Moody [00:36:20]:
Yeah, it comes back down to the user. And it really should. A good product, if you're meeting a user's needs, will grow. Right. If you've built something that they want and they use, it will grow. But there is a point at which sometimes that does start getting lost in the noise.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:36:34]:
Yeah. Which therefore created the tragedy that yours got lost.
Melissa Moody [00:36:40]:
Yeah, I think my tragedy was that we stopped saying that we stopped. And when I stopped hearing that, I don't think I consciously recognize it, but I think that was part of why I went back to a world where focus on the user and all else will follow.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:36:53]:
Because as a human, that touches our soul. Because it's a human to human interaction. It's not a human to advertiser human, just some sort of external thing that doesn't have impact in our emotions. What's a big deal. Thank you for being you and for caring about these things that, you know, everybody's just busy doing their work and you're the one out there thinking about, but how can we meet each other and make life meaningful in the midst of all just doing our work and without people like you being intentional about building either technology or space or whatever it is to do that? We miss out on a really important human need. So thank you for doing what you do.
Melissa Moody [00:37:43]:
It's my pleasure. There's nothing more important in this life than, you know, really connecting with other humans. And if we can find ways to use tech or even just better principles or encouraging folks to do that, it's a great space to be working and I love it. I'm not coming down. I never locked it on the ground. I'm not coming.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:38:03]:
Thanks for being here. You can follow us on Instagram, businessishuman or TikTok. Rebecca Fleetwood Hession. It's a great way to share some of the clips with your colleagues and friends. All right. Make it a great day. Love you. Mean it.